2's book tv. >> next, professor christopher hamner teaches about the motivations of civil war soldiers. professor hamner explains how things like hatred chisholm, money, and ideology initially factored into young man's decisions to list and head into combat. of anlicitly promise immediate furlough served as incentive for soldiers to relisted during the latter half of the war. george mason university is in for jenny. this class is about one hour and 10 minutes. >> good morning. we have taken a top-down look at this middle part of the war. today i want to change our

focus, moving back to the individual soldiers. let's start with an image we have seen here for a couple times. this is an artist rendition of one of the charges made by the army of the potomac at the 1862 battle of fredericksburg. wall, top, that low stone and a density of confederate soldiers because the frontage is so limited, they are stacked 6, 7, 8 deep. people in the back are low -- handing up loaded weapons. they are able to generate a volume of fire comparable to a gun. war i machine more than 10 separate charges try to go up the hill. remember, by the seventh or eighth charge, the wounded soldiers were struggling back and are begging comrades not to go. they think it is suicide. yet, they keep going. why do they do that?

thise spring of 1864, cadet and the entire core of the virginia military institute were called up to try to block a federal army moving down the shenandoah valley. ps was initially held in reserve, and at the end of the ,ay with a federate position some struggling, they were ordered to make one of those frontal assaults we saw at fredericksburg. 200 young men making their way under across the field heavy union fire. mcdowell and more than a dozen of his fellow cadets were killed. why did they do that? what are we looking at here? what do you think?

>> [inaudible] it says who he is and who his father is. holmes, sontain o.w. wendellf her -- oliver holmes, sr. pinned indell holmes his coat. why did he do that? improvising dogtags. lmes knew many men killed or wounded would not be identified. this is his attempt to make it easier for people to identify him if he was incapacitated or unable to speak. early summer of 1864, union troops on the eve of the battle of cold harbor, virginia, used a revised dogtags and put them in their coats. the next morning summit they got up and made another one of those

disastrous rental assaults that so common by the war .t that point to elbow to elbow, shoulder shoulder, one of the most lopsided assaults since the battle of fredericksburg. some victorians estimate more than 7000 union troops felt in the first 10 minutes or 20 minutes. talking about death on a scale that is amazing. you had man the night before improvising dogtags, putting them inside their coats so that when the families identify their bodies -- can identify their bodies. visitwas a diary entry cold harbor, i was killed today. fascinating about this is that men who were

improvising dogtags and writing their diaries nonetheless went and made the charge the next day. why did they do that? theink that is a fast and -- a fascinating question for us to explore. we have already talked about some of the characteristics of the civil war, the way the battle was both more destructive and less decisive. we talked about the extreme casualties that are incurred in battle after better -- battle after battle. but the battles do not settle anything. we talked about some of the in the that warfare civil war was both more destructive and less decisive. some of those things were inventions in agriculture and communication, the kind of technologies that allowed both sides to have larger armies and keep them at war for longer amounts of time here it we looked at some of the weapons technologies. the rifle musket, canister shot, the new hardware that enables kill each other

so brutally and so efficiently. there is one thing that we left out. there is a missing piece. why did these soldiers continue to make these assaults? to continue to go into combat over and over again in the face of so much mounting evidence that it was brutal and bloody and incredibly lethal? remember, we have talked about these guys before. they are regular, young american boys. farmhands and shop clerks, neighbors, school teachers. they're not professional soldiers. they're not young man who spent years and years preparing for battle. they are regular american boys. they are hurled into some of the most vicious close infantry combat that the world has ever seen. if we are going to understand why the war went on as long as it did and why it would cost three quarters of a million northern and southern men their lives, i think we need to pull

apart this big question -- why did the soldiers continue to fight? this is a fascinating question, central question for military history during that millennia. it is a fascinating question into human behavior. what would make someone throw to seeves into combat friends and comrades killed, to risk your life and limb? it is a fascinating puzzle, even if you're not interested in military history. serve -- for civil war soldiers, it would cost so many of them limbs, their lives. we have this slighty have seen a number of times, corpses in antietam. doing this? keep why did they keep throwing themselves at the battle? it is a big question, one i think is sort of an intrinsic interest. it is an urgent question to military. yet, maybe that one big question

needs to be broken down a little bit. to recognize that the things that get you to join the army in the first place may not be the things that go soldiers to charge on the third day of gettysburg, for example, or to make those assaults of the hill. we can take the big question and break it down into component pieces. first we will talk about why soldiers get into the army in the first lace. what makes them join? second, why would they stay with the army? it is arduous, the food is awful, conditions are miserable, everybody is sick all the time. then the third part, how did the soldiers bring themselves repeatedly to face battle? mid-19th century, pre-freud, before a sophisticated psychological understanding of what makes people behave the way they do.

in the 20th century, the u.s. scores anduld field scores of scholars. they sent them into battle with understandto try to what was making them tick, why they did the things they did. this is a photo of one of the scholars who is right at the front line interviewing some soldiers who had just come out of combat, trying to understand what it was that was making the soldiers repeatedly expose themselves to combat. in the 20th century, they have taken on two questions here and broken them into three different categories. it is to try to explain each piece of this puzzle. factorsal motivations, that get you to join the army in the first place. sustaining mode of a kit -- sustaining motivation, factors that hold the army together during a months or weeks long campaign. and then combat motivation, what makes soldiers get out and face

enemy fire, sometimes over and over again. explore each of these pieces as they pertain to the army in the 19th century. i have spent most of my professional career said -- studding soldiers and their experiences under fire. it is difficult to say that one kind of combat is worse than another am a because they are all amazingly terrible. the middle 19th century and the infantry combat that these civil war soldiers bridges paid in is some of the most brutal and most her figured battle of 1964, places like -- like spotsylvania. you will see a viciousness and brutality, and there is a willingness from some of these soldiers to repeatedly expose themselves, and that is something to pull apart. what are the things that would get a regular 20-something american man to join the army in the early days of the war? let's start.

>> you have recruiting posters that make it sound excitable. so you will have one poster that says "come join me army and see the beautiful south." >> all right, let's focus on the documents appeared we have sources that might give us a window into the mentality of young men who are joining the military at this point. certainly, a sense of adventure is a big part of it. in 1961, it is not uncommon to born, married, work, die, and buried within 50 miles of the same spot. the idea for a young 20-something man of going on some grand adventure was what many recruiting posters try to play up here it was something appealing. the only chance to get away from home and see a little bit more of the world. adventure is one thing. another one? >> i think a lot of it is the concept of patriotism. wanting to fight and save the union. ok, patriotism or ideology.

this is one of the quintessential ideological wars. for the north, there was the desire to restore the union and take down the rebellion. in the u as of the war, for many union soldiers, it becomes a war of emancipation. for the south, it is defending their southern way of life, a southern society built on the foundation of racial slavery. these are wars in which there are important patriotic and ideological motivations to get out and join the army. it is interesting, when i give this lecture, how quickly people bring up patriotism and ideology. sometimes people leave it until the very end. those are the cynical classes. you guys are not quite as cynical. you're putting it right at the top, which i like. what are some other reasons? >> same line as patriotism, but on her -- honor. >> one of the things that shows

up a lot in these posters, if you closely read the text, you man, able-bodied men, free brave man, courageous men needed to come, and this idea of hon or, particularly a kind of masculine honor. manycularly in the south, men went in voluntarily and flooded the recruiting stations in the first week of the war. but there were a few that were a little reluctant, could see little bit into the future and imagine military service was not their cup of tea. it was not unusual for those young man to get a package from a sweetheart in the mail that ladies'undergarments in there. it was to send a message that if you are not going to join the army, you should probably get used to the idea of wearing this around. there was a lot of gender pressure being put on men. the sense of honor, the sense of this is what men do.

what are some other reasons people would join? >> money. >> money. and a lot of the things that show up here, a months pay in advance, $100. as you would get more of the posters as the war drags on, pay becomes a more important part of it. and bounties become part of it. so there is more and more emphasis on what you can get by serving. so there are financial reasons to join as well. what else? >> [inaudible] >> yes. how are they recruiting these civil war units? friends and your brothers -- see -- look for what is popping out at you. the 16th maine regiment. we have got the third delaware. >> it is on a local basis. >> yeah, they are all recruited

locally. so you would serve alongside people that you knew and probably trusted from home. but think about the kind of pressure that that might exert. if a whole town of young men are all signing up for the military, it becomes a little harder to stay behind. employmentur prospects if you are the one young man who stays behind? technically there should be more work to be done, yet, if you're the one able-bodied none -- young man that stays, that might get attention. what are the romantic prospect if you're the one guy that stays behind? recruity deliberately from localities and specific geographic regions, towns, where people know each other, where there is a sort of pressure being exerted. a sense of glory, honor, ideology, some more practical things. money, bounties. anything else?

to avoid the draft. >> ok, there are two reasons than. -- two reasons then. 1863, both sides have resorted to conscription. so many people will be in the army because they have been compelled to do so. both north and south, construction dust conscription starts as a way to force up the last reluctant volunteers. slightly more honorable to volunteer than to be conscripted. by 1864, you will find many soldiers in both armies who are not volunteers but who have been compelled or coerced legally. so we have got all sorts of carrots and sticks, things that are pushing people into the army and things that are driving them in less reluctantly or less enthusiastically. other things that we could pull

off? we have money here, $50 million in prizes. the poster here sends a message -- why do you join the army? why do you join the navy? to get out of service in the army. >> a lot of it is about the equipment you will be using. >> they are making statements about why you would want to join a particular regimen. there are some that will talk about the fact that the kernel of the regiment is a u.s. soldier with some experience and they will be armed with a particularly useful new kind of gun. so they're talking up things that might lead you to join the army, even if you are a little reluctant at first. one of the things i think we can take away from looking at all of these posters together is that it is not one thing. it is not one single factor that is pulling these men out of their homes and getting them into the army. there are a number of factors

that may act in different ways at different times and places, and you might have individual soldiers who joined for more than one reason. it is not as if there is one simple answer to this question of initial motivation, why they joined the army in the first place. about specifick groups within the army and the ways in which they might have been motivated to join. our next lecture will focus on service of african-americans in the union army. for that group, in the latter half of the war, there are other clear reasons why you might be eager to enlist, rather than have to be conscripted in. his initialhat motivation. what about sustaining motivation? what is keeping the armies together? remember, they spend a lot more time not fighting than they spend fighting. the army of the potomac is fighting fairly sporadically him and in between these battles,

there's spending a lot of time in army camps. the condition of a lot of these camps is pretty miserable. the food is bad. the sanitation is awful. you have a moving city of 10,000 people, many of whom are sick to my disease is rife in the camps. the drinking water supply is often foul. you have animals and people defecating in the same closed quarters. there is lot of drill and discipline of the soldiers find of noxious. what kind of documents can we look at to get some sort of perspective on why soldiers are staying with the army. ?> the letters >> yeah, we had this great set of documents that is really pretty new. the civil war armies are the first literate armies in world history. they're almost the only ones who could read and write. 100 years prior in europe, the armies were filled with a letter literate people.

in the civil war, most of the men could read and write. they had a lot of time to sit and reflect on what was keeping them in the army and write about it. and they wrote a lot. millions and millions of letter. we're still finding them 150 years later. so we have a window into what is making them willing to stay with the army. probably add a caveat here, not everybody does stay with the army. certain soldiers decide at various moments that the suffering and the misery of camp is not justified, and they make a run for it. there are even soldiers who desert. particularly the confessor he just the confederacy at the evening of the work, many soldiers sent letters -- got letters from home saying we are starving to death and you need to come home and take care of us. maybe as high as 50% of the confederate army asks for leave by the evening of the war. so not everybody is staying with

the army. do we know, based on how the casualties were piling up in the latter two use of the war, that many men were staying. let's think about some of the reasons that soldiers were willing to stay and serve with newton notation to leave might be pretty overwhelming. and serve when the contagion to leave might be pretty overwhelming. >> a lot of them are sending money back home. >> absolutely. some of these things have overlap. particularly for young men who did not have any job skills. the payment from the army and the promise of a bounty at wars and might be a really good reason to stay with the army. some practical reasons. some other things? >> camaraderie. >> camaraderie. remember, you are serving alongside people you know. you might not want to embarrass yourself. what happens if you slink off?

executed.d be or if they find you -- >> let's say they do not find you. home and you make it you say, you know what, the whole fighting thing, getting shot at, not for me, folks. i'm going to go home. hireople will not you. >> people will not hire you. you will be disgraced. there will be a letter that most talkingeats you home about how you ran. it will be very difficult for you to show up in any sort of honorable way at home. so there is a way that the camaraderie exerts pressure to stay. you suggested another reason that people might stay. a capital offense. if they catch you, the military can execute you. here you have a photograph of a

northern soldier being executed. not every soldier they catch gets executed. lincoln is famous for commuting a lot of these sentences. war,e point in the thousands and thousands of men and absent from the units, he was asked why he was not hanging more soldiers. he said there is something about american society and people will not stand seeing him boys harmed by the dozens. they will not stand for it and should not stand for it. but they do. generally when they execute soldiers, the union executes i than more than 100, fewer 200. they usually do so in a very public execution. so the men will be masked up. they will have breakfast or they will be brought out and they will see soldiers that along want to the units of the

deserter who are forced to watch the execution. many right tone that this is a terrible and agonizing experience, to have to watch a fellow soldier hanging. publicly you do is a like that? >> to make sure that everybody knows that it happens. >> exactly, as a deterrent. if you see oneat or two german hanging, the soldier who is thinking about deserting might give it a little .ore consideration there is the punishment element, camaraderie, money, and other reasons. you feel guilty for leaving your brothers in war, but what happens to your family if you are shunned in your city? so you have that else. >> sometimes. there is a really complex psychology at work. late in the war, union armies began penetrating very deep into the south, destroying southern farmland.

southern families are writing letters to soldiers in the army saying you joined to protect us. you need to come home. are ravagingrmies the countryside. we are going to starve and cannot make it through another winter. in that case, they're trying to invert that on or -- that honor. other things? >> the popularity of their commanding officers. >> ok, maybe the men became deeply attached to the people they are serving with or serving under. there is definitely a lot of evidence that people formed attachments to their fellow soldiers and the unit itself. patriotism,lace for motivation?this >> yeah. >> absolutely. the of the things -- this is another thing the soldiers write

about at length. they have time to sit in camp and talk to their fellows about why they are serving. restoring the union, the importance of restoring constitutional government, protecting a southern way of life. in many units, there is a lot of talk in the north about emancipation and the desire to create a better society going forward. are patriotic, ideological reasons to stay and fight. i do nothing we should dismiss those, particularly when so many of these letters talk in very ornate language about their willingness to lay down a life on the altar of the country. it is language that our 21st-century sensibility does not always read at face value because it sounds overly romantic. yet, you see so many examples from troops on both sides talking about the willingness to give their life on the altar of the country, willing to pay the dues that their forefathers had in the war of independence.

those are reasons. we can also talk about the importance of religion. there is another way in which soldiers are encouraged to stay and fight and the idea that the outcome of the war, the outcome of your own individual life is in some ways in the hands of the almighty. there are large moments of revivalism, particularly in the southern armies come about throughout the army and throughout the war on the there are revivals, conversions, talking about the role of providence in deciding the war. this actually cuts two ways and the confederate army. in the first part of the work, many southerners were convinced that god was on their side. and the string of surprising victories that they win against larger union armies seemed to kind of confirm their suspicion of god is on their side.

the third year of the war, there is evidence from places like gettysburg and vicksburg that perhaps they are not going to win the war. there is a state of revivalism and many of the confederate armies in which some of the preachers say perhaps this war is god's judgment. perhaps there is something to this talk. to keep soldiers fighting. if this war is god's judgment, who are we to run away before we take the full measure of it? we have to stay and fight. there is this complex web of factors that are keeping soldiers in the army. but i do not want to overlook this critical one, that desertion is a capital offense. there are important reasons to stay in the army, but there are also important reasons not to run away. this affected different soldiers at different times and in different ways. one of the things we know is that it worked enough on large

numbers of men that there are hundreds of thousands of troops in the field in the third and fourth years of the war. certainly many of them have gone awol and some decided army life is not for them. but enough of them are staying and fighting him about the casualties continue to mount as the war drags on. let's talk about this last part which is the most interesting one to me. this is a series of slides from the beginning. what makes a teenage william mcdowell willing to go out and make one of these frontal assault? what does it take to be in the first wave of fredericksburg? what does it take to be in the 10th wave at fredericksburg? what does it take to be one of chargediers in pickett's on the third day of gettysburg or one of the union soldiers who pinned an improvised dog tag to his jacket? diary entrys a saying i was killed today, yet

he gets up and goes? this is fascinating. this is one of those fascinating puzzles of human behavior generally. one of the things that makes it so interesting is that you have rational people behaving in a way that is somewhat irrational. the willingness to expose yourself to fire over and over again, to risk your life, to give your life. it violates deeply ingrained biological impulses we have. the other thing that makes combat motivation interesting is it is much harder to study. for an initial motivation, we can look at recruiting posters and look at letters that people wrote as they were going off to war. for sustaining motivation, we can study some of the things that soldiers did in camps. combat motivation is different. it is not honorable if you're trudging across a mile and a say,at pickett's charge to future historians, here is why i am doing this.

and right in your diary that there is a complex web of motivating factors that might drive you to make a charge like that. >> [inaudible] the first wave, not really understanding about death or dismemberment. wave, you the 10th have to walk over all those dead bodies. >> fredericksburg is the first battle. when you are in the first wave, you might not have a good understanding of death and civil war combat. but what about the soldiers in 1864 at cold harbor? think about what we discussed last week, 262 hard-fought soldiers who had been in the wars of the very beginning and are ordered on the second day to make an assault against a much larger confederate unit, one that results in the highest casualty that any unit suffered in the entire war. they know what they're getting into, yet they still go. to me, that is a puzzle. >> at that point i think it is mostly camaraderie.

>> ok, camaraderie. this is certainly like the orthodox explanation. i love the guy, it is a band of brothers. that is one thing we will talk about. again, i think we cannot lean on simply one explanation. because this behavior is a complicated that it would be -- it would really reduce something, located to something much too simple if we just said, well, it is affection for the guys there fighting with. there are a couple problems. one, keep in mind, a lot of soldiers do not fight. every unit has got soldiers who are great soldiers in camp, great on latrine duty, great cooks or whatever, but when the bullets start flying, these guys are gone. they seem to disappear. some call them shirkers. some guys call them coffee coolers because they generally make their way to the back were the coffee is. when it is done, they say, hey,

we got lost. i do not know what happened. certain soldiers try to remove themselves from combat, but there are many, many, many more who continue fighting. we want to explore a little bit about why they did that. i want to suggest that the camaraderie is important, but by itself, it cannot explain why these soldiers continue to do that. let me give you one piece of evidence from pickett's charge. there is a soldier who are dissipated in that charge, civil war soldier -- there is a soldier who participated in the might, and the regiment consist of 10 companies of 100 men each. the companies that smaller groups called messes. guys that you cooked with. the people you knew most intimately and had the most familiarity with. there was a virginian soldier at pickett's charge who goes in , dozen men he

knows the best, which includes the figurative band of brothers but two or three actual brothers also, and i believe that he is the only survivor. such a's charge took serious toll on these units. so he is the only one who comes back. if he were just fighting for the camaraderie that he felt for the guys he fought with, at that point he would expect that his willingness to go into battle would have -- yet, this guy, like so many others, continues to fight. they put him in a different company and he keeps fighting. i do not doubt that camaraderie is one piece, but by itself, i do not think it is completely sufficient. perhaps atested that the beginning when you do not know exactly what you're getting into, it might be easier to go out there. but by the second and third year of the war, it should have been

cleared to absolutely everybody exactly what kind of a meat grinder civil war combat was. so this could have had three years to watch the war unfold and should have known that making one of these frontal assaults against a fortified position was futile. yet, they continued to go. a cold harbor, you have large groups of troops willing to make the kind of assault or they have seen at fredericksburg and gettysburg that they know is going to be dangerous. yet, they still go. it is interesting from a cold harbor is after fredericksburg and one of the most lopsided civil war battles. that ahe one assault u.s. general says in his memoirs, the one assault he regrets launching pure nothing was gained in thousands and thousands of people were either when did or killed. after cold harbor, there is a

union that isthe referred to as cold harbor syndrome. they're not willing to make those frontal assaults anymore. there is some sort of push back against officers' insistence that they walk into a position. so there is a pattern of learning and being reluctant to fight. and yet, they're still fighting in some incredibly brutal battles in the summer of 1864 win the war is generally becoming more vicious and more bloody. areme suggest that there other things that are helping to tell the men into battle, and some of those had to do with the tactics that soldiers used in battle. this is an artist representation, stylized version. this is not a photographic piece of evidence of what battle looks like. yet, a gift at a couple things that i think we can unpack usefully. what are some of the things that

will just pop up when you see these kind of pictures? they are very common. you can go on the internet and search civil war battles, and you will see a lot of things like this. >> they are organized into big blocks of soldiers. >> yeah, big box of soldiers. they're standing elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder. there are ranks behind. there is a high density of troops. so they're packed in. that should stand up. >> they are carrying the american flag and i do not know which flag that is -- >> they are carrying these huge banners as conspicuously as possible. bey are not trying to stealthy in any sense. image of ands eye combat looks like is from the second world war when soldiers are spread out, wearing

camouflage, and they go underground and try to hide, crazy, thatst seems you would pack soldiers into these formations and that you would advertise your location. colorful, and they are not trying to hide. for our 21st-century sensibility, you kind of recoil. why on earth would anybody do that? it is important to note that packing soldiers into these blocks, linear tactics involving lines, this is the way that armies have fought historically for thousands of years. here is an artist representation of the british at bunker hill, but we can go all the way back to agent reese -- ancient greece. this is the exception. the records of the last 85 to 90 exception. for most of human experience,

soldiers go into battle and these tight formations. and you can find plenty of historians who would suggest two things. first, these tactics are meant to overcome some of the crude -- the crudity of the weapons. remember, we looked at the rifle musket which was a huge improvement over what had been used years before but still takes 15 to 20 seconds to load and you have to do it standing appeared there is not sort of rapid fire. the muskets were being displaced by the rifle muskets. they were not very accurate. remember, this big lines are firing at the same time and in ,he same general direction thinking somebody will hit something. a lot of historians will suggest that the tactics are to make up for some of the technological shortcomings.

i suggest that it had as much to do with the psychology of fighting than with any sort of shortcomings in weaponry. one central point about combat in the civil war and other wars is that people generally do not want to be there. people do not like being shot at. they do not like being in loud, dangerous situations. this is one of my favorite quotes from a union soldier david thompson who speak so quickly. he said -- the truth is, when the bullets are whacking against tree tracks and solid shot are cracking skulls like eggshells, the consuming passion in the heart of the average man is to get out of the way. what he sympathize with is talking about. these linear formations are designed not just to help accommodate some of the shortcomings in the weaponry, but i think also to help channel people who may be reluctant to expose themselves to fire and may be reluctant to go in and to

sop them masked together that they can be pushed into battle. let's look at some of the ways the linear tactics might do that. guy.se you are this theonsin farmhand, join army at 23, thought it would look like fun, stay with the army because did not want to desert, believes in restoring the union. battle andhe day of you find yourself having serious second thoughts. saying, gosh, i am an innocent wisconsin farmboy. the whole frontal assault thing does not agree with me. in theare this guy second rank, what are your options? >> you do not really have options. >> why not? >> well for me you are in the middle. >> you are in the middle, just

packed in there. one soldier said it was like being in an iron box. you have people in front of you, behind you, on both sides. alsocking soldiers in reduces some of the chances that they have to try to get out of combat. you will notice in a lot of these artists were trails -- portrayals, you have soldiers at the ee bank you're not carrying who were- at the end not carrying muskets. what are those guys therefore? noncommissioned officers. >> noncommissioned officers. why does he not have a weapon? what are they there for? sometimes you will see guys with pistols. >> to make sure you stay there. >> they are there to look down the ranks and make sure that is feelingho

wavering knows that there are eyes watching them. who else is watching them? >> the people next to you. >> yes, the people next to you who are people you know from home. waver, therert to is the knowledge about the way you behave in battle and the decisions you make under fire are going to reflect on you. you will not be able to do this in secret. >> i am wondering, if you lose comrades, if you have lost brothers, is there a sense that you cannot turn away because then they would have died in vain? >> there is. i think that's big smaller to the sustaining motivation. -- i think that pertains more to the sustaining motivation. in world war ii, people asked these guys were they were doing. there was an awareness that the things that drove soldiers to join the army in the first place and stay in the army were often

much different than the things that got them to go to comment. that actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it, because combat is very immediate. your body is filled with adrenaline. it is very urgent. a civil war soldier, i was looking into some of his letters, and he said that it was all fine, well, and good in camp , but he said once you were in battle, the range of your concern is narrowed to what you can see over your gun. inthe things thought about combat are often different than the abstract notions of what might keep you in the army. but there is a sense that we cannot stop fighting now because of fear of all the friends and brothers that had gone before would have died in vain. your reluctance to change your behavior in the near term because you are thinking about what you have already lost. that helped drive the armies in

the later part. in combat, i think it was rare to think about that. it is just such an overwhelming experience to fight. it is a rare soldier who says, yes, on the morning of battle, i was primarily thinking about constitutional republicanism and ae danger of setting precedent in which there are breakaway factions. this is not the time to think about that. >> i was just wondering, we think it is strange that they have the brightly colored uniform. historically, when we go back a little while, the british thought that when american soldiers would take off officers, they would use guerrilla tactics. does that mentality kind of carryover in the civil war with american soldiers or was it more wear bright colored uniform so that they can identify them?

>> why would you wear brightly colored uniforms and have these big flags? you're not sneaking up on anybody. you will see pictures where there are drummers and you are making a tremendous amount of noise. you're waving flags and wearing brightly colored uniforms. why? >> friendly fire. >> it has to do with friendly fire. we saw this on both sides with what the armies were wearing. it is how you know what is going on. >> [inaudible] >> right, once you start firing, the battlefields are cloaked with smoke. produces a dense, thick white smoke which hangs low to the battlefield. the concern to the early part of the 20th century is not sneaking up on your and any. it is making sure that your friendly troops know where they

are and know that your unit has not fled in terror. also, so you can exert some sort of control over the troops. how are you communicating if you're the regiment's colonel? does the civil war battlefield afford you in terms of control? >> you have to communicate to your officers. >> how do they do that? >> yelling at them. >> they are yelling. they're using a bugle call. they are using oral and visual signals. people are suffering from battle deafness, a temporary hearing loss when someone has pulled the for thein your ear last 20 minutes or so. people get confused. there is a journal entry you need to tell soldiers were there supposed to be, which is why the flags are crucial. you need to give soldiers the sense that the unit is still here. the one thing that can happen is

if every other soldier in the , then you and runs are the last guy left. civil war commanding officers, the captains and colonels, do not have to make a lot of decisions in combat. the tactics are such that they're not supposed to make decisions in combat. we talked about this a little bit last week. officers exercising autonomy on the battlefield was quite often going to result in disaster. we saw that at gettysburg. you're not supposed to make big unit.ons of your you're supposed to keep them together and keep them firing. so use the officers on horseback who are very conspicuously present for their man. and they are modeling the kind of behavior that you are supposed to engage in as a civil war soldier. that is generally stoicism. pretty fascinating if you go

back and look at the kind of office is -- officers that the man seemed to really respect. in letters home, they will talk about such and such soldier never seems to waver under fire. if he walks through a hail of bullets, he is as calm as if it was walking through a rainstorm. and riding horseback during an artillery barrage, and all the men are lying down. and calmly, the general is riding his horse up and down. it is a rare man who does not remember that. you're supposed to be steady under fire, be stoic, and you are not supposed to show outward signs of physical fear. in these first missions, everybody can see how you are behaving. , you're looking around to see if the guy to your letter the guide to your right is looking like he is about

ready to run. the officer said this is one of the greatest fears. once you're in battle, panic spreads like a contagion. it is infectious. one guy gets it and then the two guys next to him get it and then the guy next to him. pretty soon, the whole formation waivers and dissolves like a sugar group it -- a sugar cube in warm water. the officers are there to keep the man to gather and to keep them working. not to exercise autonomy. clicks [inaudible] >> that is a great question. in most cases, i think it is the threat of that. one of the takeaways and hope you get is that it is not one thing that is getting them to fight. it is a whole series of factors. officer, we think, who makes good on the threats. the point is, you can make a

credible threat. you can threaten this guy or something, if you do i will see you. a town of winchester, west of where we are now, changes hands a number of times over the course of the civil war. right before the third battle, a confederate general gives a kind of pep talk to his men, saying we're going to continue to fight. he says a lot of things, saying we're fighting in the defense of homes and family, fighting to justify the sacrifices that our grandfathers and great grandfathers may, fighting to protect our southern way of life, fighting to demonstrate that we are honorable men. then he pulled out his pistol and threatens to "personally blow the brains out of the first man who steps out of line." so you have kind of a nice series of things that might keep you fighting. there is a carrot and a stick. what we do not like to think about in the united states is that coercion, compelling people

to fight, is a very powerful motivator. it is not used as much in american armies as in many other armies, but that does not mean it is not used. in fact, in the 19th century, that is a very common understanding. in europe, for example, a great general says that an effective soldier has to be more afraid of his own officers than he is of his own enemy. people are not going to be willing to expose themselves to combat unless they have a very good sense that there are going to be swift and immediate assurance if they waver. in these linear tactics, it requires an active real imagination to put yourself into how they were processing things. there are other factors. i have read thousands and thousands of letters from soldiers like this. the one reason that shows of the most frequently when soldiers

struggled to explain why it was they they continue to fight is something called the touch of the elbow. because you're packed into these linear formations, because you are standing shoulder and shoulder and elbow to elbow, you had the physical, tangible comradesce that your are there. the rescue unit is there. of physicalsurance touch is incredibly important. it helps to counteract some of the real carnage that occurs in these confirmations. it is one of the things when you're packed in shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow, if your buddy catches a cannonball , his guts will be splattered all over you. the savagery is right up front and close. even more it

important for soldiers to aspire to have this kind of stoicism. you do not show fear in battle. think about what a big change from the 20th century and the 21st century. a famous example and a memoir of the second world war in the evilic, a story that some have suggested is embellished, but it is a useful instruction -- some people have suggested is embellished, but it is a useful instruction. in the first battle, they hit the beach. the troops are spread out. there are not comrades right with him. he is desperately clinging to the side of a sand berm. suddenly, he hears the sergeant scream out. he was afraid he had been hit. what would we do if we lost a sergeant? he yells out, are you ok, and the sergeant yells out, i am fine. it was interesting. the guy said, all right, every

time i go into battle and the first time a shell is exploded, i piss myself. and the guy looks down and says, oh, hey, i pissed myself, too. in the sergeant yells back, welcome to the war. it is absolutely impossible to imagine a commander in the civil a reputation for bravery and a competent soldier who soils himself every time he goes into battle. it is just unimaginable. i think that says something about how expectations changed. in part, that is because the way that the fighting is so different. in the linear formations, it is vitally important for the general to be there to reassure them. you cannot do that if you have a spreading wet stain on the front of your uniform. soldiers talk about how they have to tamp down the natural responses in an attempt to stoicism.e façade of there are some other things

.oing on, tactics is a process.apon you have to load it, ramrod, percussion cap -- soldiers spend a lot of time practicing loading and discharging their weapon. they drill with it. they spend a lot of time in camp, and that is one of the things that was so i'm noxious about camp, they had to do these things over and over again. one of the reasons for that is to create what psychologists would describe in the 20th century as muscle memory, something that is over-learned. they do not have vocabulary for this, but they observed the phenomenon. any of you who have played a sport probably have seen this. if you have practiced something,

it almost becomes automatic. a set of physical manipulations that is in your muscle memory. being in stressful situations actually improves your performance. a lot of the tactics which do not require the soldiers to make judgments about, should i stay here or seek cover? you're supposed to do things in an incredibly repetitive way such that the strain of combat actually improves your behavior. what are some other things that are going on in the civil war battles? do you feel like you have a better answer about how they do it? let me throw one out for you

then. >> what about taking the offensive as a way to get away from all the fire? >> what do you mean? >> if you keep attacking, you will eventually get past all the shot and shell. thewill be able to force other guy out of his trenches or whatever. >> yeah, and they do that. they are willing to do that later in the war. at cold harbor, the veteran soldiers are still willing to go forward. but because the range of -- because soldiers have become much better at digging in and making temporary entrenchments, it is much more difficult to close the gap between an attacking force and a defending for spirit that is one of the reasons that the last month of the war had a lot more siege encounters where one army, rather than making an assault, sets up and tries to smother the other army. let me throw one out for you then. we have talked about the

soldiers at the beginning of the war, the initial motivations. they think it is going to be a short, glorious war. those initial soldiers signed 90-day tapers. a three-month work. then we will all go home. it becomes clear in that first summer that it is not going to be a short war. signing men up for 90 days will not be sufficient. 1861, whatummer of are the enlistments that soldiers for the union army are signing onto? >> three years. >> three years. 1861, seems like this will be more than adequate. do some math. -- end ofe years 1864. is the civil war over in 1864?

it was not. the union army has a huge problem going into the winter of 1863, 1864, that some 300,000 of the soldiers had served out their enlistments. and they're going to be free to go in just a few months. troopsy is that a lot of , but who are the guys who are going to be -- who will have served out their enlistments? the ones who have been there the longest, the most experienced troops, and the most enthusiastic volunteers. these are the guys that came out at the beginning of the war and said sign me up, i want to help save the union. you are losing a large group of your most motivated soldiers and your most experienced soldiers, the ones who know how to fight. the ones who are good at infantry combat. that is a huge problem for the union. what are you going to do? the south recycled those guys

back into the draft. you serve out your term in the confederate army and go back into the draft. but in the union, soldiers that have served their two-year enlistment are not liable for the draft. they can go home. they had done their part. for the war department, that creates a serious dilemma. in the winter, there is a drive to reenlist the veterans whose terms are going to expire in late 1864. they put together a package of incentives to try to get these guys to sign up again. if you are in the war department knowing what you know about the things that get people into the army in the first place, the things that get him to stay with the army, and some of the things that motivate them in combat, what are the kinds of incentives

you might put together in a package to encourage some large proportion of these 300,000 veteran troops to reenlist? >> a lump sum bonus. >> let's give them some money. that is one of the incentives. they offer a package. one of the incentives is a bounty. you reenlist, we will give you some money. that is one reason. >> military promotions. >> yes, they offered promotions to a lot of soldiers. but they cannot promote everybody. you cannot make everybody an officer. they do try to dangle promotions to certain people they think are

going to be critical in the reenlistment drive. >> if they sign-up, they can keep their colors. >> we have talked about camaraderie and the value of fighting with people you know and respect. this is one of the shrewd things the war department comes up with. if 3/4 of your unit agrees to reenlist, you get to keep the colors. you get to keep your unit designation, and you get rewarded with a special designation as a veteran infantry company. these are flags from ohio, to an ohio unit. veteran volunteer infantry. you get to wear a red and blue chevron on your shoulder if you reenlist. why is that important? i mean, who cares? >> it is battlefield prestige among the other soldiers. >> yes, prestigious. they also want this to distinguish themselves from who? from the conscripts and the bounty soldiers, the guys who did not join. they are only there because they have to be. they want to be distinguished from those guys. they want some sort of recognition that they got in at the beginning, they have fought through the whole war.

they want that element of prestige and recognition. but there is a catch. 3/4 of the unit has to reenlist. it is playing on the bonds among soldiers. if you don't get all of these guys, you cannot in dribs and drabs reenlist. if you go back to the reenlistment movement, you see there might be general reluctance to sign back up. think of it. if you have fought through the first three years, and there are lots of men in the north who have not fought at all, it is not unreasonable to say i have done my part. somebody else can pick up a weapon and march to the next battle. i have found some cases where you would see the colonel of the regiment telling the men, "don't reenlist. go home. you have done your part. if anyone stops you and asks why your home when the war is not over, tell them that for three years we have done all this, go thou and do likewise."

he was telling them not to reenlist. what you see sometimes is a soldier writing his wife and saying, don't worry, i will be home. i'm not going to fall for this reenlistment thing, i'm coming back. you don't have to worry about me. three days later, a note saying, "here's what happened. i was ready to come home but my friend charles said since i was popular with the men, if i relisted, james, billy, and their brother bobby would all reenlist. if those three would reenlist, we could get the rest of the company."

they made it sound like it was just this one thing, so i signed up. my signature is dry on the reenlistment paper. i did it without thinking. they make it kind of conditional on these bonds of comradeship and the pressure soldiers could exert on one another. yeah. >> in world war ii, the army air corps kept changing the number of [indiscernible] you could fight before you could go home. why did the government not change the number of years and say the war is not over, you have to stay? >> manpower policy is an evolving thing. this is the first time they are experimenting with this many troops.

they are worried about what they can do. there is a sense that they have signed a contractual obligation and it would be poisonous to renege on that initial agreement. you will see in the second world war a reaction to this. what is your enlistment in the second world war? for the duration. not going to be screwing around with any of the veteran reenlistment stuff. you're in until the war is over. they discover people start falling apart psychologically. every soldier has his limit. somewhere around 250 days in combat is all they can stand before they start coming apart. in vietnam, what is the service obligation? >> one year. >> one year. they are trying to respond to the lesson they think they have learned in world war ii. in the civil war, they are still feeling this out. the confederacy changes the rules. the union does not. another important thing we have not talked about is a furlough. if you sign the paper, you get 30 days to go home. the 30 days starts now. for soldiers living in the field for that long, many of whom would reasonably despair of ever going home, the chance to see home and family one time, maybe one last time, was an incredibly powerful inducement.

there was one historian that made the argument that most of the guys that enlisted held their chances at surviving the last eight months of their obligation so low that they reenlisted mainly for the furlough, mainly to go home one last time and say goodbye to friends and family and return to what they had come to believe was almost certain death in 1864. it is a complicated question of what is making them fight. it is vitally important because we cannot understand why the war goes on salon and take such a toll if we don't think about it. i hope you have gotten at least

the idea it is compensated. many factors are working on soldiers at different moments. when we come back, we are going to talk about the campaign of 1864, which would test soldier'' motivations in ways they could scarcely imagine at this point. we will come back there. see you next time. >> you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span three. c-span's new book, "sundays at eight" includes gretchen morgan said. >> if you want to subsidize and we in this country want to talk about it and the populist agrees that it is something we should popularize, put it on the balance sheet and make it clear and evident and make everybody aware of how much it is costing. when you deliver it through these third-party enterprises, and fannie mae and any mac, when you do this. public company with private shareholders and executives who

can extract a lot of subsidies for themselves, that is not a very good way of subsidizing homeownership will stop >> read more of our conversation with gretchen morgan's and and other featured interviews from our book notes and q and a programs. eight" now at available as a father's day gift idea favorite bookseller. >> next on american history tv, author vicki mack talks about her book, "frank a. vanderlip: the banker who changed america." the book chronicles the life of frank vanderlip who played an important role in the creation of the federal reserve in the early 20th century. this event was hosted by the museum of american finance in new york city. it is about 50 minutes. >> it is my pleasure to introduce vicki a. mack. her previously published books include "the groom's guide," and "up around the bend."