this and he would mount that figure on a wooden disk, a circular disk and put a glass bell jar over it it and present it to the speaker. it's a nice gesture. so he had seen i was speaking on the atlanta campaign, and he was certain that i was going to tell him what a great general joseph e. johnston was, so when i finished my talk they introduced him and he got up to give me this little figure of joe johnston that he had made. he had a rather sheepish look on his face and he said, would you like me to take this and -- and make one of hood? what are you going to on do? saw off one of the legs? i mean, that's what the doctor did. but it's a wonderful little thing. anybody interested in the civil war would like to have this to

put on the mantle piece so i was glad to get it. i thanked him for it and i was going to waco to do some research at baylor, wrapped it up in old dirty t-shirts and put it carefully in my suitcase and went down to waco in the rental car the next day, spoke well and came back and went to the airport at dfw, checked the bag to go to washington because i was going up there to a smithsonian program. i spent a few days at my brother's doing research in the archives. did that, the jar still wrapped up in its t-shirt. went back after i finished to the airport, checked the bag to go back to my home in americas where i was living then and changed planes in atlanta and they changed the bag to the little world war i plane that they used between atlanta and

albany, georgia. got down to albany, picked up my suitcase, put it in the car and drove back. i was convinced that bell jar was broken and there would be a million pieces of glass and i would have to throw out everything in the suitcase, but i got home, opened the suitcase and very carefully unwrapped the bell jar. the glass bell jar was fine, but somewhere in the jarring around the little figure of joe johnston had gone -- that seems very symbolic. thank you, people. i hope i've geffen you something to think about. [ applause ] tonight on american history tv a focus on slavery and cinema beginning at 8:00 eastern with a look at the depiction of slavery in film since the 1930s and then the movie "lincoln" and its portrayal of the debate of the

amendment abolishing slavery and the 1939 movie "gone with the wind" and its depiction of southern society and that's all tonight starting at 8:00 eastern starting on c-span3. here are some of the highlights for this weekend. tonight on c-span in prime time. we'll visit important sites of the history of the civil rights movement. highlights of the new york ideas forum including cancer by ol jest andrew hessel and on sunday, q & a with new york congressman charlie rangel at 8:00 p.m. eastern. tonight at 8:00 on c-span2, in-depth with writer and religious scholar ressa aslam. retired neurosurgeon on, ben carson and sunday night at 11:00 p.m. eastern lawrence goldstone on the competition between the wright brothers and glen curtis to be the predominant name in manned flight. american history tv on c-span3

tonight at 8:00 eastern. a look at hollywood's portrayal of slavery. saturday night, the 200th anniversary of the burning of washington. and sunday night at 8:00 p.m., former white house chiefs of staff discuss how presidents make decisions. find our television schedule one week in advance at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400 and comments at c-span.org and join the c-span conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> next, how general sherman brought the war to the south and the impact of the union army's capture of atlanta. as sherman's troops set towns on fire, he established a code of conduct. sarah ruben discusses sherman's march hosted by the u.s. capitol historical society.

this is an hour. >> thank you very much, paul and thank you all very much for comi coming. mergeant of terror, attila. if you type, was sherman a into doingel. the auto-complete includes war criminal, hero oroville an and if you add a couple more letters you get terrorist. the urban dictionary, a popular website, describes general william t. sherman as having employed the vicious tactic of targeting civilians continuing, such tactics had previously been deemed morally unacceptable. the deliberate targeting of civilians for attack was taken up in world war ii ending in the deaths of millions. the bombing of european cities by both sides of the war and

japanese cities by the u.s. as well as attacks on civilians in china the philippines and korea by japan were consistent with n and encouraged by sherman's precedent. the logic of these tactics seems to have been refuted by history. finally, if you scroll through this entry, the words related to general william t. sherman tags at the bottom include collateral damage, modern warfare, murder, terrorist and war criminal. now let me be a little bit honest and fair here. this is not the best source out there on sherman. it was written by somebody named tex in tex, and it misquotes sherman at one point and i'll also concede that if you look at the word association tag line it does also include war hero, but

what this does represent a really popularly-held view that william t. sherman and the march through georgia and the carolinas during the final months of the civil war have something to do with the creation of total war, and the millions of civilian deaths in the wars of the 20th and 21st century can somehow be laid at his feet nor does this view reside entirely on the internet, noted repository of crack pot theories. a history of henry county georgia explained simply that, quote, sherman's march to the sea was the first hint of the concept of total war which was to come to full fruition during the second world war in which civilian infrastructure is considered a legitimate military target. later writers photoably james reston, junior, reston made the argument and said that when a

rash confederate venture to shot on his trains from a courthouse, the courthouse was burned. when a lady burned her corn crib, she lost her house. the proportionality, this is against reston of the retaliation is roughly the same if geometrically less as hostile fire from a jungle rifle being greeted by a b-52 strike. one of the issues that comes into play when we talk about sherman and the questions of total war and the lawses of war is that people seem to use pretty slippery definitions. often sherman seems to be judged by the standards of today rather than of his own time and often when -- not as much historian, but when people use total war they seem to be referring to the degree of mobilization rather than the range of targets, so what i want to do today is take a closer look at sherman's march in the context of changing union

policies over the course of the car and see if that doesn't paint a more nuanced picture of what sherman was doing and whether that fell within the bounds of kind of civilized warfare. so in 1864 there were no hague or geneva conventions, and that was not to say there were no guides for military behavior and conduct, but these wars were very fluid and evolving and changing as the very nature of the civil war changed. so initially, union policy towards the confederacy and its civilians would be one known as of conciliation. the idea behind it was lincoln believed that there was this silent majority of unionists in the confederate states and that all he needed to do was animate them and they would rise up and the states would rejoin the union. this conciliation policy meant a

narrow focus on targeting the confederate armies rather than antagonizing southern civilians and in effect southern civilians were still being treated as though they were american citizens rather than the citizens of a belligerent nation, but as early as 1862 that had begun to change and during that summer union general john pope had issued a series of orders that allowed the army of virginia to sub cyst on the produce of the local countryside and lincoln actually, he was frustrated by the progress of the war at that point and he approved these orders. pope's soldiers went on a tear of destruction and violence reminiscent, actually, of the stories that would come out of georgia and the carolinas two years later and so great were the abuses perpetrated on on civilians that pope had to backtrack and condemn his men for being so out of control. so that's happened.

at the same time in the summer of 1862, lincoln has come to the realization that he needs to use emancipation as a war measure and once he issued the preliminary emancipation proclamation in september 1862, the opportunity for this policy of conciliation to work was pretty much over and the war would be common, historian mark brimsly's phrase hard handed. at the same time, all of this is happening simultaneously in different levels, the union war department had begun consuling with oppression-born professor named francis lieber about devising a military code. lieber then in turn called his 1863 work a code for the government of armies, but the war department issued it as general orders 100, and it's more comfortably known as the lieber code. so, the lieber code was designed

to codify the laws of war and particularly as they pertain to the interactions between civilians and soldiers. one of the most significant sections of the code are articles 14 through 16 which very carefully delineate military necessity. lieber has a pretty broad definition of that that deplores cruelty and deplores acts of vengeance as he would put it, but did allow for the making of war on civilians in specific situations, and in fact, there's a sort of tension internal to the lieber code over what's military necessity and what's going too far. so he does explain further in article 17, wars not carried on by arms alone. it is lawful to starve the hospital belligerent armed or unarmed so it leads to the

speedier subjection of the enemy. he talks about also in a later article, he said the citizen or native of a hostile country is, thus, an enemy as one of the constituents of the hostile state of nation and as such is subjected to the hardships of war. so it's clear from lieber's code that there are ways that civilians can be targeted because of the fact that civilians are presumed to be inherently helping their military. that being said, among the code's prohibitions were the death and destruction of art works and the like and under punishment of death, this again is lieber's language all wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all destruction of property not sxha commanded by theboq[z=jju)+q" officer and all robbery and pillager sacking and taking place by main force, a rape,

wounding or maiming and killing of such inhabit apartments. there is a line and that is physical violence against civilians. you can destroy their property, some of them, not their art, which is nice. there's limits. confederates when they read the lieber code complain that it's so broad that as to license mischief under the grounds of military necessity. also by 1864 when sherman is preparing for the march, lincoln and the union in general have become comfortable with a high degree of destruction of private property. cotton could be burned easily, if not the contents of homes if not the homes themselves in areases like missouri and the shenandoah valley. so one can argue that the lieber

code, at least as it it pertains to the treatments of civilians and their property was honored more in the breach than it was followed to the letter. just after the war something called field service at war by francis j. lipity was val published specifically on military logistics and he also leans on this doctrine of military necessity to justify foraging and he argues that foraging was a, quote, well-established right of war. now he does concede, though that there need to be restraints placed on foraging because, as he put it, to do otherwise would be to bring dishonor upon the the country. and lipity's work, i know it was published after the work, but it will all make sense. lipity's work demonstrates the complexity of the issue that surrounds foraging. by its very nature, when you see

supplies from civilians you are inflicting hardship on that civilian population and so in order to inflict sort of the magical right amount of hardship enough, and to operate within the moral boundaries of civilized warfare, officers need to maintain tight control and lipity explains defined foraging parties and centralized systems, chaos could ensue and the army could really descend into a sort of armed mob engaging in pillage and so forth. so what's interesting is that you would have expected lipity to use sherman's march as his examples as he's making this complicated case. he doesn't and it goes back to napoleon's russian campaign. in fact, though, he doesn't

ignore the march when he's talking about how an army can descend into chaos. that's where he uses napoleon. he actually defends sherman's march and he claims at first that when seizing household goods the men carefully discriminated between -- and this is actually the language from sherman's orders, discriminated between the rich who were generally hostile to us meaning the union and the poor and industrious who were usually friendly or at least neutral and he also describes sherman as having a very organized system and with rules and receipts and he explains that any deviations from this nice, orderly, foraging system on the march, were the and stragglers and the like and not the main force of marchers. we'll kind of talk about that in

a minute. white southerners during the march and immediately afterwards frequently drew comparisons between sherman's march and robert e. lee's invagus in 1862 and pennsylvania in 1863 and they've often quoted lee's general orders, 72 in the gettysburg campaign in which he reminded them, this is lee's language that the duties expected of us by civilization and christianity are more obligatory than in our own and now aen go, lee's language. we make war only upon armed men and we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies. so lee's often praised for these orders, right? that he's restraining his men and relying on their sort of

inherent gentility that's a pretty selective reading of what actually happened and many of these defenders of lee ignore the many wrongs perpetrated by lee's men specifically when they kidnapped african-americans to sell into slavery and virginia. so we'll set that aside. okay. i've gotten ahead of myself and a little off track. so let's talk now specifically about sherman and his march. despite many allegations to the contrary, sherman himself was very well aware that war was governed by rules. these charges against sherman. is sherman a war criminal generally focused on two events. they focus on the march, obviously, which i'll talk about, but they also focus on his expulsions of citizens, of

civilians, rather, from atlanta. so, sherman's army took control of the city of atlanta on september 2, 1864. they weren't planning to stay for very long but he did want his men to use their time in the city for sort of recharging to rest after the rigors of the campaign to take atlanta and he didn't want his men distracted by confederate operatives or women and children. he didn't want to have to feed women and children, and he didn't want to have to leave any men behind to hold on to the city of atlanta when he pulled out of the city. so he famously ordered civilians, unionists and confederates out of the city and gave them ten days in which to comply. it was with about 1200 people who were affected by this. many people have used his september 12th 1864 letter to

the mayor of atlanta in which sherman famously wrote, war is cruelty and you cannot refine it to make the argument that he was willing to do whatever worked to wreak all kinds of havoc on civilians in order to end the war. sherman is quite explicit about following the rules and laws of war. in fact, he was quite angry when confederate general john bell hood challenged the eviction of confederates from atlanta and he wrote to hood, i think i understand the laws of civilized nations and the customs of war and then he suggested, in fact, that maybe the confederates ought to be taking better care of union prisoners at andersonville. in his final letter to hood, in fact, sherman proclaimed that, quote, he was not bound by the the laws of war to give notice of the shelling of atlanta because, he said, the city had

been fortified and was being used for military purposes. see the books, he testily concluded. so what of the march itself? >> before sherman left atlanta in november 1864, he set ground rules for his 62,000 men and he did them in the form of his special field orders number 120. there were nine article s altogether ask there are marching orders and then there are center sections that, in fact, deal explicitly with what the army could and could not do along the march. so the men were instructed to, quote, forage liberally on the country and to destroy mills, houses, cotton gins, et cetera, but within limits. the foraging parties were

supposed to be regularized and under the control of discreet officers. soldiers were not supposeded to enter homes as long as the the -- and if the army was left unmolested, southern property was also supposed to be left alone. essentially what sherman is saying is a group of union foragers came up it a farm or plantation and they were allowed on and nobody was shooting at them or smarting off to them, then they were supposed to leave all the property. and again, sherman also ordered that when seizing livestock in particular his men, as i said earlier, ought to discriminate between the rich who are usually hostile and the poor and industrious, usually neutral or friendly and if the army was well treated during their foraging, they were invukte ed o

strucked to quote, leave a portion for their maintenance. so he is setting parameters. most of these rules were really more -- more honored in the breach than in reality. they're pretty elastic, but i think that their very existence of these rules gave sherman and to a lesser extent his men a degree of, i think, moral cover or at least that's what sherman is trying to achieve. they also allow for a certain elasticity. so you could treat some people more harshly and other people leniently and there's evidence that, in fact, the march does have an ebb and flow into it. certainly, it's pretty harsh in georgia and it's extremely harsh in south carolina and then the men are ordered to really pull back and be less destructive in north carolina because north carolina was perceived to have a

lot of unionists. so, i don't really want to come away from today thinking i'm an apologist for sherman's march or that i in any way am trying to minimize the very real damage and devastation that the soldiers left in their wake, but what i am trying to say is that the men were bound by rules and they knew they were bound by rules. sherman certainly believed that he was operating within the laws of war and the parameters of civilized behavior. he's also willing to push exact leigh up to those boundaries of those rules. frightening people, stealing their supplies and burning their barns, burning their houses even was one thing for sheryl man. i do think the the wholesale kill, sexual violence as happened in areas by guerilla violence, like missouri, for

example, was really beyond the pale for sherman's men by and large. sherman biographer michael feldman has argued that while the march quote stopped well short of a total war in the 20th century nazi sense, sherman's rhetoric of destruction implied that he could make war on whomever he chose ask that southern whites would be powerless to stop him and sherman is certainly well aware of the psychological impact of what he allowed his men to do and encouraged his men to do. does that make sherman a terrorist? he used his calculated brutality to terrorize the southern population, feldman, i think, really tries to split hairs as much as possible and describe sherman as having, quote, terrorist capacities. i also think there's some responsibility, clearly, for both destroying and reining themselves in to the soldiers

themselves on the march and part of the reason that the march was not total in the 20th century sense was because the veterans limited themselves, held back by their own internal and cultural sense of morality. i've done a lot of reading on sherman's march because i have this book coming out this summer, and i will tell you that there are very few instances of -- there's not murdering. there's not killing and there's not lining people up and shooting them. there's definitely some violence, but not the kind of violence that's associated with wars in the 20th and 21st centuries. so sherman himself may have overstepped the bowns unds of legality a few times and these charges again are regarding his use of prisoners of war. so in the first instance, sherman wrote that torpedos or mines had been buried along the

roads outside of savannah and he called for prisoners of war to be brought up to clear the mines, not wanting to risk his own men and then in the second, a group of union foragers had been captured and killed by some of wade hampton be's men in south carolina, and sherman ordered a group to dry lots and had men executed to set an example or a retaliatory example, but, i would argue, what keeps sherman from being a terrorist in the modern sense of the word is that he was operating during wartime with the full sanction and full support of his government and when the war ended, so, too, did his hostilities and his destruction. i mean, in many ways, i think that a better analogy to terrorism in the wake of the civil war would be the waves of violence that confrontedihe@@@r% african-americans during reconstruction as they saw to exercise their new economic and social and political freedoms.

so this notion that sherman brought forth some new kind of war with the march really only makes sense in retrospect. at the time people didn't perceive it as such. as the 19th century became the 20th and as wars of increasing deadliness and destructive power break out around the globe, the march seemed to reappear again and again and often the analogy surrounding the march are strained, what they do is they reveal this evolving notion of the march that somehow the march becomes increasingly destructive as it's repeatedly compared to more modern or more current wars and i'm just going to suggest a few things to give you a few examples of this. >> sherman's march was when germany marched into belgium in 1914.

often to actually remind americans of the costs of involvement of war even when justifiable. once the united states became involved in world war i, this past ceased to be a significant point of discussion although it did reappear abovely after the war and i'm excited to talk about this in this room which is that during testimony before the senate committee on propaganda in 1919, grant squires, a new york lawyer who had visited belgium testified to the cruelties that he saw perpetrated by the germans, men and women beaten with rifle butts, children and babies murdered and families starting without shelter. >> he was then asked to counter testimony that had been given earlier by a german sympathizer, to the effect that sherman's march had also been a very cruel expedition. >> and this enraged senator newt

fellson who was a civil war veteran who angrily proclaimed that american soldiers had, quote, never killed women and children. whatever they did they did not do that and nelson specifically asked squires to it address the charges that germans were no worse than sherman's men and the squires confirmed that the germans were different from sherman's march. so what i'm -- what i see coming out of this is this sense that there's a new standard set for violations of civilians that were once sherman's thefts and fires were the worst that people could imagine, the great war issued horrors of an entirely different order of magnitude. there were very few mentions of sherman's march that i was able to come across, but in the

vietnam era, perhaps because it coincided with the centennial of the civil war raised all sorts of analogies to sherman's march. a variety of cultural critics and opponents of the war in vietnam compared sherman's actions in georgia to the actions of american soldiers in vietnam. the most detailed and culturally significant exploration of this relationship somehow between sherman and vietnam came in james reston, jr.'s sherman's march on vietnam where reston retraces the march through georgia and he's looking at the past to explain the turbulent present and this post vietnam war that he lives in and he seems to draw this straight line and this connection between the violence and here is a passage from this.

>> general william sherman is considered to be the author of total war. the first general of modern, human history to carry the logic of war to the ultimate extreme. the first to scorch the earth. the first to wreck an economy in order to starve its soldiers and he was our first merchant of terror and our spiritual father and the spiritual father, some contend of the vietnam concept of search and destroy, pacification and free fire zones. as such, he remains a cardboard figure of our history, a monstrous arch villain to unreconstructed southerners. an embarrassment to northerners who wonder if civilized war died with him, whether without sherman the atom bomb might not have been dropped or vietnam entered. >> reston concedes after this passage that maybe he's -- he's more metaphor cal than real, but

he's trying to argue that there is once you lose the bounds, the bounds are constantly loosed upon. >> he's trying to make an argument, too, that sherman's veteran, that sherman's soldiers and west moreland soldiers had more things in common, being animated by a desire for vengeance and a desire for reprisal and where they differed were in matters of scale which he says is more a function of of technology than of desire, that it seems worse in the 20th century because men had weapons of mass destruction and in the 19th they didn't. not -- i don't buy it completely. in order, let me just conclude by invoking something, what of today?

where does sherman fit today? he's sometimes invoked in discussions of the iraq war, often in support of a more terrible and total sort of war. again, this would be the dark reaches of the internet where people are saying things like, if only sherman had been in, you know, iraq or afghanistan. okay. just the other day, though, my -- on tuesday, actually, my trusty google alert for sherman's march pointed me to a column by thomas ricks and foreign policy entitled sherman as a counter insurgent. ricks argued that sherman, he's arguing that sherman was embarking on a counter insurgency and not a soft hearts and minds campaign which rick sort of pooh-poohs and a tough minded you're either with us or against us approach with a clear psychological dimensions. i read rec's column over a bunch

of times and i'm not convinced by his argument, but where i think rick's work is useful and what i am convinced of is that sherman's march and its relationship to what americans think about war is still very much alive and very much relevant today. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> i'm happy to answer any questions. oh, here we go. oh. can you address a little -- you talked a lot about the topic of the standpoint of what sherman ordered. did you address kind of what actually was happening on the ground for the union troops, in particular as they march through

the swath of the south, they obviously disrupted the society that was going on, but in particular how did his men handle african-american slaves? >> that is a great question and actually, my book, i have a whole chapter on the march between african-americans. as sherman's men marched through, the first thing i would say is there's this misconception that people say, oh, sherman's men kit a swath 50 miles wide or 60 miles wide. that's -- i always tell my students, you don't want to think of it like a lawn mower strip, right? it's not 50 miles wide of lawn mower. it's 50 miles from the edge of one column through four columns to the furthest edge of the other. so in many ways, it's very, um, what's the word i'm looking for. not sporadic and episodic, but sometimes the house is targeted and a house a mile away is not

targeted. that being said, where sherman -- sherman's men and sherman himself and african-americans is a really interesting question. i love paul's formulation that sherman's army was one of the great armies of liberation. they are not really very willing liberators. sherman was not -- certainly not a fan of racial equality or after the war of according civil rights to african-americans. he did not -- he was perfectly content as they went on to plantations to have his men liberate the slaves and announce they were free and he was always telling them to stay put because he doesn't want them following after his army and of course, he's unable to prevent african-americans to follow his army and by the time he gets to atlanta to georgia there are probably 25,000 on african-americans who have followed his army and he doesn't

want them. he's perfectly willing and there is a section in his orders to take able-bodied african-american men and put them in his pioneer core and have them work as teamsters and things like that. he does not want to have to feed women and children and elderly people and he tries to leave them behind. there is a horrific episode outside of savannah in a place called ebenezer creek where sherman's men -- you have sherman's army or a section of sherman's army under the command of one of his subordinate generals, jefferson davis, no relation and then you have the african-americans who were following them and then you have wheeler's confederate cavalry behind that and what happens is they use pon toon bridges to get through this river and swampy area and it's a swamp and davis orders the pontoon bridges

pulled up so african-americans can't cross on the bridges and they're being chased by wheeler's cavalry. hundreds of them wind up drowning in the swamp. hundreds of them wound up being recaptured by wheeler's cavalry. when the news gets out, sherman is condemned for not condemning davis. so it's tangled, i guess is the short answer. >> one consequence of the march is the rising dissertion rates in the army of northern virginia from those soldiers whose homes were in the areas that sherman's army went through. was this a fortuitous circumstance or was this one of sherman's goals this. >> i don't think sherman was directly hoping to influence the army of northern virginia and whatty hoo was doing was trying to target the army of virginia

was not through dissertion, but through supplies. >> first of all, by break the rail line from atlanta which had been a major supply line up to petersburg and then by rating through this relatively untouched area to deprive them of supplies, and i think also there was a sense -- he definitely was cognizant of the psychological impact that he wanted people to know that he could not be stopped and that, in fact, any kind of rumors that might have come out about how vicious they were or how violent, he was comfortable with that because he felt there would be this deeper, psychological impact. it doesn't matter. 50 years before the event you're talking about we had an episode

similar right here or next door when the british came to washington after the battle of bradensberg and at the belmont house, literally next door to this building someone took a potshot at general ross as he arrived in the capital plaza and gener general ross ordered that house burned and he made a point to not limit civilian properties. so he contrasted that to the uncivilized behavior to the americans and the canadian talents that they burned and looted and they were far more civilized and general ross was aye he unique in his time or what was going on with him? >> i'm far from an expert on the war of 1812 and i don't think ross was ahead of his time. i think ross was ahead of his time in burning the civilian house and not burning everything

else? >> there is an argument to be made for only limiting your destruction for private buildings. i would also say that with sherman, the vast majority of building or structures that sherman's men burned were not private homes and there was this sort of the places that gave material support to the confederacy. barns, gin houses, cotton, big bales of cotton. they burned remarkably few houses and it's fascinating to me, one of the areas that i explore in my book because my book is about the the cultural memory of sherman's march is, in fact, all of the different reasons that houses along sherman's route were saved because you can't have it both ways, right? you can't have sherman cutting this 50-mile swath and yet have dozens and dozens of antebellum there are lots of reasons why

psychological of an effect do you think that had in making him? some say it made him manic and mean. what do you think? >> i think it was tragic for him as losing a child would be for anybody. i think that -- i don't think sherman was mean. i think that sherman was clear-eyed which is to say that

i think sherman recognized that the way you stop a war is you make the war too costly and in so doing he also really did believe that he was saving his men because, look, his men, they thought the march was great. they loved it. they had more to eat than they normally did. they marched less each day than they normally did and with very knew exceptions nobody ever shot at them. so from sherman's perspective, this is saving his men's lives while bringing the war to a more rapid close. so i don't -- i don't think he's mean. i think he -- he has a job and he's willing to do what it takes. >> could you speak to how in 1864 northern papers were covering the march and how were

there lincoln opponents who singled out the march as anything different than had been happening? >> that's a great question. there's very little coverage of the march itself because from november 15th until really when he's right outside of savannah, there's almost no news coming out of the march. the northern paper that i've looked at the most in terms of its coverage of the march has been harper's weekly mostly because i was looking for images and it does have great images of the march, but it's largely celebratory. i'll be perfectly honest with you and i don't look at specifically democratic newspapers where you might have found opponents of lincoln, but there's not a sense at the time that sherman is doing anything beyond the pale or anything radically, you know, no one thinks sherman's created this new kind of warfare. what sherman is doing is really the same as what, say, sheridan had done earlier in the valley of 1864.

grant famously instructs sheridan and you should destroy the valley such that a crow flying over would have to carry his own provander with him. it's largely celebratory because they see in the progress of sherman that his progress is helping to win the war. the reason he turns to savannah and turns to carolina is he's trying to get to petersburg, ultimately to help out grant and not to steal any of matt pinscan ker's thunder, and that was my frustration with the movie "lincoln" is there was no sherman in it, so -- >> one of my favorite cities in america is savannah, georgia. can can you talk about his decision to save that beautiful city and give it to president lincoln as a christmas gift? >> wow! that is the nicest, most genteel description i've ever heard of that, because normally sherman

didn't decide to save savannah, sherman said look, you can surrender into submission and they'll surrender and they earned the most other places in the south because they were weak and they gave up. so that's just the nicest way i've ever heard that played. >> quick question. of course, natchez does the same thing. in 1863 confederates arrived at gettysburg because they're busy burning downed thatius stephens 'house, and chasing free blacks all over pennsylvania and rounding them up. is there anything equivalent in sherman's march? that is, does his army target politicians' house and do they march out of his way just to seek revenge against particular

politicians and are they rounding up any white confederates and enslaving them? >> they are not rounding up white confederates and enslaving them. i wouldn't say they go out of their way and sherman takes a particular delight and he has a long passage about it in his memoirs about camping on the night on plantation in georgia and freeing how cob slaves and then the other place that comes in for a lot of destruction is the poet, the south carolina poet, william gilmore simms who they really destroy his house and i read one diary where soldiers were dismayed because it's one thing if they sort of trash the house, but they burn a lot of the books in simmses library and he feels that is beyond the pale. so i think those are the two. the other thing is when they take millageville and sherman's men go into the georgia statehouse and they have a mock convention where they bring

georgia back into the union. it's really interesting. what they don't do, though, is they don't talk about emancipation at all in this mock convention. they just bring georgia back in, so -- >> there were women and children from the south who were shipped via rail train to the north who never made it back home again. has any research been done to follow up on what happened to them after the war? >> not that i'm aware of. and by shipped, i mean, they go willingly. it's not as if sherman is refugeeing women and children out to the north. no, i've not seen much on that. the only thing i can recall, a long time ago when i was working on my dissertation, i read a diary of a woman who had been from georgia and had gone and spent part of the war with family in brak lynn and then came back to georgia and was constantly -- was very upset that like the minister's wife wouldn't talk to her, that she was seen as having been sort of

a traitor. but, no, i'm not familiar with that. >> there's a professor, i believe it's mississippi state, who recently came out with a book on sherman. it advances that one of his motives since he had taught school in louisiana to a military school, knew many of the confederate officers and had many friendships and personal relationships. that part of his motivation in the south certainly was to protect his own troops, certainly to break the will of the south, because it was obvious the war going on for four years, what we had been doing wasn't completely working. and then i think back to after the overland campaign, grant still hung on for almost a year, and all the loss and destruction and loss of life that went on there, to take the approach to break the will of the south to

continue to fight and all that that entailed. but also he did not want -- and to protect his own troops, but he did not want to take on many of his friends and do battle on the field of battle. >> i've not heard that theory, that he didn't want to take on his friends. i mean, those friendships, of course, are legendary. not so much because sherman had taught at lsu, but because almost all of these officers had been at west point together over the years. i don't think that sherman -- that doesn't sort of ring true to me, personally. but i'm not familiar with the -- is it the -- "the demon of the lost cause," is that the one? that's the most recent one that i know of that came out. no, i'd love to see it. thank you. >> when the question arose about

press coverage, did walt whitman cover anything having to do with sherman? did he comment on it? and the other question i have is, can you address the mythologizing of sherman, when it began? i think maybe reston -- i think there's a big mythology in america surrounding sherman. so when did that begin? >> okay. as to the poetry question, walt whitman has one poem that obliquely references sherman, it's "ethiopia saluting the colors." from the perspective of an african-american woman watching sherman's men marching through north carolina. actually, melville, herman melville in "battle pieces" has two poems about sherman's mamp. i think there's two, that are pretty powerful. in terms of the mythologizing of sherman, i think it begins as the war concludes.

i mean, he's seen as just such a hero of the war, and they march in the grand review. at the very end of the war, they march, and then they have all these, like, captured cows and sheep and stuff marching behind them. certainly when sherman dies in 1819 or '92 now, i can't remember, but when sherman dies, there's the outpouring of sort of national outpouring of grief is really tremendous. the other thing i had say about sherman is that during the 1870s, 1860s and 1870s, he's not reviled in the south. he makes a tour of the south in 1879, he goes back to atlanta, actually. he's welcomed with open arms. there's balls in his honor. the papers are funny because there's people like ha, ha, ha, hide the matches. sherman's coming. but he's really -- he's welcomed by white southerners because of the fact that he did not support equality for african-americans.

and he wanted, in fact, a very soft peace for the south. so going back to his time at lsu and his time earlier when he had been in the army in the south, he loved the south. he loved southerners, southern whites. let me be more clear. thank you all very much. [ applause ] tonight on american history tv a focus on slavery and cinema, beginning at 8:00 eastern with a look at the depiction of sheriff ri and films since the 1930s. then the 2012 movie "lincoln" and its portrayal of the debate and passage of the 13th amendment. and a discussion about the 1939 movie "gone with the wind" and its depiction of southern society. that's tonight starting at 8:00 eastern here on c-span3. this weekend on "american history tv," we take a look back 200 years ago this week, when british military forces set the white house and the capitol on fire.

we'll also hear about british admiral george coburn used washington's waterways to burn and invade the city. coburn's idea is to make use of several different waterways in an attack on washington. if the british force simply sailed up the potomac, everybody would know that washington was the ultimate target. coburn decides that -- or recommends that the force be split up. that one squadron sail up the potomac river and threaten the capitol and the city of alexandria. the main force is going to go up the river into southern maryland, and the advantage was that it would kind of shield the ultimate british intention because a move up the river could mean many things. it could mean an attack on washington, but it could also

mean an overland attack on baltimore or an attack on annapolis, or it could mean that the british were simply chasing after commodore joshua barney, who was the american commander of the chesapeake flotilla who had a flotilla of shallow draft barges that were perfectly suited for and a half gatesinaf shallow waters of the chesapeake and the rivers feeding into it. barney, by the summer of 1814, had been trapped in the river. he was further up river than the british. the british could use barney's presence in the river to more or less shield their movement toward the capital. and that's exactly what coburn recommended. and it's what the british commanders, general ross and admiral alexander cochran, who was in charge of the entire

fleet here in north america, agreed to do. you can watch more from author steve vogel on how the british utilized washington's waterways during the invasion this sunday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern. also saturday live coverage of a panel discussion with authors and historians about the 1814 battle of bladensburg and how the victory left the capital exposed to british forces. that's live saturday at 1:00 p.m. eastern right here on c-span3. next, historian jim ogden talks about confederate weapons manufacturing in central georgia. in the fall of 1964 sherman destroyed much of this infrastructure, crippling the confederate army's ability to wage war. this hour-long talk was hosted by the civil war center at kennesaw state university in georgia.

[ applause ]know, as many of you all know from coming to some of my programs over the years, i have a tendency to use a few props of one sort or another.hat so i couldn't resist that opportunity today as well. as to help illustrate a few pointss mike and some of the staff are -- oh, my goodness. we even recruited craig into distributing handouts. i should get a picture of this. i have a historian friend who once had trace adkins as a sound man at an event. i have a naval academy professoy as a map hander-outer. so that's kind of like bob crick as an easel in the western theater. brian, i do thank you for the

introduction. as brian noted, my day job is staff historian at chickamauga o and chattanooga national military park. s a even though i'm here today just. as a self-interested historian and citizen and learner, because i've enjoyed making a few notes about things already yet again from richard and now craig few and look forward to hearing steve's talk in a few minutes. and i'm not here today as a national military park employee, but because i think the place that i work is an important the historic site in the shaping of our nation, i couldn't miss an opportunity of hawking my day job. chickamauga and chattanooga national military park. and i've already seen that some of you all have discovered that out on the table in the lobby there are piles of brochures foe chickamauga and chattanooga the national military park.

the old one is currently in usen and the new one which some day b will be in use. and so you can pick these up at some point, and i hope to see you on the ground studying thosg battlefields frequently and often. also coming around is that hand handout, which hopefully ou everybody will get a copy of pretty soon. and i also have a power point.po and let's see, mike -- okay. let's see here. let's try this. aha! there we go. try that's the one that works. oh, no. i've already --already there we go. okay. well, i'll only use the advance button.

for the events that were andd be would be unfolding in the year we are considering today in this symposium, the year now a century and a half ago, this past week of march, 1864, would prove to be a momentous one. bea not only did on march 17 the newly appointed lieutenant general ewe lis cities s. grant assume command of the armies of the united states and the next a day, the 18th, his most trusted subordinate, major general trut william tecumseh injury shan, acouped command of his new area of responsibility, grant's just vacated seat of the commander o the vast military division of the mississippi, that western tt theater that richard so well described a few minutes ago, that area between the appalachian mountains on the east and the mississippi river

on the west, but two days ago on the 20th of march, 1864, in a series of what one of the participants called full conversations, those conversations dre to a close with some important conclusions. that in the end would turn out, indeed, to do much towards determining the course of events over the coming year. those full conversations, as bn william tecumseh sherman would characterize them, had begun two days earlier in nashville. and ironically in the recently f abandoned and recently constructed renaissance revival home of one of the very men, ry confederate quartermaster george w. cunningham who would soon feel as if he personally had a target painted on his chest.

because at that time, cunningham was working for the new e confederate government in atlanta. concluding on march 20, two days ago, in the burnett house hotel in cincinnati where the co conversations had moved, including being continued on thn rail line between nashville andn louisville, and then on to cincinnati, these full conversations set the strategy for the coming campaign season.w two weeks later, grant, the principal in those full ng conversations, having relocatedi to the east, would reiterate the substance of those discussions as a general directive. in a letter to sherman dated washington, april 4, 1864, and marked "private and

confidential." grant would write, it is my design if the enemy keep quiet and allow me to take the offensive in the spring campaign to work all parts of the army together and somewhat towards ao common center.i for your information, i now write you my program as to present -- or as at present or determined upon.hat he then briefly outlines what richard had briefly outlined about the many prongs of grant's planned spring offensive. but then he gets in the end of the second paragraph to the important part of it. and he tells william tecumseh sherman what you see on the screen.propos you i pose to prove againste, and get into the interior of the enemy's country as far as you cn can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.

six days later, sherman, wanting to make sure that he understood this and doing something that would not be really codified in military art and science until , much later, although some of usa who work with groups of militarn personnel today can tell you wel have to continually teach this, but sherman essentially will dor a brief back in a letter to grant on april the 10th from his then headquarters at the cunningham house in nashville.sl sherman having occupied the samg residence after grant had vacated it.sherm and sherman, too, marking the letter private and confidentialn sherman will say, your letter of april 4th is now before me and affords me an infinite nfin satisfaction, that we are now n

all to act in common plan, converging on a common center. looks like enlightened war. most specifically he will say, k like yourself, you take the biggest road -- or biggest loade and from you shall have thorough hearty -- or from me you shall have thoreau and hearty cooperation. i will not let side issues draw me off from your main plan in which i am to knock joe johnston and do as much damage to the muh resources of the enemy as possible. i think william tecumseh shermae understands what is expected of him in the coming campaign. and joseph johnston's army of tennessee is indeed to be the o first target for sherman's r's combined army group of the military division of the y mississippi. and he'll later summarize this

strategy by saying he was to goe for lee, and i was to go for joo johnston. that was the plan. the confederate armies would b : the first target. been but there had by 1864 to be a second target, and that was the war resources that are mentionet in this order. because by 1864, the confederata states of america had created a capacity, principally in central georgia and central alabama -- and now you can turn to the handout that i've provided you, and in particular the side that is in the lower right-hand corner labeled number one. the side with the map of the southeast of the united states on it principally. you'll notice there in central georgia and central alabama, at places like augusta, athens, macon, atlanta, columbus,

montgomery, and selma, i have u drawn another symbol by those cities, a solid square with a straight line off one of the h a upper corners of that square and a squiggly line off the top of l that straight line, a symbol to represent what?y factories, manufacturing, processing, transportation, ansa warehousing, and distribution.by by 1864, the new confederate government had created in central georgia and central o alabama what we in our day woulr think of and call a military industrial complex. a military industrial complex that was keeping southern armies in the field. a capacity that had allowed the confederate states of america, just three months after the ntha surrender of the garrison of ft vicksburg, to return most of those men surrendered there on the mississippi to the field.

for grant and sherman at chattanooga, it was some of these same surrendered, paroled, exchanged, reorganized and re-equipped vicksburg troops who had helped, as we've heard from craig just a few minutes ago, kn they had helped patrick clayburw stop what was supposed to be grant's main effort. much of carter stevenson's division that was on the tunnel hill portion of the missionary ridge battlefield just south ofe where clayburn's primary dg brigades were located.e were l in particular, the georgia brigade, and the alabama brigade of edmund pettus, they had helped stop sherman's men.n firing into the flank of l sherman's assaulting columns on tunnel hill, was rome, georgia's cherokee light artillery, rearmed with products of the confederate military industrial complex.

and less than five months after their surrender to the very troops who were assaulting them on that november 25, 1863, were now firing to stop those very assaults. this military industrial complex was the capacity that caused one -- or someone walking the line of confederate canon captured on lookout mountain and missionary ridge, and displayedt as trophies in front of the army of the cumberland's headquarters on walnut street in chattanooga, to observe that over one-half of the three dozen artillery pieces just captured in that fighting around chattanooga were products of confederate manufacturing. in fact, all of the standard --d or all of the standard canon of the day, the 12-pound napoleon e were southern manufacturers.

1 of the 19 12-pound napoleons captured had been produced in georgia. in fact, on a clear copy of thi photograph, you can read stenciled on the trail, macon arsenal, macon, georgia. this military industrial complex was a capacity which in april oi 1864, was one of its principal l architects, if not the principa act, general summarized in a report to the confederate government, it is three years today since i took charge of the ordnance department of the rtmet confederate states of montgomery. c three years of constant work and application. i have succeeded beyond my utmost expectations, from being the worst supplied bureau of th war department, it is now the best.en large arsenals have been

argued at fayetteville, augusta, richmond, charleston, macon, atlanta, and selma, and smaller ones at danville, lynchburg, montgomery besides other establishments.. a superb powder mill has been built at augusta, the credit ofe which is due colonel george washington raines. smelting works were established by me at petersburg. a cannon foundry established at macon for heavy guns and bronze found ris at macon, columbus, and augusta. and salisbury, north carolina. and corksville, virginia. in fayetteville, a manufacturing of carbines has been built up ik richmond and a rifle factory aty asheville, north carolina. and a new very large armory at macon, including a pistol factory built up under contractr here and sent to atlanta, and

thence transferred under geor purchase to macon. a second pistol factory at columbus, georgia. all of these have required incessant toil and attention, but have borne such fruit as relieves the country from fear of want in these respects.three where three years ago, we were not making a gun, pistol nor saber, nor shot, nor shell, except at the works, a pound of powder. now we make all of these in the quantities to meet the demands of our large airplane armies. m in looking over all of this, i feel that my three years of labor have not passed in vain. a i want to spend a few minutes, e or the rest of my time oratin principally elaborating on what this confederate achievement, principally in central georgia and central alabama was because in the end it can be kjargued,d

who fought at altoona and dalton and decatur, and franklin and nashville, probably would agreeh engagements that occurred after the atlanta campaign. it is in the end that sherman's greateher success was probably with the second part of grant's directive rather than the first. the army of tennessee was stillt a potentially dangerous force even after sherman was he is ee sconced in atlanta. .nny of you can, of course, locate manyo of these places, i know lots of you all are georgians, and y al hopefully all of you georgians can locate these principal places in what was then n considered by many the empire state of the south. but in general, i'll be working' from east to west. i'm going to start off with

augusta. augusta turns out to be, in thed end, one of the most important t of the military industrial impot centers for the new confederate government. it was when georgia seceded andt declared independence. it was already the home of a very important facility. a united states arsenal had been established there early in the 1800s. its first location right on the banks of the savannah river. of but because of disease, it had been moved up from the valley, and perhaps a little ironicallyy and also reflective of what we d heard just a few minutes ago from craig, it wound up on the a land of thme -- or land that tht father of henry shot pouch walker sold to the united states government. it's on walker's plantation.

and some of you all may know walker, after his death in the r atlanta campaign, in the battlei of atlanta, will wind up being interred on the family cemetery that is still on this piece of ground. but augusta was already the location of a principal united i states arsenal in the south in e the antebellum period. and with georgia's secession, the state of georgia sees that arsenal in january of 1861.uaryt and in so doing, brought 22,000 arms to the state of georgia and then the new confederate o government. noti it is worth noting that 12 in months before, in early 1860, y there were only 2,000 arms in u the augusta arsenal. jump why the jump between january of 1860 and january of 1861 from a 2,000 to 22,000? was

it was in response to pleas by l governor joseph e. brown to theh united states war department, ia particular, to the virginian who was the sget of war, john floyd, to ship more arms south in the o aftermath of john brown's insurrectiinsu aborted ser vivile insurrectioat harper's ferry. the there was the fear that there lg would be more john brown's and more harper's ferries. so the state of georgia, and then the confederate governmentt will get this already existing facility, but will almost egin immediately begin to expand its capability. first by making contracts with other industrial facilities, ot including two foundries in augusta, but soon those foundries will be purchased by the confederate authorities andb

theny incorporated ated administratively into this ever-growing confederate statess augusta arsenal that's located there, and the slide here on the screen shows the plan of the arsenal as it developed during the course of the war.suj one of the reasons that this of subject doesn't get a great deal of attention today is that so many of these facilities were destroyed in the last year of t the war. but believe it or not, this one in augusta is one that you can actually still walk and visit and get some idea about its size and scale. and some of you all may havelrey already visited this site t without knowing that you have. n this is now the main campus of georgia regents university in augusta. and, in fact, the old complex

towards the, as you view it, img left edge of the image is still there.e, most of those buildings are still present. the walls enclosing it are still there. the and you can walk that ground. during the course of the war, the confederate government willt expand the facility and build across one end of it, a very large structure that appears here in a post-war photograph. but for this facility but incorporated additional workshops and capabilities as b well, another post-war image of that structure. this structure is long gone. but because the street pattern around the campus is still stil pretty much still the same, you can see and sense where this structure was located. t as all arsenals, it had both in-house ability to produce o materiel, but also served as an administrative center for the

contracting of production of war materiel. and the augusta arsenal will become one of the most gust productivear.1864 just in 1863 and 1864, to give you a couple of ideas about its capability, it will produce 174u artillery carriages, 115 kasons, 343 limbers, 10,500 wooden shipping boxes for gun powder, 11,800 wooden shipping boxes for small arms ammunition, 73,500 horseshoes, arsenals also are where the ammunition is prepared. 85,800 rounds of artillery ammunition will be prepared. 200,000 timed fuses.

15 million small arms fuses, cartridges. and in addition to some male laborers working in the rs, they cartridge factory, they employed dozens, hundreds of women, gi girls, and young boys as well. and eventually, particularly inv 1864 as the threat to the empiro state increased, they expanded e thexp ammunition production aspn of the arsenal by opening a cartridge rolling facility right in downtown augusta. so that it would be closer to t where much of the labor was, the where people could come in and e work. and when you've seen at a national battlefield park or ivl civil war site an individual dor a firing demonstration, as you know, civil war soldiers to loar and fire their single-shot rifle muskets would reach in their h cartridge box, pull out that x, paper tube containing the lead

projectile and the powder charge.char they tear the end of that paper tube open and then to pour the e powder down the bore.tly well, it was mostly women, boysi and girls in factories north ann south who took those trapezoid-shaped pieces of paper, rolled one up around the wooden form, twist at the end, tied it off, picked up that lead bullet which had been cast or stamped an then trimmed and lubricated by a man, and then place that lead bullet on the hn end of that now paper-wrapped w former, rolled that up around a second trapezoid piece of paperi twisted it, tied it off, removed the former and stuck that completed tube in the box to bet sent to another part of the factory where men would put the powder in and then fold them upo how long do you think it would

take you to roll up those two pieces of trapezoid paper around that former and that lead ball? well, if you're going to get paid to do it, you're going to have to do 90 an hour, or one every 45 seconds. ju and when you think about just i0 augusta, 15,000 -- or excuse me, 15 million rounds of ammunition being produced, how many man, women, girl and boy days and hours were expended doing that. the augusta arsenal will also develop the important capabilitp of producing those -- the principal and main and most important artillery piece of civil war armies north and south from the beginning of the war to the end of the war. and that is the 12-pound napoleon. -- war now, as the confederate government, a little bit poleona

belatedly, adopted the 12-pound napoleon as its principal artillery piece, they will maket a few refinements to their design of the 12-pound napoleon, primarily to reduce the amount of machining necessary and also the amount of material necessary. the back side of your paper handout, you'll notice the profile on the left, the model w 1857, 12-pound napoleon, as developed in europe, and the t concept brought back to the oand united states and refined somewhat and adopted by the united states army in 1857.on you'll notice most specifically that on the model 1857 12-poundd napoleon, there at the muzzle, the muzzle is flared. that is purely decorative, to

make it rather attractive. but if you look at the profile of the confederate manufactured 12-pound napoleon, you'll notice that the muzzle is sans that he flair. to not have that flair on the m muzzle redeuced the amount of machining that was necessary, ey and if, you are short material, how many pounds of bronze is ine that flair, and if you safe thau amount of bronze for each tube, how soon might you have enough bronze to cast another 12-pound napoleon? so there's a little bit of l savings in material there as well. in this central georgia military industrial complex, the production of these weapons will begin in the spring of 1863. and at augusta, which produces

as many as 115 of these 12-pounw napoleons by the end of the ward they had produced at least 57 bf the end of 1863. at and at least 77 were in the field by may of 1864. of and almost all of them are in the army of tennessee and the other western armies. although, today, if you're looking for the best collection of these products of the confederate military industrialu complex, you have to go to the eastern theater, and you have to go to the grounds of that -- of the scene of that small engagement outside that south central pennsylvania college syn town. g but that gets to a whole other e story which we can talk about b another time. these guns begin to be fielded in the late spring and summer og 1863, and as i noted, by the as

time of the confederate dee feet on missionary ridge in novembern of 1863, many are in the confederate army of tennessee's artillery complement because 13e of the 3 1 dozen guns lost at chattanooga are these confederate manufactured 12-pound napoleons. thereof was also in augusta a clothing facility that employedd women producing confederate uniforms for soldiers.f but perhaps the most important of all of the industrial in facilities indu augusta was the confederate states powder worksa that was developed there. they said at the beginning of the war no powder was produced

in the southern states. there were reallyso only some vy small powder mills like the one to the northwest of nashville, f but one of the most critical mo resources that the new nation ch would need,at even if, as they n thought in 1861 it would be a short war, would be gun powder. and george washington raines was tasked with deciding on a location and also the construction of a powder works. raines made a quick trip of the industrial cities of the south and decided on augusta as the location. is not only is augusta well served by railroads, and in fact, the e whole military industrial in complex in central georgia is in part located there because of the railroad network, but

augusta, being located on the d fall line of the savannah rivere and having developed that lo river's potential industrial power by the construction of tha augusta canal, had the potential power base as well to support this powder works operation.on, although, in the end, most of d the power for the works was going to come from steam power g and not water power. but also, as it turns out, goig augusta is going to be a well-chosen city because it is h going to be well behind what will become the front lines very quickly and for much of the war. the complex stretched along the bank of the savannah river, upstream of downtown, and also along the augusta canal. and on your handout, you've got a black and white copy of this image.

both of the powder works images that i have here come out of a very wonderful and rich volume that the university of south carolina press published in 2007. the "never for the want of powder: a history of the augusta powder works." and you can find this in many libraries, and there are lots of things that you can dig out of that volume. but by the spring of 1862, the powder works quickly constructed by incorporating the industrial capacity of much of the south by having the individual parts of o the factory produced in f different places, including some of the incorporating wheels, th big, what you can kind of thinkf

of as grinding wheels in nashville, the drive shaft in the incorporating house building which was in segments, which is almost 300 feet long, was cast o in segments in chattanooga and then shipped by rail to augusta and assembled in the complex.a there was a refinery for refining, removing impurities from the principal component of gunpowder at that time, potassium nitrate or saltpeter. and then large cooling magaz magazines and also storagein magazines. and the complex was laid out ial essentially so that all the materiel progressed from downstream to upstream, and the finished product and also the most dangerous part of the

product was also located furthest away from the city of augusta. during the course of the war, this powder mill will produce mo 3.3 million pounds of gunpowder for the confederate government. in may of 1863, it was one of tn the principal places that the english military officer ned freemantle wanted in particular to visit. t he happened to be in augusta on sunday and was disappointed, because at that time all of the needs for gunpowder for the cof confederate army nationally had, been met, and there was no need to operate the powder factory on sunday. so they were keeping the sabbath and kept it closed.. now, if you remember kind of thh look of the color image of one

of the buildings i showed you, you might wonder where the confederates get some of these ideas.et i just flashed past it again. p but this is the national armorya in vienna, austria. and notice the crenulated and square turreted form of this.of think back to the powder works images that i showed you and also the arsenal images. in the aftermath of the -- as at result of the crimean war, he jefferson davis, then secretarye of war of the united states, hao september officers to europe to look at advancements in militard arts and science.s th one of the things they saw was some new ways of making gun powder and also producing a lot of other war material.prode this engraving comes out of thee report of the three officer team, richard delafield, alfred

mordecai, and george mcclellan.k one of the first times that many of the observations from these e officers about how to produce war material on the newest practice are going to be implemented is by the new nation, the confederate states of america.too w macon, georgia, is another important facility. macon too will go through the same development process where t first existing private firms ms like the d.c. hodgkin's and son and findlay iron works and the schofield brothers facility are contracted anwith, but eventually hodgkins and findlay are going to be bought out by thebu confederate government anl along with other facilities dere established be incorporated int what is on paper the macon aper

arsenal there. also to be located in macon is an armory for the production ofo small arms, and after a search r of some time, it was decided to locate the national armory of the new confederate states of america at macon, georgia, to build an armory just like that at springfield and what had beej at harper's ferry in virginia, e to locate that at macon. and property was acquired for the armory and construction began. these are two buildings that were used by the confederate states laboratory, part of the arsenal complex producing some of the ordinance items, but they

also begin construction of this national armory because it is the production of small arms of where the confederates will have the greatest challenges. in macon they also will produce the 12-pound napoleon, as many s as 80 during the course of the war going into production again in the spring of 1863. pr by the end of 1863 having t l produced at least 37 and by may of 1864 having at least 44 tubes in the field. columbus, georgia, will also be another major arsenal and armorr complex. it, too, goes through the same process of first by contract and then by purchase and consolidation of individual works, and much to craig's joy,s i'm sure, you'll be satisfied te know that the confederate navy

liked columbus also and the confederate navy will develop an important industrial complex there in that city on the cho chattahoochee river. columbus arsenal will produce the 12-pound napoleon, as many as 60 with at least 23 by the end of 1863 and a couple of dozen in the field by may of 1864. columbus was also the location n of some very large textile mills like the eagle manufacturing company, and that product wasy a then shipped to various places a to be used to produce uniforms, tents, and other cloth items. columbus also had another very important military industrial manufacturing complex and that y was the rock island paper mill.k why is paper important?nt?

what did the soldier expend every time he went to fire his weapon? a rectangle of paper a little more than four inches by six a inches in size. how much paper was expended by the confederate army in many battles. across other places in central georgia and central alabama were other facilities as well like the small arms production in athens, a large potash works in terrell county, the georgia state armory, at gris waldville outside of macon, a cotton gin manufactu manufacturer was convert ed andu became the confederacy largest pistol making factory making wl

3,600 during the course of the war.d in greensburg, georgia, the rigden company would produce pistols as well and this complex extended over into alabama, als, there were facilities located in montgomery and nearby points pt like the textile mills at prattville and another very tvia large complex would be developed both by the confederate states e army and the navy at selma, alabama. and the factories in selma itsef itself and the activities that , were operated out of selma, such as some of the functions of the confederate neider and mining bureau, by 1865 the operations right at selma itself and in the greater region had as many as 109,000 employees. not all right in selma, but at facilities in that greater region.

the industrial capacity at selma was capable of producing even large rifled and banded sea se coast weapons of the brook pattern which were very o the important to the confederate naval operation. then, of course, there are all of the facilities in this the gate city of atlanta or the nearby gate city of atlanta.nta and while atlanta had some key e facilities itself like the rolling mill depicted here as a result of the abandonment of the city of atlanta in early septem september of 1864 in ruins, atlanta was primarily an primarl administrative center for the confederate military production.

offices here in atlanta contracted with firms large and small throughout the region and then received the product of those operations and then distributed them to the armies in the field as needed.ne but one of the most important facilities in all of the atlanta complex was the quartermaster clothing depot run by that tennessee now confederate quartermaster, george washington cunningham whose house had been grant, then sherman's headquarters in nashville in rts late 1863 and early 1864. cunningham operated a facility in atlanta that was capable of producing 130,000 complete suite of uniforms in a 12-month time

period, and he did this mostly by piecework. he had male tailors and other staff cutting out fabric in warehouses in atlanta, and then all of the pieces of a given garment like a jacket or a paira of trousers would be bundled together along with the necessary thread to sew them together and the buttons and other bits of trim, and then ad women would come in and check a out these bundles of unfinishedd garments, take them home, sew re thems, together, and then bring them back in and receive pay foe them once they were inspected and found to meet standards. by the spring of 1863 this operation in atlanta employed

3,000 women a month sewing uniform items together. do and if we do not discount the sundays, just crude mathematics means that on a daily basis about 10 women were ar100 women andan departing the atlanta clothing depot delivering de finished products and checking out more bundles and taking them home.e. it was a pretty busy street corner scene each day there in 1863 and 1864. now while this complex that i have described have set in place and while it was so while successful, the product really c of the hard work of not only josi josiah but george washington raines and james h. burton, john

mallet and f.w. dillard and jo george washingtonhn cunningham n fredrick c. humphries and isaac m. st. john and a host of others, while that capacity to prop deuce war material had reached such a point that between july 1, 1864, and january 21, 1865, it could issue more than 200,000 complete suits of uniforms to its soldiers in t the field just in that time period. i do have to note a few qualifications. it was not always the most mo perfect system. the southern railroad network as it deteriorated often meant that raw materials and finished ra products would be delayed in either reaching the factories oi reaching the destination points. it also meant that some

alternate materials had to be used. instead of the preferred all ofe woolen outer garments, jackets, coats, and trousers of the military uniform of the time, the confederates had to rely very extensively on what was commonly called jean cloth, a mixture of wool and cotton. an a cotton warp and a wool weft. what was often called negro cloth because in the antebellum period this cloth was used extensively to produce clothing for slaves in the south. in the production of shoes, eve the ingagricultural south had a shortage of leather. the southern style shoe had to

be produced a little more simply. and after our presentations today if you want to come and r handle these and look at them aa littleti more closely, you willa able to. at i will have them out in the lob lobby there. but they also had to use some expedient methods. in the south with plenty of wih cotton, why not substitute cotton cloth for some parts of s leather items? and so shoes that are partly leather and partly canvas. c a part leather, part canvas shoe as good as an all leather one? no, but will it put a shoe on a 10e8d soldier's foot for a time? and in the summer heu1863 you wd have seen thousands of army of tennessee soldiers wearing these part leather/part canvas shoes.v a cue tr accoutrements were done the same way. instead of a set of infantry

accoutrements made almost entirely out of leather, why not make a combination of leather and painted canvas? it's a part leather, part painted canvas as good as an all leather set? no. but will it work for a while and more than 5,000 sets of these, probably many more, we've got that record, 5,000 at least, bu were in use in the army of tennessee in the fall of 1863. while alternate materials often could offset some of the difficulties, there were still some problems which were very hard to overcome. one of the greatest difficultie. the confederates had in production at least reliably wai in artillery fuses. confederate artillery fuses were notoriously unreliable. edward porter alexander would say during the siege of

chattanooga that he felt lucky e if he could get one projectile in nine to explode on target. one in nine on target is not very good. unfortunately for us, we do not -- he did not record how many of the other eight exploded prematurely or not at all or t well beyond the intended target. but we do know one case where many of the projectiles fired had fuses that burned longer than the are a till rist a believed, and that, of course, f is in the artillery bombardmene in preparation for that charge on the 3rd day of july at gettysburg. bu at despitet these caveats, t, complex by 1864 was what was keeping southern armies in the field. it was that complex which produced the material that

confronted grant and sherman att chattanooga and would confront sherman as he drove into georgis beginning on the 7th day of may. it it imas also the complex thatte is man's men encountered as thed advanced south into the empire state of the south that spring. on may 17th, sherman purposely e took the industrially city of c rome, georgia, to knock the industrial facilities at that site out of the war. six days later, troops were sen specifically to the ironworks oe the river run by what had prooet sln been run by mark cooper, then being run by quimby and robinson and knock them out and as sherman pushed ever further r south, of course, he'll knock out the textile mills at sweetwater and high falls and h other points around atlanta and then by his mere presence

outside of atlanta in early september caused the destructioe of some important facilities.ome and as sherman's advance south, also, became more threatening, o it caused the labor force at fe many of these facilities in augusta, macon, columbus and other points to be diverted froi their production ductio responsibilities and turned at least into temporary soldiers. a machinist handling a rifle ang standing in the entrenchments at macon guarding against one of s the cavalrhey raids is not a machinist who can be turning out a part for some piece of piec military equipment. in the end, as i noted, it is probably sherman's success in disrupting and destroying partsd of the military industrial milt complex that -- where he had tht

greatest success in achieving what grant had outlined for him back in those full conversationf in march and in that directive t of april of 1864. because how many months is it e between sherman's arrival in a atlanta in september of 1864 or savannah in december of 1864 ane the collapse of the south's bid for independence? thank you. american history tv normally airs on weekends but with congress on recess throughout august we're featuring highlights in the week. we continue a look at the civil wars atlanta campaign. in may of 1864, union general william sherman marched into georgia after a series of battles. the union army seized and later destroyed much of thereabout. coming up, we'll hear about general sherman's march to the sea through georgia and general

johnston that led the confederates in the spring and summer of 1864 and later weapons manufacturing in central georgia during and after the fall of atlanta. tonight on american history tv, a focus on slavery and cinema beginning at 8:00 eastern with a look at the depiction of slavery in film since the 1930s. and then the movie lincoln and the portrayal of the debate and passage of the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. and a discussion about the 1939 movie "gone with the wind" an depiction of southern society. and that's all tonight starting at 8:00 eastern here on c-span3. here are some of the highlights for this weekend. tonight, on c-span in prime time visit important sites in the history of the civil rights movement. saturday night at 8:00, highlights from this year's new york ideas forum, including cancer biologist hessel and

sunday, new york congressman charlie rangel at 8:00 p.m. eastern. tonight at 8:00 on c-span2, in-depth with writer and sko lor reza aslan. saturday at 10:00, ben carson. and sunday night at 11:00 p.m. eastern, lawrence goldstone on the competition of the wright brothers and glen curtis to be the predominant name in manned flight. american history tv on c-span3, a look at hollywood's portrayal of slavery. saturday night at 8:00, the battle of bladensburg and saturday night at 8:00 p.m., former white house chiefs of staffs discuss how presidents make decisions. find the schedule one week in advance online and let us know about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400 or e-mail us. join the c-span conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter.

next, sherman's 1864 atlanta campaign, including the union siege of the city and march to the sea. with university of west georgia professor keith bohannon. this is part of the gettysburg college civil war institute of the summer conference. it's about an hour. >> before we get started, the map you see up here is a campaign map on the left side. the inserts there or the smaller maps indicate the main battles. i know it's probably difficult for those of you in the back of the room to see the small details and maybe read the print, and so, what we did or actually, what pete's staff did is include this in your maps and handouts books. so hopefully most of you have this.

if you turn to page 9, you'll see this map in there. you might want to refer to this, this is probably a little easier to read. but we'll be making frequent or i'll be making frequent reference to this campaign map, which will help us understand the course of the campaign. as general and chief of all union military forces in the spring of 1864, u.s. grant devised a grand strategy of coordinated offenses by a number of union armies stretching from louisiana all the way to virginia. and as you know already, the two most important of these offensives were those of the army of the potomac in virginia, and that of william t. sherman who commanded what was called the military division of the mississippi. grant's orders to sherman for

the campaign dated april 4th, 1864, were pretty straightforward. grant told sherman to move against the confederate army of tennessee, commanded by general joseph e. johnston, and to break it up. then get into the interior of the enemy's country as far as you can, inflicting all the damages you can against their war resources. at the same time, sherman was supposed to prevent johnston from detaching elements of his army to reinforce either lee's army in virginia or confederate forces out in louisiana. that is sherman's objective then in the atlanta campaign. if you look at sherman's record during the civil war, up until the spring of 1864, in many ways it's not that impressive.

particularly if you look at his performance on the battlefield. if you look at chickasaw bluffs during the vicksburg campaign in december of 1862 or december 1862, if you look at chattanooga and missionary ridge, sherman's, the attacks that sherman has launched in those battles have been piecemeal. they've been repulsed. he doesn't have a particularly impressive record on the battlefield. sherman's reputation then today rests primarily on what he did in 1864 and 1865 to implement grant's grand strategy. sherman targeted not only the army of tennessee, but also, the ability of the southern confederacy to wage war. of course, this is part of grant's larger strategy, too. during the campaign in the spring and summer of 1864, the

city of atlanta symbolizes the way that the confederacy waged war. the city was a vital rail center in the deep south and was filled with important war industries. dj-niforms and shells and g out accoutrements for the confederate army. sherman also sought to demoralize the civilians, to prove to the people the government could no longer defend them. sherman said, war is cruelty and you cannot refine it. sherman's an imminently quotable individual, as many of you know. in his letters, they're absolutely superb.sñ i would highly, highly recommend "sherman civil war, the selected correspondence of william t. sherman." it's one of the most important edited volumes in many decades. brook simpson, who is on the faculty here, is one of the co-editors of that.

throughout the atlanta campaign, sherman largely avoided launching frontal attacks against his entrenched opponent. instead, what he repeatedly did was utilize maneuver, flanking movements, to rest the confederates from strong defensive positions. i think sherman's greatness also derives from his mastery of logistics. keeping an enormous field army supplied day after day after day, very deep in enemy territory. sherman's army numbered over 100,000 men. it had 28,000 horses. 33,000 mules. imagine trying to supply an army of that size, day after day after day. the only way to do it, of course, was via railroads. sherman, in the months leading up to the campaign, which began