breadwinner. sometimes with zero child care and household task. in the new regime, man can be, and want to be actually, fathers participating to the development of their children. i thank you very much for your attention. [ applause ] coming up tonight on c-span3, panels from the gettysburg college civil war interstuts conference on the war in 1864. next, robert e. lee's strategy guess the union army of the potomac. you lice es s. grant strategy in virginia. later, a look at the sand creek massacre, an attack on an indian village in colorado territory. and after that, a talk on confederate general john bell hood's campaign in tennessee, that resulted in the almost total destruction of his army.

remind your children in this by centennial year, when we are the first generation of the americans who have experienced attacks on the continental united states, we are the first generation of americans to have felt what it was like to have our government buildings attacked. remind your children freedom is not free. and that our country's greatness is found in one another. that's what the star-spangled banner is about. that's what this commemoration year is about. to tell that story, and to lift every voice, and to sing. >> a three-day fourth of july weekend starts friday on "american history tv," including the 200th anniversary of the star-spangled banner 8:30 p.m. eastern on friday. visit the college classroom of joel howell as he talks about u.s. government human radiation experiments conducted after world war ii through the cold war. sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a preview of presidential

historian jeffrey engel's manuscript on george w. bush and the peaceful end to the cold war. next, on "american history tv," peter carmichael discusses confederate general robert e. lee's strategy in 1864.rect of civil war institute at gettysburg college and delivered this talk at the institute's annual summer conference in june. it's about an hour. >> good morning. so when we all get in this business of writing books, you know, we hope that our books have a lasting impact, that in the long march of his triography, we keep pace with the scholarship. but the reality is, most of our books fall by the wayside. and i had that realization at a

recent book signing, in which i didn't have to strain my eyes very much to see the end of that line. and as people made their way up, a guy said to his wife, honey, this is the author of the book that i've been reading every evening. and she said, oh, the book you fall asleep to every night. [ laughter ] douglas freeman, there's no risk of his work falling by the wayside. douglas freeman as many of you know was the biographer of robert e lee. he received a pulitzer prize for it. he did three volumes on the army in northern virginia. entitled "these lieutenants." all of his work is beautifully written. he had prose that i think is

equal to catin, who did incredible research. freeman was very much enamored with the general. in fact, he admitted to this. every morning as he walked to work, he would salute the statue of robert e. lee in richmond. a little odd, i would say. mon the less, he had great admiration por the general. and he was, i should add, a his or yan. preman grew up in virginia, did his undergraduate at the university of rich mobbed and went on to johns hopkins where he earned his ph.d. he decided to work for a living and was a journalist, two different papers in richmond. his historical output is amazing. this should remind us of our conversation with gordan ray who did a real job as a lawyer and has a historical scholarship. freeman also maintained an incredible work ethic. he got up every morning at 2:00, in fact, this is a picture of

him in his office. he would work from 2:00, to i believe 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. if you note in the photograph, you can see there's a microphone where he did a daily radio show. then he went off to the newspaper office and was a full-time editor. so really quite remarkable his output. his scholarship deeply influential, although it's certainly taken some hits. his interpretive foundation is there. there's a lot of rubble. because of the revisionist scholars. and of course, their critique of freeman, is that he simply presented us a sanitized lee. he was very selective in the evidence that he used in his presentation of lee. so i'll give you one example. he spoke to an audience at the war college talking about leadership. and in this, he made an observation about what constitutes the generalship during the civil war. he said a great general, a great

general must recognize between what was profitable to what was desirable. a soldier who cannot make that distinction, freeman declared, will never get anywhere. freeman was referring to confederate gustav to beauregard. beauregard had fantasies with joining with the forces around petersburg and richmond and marching on to washington, d.c., and on to philadelphia, and their final destination would be new york city. of course, that would be giving up richmond and petersburg. this kind of flam bouncy with pierre gustav to beauregard is understandable. if your parents name you this, you will have grandiose plans. freeman should have applied this rule to robert e. lee. if he had done so, i think he would laugh come up with a more

critical, and actually more lasting interpretation of the general. so my argument is very straightforward. and note that i've just changed the slide to distract you as i tell you my argument. it is simply this. by the fall of 1863, lee's expectations of his army had far exceeded what it could actually accomplish. during the preceding 24 months before june 1st, 1864, before the fighting at cold harbor, lee had lost roughly 100,000 men. of course, he was keenly aware of his diminished strength, but at the start of the overland campaign, robert e. lee was still searching for that elusive victory of annihilation, or you can call it an american waterloo. what's really odd here is lee's thinking on this subject, after 1863, in no way evolved, or

changed many of his peers, especially on the union side, they had adjusted to the reality of civil war warfare. they recognized that civil war armies were virtually indestructible. and that the battlefield almost never resulted in decisive strategic results. '64, lee has the grandiose plans. and the expectation that grant would be destroyed in a single battle. what's surprising is the southern press and the southern people, they were modest, and realistic in their expectations. this was not the case in the north. brook simpson wrote a very good piece called "great expectations." if you've got your pen out here, to write down the book titles, this is a fine volume on the essays of the wilderness campaign. that's where brooks' article appears. great expectations, in which brooks finds that northern

editors promised their readers that grant would deliver a knockout blow in the overland campaign. lee never faced the same kind of pressure that grant did. and of course, he had the political clout in richmond to take a more strategically conservative approach. grant simply didn't have that option. so finally i want to suggest this. that lee should have abandoned his spotsylvania line, and retreated across central virginia, that area was logistically barren, and of course, he could then consolidate his forces around richmond and petersburg, something we can discuss during the question-and-answer period. there's a perception that once the armies fell back in richmond, enter siege warfare, it was simply a matter of time. i honestly don't agree with that. if he had left the spotsylvania's line after may 10th, he probably would have

saved himself about 20,000 men, according to my estimates. grant would have been obliged to do, what? to attack him. so the standard of victory in 1864 should not have been a victory of annihilation, it should have been a stalemate. as we know, in may, atlanta wasn't threatened. joseph johnston was grinding down sherman's army. lee could have done the same, because what's the prize for these campaigns in 1864? it's defeat of abraham lincoln. in fact, it is the defeat of abraham lincoln that is the confederacy's last best hope for southern independence. before we dive into the details of this argument, we need to do a little his triography. when the word his triography comes out of my mouth, it's like ether. i'll make this succinct and to the point. it falls in line with many

historians who critique lee for his excessive attacking. and that that attacking, or the commitment to the offense, that it ultimately brought upon confederate defeat. this idea that many scholars maintain today, has its origins in the work of many of these peers. including edward porter alexander, the artilleryist, in the first corps. he described lee as audacity personified. james long street, alexander's superior, after the war said it was lee's up and at 'em courage that would not let him rest. these two examples, and there are many others, they infuse the writing of early scholarship on lee. i'll give you one example. george bruce in 1913, concluded that the aggressive warfare -- that aggressive warfare was congenial to lee's impulsive nature. scholarship has not removed

itself from this idea, that lee had a peculiar lust for combat. michael feldman, in his 2000 biography of lee, titled the making of robert e. lee, he explained that lee's addressing this on the battlefield served as a release for pent-up sexual frustrations that lee had throughout his adult life. at the moment, when it was most needed, aggressiveness thrust up through the passivity and deep reserve of lee. in a sense the most approximate emotional precedent for such an outburst was the considerable erotic energy that had forced its way up through the carefully controlled exterior, the young lee had normally shown the world in his relationships with young women. lee found a parallel, a

conscious act given the choice he would attack, not wait. now, feldman's observation got a nice chuckle from the audience. some of you might find them very disturbing. if you read his biography, it's beautifully written, by the way, but if you read it, it's what many call -- i don't like using this term -- psycho babble. you will reach the conclusion at the end, there are all these explanations for confederate defeat, i think we have a new one after reading feldman's book. if the confederacy only had prozac, r.e. lee would have been a successful general. i want to quickly remind you of this. the when douglas saw freeman, he wrote the following description in his 1934 pulitzer prize prize of robert e. lee, no one had a problem with his biological theories as long as it purported to explain lee's greatness. at the battle of fredericksburg,

freeman writes, lee's eyes flashed as he watched the men counterattack and the blood of light horse harry fought in his veins with the calmer strain of the peace-loving carters. turning to long street. lee revealed the whole man in a single brief sentence. is well that war is so terrible, we should grow too fond of it. the feldman and freeman examples remind us of the dangers of comparing culture with biology. any historical interpretation that suggests that historical people were governed by animalistic impulses serves to legitimatate violence and oppression in people in contemporary society. birth of a nation, the movie, released in 1950, and a classic example, it, of course, shows african-americans as free people, taking over political governments in the south, running roughshod over whites. what's the greatest threat of all? that black men had this, not

just lust for power, but lust for white women. and if you think about early turn of the century, especially in the south, we have on the rise, lynching. of course, the factors that explain the rise of lynching are extremely complex. the point is simply this, historical interpretations are very much critical to the legitimatization of social relations and unequal power in any society. now, let's move back to when i'm more comfortable with, and that's an explanation of aggressiveness that has a cultural -- cultural -- foundation. and if we think about aggressiveness in the 19th century, men certainly prized it, but they didn't prize it in its raw form. they thought that courage should be something that's harnessed, and that should in fact be refined. an emotional equilibrium were of all 19th century men.

you read elizabeth pryor's reading the man, probably one of the best book that we have on the -- in terms of looking at the inner lee. she does it by drilling down in research. she is just a fiend when it comes to primary sources. and she really gets into them. it's a brilliant, beautifully written book that actually won the lincoln prize. which tells you something. a biography of lee that wins the lincoln prize, it's superb. she makes a compelling case that lee's engineering background flowed into his victorian sensibility of self-denial and control. lee was always worried, and very self-aware about mastering himself, but also we should note, he also wanted to master those people whom he deemed inferior, whether it be women, native americans, or slaves. now, where did lee learn his

commitment to the offense, in a military sense. he probably got some of that schooling at west point, although there wasn't any formal training in military science. he probably read about napoleon's campaign. he probably had some appreciation of the offense. but then on the ground, where did it play out with dramatic success, but the mexican war. where r.e. lee was a staff officer for winfield scott. that's where he learned to do what he called head work, getting on the ground and making reconnaissance as lee did for winfield scott, resulted in dramatic offensive-minded victories. so this is not about an animalistic impulse, it's that lee believed that the offense offered his army the best chance for success. we often look at -- let me get away from this now -- we often look at gettysburg in the

anomaly of his career. that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. i think it's in part of the book "killer angels," movie not quite so good. martin sheen plays a very, i would say somber r.e. lee. and i don't think it captures lee's thinking at that time. the result is that we get to picket charge. we stand in front of the lee monument and take in the fields and say, what was the general thinking. martin sheen got it right. lee was so depressed, he suddenly lost all his imagination and creativity and just lined up his men and marched them across those open fields. what it overlooks is the strategic possibilities of 1863, that they really required r.e. lee to do, what? to stay on the offense and to maintain an offensive disposition. there are so many possibilities that can be gained politically, and they could have only been achieved through attacking. once his army was engaged here,

which he did not want, as you all know, nonetheless, he stands as one of the most complete victories that the army in northern virginia ever achieved. july 2nd was certainly a day of frustration for lee in northern virginia. but it still was a day of impressive assaults that nearly crashed the union line at a number of places. on july 3rd, it makes utterly no sense why lee would suddenly relinquish the offensive. the idea that james longstreet had the vision that would have secured confederate victory here, it's not in sync with the reality of what was on the ground. when you stand in front of the lee monument, the next thing you need to do is the fact that the interpretive markers there don't really explain where the troops were. it appears that he simply lined them up along one extensive front, as portrayed in the gettysburg movie. that's not the case. 90% of the people who come to

gettysburg knows where the division was actually formed. it's not in front of the lee monument. it's off to the right in front of the spangler house. the troops were concealed for most of the day. the point being is this. r.e. lee took great care on july the 3rd to try to ensure that that attack would succeed. as i said yesterday, r.e. lee operated upon the maxim of possibilities, not probabilities. and there were possibilities. was it his best decision? no, it certainly was not. but it was not a decision that was a knee-jerk reaction. it was not a decision because his blood was up. it was a decision made after careful calculation. careful calculation. i would say what r.e. lee did at gettysburg was consistent to what he had done up to that point. the big question that the revisionist of r.e. lee have

raised is simply this. could the confederacy afford lee's maneuvers, could they afford that kind of casualties that -- of course, he did run up some very, very, very high casualties. that's the big question. that is the question that historian allen olden raised in his book "lee considered." the book was published in 1991. many of you know allen alden. another lawyer who turned civil war historian like gordan ray. always getting on our turf, lawyers are, as historians. he did another book called "the iron brigade." noelen's take was very controversial. but he's asking the right question. did his dairy maneuver, did lee's dairy maneuvers, could the confederacy afford them? no len couldn't understand why

people were enamored with the campaign of r.e. lee. if you take them by themselves, they are very impressive. but in the end he believed that those campaigns ironically enough, they ultimately committed r.e. lee to the thing he said he feared more than anything else. siege warfare around richmond and petersburg. there was a real uproar over nolan's book. it was really kind of sad and pathetic to be honest about it. many people never even read the book and criticized it. one person even suggested a book burning, a book burning, because, of course, that promotes healthy discussion in a democracy. [ laughter ] so, you know, in this uproar, as so often happens, people, of course, did miss where i think there's a weakness, to nolan's interpretation. that weakness is the timelessness, the timelessness of nolan's argument.

look, if you apply nolan's question to lee's operations in 1862, and even in early 1863, it doesn't make much sense to me at all. it's a time when lee did have ample resources. he had reserve manpower. he also had political opportunities in which offensive strikes could, of course, have brought incredible rewards for the confederacy. to not seize those opportunities by taking the offense and simply assuming the offensive posture, again, that doesn't make any sense to me at all. but i think it is important to know here that lee's thinking did not evolve as the war had changed. he continued to search for that victory of annihilation, and lamented the fact that his lopsided victories gained at fredericksburg and chancellorsville, that they didn't result in the destruction of the enemy. after chancellorsville, lee explained, we gained another victory, and our people were wild with delight. on the contrary, i was more

depressed than after frederic fredericksbu fredericksburg. our losses were severe, and again, we had not gained an inch of ground, and the enemy could not be pursued. many union generals had reached a strikingly different conclusion about what they could accomplish on the battlefield. grant sherman meade, they all saw that the tactical engagements, often left both armies bloodied, and they would simply retreat to go fight again. this is what meade wrote after gettysburg why he was unable to pursue the army in northern virginia. the government insists on my pursuing and destroying lee. the former i can do, but the latter will depend on him as much as me. for if he keeps away, i can't destroy. it's impossible to pursue and destroy an army nearly equal to my own. falling back on his resources and reinforcements and increasing its morale daily.

here's the hard facts of the situation. i think it's explained brilliantly by her man had a way -- this is a book unfortunately difficult to find -- "how the north won." a great military history of the civil war. and in it, they make a compelling case, that in most civil war battles, you might have a brigade, a division, sometimes a corps, that would be routed from the field. that civil war armies, rifled weaponry, because of entrenchments, they could recover quickly. a victory of a annihilation, you can only really find one in terms of a field fight. that's the battle of nashville in 1864. it almost doesn't count because by that point john bell hood wrecked his army before that battle. on the battlefield, it is a stalemate. it is a stalemate. meade got it. even sherman got it. i'm going to paraphrase sherman here. after the fall of atlanta, he began his march to the sea.

grant as well as lincoln was unsure if that was the right policy. they felt they should hunt down hood's army that escaped atlanta. sherman said, let's not play their game. i'm paraphrasing. we'll chase them down, get ahold of them, and he'll do what? he'll escape and the battle and the fighting will keep going on. there was a recognition amongst the union high command. lee never had that epiphany. so now we start to the campaign of 1864. lee has high expectations of his army and of his subordinates. he did have doubts about his senior corps commanders. commander of the third corps, holmes is the man who initiated the fighting on july 1st, which r.e. lee did not want. and then hill mysteriously sort of disappeared for the rest of the battle. on july the 3rd, hill's soldiers were in essence transferred, or given over to the command of

jangs longstreet. hard to know why lee did that. but certainly not a vote of confidence. just a few months later, in october of 1863, a.p. hill makes a reckless assault at bristol station that results in terrible losses, and this is one of the few instances on record, at least, in which lee rebuked his subordinates, to a.p. hill. he was very disgusted about what he had seen, and told hill, let's bury these dead and never speak of this again. there is certainly some concern about hill. many of you probably know this, and i think too much is made of it, but i will say it anyway. hill had shaky health. he had shaky health when he was a cadet at west point. he had some leave in government am, in new york city. he appears to have contracted gone re a in new york city. it was the gift for life for him. so he always had to contend with

health issues related to that. so he was sickly. and lee was certainly concerned about whether he had thewhere withal to keep up. the other corps commander is richard yule. there's also concern at headquarters about yule and his health, which was -- certainly was not physical health was not sound. yule had earned his stripes in lee's army in the shenandoah valley under stonewall jackson. he was a superb divisional commander. he went on to serve lee well. at second manassas, richard yule was wounded severely that resulted in the amputation of his leg. when lee's army was reorganized, yule got command of the second corps. while he was recovering from his wound, he also got married. got married to his cousin. a woman named lazinka campbell

brown. one of the wealthiest women in the south, from tennessee. her first husband had died, because of a suicide. he was part of the percy literary family, where in fact depression runs through that family. but she endured a brutal, horrific marriage with this man, who had all kinds of affairs, paraded his mistresses in public. it was an awful, awful situation for her. then, of course, she has her cousin, richard, who had been in love with her for supposedly from when he was a young child. and richard's stepson said, after the war, that lazinka married richard because she felt sorry for him. now, i can speak for all the men here. we've all had pity dates. but a pity marriage, that's really quite impressive. so she was -- this is fascinating. leslie gordon, who will be speaking next year at cwi, she and carol blesser, they edited a

book called "intimate strategies." it's about marriages of generals and their wives. intimate strategies, leslie gordon. and there's a piece on yule and lazinka. she was considered to be a strong minded woman. that's not a compliment back in the day. she made her headquarters with the second corps after gettysburg. she was with the general. and many of yule's officers, they said that they were living under petty coat government. and there was such concern about a man who got married during a war, like yule, that people started to assume that they lost their fighting edge because they got married. they got hitched. in fact, there were articles in the richmond paper, not pointing out yule, but in general reflecting upon confederate men, single men should do during the war. of course, the answer was, stay single. because a married man would lose

his fighting abilities. so yule himself -- and i like yule a lot, so that's why i'm spending a lot of time talking about him. yule is very funny and witty. all of his letters have been published, edited by -- i'm throwing a lot of books at you, by a long-time historian at gettysburg. wrote a biographer of yule. that's the best source to go. there's great anecdotes about yule. he was a curiosity. one anecdote is yule used to pretend when he was sitting in his tent -- i should say pre tent, hallucinate, that he was a bird. he would chirp softly to himself and ask his staff to bring him sunflower seeds to eat. i'm pretty sure that didn't inspire a lot of confidence in the troops. [ laughter ]

all right. i'm going to move quickly through one example of the wilderness. i want to give you time for questions and comments. as i said before, lee had high expectations of confederate forces. at the start of the overland campaign, this map in front of you gives that opening phase on may 3rd and may the 4th, as the army of the potomac enters the wilderness. lee's hunting ground nullified the artillery. lee really lost his opportunity on may the 4th, that he could have maybe attacked the army of the potomac, while he was straddling the river. that did not happen. the army of the potomac as it entered the wilderness, yule men are north, below the orange turnpike you have the orange plank road. you need to imagine that the first day of fighting at the wilderness were almost two separate battles.

one on the turnpike, one on the plank road. about mile or so between the two confederate forces, r.e. lee made his headquarters with ambrose poul hill. yule was on the hook, all by himself. he did extraordinarily well to bring the union army at bay. many of you will be going to the wilderness with brooks simpson and others on monday. one of the thing the park services has done brilliantly, was a scene rehabilitation. there are areas in the wilderness that have been restored to the wartime appearance, where yule fought the saunders field. that is one of those places that brings it back to life. when i was a kid, you got off at the saupders field and all you saw were trees everywhere. now you can appreciate the historic landscape. second day of the battle of the wilderness, lee has more ambitious plans for richard yule. he hoped that yule, and there we have the fighting on may the

5th. i should have pointed this out earlier. confederates on the turnpike, on the plank road. you can see the gap between the two confederate lines. right now this is the final day of the wilderness, may 6th. you can see where it says, cedric and to the left of it, rickets, and the far right flank of the union army. lee hoped on the 6th that the confederates would swing around the right flank and that they would cut off the union army. again, an ambitious, ambitious design. and of course, ambitious design that would only be realistic prior to gettysburg. lee's army simply didn't have the reserves for that kind of attack. it's simply not within the cards. there's a lot of delay, a lot of controversy, which we can talk about as well. the lost cause comes in here. after the war, everyone uses yule as a scapegoat. gettysburg is central to this. yule blew it at gettysburg.

by the way, he didn't, but that's what they claim. who's above the fray, r.e. lee. we get to the wilderness and it's once again richard yule and gettysburg the second time. you know the song, right? it's a lost cause song. the line is always the same. lee had the vision, had the right ideas. his subordinates stumble, they made mistakes. if they had only followed lee, there would have been a crushing confederate victory. confederate independence was almost within their grasp and we would all be singing dixie today. that's how it goes. that's the same explanation for the wilderness. again, this wasn't simply possible at all. after much delay, lee finally launched an assault against the right flank. one reason he was not able to launch a major attack, he didn't have any reserves. one brigade arrived on may the 6th. one brigade. you're just talking about a few thousand men, that's it. with that final attack, he was

able, yule, to slam into two brigades. they retreated, he captured a few officers as well. it goes back to my point of the indestructibility of civil war armies. yule had the el the of surprise. it's ideal. that's what every civil war officer wants, to be able to pitch into an unsuspecting army. you're fighting in the wilderness, the thickets of the jungle. the results were limited. after the war, after the war, yule was, i think, turned into a scapegoat by lee. in a private conversation, in 1868, at washington college, lee was still holding on to that fantasy of a victory of a annihilation. in this conversation that he had with william preston johnston, this is what lee said. yule showed vacillation.

that prevented him from getting all out of his troops that he might. if jackson had been alive and been there, there we go, right? lee predicted he would have crushed the enemy. the desire to destroy his adversary, persistent for lee after the battle of the wilderness. it continued to motivate him throughout the summer of 1864. lee said in atlanta, we must strike them a blow. we must never let them pass us again. we must strike them a blow. two days later, may 21st, lee promised jefferson davis that wherever grant moves, that he will promise to be in a position to move against him. and shall endeavor to engage him while emotion. seems to me, lee added, that our best policy is to unite upon the army of the potomac, and endeavor to crush it. now, lee's sense of urgency, of course, is understandable.

his desire to strike grant's army is reasonable. but his overall designs were not in alignment with the expectations of the southern people. or the southern press. this is a critical point here. they measured the success of military operations differently now. early in the war we know that the southern people wanted offensive gained victories. and lee served them up with p panac panache. they were in line with one of lee's maxims, that he said early in the war, and i think this is very interesting point that lee made. he wanted easy fighting, and heavy victories. easy fighting and heavy vi victories. it's more critical that the contemporaries in 1864 started

to applaud r.e. lee for his defensive skills. that was his greatest virtue and the surest course to confederate victory. by the end of the overland campaign, june the 1st, many confederates equated aggressiveness with desperation. the defense became a sign of confidence. intelligence, fortitude. and i'm just going to read you one -- i could spend the next 15 minutes reading quotes -- but i'll just read you one from the editor of the richmond wig. a bully who rushes an antagonist is met and checked. that's probably u.s. grant. and then skulks away in search of great safety. he is whipped. that is the most satisfying reflection, and it is a renewed triumph of our arms. it has been achieved with comparatively small sacrifices of life. so here we have it. lee in many ways who was so sensitive, so aware of public

opinion, and especially northern public opinion, he had always had his strategy in tune and in sync with what the people wanted. of course, it's an absurdity to think that lee or any other general was as concerned about public opinion today. we can't function especially on facebook without getting likes and approval of everyone. i sort of imagine lee during the overland campaign, should i counterattack after spotsylvania. please like, if you want me to do that. lee wasn't beholding to the people's whims in that way, and thankfully not. it's interesting here, and i want to leave this point alone, that i believe that lee, unlike joseph johnston, he had all the political clout in the world. he could have done almost whatever he wanted. and a more conservative course maybe would have gotten a few folks worried, but everybody knew lee well enough and trusted him enough that he could have in fact retreated back to richmond and petersburg and raised a few

eyebro eyebrows, but that's about it. my critique of lee's generalship. this is just another example of armchair generalship by historians who sit on a pedestal of hindsight feeling high and mighty and making it clear that they are so much smarter than people in the past. the what-if scenarios that promise confederate victory as mine sort of suggests, i think they're really troubling. because they obscure, if not obliterate, the political and racial reality of a world where slavery and secession would have prevailed. if i had these concerns, what could be gained from this inquiry into lee's generalship. we're currently a nation at war, and what appears to be a never-ending conflict against terrorism. i think we need to ask ourselves two basic, but strangely enough,

ignored questions. what are the u.s.'s political goals? and are they in harmony with the military strategy abroad? no matter how you answer this, whether you're a hawk, a dove, democrat or republican, or member of the tea party, democracies at war will not succeed unless political and military aims are in harmony with public opinion. in the end, an historical military leadership, to quote allen aulden, is a concern not only to the leader but to the followers and to the enemy, to ordinary people, many of whom die, are maimed and otherwise suffer. in short, nolan concluded, military leadership involves responsibility for what happens to other persons. nolan's observation is essential, if we are to seek a

critical assessment of lee, the moral as well as the military consequences of his decisions, and the human price of organized killing for the political ending of slavery and secession. thank you. [ applause ] >> we have plenty of time for questions, if you have -- or criticisms, concerns. please go up to the mics. and we have john over there. >> hello. john of chicago, illinois. i think you're right in that had -- >> stop right there, john. that's perfect. let's go on to the next question, please. [ laughter ] >> i think you're right that had lee, prior to the large conflict that spotsylvania, gone back to

richmond and petersburg, i think that obviously would have helped their cause. but i have a difficult time believing anything like that while obviously it didn't happen. but because lee is so offensive-minded. i feel like it's difficult for me to consider that as something that might have happened because lee just -- i feel like isn't thinking in this way. >> even if, again, you don't believe that r.e. lee had it in him to simply maintain a defensive posture, i would agree with you. in fact, that wouldn't have been a wise policy. what most people i don't think fully appreciate are the operations around petersburg. we think of the creator, and that's about it. if you come to cwi next year you'll find out there's a lot more to petersburg. the operations in june, july, august, into the fall, as the union army starts to make its way to the south of the city, snipping the important railroad links, there are open field fights, they're not in the trenches. lee's army does extraordinarily well.

the main reason, i believe, is the very best men and officers in the army of the potomac are either wounded or buried in central virginia. 20,000 veteran volunteers, their three-year commitment in 1864. the green army is filled with lots of substitutes, lots of bounty hunters. lee does extraordinarily well. it's an offensive-minded approach that helps slow down that union advance. my point is that if he had preserved more of those men, think about 15,000, 20,000 men more, and the other thing to consider is lee maybe should have relied on a rating strategy, where the federals turned, the crucial element to their ultimate success, i think if lee used that as well, it would have assisted the confederacy more in political support. little victories, which is all you could get with the ratings strategy, they are amplified in the papers. if you want to buck up morale on

the home front, these raids, they're fueled for morale. i think john moesby is a good example of that. okay. yes? go ahead. >> lee elder from ohio. and i'm curious how it would have been different for lee to fall back to the petersburg line earlier than it eventually was in reality when he fell back later? how do you feel that would have been different for the confederates? >> so, here again can is a great question and opportunity for me to acknowledge the limits of my knowledge. for me to say, well, i'll look at a map, and lee after, you know, may the 10th, should have abandoned that decision and headed south. of course, removing one's army from a position in which grant got ahold of you, right? that's probably easier said than done. we should all be aware that looking at a map as i did in my talk and said, simply take your troops and go back down to

richmond, there's all kinds of problems. one, grant's not going to allow that to happen. he desired that, because he knew lee's army would be vulnerable and a long retreat back to richmond. i think there's all kinds of difficulties that would present itself, that would be very, very difficult for lee to get back to richmond. think about antietam. lee maintained the position around sharpsburg. the aggressive lee, that he's refusing to give up the field, that honor, taking hold of him once again, pride is in the way. he's risking his entire army. that overlooks the basic fact of, he just can't get across the potomac overnight. it takes time. it takes time to move an army. i think you raised a very good point. i think there's a hole in my sort of theory of what lee should have done. because i think it would have been very difficult, i think, probably to pull off.

>> grant is my man. i'm from wisconsin. i studied grant almost all my life. general lee, i remember back at the university, he had a visitor and they sat down there discussing the war. and this visitor said to general lee, grant was a horrible general. and i can't understand how he didn't -- he was such a wonderful general. and he looked at him and said, if i was such a great general, why did general grant defeat me. and then the other thing about grant is, he was an enigma. people say why did grant succeed. everybody said, we don't know why, but he was successful. >> let me take your first point. no offense, i don't believe that conversation probably ever happened. knowing enough about r.e. lee,

he was -- he did not believe that he had been defeated by hen that position would be. he had respect for grant, but i shink he would argue that hi army was worn down. the same way felt about lee. he had respect for lee, but he -- wee had out generaled need to think about grant as a mastermind of u.s. strategy. you can focus on just virginia. he orchestrated all the union armies. we can't just focus on virginia. he's orchestrating all union armies. one reason why he relinquished s so much control to george gordon meade, because he simply could h not handle those administrative duties. so he had lots of other responsibilities and he did that brilliantly. bringing about simultaneous nfer advances throughout the fro

confederacy was a waym to stop the confederacy from shifting he troops from various critical pre areas to meet uncoordinated union advances. grant was able, i think, to solve that problem. and then and then to rely on it on a ratings strategy. certainly grant wore down the confederacy, he didn't simply do it byan lining up his men and attacking.nt out >> al mackey from mechanicsburg, pennsylvania. lee's actual target was the northern morale, so that they would get depressed and then force the lincoln administration to negotiate an end to the war e endingat confederate independen? how would this retreat that you postulate play into that?

it seems to me that would be mat counterhi productive, if gallagr is correct? >> well, dr. gallagher is right about many things, he's wrong about this. he had a great job training ere. graduate students. he did a great job there. i think he's just flat out wrong. they were in retreat.so they were in a retreat, and that, of course, didn't appear to affect southern morale. at the same time northern moralf is on the brink of collapse. my point being lee gave up a loo of ground. he gave up a lot of ground with a high body count that still hurt northern morale. ras in may. nobody knows that atlanta's going to fall. when atlanta fell, that sealed the deal for lincoln's re-election, we need to reinforce the point here, where you look at military campaigns,l

they're inseparable for politics.ded to this is the great prize. the great prize is to make sure that lincoln is not re-elected.p they needed to be more patient. and keith will probably speak ea about this, i hope he agrees with me when he talks about the atlantic campaign. it's my sense that the army of tennessee had great faith. and johnson's problems were very much a problem with richmond ngt authorities. i wish that --nf i think that i you're looking at it from the th confederateav perspective, some. patients need to be showing toward johnson. they've been through the stance before with johnson, in 1862, the keys to richmond. i think they saw the same thing happening. >> my question is that at the beginning of the war, both the union and the confederacy were able to wage war. but at this time, obviously lee was focused on the relentless attack in 1864 against the e'

invading union army. but in 1863 he had already tried to push into the north with gettysburg, and he obviously -- i'm not going to say swanderred, that's not what he did. earli he gave up a lot of resources in that attack, in that advance in the two-year period before lincoln's election.o the perhaps maybe if he had waited until 1864 to carry on that sort of push into the north with this kind of strategy, if he just waited. would he have had more of a chance -- >> the raid into the north, which is i think the proper waye to define or describe what lee did in '63. it had to be set up on victories. as lee saw it, and i think -- rightfully so, those moments, th those opportunities, whoey knows when they're going to present themselves again. and so the spring/summer of '63g e to bring the war into the north. and he

that's something that these -- all these forces have to come a together, and lee understood that he's not controlling the war with a joystick. the second point, and this is an important one. if you want to read.milita i think the finest work in terms of a military campaign study is joseph harsh.f book josephs harsh, you can look hie up on amazon, the number of books on the war in 1862 culminating with the raid into maryland and antietam.lass of he looked into the war, before he understood there was only so much sand in the hourglass of the confederacy. it was the limited resources that lee knew was at the south's disposal that that's what propelled him to fight. that puts nolan's argument on e

his head. it sees the war from lee's eyes. and i -- it's compelling work. i do we have time for one more question? one more. >> david rosen from alexandria, virginia. >> i wonder if we had had a lee who would -- rather than being the general that he was, had been a hybrid lee johnston, the whether he could have given risn to the lost cause legend and the icon that we now enjoy chipping away at, or whether -- cau >> let me step back from that, in terms of the lost cause. something we've always talked about, let me just -- in a y an generic way say this, white southerners, they have a uniquei history, in that they faced mi