defender here and it is your first battle, it was like shock and awe in 1814. >> you can watch this and other american artifacts program any time i visiting our >> next, on the civil war -- author and texas christian university professor steven woodworth discusses the military career of james b. mcpherson who served and later commanded the union army of the tennessee. professor woodworth also describes his relationship with general ulysses s. grant and its role in sherman's atlanta campaign. this 90-minute event took place in ohio. >> if i appear nervous, i apologize. it has been a long journey from decatur delivering the body of

my good friend james mcpherson. there comes a time in every soldier's career where there'll be a sorrowful duty to perform. that duty today belongs to me. i have brought home the fallen body of my commander and my dearest friend. major general james mcpherson. home to his grandmother, mother, family and to his friends. mac and i met in tennessee and formed an instant friendship. two young men from ohio whose personal lives and military careers were similar in nature. when general mcpherson was promoted as commander, he chose me as his chief engineer.

i joined general mcpherson staff in mississippi. this began our amazing journey that would last more than two years. when i learned general mcpherson had been killed in action, i knew immediately i lost my best friend. the army lost a great commander and a nation lost a soldier who had the wherewithal to unite a divided nation. if i was asked to summarize the general mcpherson's personal and military career, i would use these four words. by quiet merit alone. this evening, i have the great honor of introducing our guest speaker. he is a distinguished author with over two dozen books to his credit, including "davis and lee at war," "jefferson davis and

his generals," and "nothing but victory: the definitive volume of the army of the tennessee." he is currently a professor at texas christian university where he teaches courses in u.s. history as well as the civil war, reconstruction, and the old south. on a personal note -- i will step out of character for a moment -- i am pursuing my masters on military studies in the civil war. i had the privilege and honor of studying under him. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in giving dr. steven woodworth a welcome. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. good evening. it is a pleasure to be here. i was just thinking back as waiting to speak this evening

that i do not think i have ever had the privilege of addressing a civil war audience, and audience on the subject of the civil war in my native state. i may may have forgotten but i do not think i have had. it is a pleasure to be here in ohio with you all. my topic tonight is a general james mcpherson and the army of the tennessee. it is a sobering thought for me to reflect that there are undoubtedly people in this audience know more about james mcpherson than i do. my topic again his general mcpherson and the army of the tennessee, the army he was in. i hope i can put it into perspective, offer some insight about his contribution to union victory and what kind of a general and man he was. ok. general mcpherson was a man who showed tremendous potential and i think as we think of general

mcpherson one of the things we think of is a forgotten general, a general that is not remembered as much as his merits justify. but, we think of also as someone who perhaps could have done so much more. who might have become much more. that leaves us with one of those tantalizing questions that history often poses -- what might've been? because general mcpherson showed an amazing amount of potential but was cut short very tragically. let's go to the next slide. you know the scene, don't you? james mcpherson was born in clyde, ohio. he lived in this house as a boy. he attended norwalk academy, not far away. and then, he eventually as a young man of 20 in 1849 entered the united states military

academy at west point. the age of 20 was rather mature in those days where the minimum age for entry was 16. an exception was made for mcpherson's almost contemporary george mcfarland. he did well at west point. of the 96 men who entered west point that summer of 1849, 52 of them were still around when the time came for graduation in 1853. of those 52 graduates in the class of 1853, james mcpherson ranked number one. he outdid all of his 51 classmates, including later general coalfield who ranked number seven. the even better known general philip sheridan who was about another 23, i believe, or a little further than that. and then even further down the

ranks, i think at number 44 was john bell hood who would later be general mcpherson's opponent in his last battle. it was standard operating procedure at west point in those days that those members of the west point class who graduated near the top of their class -- it could be anywhere from two to three or four or five graduates -- they would go into the most prestigious branch of the army which was the corps of engineers. as the honor graduate in the class of 1853, james mcpherson went into the corps of engineers. however, you received an additional honor in that he was assigned to teach as an

assistant professor of practical engineering at west point the following year. let's go to the next slide. there is west point today. click it again. there is west point closer to the time when james mcpherson was a student there. he taught there for one year after graduation and then was assigned to the more normal duties of an engineer. let's to the next slide. what did engineers do in the old army? they built fortifications, supervised the buildings and sometimes supervised the improvement of river channels. james mcpherson did both of those things. he worked on maintaining the channel of the hudson river. he worked on fort delaware which is pictured here. and then, later for several years he was sent out to the west coast. i guess you could say the army sent him to the rock.

he was working on the defenses of alcatraz island which was not a prison at that time but a fortress. that is where he was when events at another port -- next slide -- ok, there is alcatraz. let's go to the next slide. events at another -- 2000 miles away at the opposite side of the continent, it would change the course of history and his career. you probably recognize this for as fort sumter. the confederate decision to open fire in april of 1861 launched the civil war and launched mcpherson in a different trajectory in his career. mcpherson requested assignment to active duty in the theater of the war. fairly shortly, he wound up on the staff of general william halleck. general henry halleck was the

union commander who commanded the state of missouri and the western part of kentucky. so, mcpherson initially as a captain of engineers served on his staff. promotion came fast during the civil war and mcpherson rose rapidly in rank. by february of 1862, mcpherson was lieutenant colonel of engineers still serving under halleck. at that time, halleck assigned him at least temporarily and it wound up being permanently to other duties to serve on another officer's staff. maybe you recognize this man or maybe you don't.

this is ulysses grant early in the war. he looked a little different then. he didn't smoke cigars in those days, he smoked a pipe and a longer beard. this is ulysses s. grant that is going to win the war. mcpherson is assigned to his staff by halleck. halleck had a couple of reasons for doing that. grant was about to advance with his force -- he was commanding under halleck -- the troops around illinois. grant was about to advance up the ohio river and up the tennessee river against confederate fort henry which was a located on the tennessee river just inside the state of tennessee. grant's about to begin active operations. one of halleck's reasons for

assigning mcpherson to grant's staff because grant could use some additional engineering expertise on his staff. engineer officers in times of war -- they were not simply designing defenses during wartime and certainly not improving river channels -- engineering officers were not limited to building bridges or what you would think of as may be the first things that comes under our mind under military engineering. they would also recognize terrain and advisor commanding general's about how to use terrain and place their troops. for a general that is going into an active campaign, a little more high-octane engineering staff would be a good thing. that is one of the reasons why halleck assigned mcpherson to grant staff. the other reason why he was assigned to his staff was that halleck wanted mcpherson to be an observer, almost a spy, within grant's staff to inform him into whether grant was on the wagon.

grant had, in the old army, he had some trouble with alcohol. now, the image of grant as a habitual drunk is probably incorrect or he was certainly the best drunken general the world has ever seen. i doubt that. he was sober most of the time. the red minute episode in the old army in which grant had drunk and was forced to resign. in the old army officer corps, it was a small club and the all knew each other. everybody knew about grant. halleck described it as his former bad habit. mcpherson was posted report to halleck about grant's former bad

habit. he was able to report that grant was indeed staying on the wagon. he was staying sober. halleck chose to disregard that report from mcpherson but that is another story. that is not the mcpherson story. next slide now. grant's campaign is to go up the ohio river from illinois and then to proceed up the tennessee river and up the tennessee river southward because the tennessee river flows from south to north. up the tennessee river just into the state of tennessee where the confederates had billed the fort called fort henry. they hoped to keep union riverboats caring troops and supplies out of the state of tennessee. the fort was not very strong.

grant and is cooperating naval officers believed they could take it. so, mcpherson joined the operation at this point before they made that move and in fact fort henry fell easily to the naval forces. this is an initial success here. next slide. the beginning of mcpherson's association with grant does mark a major epic. grant will be the greatest union general of the war and mcpherson's career, mcpherson's future is now linked to grant. as grant rises, so does mcpherson. this would be a relationship that was mutually beneficial to both men but mcpherson becomes a protége of grant and that is a

very good thing to be if you are civil war general. next slide. grant continued his campaign. one thing that grant understood was the importance of getting and keeping the initiative in warfare. keeping the momentum and he was not always able to do that. sometimes the elements -- rain, for example, and muddy roads would keep grant from keeping the initiative. sometimes as we will see later, it will be grant's own superior that would prevent him from keeping the momentum. grant did not delay very long. as soon as the roads dried out, and grant marched about 10 miles east of fort henry. grant marched 10 miles east of fort henry to fort donaldson. it is the second fort that grant will take and it is located on

the cumberland river. at this point, the forts are about 10 miles apart. the rivers or about 10 miles apart. with the cross the line between tennessee and kentucky. the rivers are important because the offer the opportunity for union gunboats and riverboats carrying troops and supplies to move on those rivers. they can move a much better on those rivers than they can carry supplies and troops on those rivers in far greater numbers and more rapidly than most items could move on land. those forts are important. grant moves against fort donaldson now. the second fort he attacks. by february 14, he begins his campaign against fort donelson. on february 16, fort donaldson surrendered. they put up a harder fight. that was the case at fort henry. yet, it too surrendered. if the civil war had a turning

point -- it is interesting that wars need to have turning points. there must be a turning point in every war. i am being a little facetious. i am not sure if the need to have turning points but as the civil war had a turning point, this is my candidate for turning point of the civil war. up until this time, the cat of threat or much everything their own way. after this time, you can say the confederates never fully recovered with the loss of fort henry and fort donelson. they lost 15,000 troops and they lost to tens of thousands of square miles of territory, territory dip produced supplies -- that produced supplies, soldiers or soldiers who were from that territory would now be

de-motivated because their homes are in union hands. it was a tremendous blow to the confederacy and one in which it never fully recovered. the war had three years yet to run during which the confederates continually struggled to try to recover from this blow without full success. union forces continued to struggle to exploit the advantages they gained and to build and build and build on that advantage. it was a very important event and mcpherson is right there with grant. next slide. a view of fort donelson. after the fall of fort donelson, the army of the tennessee as it will become called, grant's

army, proceeded on up the tennessee river by steamboat southward almost to the southern boundary of tennessee. by order of general halleck, grant will encamp his army on the base of the tennessee river somewhere near the mississippi border. the position they chose, the position that grant chose -- a position chosen by one of his subordinates with grant took over -- was at a place called the vicksburg landing where there was room to encamp the entire army of the tennessee on the west bank of the tennessee river about 20 miles from the key railroad junction of mississippi. you can see corinth there with red arrows which should be ominous for the yankees. the army of the tennessee was in camp there and had to wait there

for several weeks by order of general halleck who emphasized they were to stay there and not go into battle. they were not able to be aggressive. they have to wait and they were very vulnerable from a counterstrike from the confederates because the army had to sit there. they lost the event of momentum and initiative. on april 6, early in the morning in april 6, in 1862, the confederate army of johnston attacked the army near pittsburg landing. the battle that ensued takes its name from the small methodist church that was located on the battlefield -- shiloh church. it was called the battle of shiloh. and was the bloodiest battle in u.s. history up until that time. during that battle, james mcpherson functioned as a staff officer on grant's staff.

to perform various services for grant. grant moved back and forth along the lines of his army checking how the different commands were doing and coming under fire and mcpherson was as well. mcpherson's most important role back then tells us something about mcpherson as an officer. throughout the day, grant inspected one of his divisions to arrive on the battlefield. he had six divisions and his army. five of them were in the battlefield and one of them was stationed about five miles down the river or north of vicksburg landing. that division was commanded by lew wallace. he had orders ft. lew wallace to come to the battlefield earlier. they were many reasons why the division did not get there earlier. many people still argue about whose fault that was.

if this were talking about lew wallace, i could talk about that but i will not. by late afternoon, lew wallace's division was not there and grant needed it really bad. things were not going very well on the battlefield. the army of the tennessee had its back to the wall. the army of the tennessee was never so close to being defeated as it was that day at shiloh. grant really needed that extra division to get there soon. he had sent several messages. late in the afternoon, he sent what i think were probably his most to trusted staff officers -- he sent john rawlings, grant's most trusted staff officer. the other man he sent was james mcpherson. i think that says something about the degree of trust

mcpherson had won with grant even in just two were three months under his staff. they went to find lew wallace. they found him a couple of miles north of the battlefield marching steadily but not exactly desperately. it was not a terrible march but was not the kind of speed we expect from a soldier who was determined to try to save his buddies who are fighting for their lives. there was not that kind of speed. as they talked to wallace to try to convey to him the idea that it will be a good idea to go a lot faster, rawlins was goaded to almost completely lose his temper by wallace's smart assurance that he knew better what he wanted his division to do then did grants to most

trusted staff officers who had just come directly from grant. they didn't know what grant wanted lew wallace to had not seen grant since the morning. he supposedly knew what grant wanted. that was not really a reasonable assumption and it bothered john rawlings a lot who was really at the point of actually having lew wallace arrested. mcpherson remained calm. not only calm but downright suave. that is how he always was. he kept his cool, remained calm. suggested that they should not arrested the general wallace right now and also he made some useful suggestions about how they could get on more quickly. not just rating general wallace about why don't you get on faster. suppose you were to do this or do that with your artillery? maybe you would get on more

quickly. he made a practical suggestion. he also -- the question was raised which is another thing that almost made colonel rawlings lose control completely when lew wallace suggested he was not actually sure he was on the right road to get to the battlefield which is another point in which colonel rawlings really lost it. mcpherson said i will go and ask. he confirmed it. mcpherson under trying circumstances remained calm and practical.

lew wallace did not get there in time to help despite the best efforts of rawlings and mcpherson to encourage and motivate him. lew wallace tilde and get there in time to help in the battle that day. he did help the next day. that evening, mcpherson assumes that grant would withdraw his army across the tennessee river and get away from the confederate army. mcpherson was not alone in that. i am not sure what high-ranking officer did not assume that grant would do that. grant may have been the only officer who was not planning on that. famously, there was an exchange between ms. sherman and grant that night when grant and sherman encounter each other and sherman says grant, we had the devil's day.

>> >> > >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> grant says yes.

that was ulysses grant. mcpherson, like all the other trained military men there, assumed grant would withdrawal after that fight and was surprised to find he did not. but, mcpherson continued to work well with grant. if grant wants to stay, mcpherson will make it work for him. the battle continued the next day without quite as much drama as the first day. not long after the battle of shiloh was over, mcpherson was promoted to brigadier general. grant continue to be cleaned with mcpherson. there is a picture of the battle of shiloh that i was supposed to show you but i didn't. there it is. the map was better anyway. ok. throughout the rest of the summer, mcpherson continued to serve well under grant's staff and rise under his estimation. in the fall campaign, grant began to use mcpherson occasionally to command troops as well as to serve as a staff officer. when granta wanted an officer to lead an ad hoc division, a cobble together forced to reinforce the garrison at corinth as the confederate army was attacking it on the third and fourth of october 1862, grant chose mcpherson and mcpherson did a good job in pursuing the confederates, moving quickly to reinforce and then pursuing the confederates.

although, mcpherson was not able to do significant damage to the retreating force. and nevertheless, grant was pleased with mcpherson's performance. four days after the battle of corinth was over on october 8, 1862, mcpherson received another promotion to major general. that was the highest rank available at that time in the union army. major general was the highest. beyond that, the only promotion were higher positions of responsibility. mcpherson is moving up rapidly. he started with grant back in february and now is a major general inside a space of a year. let's go to the next slide. the longest campaign that the army of the tennessee waged was the campaign for vicksburg. the campaign for vicksburg almost defined the army of the tennessee. it grows up and becomes its mature self in that long struggle to take vicksburg. many of you may be familiar with the civil war. for those of you who are not, vicksburg was the key as lincoln said.

the key to the control of the mississippi river. much of the territory a most sides of it as well. vicksburg occupied a very high, strong position on the mississippi river. the confederates placed strong batteries of heavy guns that seemed to bar the passage of ships on the mississippi river there. certainly, they closed the mississippi river to commerce and that was tremendously important to the entire midwest. from ohio all the way out to missouri and minnesota. the mississippi river was the most important commercial outlets. that would be closed as long as vicksburg remained in confederate hands. with important economic, social and political consequences throughout the midwest. it was important to take vicksburg and that becomes

grant's next target and the army of the tennessee's target. grant's initial effort begin with an advanced southward along the line of the mississippi central railroad which you could see their advancing south from grand junction down towards grenada towards oxford. grant began advancing along that line. on a route that could at least theoretically eventually taken him to a position from which he could attack vicksburg from the east or from the rear. that would be an advantageous position if he could pursue that line all the way down to the rear of vicksburg. during that advance, grant had his army to what amounted to three different corps. as far as the war department was concerned, as far as what the war department authorized at that time, all of grant army was

still designated as one corp. it was too big to be one and grant subdivided it. the central column that advanced -- he put it into the command of general james mcpherson. we find mcpherson commanding a corps. for a colonel now to a major general commanding a corps. what would be a three-star general in today's army but they did not have that rank at that time. a very responsible rank. mcpherson did well in that position although he was not committed to any severe tasks. because of the campaign.

the confederate general who was stationed chose not to give battle. he retreated again and again and when the army would move up, he would retreat yet again willing to give away a lot of north mississippi real estate to draw grandfather into mississippi which is not necessarily good thing for grant because

undefeated confederate army like that deep in the heart of mississippi could be a bad thing. things got worse for grant and a hurry when confederate calvary raiders cut behind his army and cut his line of supply. an army marches on its stomach doesn't mean you necessarily crawls but sometimes they might. it means they cannot go anyplace where they cannot get food. the food has been brought to them and that is very important. grant's food his being brought up to him by railroad and the confederates destroyed one of the supply depots and grant's army had to withdraw. the army of the tennessee had to retreat from the interior of

mississippi back to west tennessee. that initial effort towards vicksburg ended in failure but mcpherson had done well. next slide. grant's next effort towards vicksburg consisted of camping the components of his army at several positions along the west bank of the mississippi just upstream from vicksburg. vicksburg is in mississippi on the east bank and grant was camping at the west bank. the name of the game was the

find some way to get his army on to that high ground on the east side of vicksburg, the only direction in which you could attack vicksburg with any hope

of achieving success. the question is how to do it. and there are several different methods that grant tried

throughout the winter of 1863. one of those is carried out by james mcpherson. as of january 11, 1863, mcpherson was now officially designated the 17th corps part of the army of the tennessee. mcpherson is officially

commanding the corps. beginning about the middle of january, mcpherson and his corps are in lake providence, louisiana. lake providence is a cut off bend of the river. then, the connector between the main channel of the river and the bend gets filtered up on

both ends. give a crescent shaped lake. grant's hope that mcpherson with his very impressive engineering skills would be able to connect

river to lake to various bayous in such a way as to create a route by which gunboats, riverboats carrying troops and supplies -- gunboats as well as riverboats carrying troops and supplies, you heard me say before, that is very important -- they would be able to get around vicksburg and get into the mississippi river south of vicksburg without having to go directly past vicksburg and fun of those powerful heavy guns on the bluffs overlooking the river where they could theoretically be smashed. that was what is anticipated. mcpherson's job is to try to engineer the passage through lake providence. next slide. mcpherson and his men work very hard for a number of weeks.

they actually moved a tugboat overland from the river into the lake so they can get around the lake and move equipment that they needed to do the job. they developed a device for cutting off cypress trees below the water line. they also cut the levy that separated the mississippi river from lake providence letting the waters from the rivers from lake providence flooding quite a large area of louisiana bottomland. despite these things, they're not able to get that water route developed where the gunboats and the riverboats could go through

lake providence and through the bayous and get into the mississippi river. even and brilliant engineer like james mcpherson, nobody ever found fault with his engineering prowess, he cannot always win against the mississippi river. sometimes nature will do what it wants to do. late in march, grant gave orders to mcpherson's to take his corps down the mississippi river to the bend. it was located closer to vicksburg and it is located up there at that oval that you see

towards the upper left-hand side of the picture. from there, mcpherson's corps follow the 13th corps and they marched down the west bank of the mississippi river. that might sound simple, it was not. they had to follow the natural levee along the mississippi as they snaked around curves between the mississippi river itself and the back swamps of louisiana. this involved many bridges, laying down a lot of roads which you could re-servers the road by laying down scaffolding. it made for a bumpy ride that he

went over those little tree trunks or bigger tree trunks. but, it would hopefully stop the wagon from sinking into the mud. a difficult march down the west bank of the mississippi. grant is now planning an even bolder plan of operations. he asked his naval counterpart, rear admiral david dixon porter, to run his gunboats directly past the guns of vicksburg which porter did with little loss. one dark night in the middle of april. six days later, volunteer crews of army soldiers -- drawn from one of the divisions -- manned the leased riverboats that carried supplies. they ran past the vicksburg. grant had the riverboats and gunboats that they needed in the mississippi south of vicksburg. that allowed grant to launch one of the most daring and operationally brilliant campaigns of the war. on the night of april 30 to march 2, the army of the tennessee crosses the mississippi river from the louisiana side to the mississippi side as you see there near the bottom left of the map and began to move into mississippi. the following day, they met a smaller confederate force at fort gibson, mississippi. it is interesting that during this campaign they will wind up fighting five battles and they will outnumber the confederates and every one of those battles. on the battlefield. the confederates had more troops

in mississippi at this point in grant does but grant was a good general. it is something like if you are ever in a fair fight, generalship is no good. the general job is to see to it that you are always in fights that are not fair for the other guy. so, grant was good at that. he did it again and again. james mcpherson had a good teacher, a good mentor, good leader for his first active campaign of combat. that was not always the case. we can think of other men who started out as commanders at this stage of the war but their first battle as the commander was with an army commander that was not very good and got them into difficult situations that there was no good solution. grant set mcpherson up for success and that is what grant's job was. it was a good partnership. grant would set mcpherson up for success with clear orders, clear enough that mcpherson knew what was expected. flexible enough that he could adjust to the circumstances he found an grant would set him up to outnumber the enemies that he faced. that made for successful first campaign as commander for james mcpherson. you can see the course of the union advance and after they won the battle of fort gibson which some of mcpherson's troops are dissipated but it was directed by grant himself. mcpherson was on the battlefield but didn't really play a big role. after that, they continue to advance west. fort gibson is about 10 miles of the mississippi river but grant's campaign was so bold and audacious that the confederate general in his camp near

vicksburg really just didn't know what to do about it. didn't know how to respond to it. grant's army marched another 40 miles before it met another serious effort from the confederates, before it met serious resistance from the confederate forces. that effort came near raymond, mississippi on may 12, 1863. the part of grant army that was the 17th corps. now, when that happened the confederate forces to attack the mcpherson's troops were not part of the confederate field army, they were part of the confederate garrison of the mississippi at jackson. you can see jackson on this map near the center of the map at the far right-hand side. the confederates had one brigade in jackson but it was an oversized brigade. in many ways as big as or bigger than some union divisions. we might think of the confederates having say 4000 men and mcpherson having on the order of 10,000 men are so give or take. the confederate brigade in jackson was commanded by john greg. he had heard some things from the scouts. grant had a small column of troops far out on the right flank. this was a smart column, smaller than greg's brigade. that sounded tempting and inviting. why not go out there and gobble them up? grant had a column marching on the right-hand side.

at this point in the campaign, the 13th corps was marching on the left and mcpherson's was marching on the right. sherman's was bringing up the rear. that little flanking column was the 17th corps which outnumbered greg more than two to one. may 12 comes and mcpherson is leading his troops forward. it is a brutally hot and humid day. with all that humidity, it is nevertheless dry. the dust is very thick and hanging low close to the ground. the troops marching and it stirs up dust and it is very nasty. hot and humid. suffocating and intense dust. the army had been marching for several hours. they come within several miles of the town of raymond. it is a few miles further on and they come to the valley of a stream called 14 mile creek. in the bottom, the creek bottom, there is timber that is thick and tangled. they get down to where the road crosses the creek. while mcpherson has people out in front, they are doing a good job of reporting back. a scattering of firing out front. mcpherson knows he is confederates at his front. on the next ridge on the far side of the valley of 14 mile creek, mcpherson also has correct information more or less about the size of general greg's column. it is smaller than mine. what will general greg do? the only intelligent thing for him to do is to stay on that ridge which is a decent

defensive position and take up defensive positions. i will have to attack him, thanks mcpherson. mcpherson is extremely intelligent but makes allowances for other human beings. i don't mean to say that general greg was dumb. that leads to an interesting little event. greg doesn't have the right information so greg doesn't do the right thing for a force of his size. he attacks the 17th corps. he is not supposed to do that. he took mcpherson and he took mcpherson's lead division commander general logan and everybody else by surprise. a kind of rocked them back a little bit. he is not supposed to do that. it gave them some difficult time. they were fighting in this river bottom in intense woods that actually worked to the bandage of general greg because he had smaller forces. dense smoke and dust which worked to the advantage of general great because he had a smaller force. another thing that mcpherson had to struggle against in his first battle as a commander, first real battle where james mcpherson is the commander on the battlefield -- no one else is there to tell him what to do. he is the man that gives the orders. another disadvantage that he has because of the dust, the three divisions of mcpherson's corps had left longer gaps between their march columns than they normally would've done. the reason for that is because the soldiers don't get to you as

much as the dust as the other people that kicked up. hopefully, the dust would settle out and you don't have to marched through much of it. with that means is if you get into a battle, it will take longer for the two trailing divisions to come up and the lead division will be fighting for longer. it would've been just possible that by greg's boldness, by doing the unexpected thing catching logan's division on aware, if greg could've broken logan division and really defeated it, he might've been able to defeat the other divisions as they come up in succession through that terrible mississippi heat and humidity. bedford forrest a little something similar to to that more than one year later in mississippi on another very hot humid day. it didn't happen this time. logan's divisions fought and rallied hard. he made good decisions about bringing more troops. he sensed the possibility of -- i don't think mcpherson could have seen it. i don't think the visibility was good enough with the trees, smoke and dust. i think he figured this was a thing that greg fought to do. greg did want to attack the flank when they saw that mcpherson was ready. they withdrew and that was beginning of the unraveling of the confederate attack. mcpherson wins his first battle by simple maneuvering.

notwithstanding the fact that he was surprised. it was quite a shock. general mcpherson forgot to mention it in his after action report. mcpherson had won. next slide. here they are at the battle of raymond, an artist depiction. here they are at the battle of jackson, two days after the battle of raymond. mcpherson is not in command of the whole battlefield this time. mcpherson and now sherman's corps took the confederate capital at jackson. they moved on. this time turning back towards -- two days after jackson, they met the confederates. may 16, 1863, the battle of champions hill.

mcpherson was right in the middle of it. he was on about a field directing the corps. karen was commanding the overall army and mcpherson was commanding his troops. it is interesting to note that this battle, mcpherson made some good decisions on maneuvering his troops. i don't think you can find any fault with his decisions but one of his subordinate commanders, john logan, didn't necessarily obey orders. i believe that logan disobeyed an order from mcpherson and advanced prematurely. i think if logan would've waited he could have done even more damage to the confederates. mcpherson ordered him to do so but logan went ahead. i think the take away from that is that mcpherson was a very smart general. he knew what to do on the battlefield. everybody liked james mcpherson.

you don't meet anybody that didn't like him. even his enemies and the guys wearing gray liked them if they knew him. at this point, he doesn't quite have the degree of respect from guys like logan that he needs to get. he is still working on that. it may possibly be that mcpherson's kindness makes it a little hard. i think logan is the kind of guy that understands you better if you treat him rougher perhaps. that may be a drawback with mcpherson's kindness. he advances the vicksburg after the battle of champions hill. the battle for vicksburg develops into a siege. next slide. here we see the vicksburg defenses. it is quite a way along the city

of vicksburg. general mcpherson and his troops have the center of the union lines as they face vicksburg. you will see mcpherson's corps in the center right hand side of that map. now, seats does not mean merely sitting down and waiting for the other guy to start. there is a myth about the vicksburg that it surrendered because the garrison was starving. they were not really starving, they still had rations when they surrendered. they surrendered because it was clear the union forces reached a position for which they would be able to storm the defenses successfully. have the you reach that position? the old army officers called it a regular approaches or siege tactics. the engineers were the people who could do that better than anyone else. mcpherson was an engineer. his corps does some of the most advanced engineering and the best approaches to confederate lines.

about a dozen different approaches that were made to the confederate lines. by approach i mean you have a trench closer and closer to the confederate lines. it is not necessarily that simple because you have to plan where your trench is and where it angles very carefully so that the confederates can never fire into it. you zig-zag towards the confederates getting closer and closer. there is general mcpherson standing in the vicksburg trenches. next slide. i want to look at some more. these are troops of mcpherson's corps facing away from the confederates. you want to know which way they are at, they are over the hill.

i read the memoirs of one a general mcpherson soldiers who was wounded while doing paperwork at that white house up there. you thought it will be safe but a confederate sniper was able to wound that soldier. this is the kind of place where the soldiers camped. next slide. here we see -- it doesn't show up clearly -- it is an artist depiction of what regular approaches look like. you get closer and closer with your trenches and then you push trenches outside ways. you can get cover for your

sharpshooters, stripers as we would call them today, to shoot at the confederate trenches and make the confederates keep their heads down and from poking up and shooting at your guys were digging. the snipers were very successful. you can also see somewhat to the center-right, a placement for artillery. as you did closer and dig out to the sides, get places where your cannons can fire at the enemy at closer and closer ranges. the ideas allow your cannons to knock out the enemy cannon and also maybe not down the enemy defensive embankment. then, closer and closer still and maybe by the time there was actually only maybe 30 feet separating the lines, that 30 feet being the width of an embankment -- maybe your guys can huddle under the opposing position and put gunpowder under

there and blow it skyhigh. that is exactly what mcpherson's men were able to do under the supervision of a colonel. he was actually mcpherson's top engineer officer and help him with the decision. mcpherson kind of observed in nature things were going the way they should. mcpherson kind of watched. they were actually able to blow up the confederate fort creating the confederacies first airborne troops. [laughter] as it turned out, that not able to break through the lines. the confederates were able to successfully defended. this kind of advance, getting the lines closer and closer and closer until by the end of the

siege, union troops were in a number of places along the line only separated by the confederates by about 30 or 40 feet. although, the confederates were able to stave off union attacks when they first got to the vicksburg defenses by july 3. it was clear they would not be able to do so the next time the union troops advanced. in fact, knowing that, general pemberton surrendered. not only did they win the victory at vicksburg, but also skirmishes in arkansas and in advance in tennessee. even a skirmish in pennsylvania.

some berg in pennsylvania. there is the mine blowing up. let's go to the next slide. demonstrating union troops attacking at the mine. that particular attack was unsuccessful. when the troops marched in on july 4, mcpherson's column had the honor. next slide. ok. i put another picture there. another artist depiction of the fighting at vicksburg. an important time for mcpherson.

now we come to the atlanta campaign. in the spring of 1864, the union prepares to launch campaigns in two theaters. in the east, grant, in charge of all union forces, will oversee the eastern army. the army of the potomac. and it's advanced towards richmond. in the west, georgia, the west is getting further and further east in this war as we go along, which means the confederates are losing -- in the west, general sherman will command all of the union's western armies combined into what we would call one army group. it is several separate field

armies. the army of the tennessee, the army of the cumberland, and the army of the ohio. since sherman is commanding all three armies, it is time for a new commander of the tennessee. that honor goes to james mcpherson. he becomes an army commander with the rank of major general. they only have one lieutenant general, grant. they will only make one of those in the war. major general is the highest rank available. still, an army commander. they begin the advance southward from the neighborhood of chattanooga, tennessee on down towards atlanta. 100 miles. the first movement of the campaign involved a major daring flanking maneuver i mcpherson and the army of the tennessee. he assigned mcpherson to make a flanking maneuver through snake creek gap.

it allowed mcpherson to get behind in the confederate army that was facing sherman. it almost worked but not quite. sherman believed mcpherson had missed a big opportunity. he did not blame him. mcpherson felt he could not advance as much as sherman had wanted him to in that movement failed. that was a disappointment for mcpherson. for sherman as well. sherman continued to have high regard for mcpherson. that is because of his skill as an officer and because he was a very personable man. you just don't find people who don't like james mcpherson. he is a charming individual.

that is not true of all generals. a lot of generals have an arrogance problem. generals, and sometimes a successful general, is going to have to be self-confident and might be arrogant. that was not the case with mcpherson. he was the least arrogant major successful skilled the general you will probably ever find. a charming personality. sherman continues to have confidence in mcpherson. not just like him but have confidence in him as a general. throughout the campaign, and you could to the armies moving this way and that, as they continue to move toward atlanta, sherman advances by means of turning maneuvers.

flank them. go around them. when you go around them, you have the advantage on them. it is like getting the half nelson and wrestling. you put a move on them and they have to fall back. of the three armies under his command, his favorite force is the army of the tennessee under james mcpherson. he calls them his whiplash. he believes they can move quickly and aggressively. sherman has not lost confidence in mcpherson. even though the snake creek maneuver did not quite work. the maneuvers are successful. the campaign that began in early may near chattanooga, now by mid july has reached the outskirts of atlanta. at that point, the confederate president became dissatisfied. defending atlanta. he believed that general had retreated too many times.

when sherman puts a move on you like that, you have a choice. you can retreat or you can fight. you can retreat or attack. robert e. lee always attacked in virginia. johnston had always retreated. that is why they were in the outskirts of atlanta. the confederate president was not happy. he sacks johnston and replace him with john bell hood. he was a very aggressive man. immediately, sherman's subordinate advised him that hood will attack. he did attack after three days in command, that army of the cumberland north of atlanta

without success. sherman had a turning maneuver going on at that time. he was putting a move on hood. swinging the army of the tennessee to the east side of atlanta. near the atlanta zoo. that neighborhood may be more dangerous now than it was then. like some not so well preserved civil war battlefields. the army of the tennessee was down there. retreat, and any further retreat means giving up atlanta, or attack. hood learned his generally under

robert e lee. he knew we would have attacked, so he attacked. and he planned a pretty good attack. in fact, i do not think hood gets enough credit for his attacks. he planned an attack that was a lot like, for you civil war buffs and students, maybe you have heard of a battle called chancellorsville. where robert e. lee and stonewall jackson embarrassed hooker. you look at hood's attack at what becomes to be known as the battle of atlanta. it is a lot like chancellorsville. only -- hood's problem was not that the attack was not enough like what lee and jackson did. he was not up against joseph hooker and the army of the potomac.

he was up against the army of tennessee. that morning, as the troops got into position, sherman tells mcpherson, i don't think it is going to attack today. i think he is going to abandon atlanta and retreat. mcpherson says, no, he is not. sherman says, no, i want you to send the 16th corps out to tear up the railroads toward decatur. mcpherson said, i think hood is going to attack my left flank. they discussed it in a nice way. i can't do an imitation of someone as nice and suave as him. in a kind, polite, respectful way, mcpherson discusses with

sherman -- sherman finally agreed. he said, you can keep the 16th corps. mcpherson says, if the rebels have not attacked by 1:00, i will pull them off and send them to tear up the railroads. if they don't attack by then, they will not be attacking. 12:00 rolls around. no rebel attack. it was taking the troops a long time to get into position. you want to attack the enemy in the rear and on the flanks. that will take some time to march around to get there. noon came, no attack. they sat down to eat. mcpherson says, i guess they are not coming.

he gets ready to write a note to sherman and an order to the 16th corps. that is when the firing starts. between noon and 1:00 in the afternoon. hood's attack fell and was supposed to hit the union line on the flank. it went right into the teeth of the 16 core. exactly where mcpherson had put them, right in the way of this attack. i think he made a good decision. he had better insight than sherman did into what would happen. sherman admitted knowing what the enemy would do was not his strong suit. mcpherson was. he had anticipated hood's movement. he had prepared for it. and it blunted hood's attack.

still, a lot of fighting would be needed to stop the attack. one problem that mcpherson realized immediately was where the 16th corps had deployed, there was a gap between it and his flank. the rest of his line. there was a gap in his line. he gave orders to move some troops to take care of that. he wrote down there himself with just one orderly. he had some other men that he sent on errands. as he rode into a patch of woods, between the position of the 16th corps, which was holding off confederate attack, and the position of what was otherwise the flank of his army, he rides into it. the bad news is the rest of the attack was going in at that time. some of hood's confederate troops were moving into that area.

mcpherson and his orderly were riding along a path in that area. let's go to the next slide. ok. you can see there the position. there is a position of the army of the tennessee facing atlanta from the east. and then you see the union unit on the southern end. facing toward the south? that is the 16th corps. you see the gap between that and the rest of the line. that is where mcpherson and his orderly are riding now in that path through the woods. looks good. next slide. the battle of atlanta is raging. they come reportedly to this spot. much about what happened the

next is a little bit uncertain as far as the precise details. the confederates who were there -- this sounds bad, doesn't it -- they left their reports. union soldiers who were there at the time, or others who came along, came on the scene, game -- gave various reports about what went on. sometimes conflicting. sometimes radically conflicting. this leads me to have some question in my mind as to 100% assurance that that is the spot. i guess i will allow that it is. you can't exactly go and walk the ground today. you would be running into people's houses. it is a residential neighborhood. reportedly, at the spot, he was

riding. confederate troops emerged a few yards away. seeing mcpherson and realizing he was a union officer, they shouted for him to stop. mcpherson apparently tipped his hat to them. he was a polite fellow. he doffed his hat, wheeled his horse and began to ride away. not going to surrender because he has an army to command. the fired a volley which hit both mcpherson and the horse. the horse lived. general mcpherson did not. he was hit with a bullet that penetrated his chest cavity. he died not too long afterwards. whether he said anything subsequently or not is within the realm of what people dispute who were there.

there, general mcpherson died. he leaves us with a lot of might have been's. general sherman himself voiced this in the immediate aftermath. stating he had expected mcpherson to become the greatest general of the war. he thought mcpherson would eclipse both sherman and grant. that he would become the great general of the war. a man of tremendous promise and a wonderful human being as well. everybody liked him. wars waste the lives of young men who are excellent people sometimes, it seems like some of the best die. i don't mean to denigrate anybody who goes to war and does

not die. but you know what i mean. mcpherson was lost. let's go to the next slide. mcpherson is remembered in a few places today. this is a statue in mcpherson square in washington, d.c. i wonder how many of us -- ok, i do, but how many others who ride the metro and hear "next stop, mcpherson square" -- think of him. as i was casting about for illustrations, last week, i came upon a picture of another mcpherson statue located in the town of mcpherson, kansas. deep in the heart of kansas. someone had posted it on his blog. it was a chronicle of the

individual's travels. he said, i came to this town and they have a statue of the confederate general mcpherson. [laughter] such is fame. let go to the next slide. general mcpherson is rumored in some places. he is remembered here in clyde. again, with the thought of a general who should be more remembered and celebrated than he was, and who could and probably would have accomplished more than he did. but that was not was in store for him. ok. i thank you for your attention. [laughter] [applause] thank you. now jill told me i should open it up for questions. unless i have talked so long

that they are about to turn the lights off on us, i will do that now. any questions you would like to ask? i have talked you half to death. [laughter] i think -- are you supposed to ask questions at the microphone? is that correct? ok, yes. we have a microphone. we will make it even more difficult for you. if you are too shy to raise her hand and ask a question, we will just have you come up to the microphone. questions? ok. we will give you time. >> i don't mean to dull the specific focus of the talk, but

i was wondering how responsible sherman was for the almost fatal first day of shiloh? >> that is a good question. he was in some ways responsible. he sort of redeemed himself. it happens sometimes in military history. an officer makes blunders or even a little misconduct, although i do not think in sherman's case it was misconduct. well, not much. then redeems himself by good performance. sherman was responsible for there being surprises. not solely responsible. charmin bears a considerable degree of responsibility. the army was surprised at shiloh. scouts, and indeed ordinary soldiers, were bringing in reports that there were confederates approaching.

sherman dismissed the reports and assumed there was no enemy out there. sometimes he was hard on the people who brought in those reports. and he suggested one colonel was very afraid. to the colonel of the 53rd ohio, why don't you take a regiment back to ohio? not very nice. however, to mitigate his responsibility, as an officer in the civil war, you might know there are confederates in the woods. the question is how many? skirmishers? a screen? you take some troops and see what you have. if you bring out more troops to stop us. that is how you find out. sherman had that possibility closed off by the orders from general halleck. the general was adamant to

sherman and grant, do not do anything at all that will bring on a battle. he was afraid that grant would've fooled around and win the war before he could get credit for it. he ordered grant not to do it. sherman was forbidden from doing what he needed to do. so, he had to guess. and sherman is not good at guessing what the enemy is doing. it makes him very nervous. in that sense, he is responsible. however, once the attack begins, sherman has the date of a lifetime commending his division.

he does a tremendous job, commanding his division and holding back the confederate assault. grant maintained confidence in him. he came out ok. any other questions? >> can you speak about mcpherson's time in the city of vicksburg? if he acted as mayor or some role there? >> administrated the city of vicksburg. yes, so -- mcpherson in vicksburg after the fall of vicksburg. well, i can't say it a lot in detail. he did administrative vicksburg, and by all accounts did a good job. as i mentioned before, the man just did not have personal

enemies. after mcpherson fell in battle, general hood, the opposing general, said it made him genuinely sad. because he respected mcpherson. when mcpherson was commanding in vicksburg, after the battle, during the siege, and subsequently, mcpherson treated the people of mississippi with respect and kindness. that made impression on hood. hood was not an easy guy to impress in that way. by all odds, i think mcpherson was very gentle with the populace in mississippi. next? >> thank you for coming to clyde, ohio. is there anyway you can speak to me on when general mcpherson was assassinated and tipped his hat, how it was actually portrayed? how the events were portrayed

that could speak to the assassination? >> the death of mcpherson. there are probably people here who can tell the story in more detail than i can. the sources that i read -- i wouldn't call it an assassination. that would be a crime. it was a fair shooting. they had the right to shoot at him. they summoned him to surrender and he did not. they are entitled to shoot. he is taking his chances and he knows it. the stories i have heard, he doffs his hat. reins his horse in and turns. the orderly is following him, hits a tree and is knocked off a horse. they hit mcpherson. the orderly's story is he is

conscious and on the ground. he staggers over to them, crawls over, something, says, are you hurt? he says, i am badly hurt. he doesn't say much after that. i think he may try to give him major inc. or something and tries to make them comfortable. another union soldier left a story that he had been going through the woods, and he finds mcpherson there in a dying condition and tries to help. the confederate troops that shot him were part of a regiment called the 5th confederate regiment. later in the battle, that body of troops were attacking an angle of lines. counterattacking troops were able to capture them. i wouldn't have wanted to be the confederate soldier who had shot james mcpherson in be in the

hands of the army of the tennessee troops. they were very fired up after the word got around. they wanted to avenge him. they were not cold-blooded killers. i don't know that they would have killed somebody in cold blood. it turned out that the the guys in the fifth confederate regiment, that little unit, none of them knew who fired the shot that killed mcpherson, they said. whether that was because they didn't really know, which was possible, or nobody wanted to admit that they killed the favorite general, nobody knows. they had some of his personal effects with them. i think maybe his field glasses, maybe his gloves, i think. that is all i can tell you about it. anything else? going once.

ok, if there are no further questions, i thank you for your kind attention. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span2, here on the c-span3, we show you public affairs events and on the weekends, it is home to american history tv. the civil war's 150th anniversary, visiting battlefields and key events -- american artifact, touring museums and historic sites to discover what artifacts reveal about america's past. history's bookshelf, with

best-known history writers. the presidency, looking at the policies of our commanders in chief. and lectures -- top scholars delving into america's past will stop and our new series features educational films from knowing the 30's through the 70's. c-span3 -- created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable and satellite provider. >> now, on american artifacts, the second part of our visit to the nra's national firearms museum in fairfax, virginia. we join the museum director in the civil war gallery. >> we are entering the civil war galleries of the national firearms museum. on my left represents the union and on my left, the confederacy. we see numerous examples of the carbines the union was using. this was a time of rapid advance in firearms design.