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the siege of petersburg was a series of maneuvers and battles around petersburg virginia, lasting more than nine months from june 1864 into the spring of 1865. beatersburg was crucial to the supply lines of confederate general robert e. lee's army and the confederate capital of richmond. union forces under ulysses s. grant repeatedly probed, attacked and attempted to outflank the entrenched recks finally gaining a decisive advantage that led to a confederate retreat and just days later, lee's surrender. author and historian richard sommers takes us into the minds of each commanding general through their personal letters, and strategies. he argues that this siege was unique in military history, and discusses how the conflict brought about the end of the war. this talk is about an hour. >> ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the director of the u.s. army heritage and education center colonel rick harney and

the entire staff of the u.s. heritage and education center and the u.s. army war college, welcome to the third lecture of the u.s. army war college, welcome to the third lecture of our series. the u.s. army war college sponsors the series to provide an historical dimension to the exercise of generalship, strategic leadership, and war fighting institutions of power. we would like to extend a warm thank you to the army heritage center foundation for their support and everything we do. please be aware that the book for tonight is on sale in the gift shop, and we will have a book signing directly after the lecture. all proceeds go to the foundation to support the growth of the army -- the army heritage and education center. our speaker is dr. richard somers. he is a native of indiana and obtained his bachelor's degree in history from the carleton college in northfield, minnesota. he earned his doctorate in history at rice university in

1970. the u.s. army employed him right here at carlisle barracks, making him the last chartered member of the organization to be hired. he held the position until 1997 and served in various capacities until his retirement in 2014. he was a professor of military history in 2007 and 2008 and continues to teach courses at the u.s. army war college. he has made numerous television appearances, addressed audiences across the nation, and has presented three times prior to tonight. dr. summers has written over 100 books, articles, entries, and reviews primarily on the civil war and is a distinguished member of many historical organizations, including the

society of civil war historians and the civil war trust. i present dr. richard somers. [applause] >> thank you, carl. it is a pleasure to be back home in devoting 43 years of my professional career here, i of course can never leave. it is always a part of me. i'm so happy to be able to share in our perspectives in military history presentation tonight. in this 150th anniversary season of the siege of petersburg, i would like to talk about richmond redeemed enduring lessons in leadership from the siege of petersburg.

the siege proved one of the longest operations of the civil war, some nine and a half months from june of 1864 to april of 1865. it pitted two of the greatest generals in american history directly against each other. robert e lee and ulysses s. grant. it was waged by two of the finest armies of americans that have ever been raised, the resilient federal army of the potomac and the hard-hitting confederate army of northern virginia. those were the antagonists, which had grappled for the entire war, were reinforced with several newer armies that have been created only in 1864. serving in those armies were senior subordinates who had

figured prominently in earlier battles such as gettysburg and antietam, which are so familiar to all of us here tonight. these officers include such prominent northern commanders as george g meade, winfield scott hancock, and david and greg, and such senior southern soldiers as richard suwell and ap hill. with that let us summarize the siege before we assess it. petersburg, virginia, situated on the right bank of the appomattox river 20 miles due south of richmond, was militarily important in its own rite as the tenth largest city of the confederacy, as the head

of navigation on the appomattox, as the site of the confederate states lead works, which manufacture of bullets for lee. the strategic significance of petersburg lay in logistics. how fitting isn't that the u.s. army's center is now situated at fort lee just east of petersburg and that our new director colonel hardy came to us from the logistics center at fort lee. throughout the civil war, petersburg functioned as the rail center for richmond. from northeast, southeast, south and west, railroads ran to the city. from there, a single railroad continued north to the confederate capital. food stuff from southside

virginia, armaments from the ports along the lower atlantic coast, salt and lead from southwestern virginia, and most vitally, reinforcements all funneled through petersburg to richmond. only one other railroad running southwest through danville and the carolina piedmont connected the capital with the rest of the confederacy. defending petersburg was crucial to defending richmond itself. capturing the city would comparably cripple the capital. in the first three years of the civil war, danger remained distant as lee's masterful generalship kept the union far from the rail center. ulysses s. grant changed all of that. by the spring of 1864, grant served as general in chief

of the entire united states army. as eastern theater commander and as commander of what i like to call army group grant, an admittedly anachronistic term which i will nonetheless use because it so accurately conveys the reality that he commanded a group of armies. in all of these capacities, grant carried the war from central virginia to the vicinity of richmond. in 30 days of almost incessant fighting, from the battle of the wilderness on may 5 and sixth, to the battle of cold harbor on june 1, he compelled the confederates to concede there -- their forward position and confronted them with the conviction of the close and

confined coverage of their capital. in a daring southward strike in mid-june grant crossed the mighty james river itself and attacked the capital's crucial communication center petersburg. his leading core overran the outer defenses but did not capture the cockade city i itself. failure to recognize opportunity, saved the city. a grand assault by the unionists on june 18 was bloodily repulsed. even worse disaster befell the yankees less than a week later in their efforts to cut confederate communication south of the cockade city. those dual defeats on june

18 and june 22, 23rd and the mobile warfare of spring that had carried of the armies from the rapid than river to the appomattox. thereafter, operations stagnated into the slowness of summer, and the siege of petersburg began. this siege was not tactical. it lacks parallels and other facets that type of five european siege warfare. the infamous battle of the crater on july 30 was an aberration, totally uncharacteristic of the siege, yet petersburg unquestionably

was a siege. on the higher planes of operations, strategy, and grand strategy. in essence, grant used the siege to fix the gray coats in place at petersburg and richmond, thus to deny lee the operational and strategic initiative, which the virginian have used to such advantage in 1862 and 1863. grant's great entrenched camp closed in on petersburg from the east where fort lee now is. with its incessant shelling and sharpshooting, they created an ongoing threat, which the southerners could not ignore. more dangerous were the attacks, some of them two-pronged, some of them first strike, which grant launched from the security of that camp against undermanned

positions north of james river and against vulnerable supply lines south of petersburg. nine such attacks, which i have termed offensive, punctuated the nine and a half months of the siege. most were marked by mobile field battles in the open rather than by assaults on well defended positions. the most significant strikes were the fourth offensive in mid august which cut the vital weldon railroad linking petersburg to the blockade runners ports on the lower atlantic coasts, the fifth offensive in late september, the subject of my book "richmond redeemed," which nearly compels lee to abandon petersburg and made richmond in the greatest danger of capture by a field army the city ever face until she was occupied without resistance in april of 1865.

another major one was the eighth offensive in early february, which extended the federal left a link to hatcher's run, and the ninth offensive in late march, which finally netted both petersburg and richmond. overnight, april 2, 3, 1865 lee abandoned petersburg, abandoned his james river defenses, abandoned his capital itself for a last desperate flight toward north carolina, but north carolina proved too far away. the federal forces were to advantageously positioned. the butternut brigades had been too badly battered throughout

the course of the siege. one week to the day after the final fighting at petersburg came appomattox. by the spring of 1865, indeed, ever since late 1864, the siege had assumed strategic dimensions . grant made this clear in his letter on december 18 to his trusted subordinate and friend william t sherman, who had just completed his devastating march to the sea. my own opinion, wrote to the general in chief -- now we are quoting general grant -- my own opinion is that lee is adverse going out of have a and if the cause of the8 is lost he wants richmond to be the last place surrendered.

if lee has such views, it may be well to indulge him until we get everything else in our hands. this siege thus became a strategic tool for fixing the southerners in place in the old dominion while philip h sheridan and george h thomas devoured the rest of the confederacy. by march of 1865, sherman had shoved the western theater all the way from tennessee deep into north carolina, while in the eastern theater lee remained pinned at petersburg. that is the essence of a strategic siege. there the nine and a half months of the siege have been summarized in just nine and a half minutes, but i'm not done. the various mobile field battles that marched each offensive are fascinating.

many in our audience and viewing on c-span have heard me speak on one or another of those battles. here tonight, however, in the army war college community, the focus should not be technical but operational and strategic. so let me then, suggest some enduring lessons in strategic leadership derived from the siege of petersburg, an operation lasting nine and a half month proclaims perseverance, both its prizes and its pitfalls. grant's bulldog tenacity in grabbing hold of the army of northern virginia in the wilderness of spotsylvania and never letting go all the way through petersburg to appomattox is one of the greatest hallmarks

of his generalship. yet just what did this tenacity, this perseverance and tail at petersburg? part of it, it seemed, involved fixing the southerners in place tactically, operationally, and strategically. such fixing in place did not come easily. time and again in the mobile field battles south of petersburg and north of james river, grant was defeated tactically. even so, he managed to weave such setbacks into operational and strategic success. he achieved such success. despite those battlefield setbacks because he remained undaunted. his calm, quiet confidence in

himself gave him the determination to keep up the struggle. then too his assurance in his own mind of ultimate federal victory in the siege and in the war gave him the ability to press ahead despite temporary setbacks. together, such self-confidence and such certainty of success produced military peace of mind, which freed him from doubt, fear, anxiety, and torment that had vexed so many other army commanders and which thus enabled him to focus on succeeding in the siege and on winning the war. yet within such military peace of mind, grant was neither

arrogant nor bullheaded. an even greater hallmark of his strategic leadership than tenacity was his ability to learn and apply the lessons of experience. such a faculty had won him victory at vicksburg. it also produced the prize of petersburg. when he perceived that frontal attacks, which had worked so well in the western theater, brought only heavy casualties in the east, culminating in the disastrous repulse of june 18 in the first battle of petersburg, grant explicitly forbade such assaults against well defended, fortified positions. he launched he launched no further such attacks throughout the siege until the final onslaught of

april 2. again, when experience demonstrated that sequential two-pronged strikes on both sides of james river were not working, he progressively altered the timing of those strikes until, by late october they became simultaneous. when simultaneous strikes too failed, he again adjusted his tactics to massive first strikes by his left south of the cockade city. such first strikes carried him to hatcher's run in february and carried him into petersburg and richmond in april. yet grant was not the only senior leader to display perseverance at petersburg. his confederate counterpart also showed tenacity in holding that

city and richmond. lee understood their practical significance to the southern war effort and cause, and he fought to save those cities. fought is the key concept here. lee did not sit supinely in his trenches awaiting bluecoat attacks. when they left their defenses of the entrenched camp to attack him, he left his defenses to attack them. although he never again controlled the strategic initiative, which remained in grants hands, the great confederate commander repeatedly challenged the yankees for control of the operational and tactical initiatives. the ensuing battles were not static, set piece struggles of attack and defense but fluid, mobile field battles that raged up and down the ground in which

the secessionists' superior knowledge of the terrain helped them halted the union advance. counterattacking attackers offers obvious advantages. it even more significantly, those counterattacks reflect lee's approach to warfare. he did not equate probable disadvantage with certain loss but rather strove to redirect to the military situation to his advantage by way of contrast. joe johnston in georgia when threatened with fallback, and when threatened again, he would fall back, and when threatened again, he still fallback.

he did not fall back. lee did not fall back. lee fought back. lee was prepared to abandon petersburg on september 30 if necessary to save richmond, yet he did not yield to such likely danger but battled back and saved both cities. through such biting tenacity, oh the prolonged the security of his supply lines, his army, and his country for another nine months. at the end, he eventually came, and all was lost. the greatcoat held onto petersburg for too long. i do not blame leave for this decision or this outcome. he did not become general in

chief of all confederate armies until february of 1865. too late to affect the course of the war. the decision to remain in richmond rested with the government. as a professional soldier of the confederate republic, lee loyally carried out government policy. there is an aspect of perseverance, however, where lee may be criticized. unlike grant who learned from experience, the virginian continued fighting in ways that had worked well earlier in the war but were no longer applicable in the mid-1864. unlike at chancellorsville, his counterattacks at petersburg almost never drove the union strike force from the field. at best, they simply stopped the

thors short of its objective. counterattacks failed to overcome the confederates. instead, they simply produced mounting confederate casualties with no corresponding conquest. for lee at petersburg, the old ways no longer worked. such hallmarks of generalship characterized the exercise of command by lee and grant at petersburg. yet with armies ranging from approximately 50,000 to 60,000 secessionists, and from 100,000-120,000 bluecoats, the two commanders obviously could not control everything themselves but had to rely on senior subordinates. here too late lessons in leadership. to begin with, both commanding generals worked with and through

their senior subordinates, not around or despite them. they accorded those responsible subordinates latitude to exercise the responsibilities of their office. as theater commander and army group commander, the illinois in focused on strategy and left operations and tactics with core commanders. army of the potomac commander mead retained grants respect, although the two generals never became close personally. the other yankee army commander benjamin f. butler was the quintessential political general of the union army. despite butler's many shortcomings as a field commander, grant recognized both the massachusetts man's talents and also understood the

necessity of working with such an influential politician. not until butler finally discredited himself with the powder boat fiasco in december of 1864 did the general in chief at last have grounds for removing the insubordinate subordinate. butler's successor was the able professional soldier and were ordered for whom fred would later be named, who had earned grants respect and friendship in the western theater. because the illinoisan liked board, he tolerated the junior officers quaint conceits. such antics by other senior subordinates usually cost them grant's respect and therefore their command. william f smith, william t h brooks, and quincy adams gilmore were all relieved of their core

commands when they demanded actions or promotions that grant was unwilling to grant them. john given almost suffered the same fate and much more tragically by the final hours of the siege. war have so drained the reservoir of good will that he had earned on little round top that neither need nor grant would save him from the implacable wrath of philip sheridan. sheridan's practice of summarily removing generals on the field of battle was a typical -- a typical. more characteristic was grant's practice of avoiding wholesale

and instead working with or through them before they either conceited or discredited themselves with either their inepititude or overweaning ambition. lee's command style was similar. earlier in the war to be sure, he had cleansed the army of northern virginia of senior subordinates who had not measured up. i the time petersburg was besieged, however, the terrible attrition of general officers reduced him to working with and through those who remained. by then, the great stonewall jackson and chad stewart were dead, and james long street had been severely wounded. the best of lee's subordinates was beauregard, but he departed

on september 23, and soon thereafter, was put in command of the western theater. a month later, the able long street returned to duty. among the newcomers, wade hampton and john b gordon proved promising, but richard h anderson was disappointed. then richard ewell and ap hill had never lived up to expectations. indeed, just before the army's by then, the capital was no backwater. there you will rendered his most significant contribution to the confederate cause by saving the capital from federal attack on december 29 in the operations covered in richmond redeemed. yet whether subordinates are

able or not, they are the tools with which senior leaders must work. the chain of command, moreover, runs upward as well as downward. one of the greatest strengths of both commanders was they understood the proper relationship between the uniformed general in chief and the constitutional commander-in-chief in a republic at war. they not only worked for but also with president linking and president davis and certainly not against them. those great generals earned and retained the respect of the chief executives and thus were accorded the latitude to apply their professional abilities in service to their embattled nations. contrast their success to what became a beauregard, joe johnson, george mcclellan, and

many other commanders who constantly quarreled with their respective governments and thus were kept on close rein or marginalized. this ability to work with the president comes through clearly in the following correspondence between grant and lincoln in mid july of 1864. in my opinion, wrote the lieutenant general, there ought to be an immediate call for say 300,000 men to be put in the field in the shortest possible time. it grant that specified many benefits from increasing the fighting force. finally, he summarized, the greater number of men we have, the shorter and less sanguinary

will be the war. yet he did not stop but went on to make clear that -- i give this entirely as my views and not in any spirit of dictation. always holding myself in readiness to use material given to me to the best advantage i know how. the following day, the president replied. yours of yesterday about a call for 300,000 is received. i suppose you have not seen the call for 500,000 made the day before in which, i suppose, covers the case. [laughter] always glad to have your

suggestions. [ laughter ] so close and so effective for the bonds -- were the bonds that link and not only welcome to grant's suggestions but also engaged in a little harmless humor about them. not that war was a laughing matter, but that the two men were close enough to share a smile as they together strove for success. that exchange not only underscores their effective working relations, it also provides other lessons in strategic leadership. grant recognized the benefit of applying overwhelming force, and he realized that the north possessed such power potentially. his great talent lay in understanding how to convert advantages into achievements.

yet all the while, he did not demand perfection. unlike some senior leaders who insisted on waiting until everything was perfectly arranged and thus often waited forever, grant was willing to give it a try with whatever resources were at hand. those resources often sufficed to produce positive results. the presidents liked the results and the attitude of the general who was always willing to act. lee too was willing to act but under much different circumstances. he knew that the south had fewer soldiers and fewer resources, and he realized that time was not on his side. he could not wait for perfection of positions, powers, and plans, for they remained unattainable.

he instead tried to make his own perfection in outcomes by seizing strategic and operational initiatives or by resting it from the yankees. in 1862 and 1863, he often managed to achieve such results. by the time that petersburg was besieged, however, grant controlled the strategicic and operational initiative and lee was reduced to fending off federal offenses. as yet as we consider grant and lee and their senior subordinates, it is important that we not mistake them for the magnificent monuments that grace our national battlefields and our public places today, the stat ow -- statues of meade and

hancock, lee and longstreet, grant looking down the national mall in washington or hampton in columbia, south carolina. those giant sculptures of bronze and marble honor the generals, but they are not the generals. the generals themselves, we must always keep in mind, were real, live human beings with varying degrees of the qualities, noble and ignoble which mark the human condition. courage and heroism and honor, to be sure, but also rivalry and jealousy and resentment and bitterness and vindictiveness. by the time that the armies reached petersburg in mid-june of 1864, the soldiers were exhausted physically and

psychologically from over six weeks of incessant fighting and marching and fighting yet again. so were their commanders during the hot, dry, seemingly ceaseless siege. anger flared among meade and his division commanders and among federal division commanders, as well. such strife certainly effective command relations and also sometimes affected operations. such personal animosity is not confined to petersburg, to the civil war or to olden times. it can flare up today and tomorrow. senior strategic leaders need to

recognize that reality and to be prepared to deal with it. understanding human dimensions of high command is just one lesson from the siege. persevering, weaving tactical setbacks into strategic success, adapting flexibility of methods to purpose, not yielding to possible threats but fighting back against the odds, displaying strategic vision, converting advantages into achievements, functioning effectively within chains of command upward downward and laterally. all of these are enduring lessons in leadership from the siege of petersburg when richmond was redeemed. i thank you. [applause]

>> ladies and gentlemen, we are going to do a few questions now. i will start on this side. if you have a question, please raise your hand. we do have quite a few people, so please limit yourself to one question at a time. >> just a question about lee's strategic division. you commented on the fact he had a strategic division, but could it also not be the case that unidentified speaker by 1864, he knew that the south lost? there wasn't an opportunity in the offensives of 1863. if he had strategic vision, perhaps as a leader, he should have encouraged his president to pursue peace earlier than april

of 1865? any thoughts on that? >> thank you, jeff. that's an excellent question. i think it is pretty clear that well along into the siege lee came to realize that the cause of the south is lost. i don't think he had reached that decision in the spring or summer or even often of 1864. lee was fighting back and fighting very effectively to maintain his position and to keep up the struggle. there are so many indications that the confederates themselves did not realize their grand strategic peril. talking about the whole civil war now, until it was too late. even when sherman had cut loose from atlanta for his march through georgia, the

confederates really didn't know where he was going, whether he was headed east towards charleston, south to tallahassee, southwest to mobile. it turns out he went southeast to savannah, and it is not surprising that the confederates didn't know because even the federal planners did not know, and their logisticians had supplied positions all along the coast that wherever sherman struck at blue water he could be resupplied. once sherman made his march and captured savannah on december 21, the confederates were still not sure what he was going to do next, and they positioned their forces all around him to include south of savannah to guard against the danger that he might march against thomasville, the railhead in southern georgia, or

to liberate andersonville, or perhaps to threaten tallahassee. it really wasn't until he moved north through the carolinas that it became clear to the confederates enrichment how dire was their peril. i don't think lee or anyone else foresaw that danger as early as any point in 1864, and that he is continuing to do his duty to bravely and honorably uphold the struggle. other questions or comments? >> thank you very much for a

fine presentation. i have a question about leadership, which you just touched upon. late in the civil war, and i don't know exactly then, ulysses grant was given the authority to promote general officers in the field subject to confirmation by the united states senate. i assume that that authority came to him through lincoln and stanton and probably the senate. i know you probably do know, but it was by that method that chamberlain achieved brigadier general. were there any other officers so promoted by grant in the field, and do you know throughout the course of american history if any commanding general was given such authority besides grant? >> well, general lee in effect had that authority in the army

of northern virginia. the appointment power rests with the president. the senate's role is to confirm presidential appointments, and that is both the appointment by grade to be of brigadier general or a major general, and also, core command and army and department command were considered presidential appointments. grant promoted several officers throughout the course of the siege of petersburg, certainly not chamberlain alone, but it's always consistent with the basic government practice of heating recommendations of officers in the field as to whom they wanted as their senior subordinates. not every officer that grant wanted was provided to him. it is very interesting that at the time jubilation erupted in the shenandoah valley in july and then remained a threat and the lower shenandoah valley gone even burning chambersburg,

pennsylvania on july 30, the officer whom grant wanted to put in charge to deal with the threat posed by general early was none other than william b franklin. despite franklin's performance at outcomes landing, his performance at cranston's cap, fredericksburg, his performance in the red river campaign, all of which fell short of the high expectations accorded to franklin going into the civil war, grant who had never actually served with franklin

during the war nonetheless had high confidence in his ability, but there had been a time when they had been together. that was at the u.s. military academy when franklin was the number one graduate in grant's class, and i have to think that cadet sam grant is still looking up to the number one man in his class. however that may be, washington denied him that promotion, and said, franklin just will not do for this position. his next his next choice was general mead , to give him a more independent command that he enjoyed as an executive officer within grant's army group, but then something happened. i'm not entirely sure what.

it might have been the battle of the crater, which ended the career of general burnside, but did not present mead in a favorable light. mead is no longer in the picture after july, and the command is finally entrusted to philip h sheridan. sheridan was not the first choice for that command. he was the third choice. that was a case where grant did not get his first choice. probably one of the cases where the north was well served by franklin not being put in command. >> thank you. to follow-up up on your discussion of the animosities and rivalry that took place just before the siege of petersburg, as i understand it, that

happened on both sides. >> very much so. >> beauregard had lee listen to beauregard in the beginning, rather than doubting him the outcome would have been different. suppose the same thing with the northern advances initially before the siege took place. it was just a total lack of cooperation and even follow up. some of that is attributed to the battle of the crater. everybody was fatigued and what have you. beauregard was still trying to overcome some bad press early on. do you support that? >> to a considerable extent. not so much bad press, but his bad command relations with richmond, president davis, secretary of war sedin, the

nominal general in chief braxton bragg. there had always been a certain healthy rivalry between lee and beauregard as two very bright engineers on winfield scott's staff in the mexican war, as two superintendents of the military academy, although beauregard was stopped in taking that position by the outbreak of the war. within the confederacy, lee was the third ranking general and beauregard was the fifth ranking general, but the real problem was the bad relations -- this underscored another point that i made -- no matter how good beauregard was, and i think he was the second-best army commander in the confederacy after lee. stonewall jackson might have proved to be a great army commander, but he was never given that chance with a real field army. among the officers entrusted

with army command, i would put beauregard close behind lee. the big difference is that beauregard is constantly feuding with richmond and feuding with braxton bragg, and thereby, he is nullifying his ability to bring his great talents to the service of the confederacy the same way that mcclellan and rosencrantz and other union generals by feuding with washington reduced or nullified their ability to serve the united states in the war. as to the exhaustion, certainly cold harbor is the culmination, but i would suggest it's really the almost incessant fighting that begins on may 5 in the wilderness and continues through june 23 at the first battle of the weldon railroad that just

wears out the armies physically and psychologically. grant recognizes this, and that is one reason that petersburg becomes the siege and that he doesn't continue always moving by his left flank in the mobile warfare that had carried the armies all the way from culpepper county down to prince george and dinwiddie county's at petersburg. the terms fatigue and psychological exhaustion were not known to military medicine in the mid-19th century, but that is not to say the conditions did not exist.

they just were not recognized. this is an important part in frame the tempers and leading to be feuding and animosity among commanders. joe, when you get a microphone -- >> your presentations are always stimulating. you did a great job on npr this morning. a question on grant's strategy -- after the overland campaign, and yeah, i understand something about combat stress -- he sat himself down at petersburg for nine and a half months. the army couldn't restore itself within a month or so and just go back. lee was just hanging on by his toenails. any comment on grant''s change in strategy besides what you

just said earlier? >> good questions, joe. the army of the potomac would restore itself, but it would take much more than a month to do it. it really took the winter of 1864, 1865 with the relatively reduced pace of activity -- there were two offensives, one in december, one in february, but really, the armies could rest essentially over that winter and regain their fighting tone. some of the officers and soldiers who had been wounded earlier in the war or even earlier in the 1864 campaign, and i regard the operations from may of 1864 to april of 1865 as a unity campaign. officers returned to duty. also, the new regimens that were being raised under this call for 500,000, which lincoln and grant had their little laugh in mid july -- this began to produce

vast numbers of troops. not 500,000 but large numbers of troops started arriving at the petersburg front in mid-september and would continue on through october into early november. here in pennsylvania, we think of the series of troops from the 198 to the 211th that would come down to form part of the army of the james and the army of the potomac. most of the regimens in that sequence. we all know about the raw troops at first bull run who fought but could not stand under the pressure of a day's fighting. we so close to antietam, so many of us have visited there, know about the wrong regiments in the army of the potomac that had

only been in uniform for a few weeks when they were thrown into the maelstrom at south mountain and antietam. it was not reserved to july of 1861 or september of 1862 to have this effect on raw troops. it is a universal truth throughout the entire civil war that raw troops need time to train, and sometimes, the most healthy and tempering training comes by being blooded in battle. in the sixth offensive, a lot of these new regimens that had just reached the front in early october and were thrown into action in late october broke and ran just like the troops at antietam and first bull run.

they needed time. it's not to say that they were cowards or that they were poor material. they just needed time. by the spring of 1865, they had had the time and experience to proved to be effective soldiers. there is also the matter of individual replacements. there is a misunderstanding that is often told about the civil war -- shall i use a modern term -- army force generation -- fundamentally different between the union and confederacy. the south would put individual replacements into existing units, whereas the north would raise entirely new units. there is certainly some truth in those two statements but not entirely. the yankees began the yankees began putting many individual replacements into existing units starting after

gettysburg in the late summer and early autumn of 1863 and continuing for the rest of the war. some of these men were called up in response to the national conscription. more were called out in response to the increased bounties that were being offered. there's nothing wrong with an honest enlistment bonus. there is something terribly wrong with bounty jumping. a much lower caliber of individual were brought forward and put into the regiments in response to these various recruitment efforts that would change the tone of those regiments. a new england yankee regiment received a great influx of

german recruits fresh off the boat in september of 1864. these were not the 48ers who had a great commitment to liberty in germany and carried their german liberalism and sense of liberty over to the united states and lived in our country for a dozen years and identified with northern cause, or in a few cases, the southern cause. a these were fresh off the boat. they could speak german, but they couldn't speak english. the officers couldn't speak german. it was very difficult to communicate, and the commander of that regiment in one of the battles we conch in "richmond redeemed" said we stood there

when the confederates attacked and really could not contribute anything and would have been justified in leaving the field except for the obvious propriity of sharing the casualties with everybody else. well, that is not the way to win a battle, but that is often the consequence of this type of individual replacement. again, another great new england fighting regiment, the fifth new hampshire, the regiment of edward cross, about which of bruce kettner writes so eloquently at the sunken road, the bloody lane at antietam where colonel cross gives his life by charging across the field -- a by 1864, the fifth new hampshire had to be stuck inside a readout with a different regiment guarding the gate to make sure that the regiment did not desert en ma sse. so much had been filled up with these replacements lacking commitment to the war effort, in contrast to the original

soldiers who had won glory on the peninsula and at antietam to the original soldiers who won at anteitem and gettysburg. to the extent those individual replacements have any merit at all and it took a while to create this condition for them. now for the confederates they, too, continued to put individual replacements into their ranks. they few new confederate units were being raised late in the war. and there weren't a whole lot of them in backwater areas to be brought to the front either. there is a large call-up of

individual replacements that come to the confederates in october of 1864 -- that would use slaves and reservists. these reservists being men beyond the normal military age use these to take over conscription and enforcement duties working in the nighter and mining bureau in which you've done such good work mike lynch, to free up able-bodied men to do these important duties in the rear to join the forces at the front. and so if you look at the roles of lee's army, it is actually stronger at the end of october, despite all of its casualties in

five big battles. stronger than it is at the end of september because these individuals have joined it. but some men who were perfectly happy to be the soldier guarding danville prison or enforcing con shortstop scripti-- conscription were not happy to be in petersburg and gettysburg where cannons were exploding and bullets were flying. and the first dark night they might literally head for the hills. the hill country of appalachia became a great haven for people who had escaped from -- fled from military service,

deserters. until such time as they made their getaway they spread the cancer of their lack of commitment among the good and faithful soldier who is remained. just in this subject of desertion in the late summer and early autumn of 1864, there is almost a dynamic of ee quul lib rum desserting to the union army and dessertests to the confederate army. all of that begins to change in mid-november 1864. on november 8th president lincoln is overwhelmingly reon ee -- re-elected, and it becomes

unmistakenably clear there will be four more years of unrelenting war. one week to the day, after the re-election of lincoln, general sherman cuts loose from atlanta to his march to the sea, which devastates much of the interior of georgia. and with these two monday mental blows to the skikypsyche of the confederate war. so, joe, thank you for that question. please. >> we have time for one more quick question. >> i won't promise a quick answer though. >> good evening. you talk about strategically. can you talk about the nature of

the military relations between the president of the union. so between lee and davis and lincoln and grant. thank you. >> thank you, chuck. this was extremely important these relations. by constitutional prescription. we all know it's in the u.s. constitution. it was the same wording verbatim in the confederate constitution. the presidential be commander in chief of the army and navy of the united states and of the militia of the several states when called into the actual service of the united states or of the confederate states. by constitution prescription the president -- effort but no president, not even george washington who certainly had the credibility during the

whisky rebellion, wants to assume field command of the army. the presidents want to work through the generals and admirals in charge of our armed forces. but it's understanding the proper relationship striking the right balance some of the great war presidents we've had like franklin d. roosevelt or george herbert walker bush 41 strike a balance there. others like james knox polk or lyndon johnson, don't strike a right balance but they involve themselves. good generals understand that and work with their presidents. and both grant and lee understood this. it was one of their greatest strengths and one of the principle reasons why the presidents accorded those generals the latitude to apply their great ability in behalf of

their respective nations. whereas you can go all the way back to winfield scott and look at joe johnston and mcclelland and carry it up through general macarthur and general fallon and general mcchrystal in our own time to see what happens to able professional military men who set themselves against their own government. there's only going to be one outcome, in a situation like that. and there should be only one outcome, and the professional military that we have here in the army war college community the future strategic leaders of our armed forces understand that that relationship and it's one of the greatest insights that military history gave to our professional military education today, which is one of the reasons why history is one of the enduring themes here at

the army war college. and so i might not be an enduring theme here all night i'll thank you this opportunity to have spoken. we would like to tell you about some of our other american history tv programs. join us every saturday at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. eastern for a special look at civil war. we'll bring you to the battlefields. we'll let you hear from scholars and reenactors and bring you the latest historical forums on the subject. that's programs on the civil war every saturday at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span3. you've been watching c-span's american history tv. we want to hear from you. follow us on twitter twitter @cspanhistory.

connect with us on facebook at faith facebook.com/cspanhistory or leave comments and check out our upcoming programs at our website, c-span.org/history. robert wilson, author of "matthew brady, portraits of a nation" talks about brady's photography before the civil war and how it changed in the following years. he also talks about the difference in subject matter and composition between brady and other photographers at the time. this hour-long event was part of the lincoln forum's annual similar symposium in gettysburg, pennsylvania. >> thank you for having me. it's a pleasure to be here again. our first speaker this morning robert wilson, the author of a new well-received book on matthew brady. will mr wilson has written for many prominent newspapers and journals and held editorial posts at many of those same institutions. he's currently editor of "the xhern scholar." he's written two previous books

as well as "a certain somewhere: writers on the place they remember." he'll be talking about matthew brady today. brady is an interesting character. we've all looked at dozens, probably hundreds of brady's photographs. i suspect many of you join me having not known much about matthew brady, the man himself, who took much of these photographs. he not only captured history but also shaped it. we'll talk about the 1860 photograph of abraham lincoln and 1864 photographs of abraham lincoln that not only shaped history but captured it as well. mr. wilson will talk about his story of trying to recapture matthew brady. it's a tough thing to do. gnat thou brady didn't leave much in the way of writings. a few letters, few diaries. it's a tough nut to crack to

figure out what was going on with brady, what stories he was trying to get across, how intentional he was in the art he was trying to create. hopefully after the first hour we'll know more about that. please join me in welcoming mr. wilson to the stage. thank you for that great introduction. thanks too, to harold holtzer for inviting me here today and for other kindnesses. thanks to all of you have given the warm welcome my wife martha and me the last day we've been here. it occurred to me to write about matthew brady about a decade ago as i was finishing my first book, a biography of a 19th century werner explorer named clarence king. after the civil war king had led one of the important

scientific missions of the west and was the first person to incorporate photography into that sort of study. he chose a man to accompany him, timothy o. sullivan who then worked with king on the survey for three years. he had been a protege of matthew brady, quite possibly meeting him in the 1850s as a boy living on staten island where brady had a home while running a photographic portrait gallery in manhattan. as i read about o'sullivan, i realized there was no first-rate biography of matthew brady who i thought deserved one. here's a flaerting painting of mr. brady from mr. holtzer's museum. how little i knew was accurate

even though i spent a year reading enough to write a proposal for the book. it should have struck me, given the industry of scholars and of journalists such as myself that if there was not a good book about such an important figure, there might be a reason why. in fact, there are two good reasons. one is that for someone who was in the public eye for half a century, he left only a lightly marked trail as jarod mentioned. this was true even though the name became a brand for both portrait photography and civil war photography. and he knew everyone who mattered in this time including some of the most prominent journalists. and he was dedicated to making photography a medium for the recording of history. he did not keep a journal or a memoir, only a handful of prefunker to letters and spoke about his career in detail to a few journalists and friends only

late in life. when the natural tendency of many people is to embroidery the past, as i'm reaching late in life status, i understand that phenomenon. this is a sketch that was done of brady by an artist and sculptor names james kelly. brady stopped into his studio on the southeast corner of washington square in new york and kelly was up on a -- kind of up on a ladder working on a model for a sculpture and he came down, drew the sketch handed it to imprad. and brady signed it. there aren't a lot of examples of brady's signature. handed it back and said something like, you better my boys, meaning he'd done a better likeness than all the photographers who worked for brady might have done. this lack of primary sources is one reason such a central

cultural figure of his time has no good biography. the second reason is in the years since his death, this pausety of fact have led some to go beyond's brady own embroidery to pure speculation and fabrication. one of the things i thought i knew about brady that were wrong. the first is what almost everyone thinks they know about him. that he was not just a civil war photographer, but he was in some sense the civil war photographer. that he himself managed to take all those photographs we have become familiar with in the past few years as the 150th anniversary of the war has rolled along. it's true we see a number of the same photographs again and again.

this one became a u.s. postal stamp of the 150th anniversary of the battle of geties burg. and this one was one of the first photographs of the dead in warfare ever taken. confederate bodies gathered for burial after the 1862 battle of anteitam. it's they're retpossible one man could have scurried around and taken all of the photographs especially since there are few photographs. none of the photographs or photos he took survived the day. they were probably survived in

the panic retreat of the union army. he did have this heroic photograph of himself made in wash -- in his washington studio the next day. several publication including "the new york times" wrongly reported or at least strongly implied he brought photographs back from the battlefield. after bull run where he could be forgiven for having been spooked by his proximity to live ammunition, he stayed miles away from any battlefield for almost two years. when he traveled to gettysburg about a dozen days after the fighting had ended. then there was another lapse after cold harbor in virginia and the beginnings of the stalemate in petersburg in june 1864 when he was back in the field. that's basically it. although he did go to richmond after appomattox in 1865 and succeeded in taking photographs of robert e. lee soon after he

had returned from the war to the house where mrs. lee was living. and within a few days of lincoln's death. i thought a lot about why lee posed for the famous photographs. he apparently agreed almost the instant he returned to richmond. you can imagine how weary he must have felt in every single way, and his son wrote later there's nothing he liked so little as having his photograph made. but lincoln died the day that lee returned to richmond. and i suspect there was some sense that he had some sense of responsibility to present that calm visage at this dangerous time in the nation's history. i'm sure you're all familiar with these photographs. this particular one where the -- part of the door behind him makes him look like christ on

the cross had some resonance in the south for years afterwards. still as many as 10,000 civil war photographs are attributed to brady or his studio, how can that be? here's where things get a bit complicated. brady began his career early in the degara type air remarks opening a portrait studio on lower broadway in 1844 just below city hall park. and across fulton street, street of st. paul's chapel. this is right near the world trade center site. this was only five years after the de garrett type process had been introduced in paris. a busy photo gallery like brady's became required a lot of workers.

the metal plates on which the images appeared needed to be buffed and treated. and after the prepared plate was exposed, the image was fixed. washed in a gold solution and possibly hand-colored and framed in a leather case. different people performed each of these tasks and a later brady studio had as many as 25 employees. the person who took the photograph was generally not brady himself but someone called an operator, the man who operated the camera. brady owned and ran the business hired the workers made all the aesthetic and technical choices and often greeted his customers and escorted them to a position in front of the camera, putting them at their ease and setting up the photo. early in his career, he decided he wanted to specialize in images of well-known people so he spent a lot of time in pursuit of them. this is a picture of the great

british scientist, michael faraday that brady got in london in 1851. you are probably familiar with the surfaces are very -- are very easy to actually rub off. i kind of love the way this picture has aged. i think it's quite beautiful in that regard. the degarrett types made in his gallery, it was a gallery because he also placed his images of the famous in a reception room were known as photos by brady. this is a rendering of a later studio brady had. so, his name became his brand. he was often called brady of broadway and his product the photographs made by his workers, were known by his name. in a business context this is pretty easy to understand. businesses are generally named

for their owner but the owner is not always personally responsible for everything the business introduces. in a photography context where we think of a photographer as the person behind the camera this is less easy to understand and it's led to charges that brady took credit in a deceptive way for work his employees performed. by the time the civil war began brady had been operating galleries for 17 years. in addition to the ones in new york, he was now on broadway and tenth street. he had an 1858 opened a business in washington, located on pennsylvania avenue between sixth and seventh. his goal had become within his first three years on broadway to take photographs not just of famous people but of every important american. and almost everyone, it seemed, had posed for his camera. he had kept up with the rapid changes in technology and had even innovated a few. and was now taking studio portraits beautifully printed on

paper, often in large sizes and expensive, but also mass produced calling card sized photographs or stereo graphs what we call 3-d photo. a similar process on glass called ambra type was still in use. here's an ambra type taken of john c. fremont. but for the most part brady was now creating negatives on glass in a variety of formats that could be used to make an unlimited number of paper prints. probably the most important photograph brady ever took was of abraham lincoln in 1860 when he gave his famous cooper union speech, which made him a viable presidential candidate. this was widely produced and after lincoln saw brady again when he arrived in washington for the inauguration lincoln supposedly said, brady and the

cooper institute made me president. brady seems to be the only source for this quotation. so make of it what you will. i think it's undeniable and others said as well that this image was -- did have an impact. after the southern states seceded, volunteer state militia units flooded into washington to protect the capitol to what was to be an imminent attack by the rebels. they often went to the brady studio on to have a portrait made to send back home. i feel like i'm losing on "jeopardy!" by not using my clicker. brady began to send operators into the field to amount to studio portraits out of doors.

part of brady's impulse was that the civil war was a big subject, history would want to know about. a continuation of his long-time goal to photograph people who would be interesting in history. these camp-like -- brady had several teams out taking pictures before the war began. after bull run, this practice continued and some of his men who became famous in their own right, his washington gallery manager alexander gardner, timothy oechlt sullivan and others began working for the u.s. army photocopying maps and orders and helping with top graphical engineers help with spots for camps, hospitals and other infrastructures. as they served the army they continued in brady's employ, sending him more photographs for his growing war collection.

after the rebels abandoned manassas in the spring of 1862, brady sent his men out to take photographs of the famous sites from the first battle there, but these images were not particularly interesting as photographs. probably the most significant pictures taken at this time were the so-called quacker guns at centreville centreville. logs made to look like cannon which were to persuade the lvr already timid mcclelland not to attack. i love the way -- you know there's such a wonderful spirit of fun in so many of these civil war pictures and these guy here pretending to light the fake can is an example of that. many pictures taken around washington before the war had people, you know, making human pyramids and doing silly things like that.

obviously, they didn't know what was to come. this picture was taken by george barnard. barnard and james gibson, who also had illustrious careers throughout the war, took these pictures together. one of them, james gibson, accompanied mcclelland's army on the peninsula campaign where he took a number of the first seminal photographs of the year. this is a -- this is a stereo stereograph. you can see the image begins to repeat itself. this is a hospital camp at savage's station. harp

harry potterers weekly brings this. how patiently and still they lie, these brave men who bleed and are maimed for us. it is a picture which is more elegant than the sternest speech. so brady sold these photographs his men took. he also copied and added to his collection that others had taken. some of which he appropriated with permission and some of which he did not. copies photos to which he had no legitimate claim is hard to defend but in fairness, it was commonly done. by any means available brady accumulated images from the civil war and the providence of many of them is not known and probably never will be. his competitors were less happy about this as we are today and there were squabbles over who owned or had taken what. because brady kept the collection together long after the war and even managed to sell a part of it to the government,

we have him to thank for the vastness of the photographic record of the war that has come down to us. it ought to be said that almost every photographer of the war worked for brady at one time or another. when late in life he told a reporter that i had men in all parts of the army like a rich newspaper. that phrase "a rich newspaper" has to make you chuckle today. it wasn't true in the sense that these men were all working for him at the same time. but in some sense they still were at least in his mind his men. so imprad was not the photographer of the civil war. i mentioned i had other misconceptions about him even after i read a few amount. some had grown out of what i've been talking about and did not come from writers looking to make a good story but from scholars and curators.

plus there was brady's suspicious enintraneural zeal. phinneaus t. barnum. barnum's american museum was across the street from the fulton studio. if brady was a huckster then he was no artist. i find this pretty foolish but effects linger today in public collections who curators are reluctant to attribute photographs that are clearly to him and sometimes they attribute them to his studio. but this is changing. what i would like to do is hint at the case i made in the book that brady was not only a

photographer but a conscious artist. i person who did not just oversee the taking of pictures but often had a real idea of what he was doing. one of the things that intrigued people about photography in its first decades is that it seemed like a completely mechanical art form. degarrett types were often referred to as sun paintings because the images appeared not by the hand of an artist but by the work of light passing through the mechanism of a camera. in a world increasingly under the sway of science, photography was the first objective medium of art. brady's first connection to the world outside, rural upstate new york we are spent his childhood, was a charismatic young painter named william paige, a protege of samuel morris, the inventor of the telegraph, also a well known portrait painter of his day. this is a picture of morse that brady took in the 1850s.

brady sometimes claimed. he was at least on the fringe of artistic circles of new york. the sorts of portraits he himself began to take undoubtedly owed a debt to portrait painting. in the poses, the backgrounds -- the back drops and the lighting, and by the late 1850s brady was specializing in what he called brady impeerals, large size portrait prints on salt paper that like degarrett type hs a gold wash and then were often hand painted. this is a portrait of a sculptor named harriet hosmer. it wasn't colored but you can

see that her jacket and on her hat, the ribbon on her hat, were inked, enhanced with black ink to make it more dramatic. three photographs brady took more than 150 years ago at gettysburg speak explessicitly to this question of whether photography is mechanical process. between the battle of anteitam where gardner had taken images of the dead that brady displayed in his broadway gallery and gettysburg gardner set up his own business around the corner from brady in washington and taken with him many of brady's best photographers, including timothy oh sullivan and james f. gibson. on the afternoon of july 5th, two days after the fighting had stopped. the three photographers

approached from the south on a road passing by a farm where the dead had not yet been buried and as gardner and gibson had at antietam, the three began taking photographs of unberried confederates. the three men spent 48 hours on the battlefield, taking about 60 images. three-fourths of which were of lifeless bodies or other aspects of the horrors of war. brady did not arrive for another week and he and his men did not start taking photographs until july 15th. by then almost all the bodies had been buried and the most visible signs of battle had been cleaned up. the battlefield was returning to the placid rural scene it had been two weeks before. because his men and gardner's had crossed paths, brady knew gardner had beat him to the story, so what was he to do? perhaps it wasn't even a question for brady.

these two men had very different sensibilities. gardner was more journalistic, and brady's although he was a businessman was more artistic. brady had gotten some attention for his dead at antietam exhibit, where he exhibited gardner's and gibson's photographs later in new york. but he himself was not drawn to images of the dead or to other sorts of pictures that showed the price of war. for instance he took this -- he took the famous photograph at gettysburg we saw earlier of three confederate prisoners but not only is the image beautifully composed it shows them looking anything but defeated. the most remarkable thing brady did at gettysburg is take a series of photographs in which he himself appears. images where the viewer is literally looking over his soldier as he couldn't plates the now quiet place where the

battle had raged. i'll just show you these three and scroll back and forth among them. he and his men made 36 photographs in all. brady appears in at least six of them. these photographs are far less dramatic than gardner's but i argue in my book they are more interesting as photographs that are clear preference today for the drama of gardner's photographs was not matched by people at the time they were taken. all three of these images have captions linking them to one of the most important early events of the three-day battle. the death of major john f. reynolds thought to be the union's best general. a pennsylvanian who was largely responsible for the union's engagement of general lee's, reynolds was shot from his horse in a wooded area on the first day of the battle, dying instantly from a head wound.

this event was sufficiently well known that several of these pictures have kind of fake -- or have captions that suggest they're looking at places where either reynolds fell or died and they're not really true. those are -- those captions are wrong. these three photos introduced in an explicit way human consciousness of the violence that played out in these woods and fields. we see one or two people contemplating the placid landscape and we know what must be on their minds. the turmoil and death of the battle that had unfolded there if only in the thoughts of brady and his colleague. we accept today all photos imply the perception of the human viewer, the person that points the camera. more directly than had been done brady offers what is called first-person photography, a

statement is that that a photo is not just an objective rendering of a scene the work of the son, but a view created by individual consciousness. i should say in this picture the man is pointing to the woods where reynolds did die. which makes him in one sense anonymous, allowing him to stand in for every viewer. this is not men standing in field. even without knowing this was brady himself, the viewer would know that this is a distinct

individual contemplating the horrible scenes that had taken place within the camera's view. a year later brady was back in the field taking photographs of all grant's union commander army. soon after the disgraceful slaughter of the battle of cold harbor near richmond. the only battle for which grant expressed. the army oe june 21 1864 he posed general robert port, a division commander under general burnsside and his staff. it's very much brady's studio photographs taken out of doors. even the flap of the tent suggests the draperies at the

studio. potter's men are arranged around him roughly by height, while potter is hatless and staring directly into the lens from the exact middle of the composition. if brady had stopped there, it would be a very satisfying photograph. but now that brady had started putting himself in photographs, he couldn't stop. this time we see his face. he has posed himself as what he was, not the subject of the photograph, the presiding -- who can view this image without knowing its author was not the son but a person well tailored artist standing to the right of the frame, hand on hip, leg jauntily cocked. harold holtzer asked me to focus in this talk on lincoln that brady or his studio took in

1864. since a couple of my pages of the book do this, i thought i would read them to you. on august 9th and again on august 8 1863, president lincoln went to sit for alexander gardner. the first portraits made of lincoln since gardner's photographs of him in the field after antietam the previous october. brady was almost certainly galled by this, given his own relationship with the president. and on friday, january 8, exactly two months after the latter of lincoln sittings for gardner, lincoln appeared in brady's gallery for a series of photographs credited to brady himself. these are two of them for that -- from that sitting. perhaps because it was an election year, lincoln never shy around a camera was more than

usual willing to be photographed. a month later, february 9, 1864, a tuesday afternoon, he went again to brady's pennsylvania avenue gallery where he had an even longer sitting for brady photographer anthony berger. according to the painter, francis bicknell carpenter, who had just started work negotiate white house, he himself joined the president and mrs. lincoln that day under the front portico of the executive mansion where a carriage was to take them to the 3:00 point at brady. after they waited for a time and the carriage had not shown up lincoln proposed he and carpenter walk the mile or so along pennsylvania avenue to the gallery, saying this won't hurt you and me to walk down. carpenter said lincoln entertained him on the way by telling stories including one of a long ago visit by daniel webster to springfield illinois. presumably mrs. lincoln followed once the carriage was rounded up and accompanied with their son

who posed with lincoln that day. it's a charming photograph with tad standing beside his father who was seated in the famous brady posing chair also called the lincoln chair, turning the page of a book they were both looking down at. i just read recently that lincoln was worried people would assume they were looking at the bible and he didn't want to mislead people. they were actually looking, i think, at a book of brady photographs they just handed him as a prop. lincoln has on tiny reading glasses. tad is dressed like his father in a tie and dark jacket. a watch chain strung across his front. his arm presumably steadying him on the arm of the chair, makes an intimate visual connection with his father. this, is among the most informal photographs ever taken of lincoln but is not the most significant of the half dozen pictures berger made that day. one, a profile, became the model

for lincoln's head on the u.s. penny. and another is said to have been the photograph the $5 bill was modeled, image the $5 bill was modeled on. so, those are three pretty significant photograph from one sitting. lincoln sat for berger at brady's one more time that spring on april 20th but only a single negative from that sitting exists and that one is broken. the following tuesday, april 26th berger and at least one other photographer from brady's studio went to the white house at the request of carpenter to make some stereographic studies for me of the president's office. carpenter -- wait. it would help if i push the right button. this is a degarrett type of

photo of carpenter sometime before the white house interlude. was preparing to paint his heroic work, first reading of the emancipation prok mags by president lincoln which now hangs in the u.s. capitol in the senate wing. carpenter used brady photographs of lincoln and members of his cabinet for his painting. when berger made the april 26th visit, lincoln posed both seated and standing at the table in his office on which he -- at the table in his office on which he had signed the historic document. in his memoir "the inner life of abraham lincoln" carpenter tells a story about tad and his father on that day. imprad's men requested an interior room at the white house where they would have the darkness necessary to prepare and then prepare the stereoscope plates. carpenter showed them to a room tad had been using as a small theater with stage curtains,

orchestra stalls, par quet and all. berger and whoever was helping him that day set up their equipment in that room and after preparing plates there took them to the president's office where they made photos of lincoln. when one of brady's men carried an exposed plate or two back to the interior room he found that the door was locked. tad had discovered their presence in his theater and thrown a fit. locking the door and going off with the key. the photographers could not get to the chemicals they needed to fix the exposed images and prepare new plates. indeed, the only prints i've seen of that shoot are pretty bad. they were explaining the problem to carpenter and president who was sitting in his office chair waiting for another photograph when tad burst in in a fearful passion. lincoln calmly told tad to unlock the door. when lincoln learned he had gone to his mother's room and refused to obey his father, the president rose abruptly from his

chair and strode across the passage with the air one bent on punishment. soon he came back with a key and unlocked the door himself. returning to his seat, waiting for the next exposure. the president explained, as carpenter recounts it, tad is a pk child. he was violently excited when i went to him. i said tad, do you know you are making your father a great deal of trouble. he burst into v{wtears, instantly giving up the key. the last image i want to show you is taken after cold harbor in 1864. it's similar to the potter photograph in that a union general and his staff are the subject. that is potter's boss, ambrose burnside, now a general, of course, seated with his legs crossed in the middle of the photo. what is interesting about this image, of course, is the

somewhat ghostly presence of brady himself to the far left. although he is not moving but simply out of focus it seems clear he had been arranging the men for the camera and was standing not far enough to one side when his operator exposed the plate. in a way it's fun y of course, a mistake, but it does speak to brady's role in a photo by brady when he was present. for me it's something else, this image of matthew brady, both there and not there. eeb after the years i've spent with him he remains for me a ghostly presence a significant figure of his time but someone we will never know in whole. thank you. [ applause ] >> so, we're going to do some questions. yes, sir. >> congratulations on the book.

i think it's extraordinary important. >> thank you. >> when brady and gardner's photographs were first published, the american public recoiled in horror, people who had never been to war had never seen those scenes. are there any recorded accounts of lincoln's reaction to seeing the dead on the battlefield for the first time? >> not that i'm aware of. there probably -- i mean, i would imagine almost everyone in this room knows more about lincoln than i do. and i don't know of an account like that. i do think that the impact of these photographs on the public is very much exaggerated. you know, they were -- the pictures were in the brady studio and people who happened to walk by on broadway could go up and look at them and they were stereoscope and they looked

down into a box. "the new york times" wrote a very touching, moving piece about them. you know, there weren't any other exhibits that i know of, of the dead, like the one brady did.# .ñ and there is, as far as i can tell i assume that gardner exhibited them in the washington studio, too, and there are no accounts in the newspapers about it. there's seemingly -- i'm sure there are many collectors in the room who may be able to add to this, but they're not apparently a terribly great number of sort of massed reproduced images of this around suggesting that they didn't really sell particularly well either. i'm doubtful of what -- of course, the war only got worse, right? if they shocked the public, it didn't have a huge effect on them.

i wish i knew about the effect on lincoln, but i don't. >> thank you. congratulations, again. >> thanks. >> question about the interior of ford's theater and the box and those of us who volunteer and have to answer questions like to tell the story that stanton -- later in the day lincoln died. can you confirm that? is that a part of the story? and any other photographs that he took of historic places like that that could be used for restoration or for history? >> well, i think gardner people got there first and did a lot of pictures pictures around the event itself, including, i think, a picture of the telegraph office where the news went out to the nation that lincoln had died.

i think brady's men got over there later and took the images they took. as i say i mean, gardner had a better sort of journalistic sense. they were often -- brady people were often following them, i think. i'm not sure -- i don't really know about other historic sites. >> did he also photograph historic sites in the city, in washington, in other cities where it wasn't just battlefields or people, but also architectural places that we -- >> well, when the -- when gibson went down on the peninsula he often took pictures of sites related to revolutionary war, yorkstown and things like that.

i don't think of the photos as being essential architectural. there were landscapes done in connection with the top graphical engineers. brady was really a portrait photographer his whole life and he really wanted to take pictures of people. thanks. yes, sir. >> thank you for filling in that void i had about brady. i have a several-part question. of the many pictures that brady took of lincoln, who paid him? how much was he paid? >> who made -- >> who paid him. the government? and how much was he paid? >> i would very much doubt he was paid at all. he took many, many -- if you go into his account books at the library of congress from later on in the 1870s you'll see all these places where it seems like with increasing futility comp for mr. brady.

brady always took pictures of the famous as comps. and he would -- you know, the send them a picture and keep one for his collection. i would be surprised if lincoln paid for any of those portraits. yes, sir. >> yeah. i worked at the clara -- in washington and doing my research on her, i noticed that because brady's studio was so close she had gone down and had a lot of pictures made by brady. so i wanted to locate his -- between sixth and seventh on pennsylvania. however, it's just an abandoned building. there is not even a plaque that says what it was. i found out it was the site of galt's jewelry which only claim to fame was woodrow wilson's wife, that galt was her first husband. >> yeah. >> but nothing. it's just an abandoned building. >> well, that's not exactly

true. the two buildings that brady's studios were in in washington are connected to the big victorian building on the corner. >> yeah. >> they've all been put together. i'm pretty sure there is a plaque out in front of that building. i went in and looked at where brady's studio -- >> i've got pictures of it. i couldn't find it. maybe you saw it. maybe i missed it. >> you may be right. i went up there. i didn't get any sense of brady having been there. when they redid those buildings there was an architectural report and it said the upper floor brady's studio had been in had been abandoned -- had been empty from the time brady left in 1881 for 100 years. it shows you how dynamic lower pennsylvania -- >> yeah the jewelry floor was on the first floor, i think. >> but there is one thing there that's of interest.

a sky light on the back of the building. if you come up and look from behind, you can see the skylight on the side that brady had designed and put in there. i try -- i sort of think of it as george washington's axe, where somebody replaced the handle and shbls replaced the head but it's still george washington's axe. there's at least a hole there that was brady -- a hole that brady made in the side of the building. yes, ma'am. >> speaking of the building on 16th -- on pennsylvania avenue. i've been in that building. my husband's uncle owned it about 50 years ago. and so -- >> my sympathies because he wasn't getting much rental. >> i was able to go up the very stairs lincoln would have gone up and also i was able to go into the room which would have been the studio. >> wow. >> although it had been converted, as you say into apartments up there. but still you could see the

area. the skylight was still there. it is not the skylight -- >> in the ceiling or in the back? >> it's in the ceiling toward pennsylvania avenue. and so that kind of kicks out the fact that the one in the back they put in when they renovated everything is really not what we would think is what -- were the actual sky light was. >> well there were skylights in the ceiling, but -- >> it's in the ceiling. >> there was one he put on the back that -- yeah all of that was covered up. that's fascinating. >> but i think the skylight is still there. >> it is. >> i think they left it in the ceiling. >> oh right. >> i should have looked at google maps, i guess. >> but it was really cool to go up the stairs and be in the really -- be in the room and stand where where those people would have stood and he took the photographs. one other thing, too, and gardner's photographs, it shows

the picture of him seated in the chair that has that fringe on it and so forth. i was able to see that chair also because that was on display at sweden church on 16th street when mark katz did his book on gardner. and he had -- i don't know if he owned the chair but somehow or another that church had the chair. that was another thing i really saw. one question i do have is have you ever seen a photograph of the outside of the washington studio? i have never been able to find one. >> i think there are photographs where you can see it from a distance. >> but you don't see -- >> not one that's sort of dead on, i guess. >> well, anyway -- >> that's very interesting. >> that's my story and i'm sticking with it. >> right. so much for the architectural report from 1981. >> brady's life ended kind of

tragic. would you care to comment on his demise? >> yeah. brady was one of these people whose life didn't have a third act because it had a wonderful first act as a portrait photographer on broadway and then the civil war part. his finances went, you know, increasingly south after the war. he worked very hard to sell this collection to the war department and was eventually able to get $25,000. although late in life he told james edward kelly, the sculptor who did the sketch of him, that a congressman -- a certain congressman had gotten a gratuity of 50%. brady only got $12,500. now, brady was not terribly trustworthy but he said you can look it up who the congressman was who put the bill in. and given who the congressman was, i tend to believe it. the congressman was beast

butler. one i think congressmen in a very corrupt era. i wrote about him in an earlier book when he had taken 100,000 shares in a mining company as he put through one of the worst bills in u.s. history, the 1872 mining act which is still denounced in the full-page ad in "the new york times" once a year i think for making minerals on federal lands available to commercial interests without much payback to the u.s. government. anyway. so he died pretty much penniless. his funeral was paid for in part by the -- one of the units in new york, i'm blanking right now on which one that he had been an honorary member of. there was not enough money for a tombstone evidently because when a tombstone was finally put up,

it had the wrong year for his death on it. eventually that was replaced. but, yeah, he died penniless, although i must say that he was about -- he was about to have a kind of revival. there was going to be a big showing of his photographs at carnegie hall. brady was going to introduce them, and he had worked on kind of extended captions for each one, picked the order of them, and so i guess he died with a little hope that his career was going to be revived in that way. thank you. [ applause ] you've been watching c-span's american history tv. we want to hear from you. follow us on twitter @c-span

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pickens. cake love owner warren brown and inventor dean kamen. at 4:00 p.m. eastern the brooklyn historical society holds a conversation on race. at 8:00 p.m. eastern, walt cunningham on the first manned space flight. new year's day on c-span2 just before noon eastern author hector tobar on the 33 men that were buried in a chilean mine. and at 3:00 p.m. eastern richard norton smith on the life of nelson rockefeller. then at 8:00 p.m. eastern former investigative correspondent for cbs news cheryl atsharyl attkisson on her experience it's reporting on the obama administration. new year's day on american history tv on c-span3. at 10:00 a.m. eastern juanita abernathy on her experiences and the role of women in the civil rights movement. brooklyn college professor benjamin carp on the link between alcohol and politics in prerevolutionary new york city.

at 8:00 p.m. patrick oliphant draws ten historical caricatures caricatures. new year's day on the c-span networks. for our complete schedule, go to cspan.org. historian catherine clinton talks about what she called, quote, parlor politics in washington, d.c., during the civil war. women such as merry lincoln and kate chase daughter of treasury secretary treasury salmon p. chase, carried out their own social battles. according to miss clinton, mary lincoln often drew criticism for attempting to keep up appearances through lavish diplomatic dinners despite the ongoing civil war. this hour-long event was part of the lincoln forum symposium in gettys gettysburg, pennsylvania. >> it's my pleasure to introduce your second speaker this morning, dr. catherine clinton.

dr. clinton earned her bachelor's degree at harvard and ph.d. at princeton where she studied under dr. james mcpherson. she taught at the citadel, wesleyan wesleyan, brandeis, and queens university in belfast, northern ireland. since august of 2014 she's been the denman endowed professor at american history at the university of texas at san antonio. so from northern ireland to texas, that's quite a journey. and 2016 she'll assume the presidency of the southern historical association. her prestige yution post recognizing her standing in the field. she's the author or editor of two dozen books, many focusing on family, gender, or women's issues in the 19th century. i suspect many people in this room have read her 2009 biography of mary todd lincoln. her talk today is titled "teeming with rivals: women's parlor politics during the civil war." please help me welcome dr. clinton. [ applause ]

>> well, thank you. it's so lovely to be here in gettysburg, and, yes, indeed, the journey from northern ireland to texas, what would draw me into these arctic temperatures? but i want to credit certainly the quartet of very kind scholars in the field. i was first brought her by gabor and then thanks to harold holzer and chief frank i have been back again and again, but thank you, jim of course, for helping this needy student on her journey toward civil war history. a powerful woman was at the center of swirling political debates during a re-election campaign of the president. her influence over him, did she or did she not sway him? was a source of parlor games in that most murky of fir bowls,

washington, d.c. gossip and gender create puerful sparks and reverberations and for those who think such issues don't matter, recall the presidential ambitions of ed muskie dissolved in the melting snow versus tears debate in february 1972. a well educated woman with a track record of speaking her mind, a woman who did not mind bumping against the young, shiny palace guard at the white house. the capital remained agog anticipating her every misstep, speculating on her motives with intensifying speculation as reporters tracked her every move. could it be 2012? or is it 1864? as i suggest in my recent biography of mrs. lincoln a life, the storm enveloping lincoln's wife could not be matched until we had hillary clinton in the white house as the president's wife and it was mrs. lincoln who first carvinged

out a distinctive role for herself during her white house years. as much by necessity as by choice. several of mary lincoln's immediate family were engaged in military rebellion dedicated to the overthrow of her husband's government. she remained completely loyal to the union and went well beyond what was required having her mail incoming and outgoing read for her. lincoln's wife had perhaps the most challenging time as first lady, a term that was coined before she assumed the role, but became a label embraced by the press to designate the president's wife. due to mary's visibility and profile, she took advantage of this new role. as mary lincoln the todd was only added later by descendants who actually wanted to link mary to her birth family, the todds and also to another president, and that is dolly todd madison

was married to a todd but in her own lifetime the two-named mary lincoln felt herself at the center of a converging disaster inform 1864. for three long years she had weathered the political storms. she'd endured fearful threats against her husband in 1861, suffered the loss of a child in 1862, and she nearly died herself of an injury following the sabotage of the president's carriage in june 1863 which resulted in an accident intended to have a fatal effect on the president rather than the very severe head trauma it caused his wife. in the year 1864 it proved a severely challenged siege for the much maligned mrs. lincoln. rather than serenely reigning, she found her parlor teeming with rivals. mary had worked hard during her husband's first presidential campaign in the summer 1860.

she made a favorable impression on john scripps, editor of the chicago tribune who suggested that the lincolns were not the country bump kins the eastern establishment might expect especially as lincoln's wife was really educated french speaking, an aristocratic daughter of the bluegrass. a new york herald reporter suggested lincoln's springfield resident resembled longfellow he is abode in cambridge. another credited lincoln's wife who was an amiable and accomplished lady. these reports were meant to reassure voters along the eastern seaboard that they hadn't really had a wild westerner for a candidate. after lincoln's victory at the ballot box he had an uphill battle when he arrived in washington, d.c. while the president-elect worked to organize his government, mary launched her own campaigns hosting family and friends,

greeting diplomats and statesmen, anticipating her new set of duties, and she sought to maneuver the treacherous shoals of secession. the coldness and snobbery of easterners was wearing her down. she confronted one of the most idiosyncratic of american institutions washington society. at the heart of the city's bow monday, the toughened core of social arbiters were known as cave dwellers. their tenure and tenacity gave them influence over the parade of newcomers who straggled into the city at irregular but certainly every four-year intervals. the inner city of d.c. society was surrounded by the money bags whose rung on the ladder was bought, and then there were the high brows, whose station was secured by talent regardless of wealth although it was considered felicitous when the two went together. three outer rings applied jockeying for improved position, the

diplomats, the army and navy crowd, and the politicos, but clearly it is the cave dwellers, particularly women like mary clemor and laura holloway who influenced the pecking order among the capital's society. fanny ems, mrs. charles, maintained an eclectic sunday salon at her 14th and 8th street salon while her sister marion campbell was embedded when several knickerbocker circles. mrs. eames in d.c. and she would later befriend 345irmary lincoln. the physical attributes of the district did not recommend it. noah brooks described the streets as canals of liquid mud. it would be difficult to could be receive of a meaner street in architectural adornments than pennsylvania avenue,