it is my pleasure this morning to introduce joan from ucla. good morning. it won multiple prices. the doctor came to the college back in 2011, where she deliveredd a lecture. she is also a noted teacher and lecturer at ucla and w has received numerous awards. when she does a lecture on baseball, at the end of the class, she brings a bag of

peanuts, and tosses them out to her students. she has a mean right arm. we have ordered boxes of heart attack -- hard tack. she will be speaking on grant and the meeting of appomattox. [applause] dr. waugh: thank you, peter for the hilarious introduction. i'm not a right-hander. if i threw hard tack at you, it would be painful. well, good morning. it is delightful to be here. i have not been at the conference for a long time at the civil war institute. i'm happy to be back. i love gettysburg. i have been here many many times .

when i say good morning i mean good morning because it is about 5:30 in the morning for me coming from los angeles. i think that will get through this. i do want to say that while i published the book on grant, i have not finished with him yet. i became fascinated by the surrenders that he conducted during the war and really look at surrenders as a way to understand the nature of this war as i have done in my title, and what it meant for reconstruction and reunion. i only knew what was in my mind -- general ulysses s. grant said the describing his feelings, as he sat down to write down the terms of surrender at appomattox in 1865. somehow that sentence makes it seems so simple. it was not. that early day in april was surely the height of his military career, cementing his

his magnanimous warrior. including his two terms. the looming sesquicentennial. and accompanying this lecture with some visuals, one of the many paintings commemorating april 9. twice, before dramatics, he accepted the surrender of a major force at fort donaldson tennessee and in mississippi in 1863. those two campaigns grant displayed two features of his

character and military strategy and was relentless in securing victory but also displayed magnanimity, anticipating the more celebrated generosity of the 1865 surrender. if projected the end and the desire of lincoln with an easy surrender of the confederacy. were a loyalty of to the united states and mensa patient. my lecture will briefly review the first two elements of his surrender and i will also look at some of the political concerns raised regarding a final military surrender. i want to turn to the story of appomattox courthouse but by the

end, i only knew what was in my mind in a more compelling perspective. a word about surrender. it is an military or political surrender, defined as giving up something valuable. an army, it defined territory, a country. a set of demands to an enemy. i think we all understand it. at appomattox, grant was already well aware of complications from negotiating both as a process and a cultural artifact. and as a ceremony replete with symbolism that carried implications for the future.

to accept the surrender of three entire armies it is worth doing the elements of the first to to see if there is anything to be learned about the third. and as i suggested earlier i will give you some background on fort donaldson and vicksburg. in early february, union strategy in the western theater -- it was in tennessee and mississippi and georgia among other states. western strategy targeted a strategic and strongly defended fort on the tennessee state side of the cumberland river. fighting gave the rebels the expectation of winning the battle but the senior

confederate commanders led to them abandoning the carnage in fort donaldson in february of 1862. and the officer simon buckner was left in charge. as federal forces pressed her advantage. general buckner sent general grant a letter asking that he declare an armistice to stop the fighting. and following that, to hold a conference so that the two might discuss terms for donaldson's surrender. with the white flag being displayed as a symbol of surrender. this request wasn't unusual. that's what you usually did. if you are beaten and wanted to

surrender it you wanted to hold negotiations to get the best deal for yourself as possible. the result of his request is famous. unconditional surrender to be accepted. his statement electrified the northern public but was condemned by helpless general buckner as ungenerous and on chivalrous. buckner really had no choice but to accept. what made the military surrender unconditional? and unconditional surrender is most obviously surrender without condition. don't you wish that everything was that easy? it means nothing is given to the

losing army. when grant refused buckner's request for a meeting to discuss terms, the surrender became unconditional. writing to his headquarters grant and his staff dismounted at the dover hotel, a two story would building on the riverfront. after some are limitary pleasantries even jokes grant got down to business and worked out the details. notably, he decided to dispense with any notion of a formal surrender ceremony of the garrison, the largest surrender

in united states history of that time. grant believed that this formality the lowering of the flag and buckner handing over his ceremonial sword served no purpose but to humiliate. he exclaimed, the surrender is now a fact. why should we go through the forms to mortify and injure the spirits of brave men who are our own countrymen. his last few words are worth a second look. our own countrymen, reflected his leaf that southerners were engaged in a rebellion, not a war between nations. once the rebellion ended the 11 rebel states could be returned to proper relationship within the united states. the northern commander promoted an ideal of restraint toward the

defeated foes. in february 1862 it was still the distinct possibility that the sections could be reconciled with the union as it was. the slavery intact. that would mean a minimum of bitterness and destruction. some of the scenes unfolding after the surrender validated to some extent a hopeful expectation. not only were the officers regular officers not only were they engaging unfriendly terms but many union and confederate soldiers could be seen milling about and bargaining food for trinkets and so on.

grant ordered his soldiers not to act disrespectfully. the meeting at the dover hotel hammered out the details of the surrender including arrangements for the treatment of injured soldiers and the transport of them to be taken to the northern prison camp's. buckner prepared himself and some of his troops to leave for the prison camps on a special steamer. before they parted, general buckner asked grant to witness something. grant stood by quietly as dr. spoke to his men -- as buckner praised grant for his respect. the consequences were profoundly

important. the demand for unconditional surrender removed from the theater of action a number of enemy troops. the number was about 16,000. it made him the first great military history of the union. it also raised northern hopes for a fast and to the conflict. it was the first good news to come on the federal side. why did it raise hope? because of the consequences. in the western theater, the rebel line had been demolished. kentucky middleton had conceded george for union. as union forces moved in this

theater as they moved to consolidate the control of federate territory they disrupted railroad mines destroyed property and liberated -- liberated slaves. it was the first phase of construction in which military operations would take hold. policies and issues relating to contraband would arise. the overall attitude did not lend itself to cheery predictions of an early end. he sat at the eastern theater of the peninsula campaign partly mitigated -- it after victory in maryland, it insured, at least

in the eyes of people living at the time that this was a long war. naturally, after antietam, the introduction of a mass payment to the union cause trigger the political strategy, the administration emanating from president lincoln. the national strategy was not the union as it was anymore. that was a conditional surrender that was not acceptable. it was now and unconditional surrender. in late december 1862, and 1863, brought confederate victory. in other words, i will take you to vicksburg now. there was no thought of a quick and easy victory by the day that

grant's second agreement was signed in fix for, mississippi on july 4, 1863. the federal goal of securing the length of the mississippi river was accomplished by the 1862-1863 campaign to capture vicksburg, mississippi. the heavily fortified city contained a sizable confederate army, about 30,000, commanded by john c pemberton, who grant had known during the mexican war. in the late spring and early summer of 1863, grant combined both naval and infantry forces to encircle and capture's expert. after a series of victories, grant's forces the siege vicksburg.

by july 1, general pemberton relates he must capitulate. he sent a letter to grant, reaching the federal commander on the morning of july 3. we know what july 3 means. like oxnard, general pemberton requested a meeting to discuss terms. i make the proposition to avoid further shedding of blood, feeling myself able to maintain a position for an indefinite period. pemberton's bluff was swatted away by grant who said that this can be ended anytime, you may choose by an unconditional surrender of the city and garrison. i have no other terms. it worked before.

softening his harsh tone, he added that men who have shown such courage will always challenge the respect of an adversary, and i can assure you, will be treated with all due respect to prisoners of war. despite his use of "unconditional surrender" grant agreed to meet pemberton at 3:00. you see this "harpers weekly" image on the screen, showing that meeting. he agreed to meet at 3:00 in the afternoon, and pemberton arrived, dressed in full uniform, meeting grant in casual dress. i have read many letters of soldiers who were there and relating this to their family -- they were all silent, watching hoping. the short exchange failed with

grant repeating his terms of unconditional surrender, leading pemberton to say angrily, i can assure you, you will bury many more of your men, before you enter vicksburg. the conversation was a failure yet it established grants willingness to retreat from unconditional surrender. the relative ease at which donaldson was dispatched must have seemed very distant to grant. here sitting in the mississippi heat, the stakes of surrender were even higher as both men knew, the loss of vicksburg would be a catastrophe for the south. no agreement was reached by the afternoons end, but grant promise that he would send a response soon. consulting with his commanders

grant decided to refrane his surrender from unconditional to conditional. his letter offered parole to the rebel soldiers instead of incarceration. a few hours later, pemberton accepted. the official surrender would take place on the morning of july 4, 1863. why did grant changes mind? reluctant to launch a wasteful assault on the city, grant also did not want to send thousands

of rebel prisoners to prison camps in the north, already overfull. this way, he could instead send valuable union units to help armies, instead of guarding armies. had i settled on a unconditional surrender, there would be 300,000 men to transfer. instead, the whole confederate garrison was paroled. this meant that prisoners could go free is a promise to not reenter the war. this is a photograph of the united states flag flying over the vicksburg courthouse on the morning of the surrender, july 4, 1863. it came to be that the general whose initials were "unconditional surrender," did not persist. beginning at 8:00, a victorious army marched into vicksburg, and within minutes, planted a fight. the union celebration was even greater, given it was

independence day. a little later, the defeated army marched out of vicksburg, officially prisoners of war. rations were distributed to the hungry people. grant said that the two members celebrated, as though they were of the same cause. i can hardly believe that, but it is nicer when you remember things, they can be both here -- rosier. grant heard criticism for his decision to promote the soldiers, the double soldiers. some confederates took arms -- return to take up arms against the united states. grant dismissed this saying that their possible escape was precisely what i expected and hoped they would do. in other words, he hoped that many of them would seize the theater of action and go home, or escape to some other place. in fact, we do not have the exact numbers, but that appears to be the case. a sizable number did not return. grant asserted, i knew many of them were tired of the war and

would get home as soon as they could. he also had something to say about this policy. he said, the men behaved so well that i did not want to humiliate them. i felt that considerations for their feelings would make them less dangerous foes, and better citizens after the war was over. at both for donaldson and vicksburg, grant combined military victories with both sensible and sensitive policy, working towards union. his actions suggested that winning the peace would be as meaningful as winning the war.

vicksburg capture accomplish three important goals. it secured union control of the mississippi river. it split the confederacy in half, and sent a heavy blow to the south. the two great victories of 1863 bolstered northern hopes for he is once again, but still, that

peace, increasingly distant. it was getting more complicated by the minute. acting quickly after vicksburg and another grant victory at chattanooga, tennessee president lincoln brought the western men east. in march 1864, grant accepted command of all union armies, cementing his growing reputation as a symbol of union military victory. grant and lincoln, who had never met until march 9, would come to enjoy an unusually close relationship. while lincoln developed strategy that guided his ultimate national strategy of saving the union, grant developed the political skills that complemented his military goal

with the same idea in mind, to save the union. assuming a role as many commanders in the civil war, particularly on the federal side did, of not only planning and executing campaigns, but also advising and carrying out policies on any range of social and political issues in the occupied territory under the control. grant accepted, without question, the president's power as commander in chief. one author wrote -- grant and lincoln assured one another of good intention while maintaining separate series of authority although those spheres sometimes became tangled. this was painted just after chattanooga.

here, i want to show you the council of war. i want to emphasize, as they go into the political part of my talk this morning, grant was in constant contact with president lincoln and edwin stanton as well. it would not always agree. more than a few times in the next year, lincoln expressed frustration with the union army's lack of success. he traveled twice to grant's headquarters in the summer of 1864 to discuss these frustrations. as lincoln reminded the

secretary of war, edward stanton, on one such occasion of disappointment, you and i have tried to bust this job, and we have not done so well. we have sat across the melons for mr. grant to succeed us, and it think we ought to leave him alone. for the most part, they did. union tribes make possible lincoln's reelection in 1864. as they went into winter, union victory seemed more and more likely. while grant was working for total victory, he was alert to the possibility of ending the war during the negotiated peace, bringing him into an even closer relationship with the president. that relationship, it must be said, was of some concern to link. there was a fine line between politics, diplomacy, and the military, and had to do with who would implement that policy. through it all, lincoln and staton made it clear to grant that their job was not to negotiate the conditions of

peace in a military surrender. it was to be purely the surrender of one army to another. both were worried that a military surrender, handled wrongly, may take away the presence goals of reconstruction and reunion. lincoln decided a heart of war and soft peace. as late 1864 passed on to 1865 union victory seemed imminent, despite the confederate leadership's refusal to give up. undergrad's -- under grant's direction, the country's ability to sustain itself and to defeat

armies was bringing the rebellion to its knees. in late february 1865, grant remarked on the dissolution that was appearing in the confederate army, remarked upon yesterday. this included desertions. doubtless, he was thinking relentlessly about the impending surrender, and the terms that it would dictate. there came a letter from general lee asking if grant would consider meeting to discuss what he called a satisfactory adjustment, a means of a military convention. what lee was proposing to grant in early march 1865 was exactly what lincoln feared. it went beyond a military surrender. grant immediately sent the message to edward stanton, who replied, the president directs me to say to you that he wishes

you to have no conference with general lee, lest it be for the capitulation of lee's army. just in case granted not understand the first part of the letter, which lincoln was evidently dictating to stanton his letter ended with this. he instructs me to say that you are not to discuss our confirm upon any political questions. such questions, the president holds in his hand, and will not submit to any military conferences. grant's replies a leak fulfilled his presence and instructions. such authority is vested in the president of the united states. on march 20, 1865, general grant invited abraham lincoln to meet

him at city point in a few days. in this meeting, with grant, general sherman, and david quarter of board the river queen, lincoln discussed at length in debt what the military surrender should entail, as well as articulating his own ideas. while the details of this meeting remain close, later

accounts stress that lincoln asked for general terms so that they will not take up arms again. it also insisted that the mancini -- it is hard today to realize how anxiety ridden the federal officials were at this time. they did not believe -- they believe that the war could go on for some time in a variety of ways. it was very important to get these details right. it was incredibly important to give and write.

the bottom line was this. momentous decisions have to be made now and soon. lincoln would claim his reconstruction cards close because he did not want to be pinned down by taking a position that would alienate many of the members of his own party. lincoln and staton make it clear that his job is not to negotiate conditions of peace, but conditions of surrender of the army. lincoln really said to grant, i will deal with the conditions and negotiate for peace.

your job is to fight. the appomattox campaign, beginning on march 25, marked the end of the road. the confederate subscription of the last line, resulted in the fall of gas in richmond. on april 6, a further disaster was inflicted at say there's great great on april 7, grant spoke with his commanders on what was it is that -- what was a desperate situation. he remarked to his staff, i have a great mind to summon lee to surrender. he said this letter to him. the result of the last three must convince you of the hopelessness of the further resistance in northern virginia.

i feel it is so and my duty to shift for myself the responsibility of any further loss of blood, by asking of you the surrender of the army of northern virginia. lee replied, asking grant to outline the surrender, and receive this note on april 8. there is but one condition that i surrender on and that is that the men be disqualified from taking up arms again against the united states. lee responded to grants note that he was not ready to surrender, but suggested a meeting to possibly discuss key signature -- peace negotiations.

grant's response to lee suggested that, sorry, i thought i made myself clear. i cannot discuss peace. lee, after meeting his commanders, turned away and said, there's nothing left to me but to go see general grant, and i would rather die 1000 deaths. making a dramatic moment more so, in the end the hours of the conflict, grant's physical condition was precarious. a great anxiety combined with malnourishment, chronic

sleeplessness, and pure exhaustion brought up one of his debilitating headaches. despite his condition, on the morning of april 9, staff germs down data and alex --drove down to appomattox. grant's headache was still raging. in his hand was a sealed envelope, containing lee's reply to grant's most recent communique. the general read the message without commenting. he handed it to his aid, asking him to read it aloud. grant's headache disappeared.

don't take excedrin migraine when you take a migraine headache. just think of the surrender. a little after 1:30 p.m., grant and his staff wrote into the village of appomattox courthouse, where they were directed to the two-story brick farmhouse, belonging to wilmer. grant dismounted his beautiful horse and climbed the steps to the house. in the parlor to the left side robert e lee. grant and lee shook hands. this is the depiction of the surrender that you see on the screen.

lee returned to his chair. grant drew up a seat and sat down, placing his gloves and hat on a nearby table. outside, thousands of weary soldiers waited and watched. all in the room, they were aware of the extraordinary contrast between the two commanders. general lee, i'm tired his best uniform, with a sword on his side. he had dressed carefully for the occasion. the commanding general of the northern armies had not. equipment had disappeared. instead, he wore a casual uniform with shoulder straps pinned on. far from insulting lee or diminishing the importance of the occasion, grant's manner revealed much about the man. as a sign of respect, he

explained his experience later. he said, i had not expected so soon the result that was then taking place. the two commanders engaged in some awkward conversation about their service in the mexican war, with lee asking, what are the terms of surrender. grant responded that the terms were exactly the same as indicated by his letter on april 8. many officers who surrendered would be paroled, and could not take up arms again until exchange properly. the arms and supplies were to be captured properly.

this was a military surrender, the surrender of one army to another. we know that there are several other armies in the field that were yet to be surrendered, even after appomattox. grant remember that what general lee's feelings were that i did not know. it was impossible to say whether he fell inwardly glad that the and had finally come. for his part, lee remain satisfied. perhaps he felt afraid that the word "unconditional" was not muttered. lee waited while eli parker brought over a small table and a tablet prepared with carbon paper for three copies. grant prepared to write. when i put my pen to the paper

i did not know the first word that i should make use of. i only knew what was in my mind, and wished to express it clearly so there was no mistaking it. there was no mistaking it. grant rejected any fancy words for a straightforward explanation of the process by which the officers and men of northern for junior would record their paroled. he explained, the thought occurred to me that the officers had their own private horses and effects, important to them, but of no value to us. also, it would be an unnecessary

humiliation to call upon them to deliver their arms. these items were to be excluded from weapons and property about to be turned over. also excluded would be a request for lee's ceremonial sword as a trophy for war. then, there was the final part of the letter to lee. the famous last sentence which has been described as one of the greatest sentences in the history of the united states. no one has described one of my

sentences like that. [laughter] it is as follows. each officer and men will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by united states authorities, so long as they observe their paroled, and the laws and forth where they may be preside. it was a vital importance and ending the war and start the progress that followed. when lee came to the end, he looked up and remarked, this will have a very happy affect upon my army. we had one more request -- lee had one more request. grant agreed, saying it would be very gratifying, much towards conciliating our people. lee returned a book to grants, and ordered a copy. as the documents were prepared grant introduced lee to the staff officers and generals who crowded into the small room, including lincoln's son, captain robert lincoln. the two discussed prisoners, and

grant agreed to provide rations. around 3:00 p.m., lee and grant hearted ways. they shook hands. when lee mounted, he lifted his hat in sloot. granted the same. later, colonel marshall describes the surrender saying there was no theatrical display about it. it was the simplest. another testimonial came from x confederate general. he said, grant's manner requires the greatest praise. and for all time, it will be a good thing. grant left and wrote to

headquarters. news of the surrender spread quickly to the union can't. soon, thousands -- a gun salute, but grant stopped it immediately. he also remarked that he felt like anything, rather than to be rejoicing. almost as an afterthought, grant sent a telegram to stanton informing him that lee surrendered, on terms imposed by myself. i can, no sustained celebration. no victory dance was allowed. i will say something i said earlier, winning the peace was just as vital as winning the war, although several more armies would surrender. the meeting between the and grant on palm sunday was considered the end of the civil war.

the deeply christian nation welcome the connection between what they deemed to be too sacred days -- palm sunday commemorates christ's's entry into jerusalem. this is a depiction of palm sunday and the appomattox courthouse, published in may 1865. it invites americans to see the -- witness the end of the civil war and the union's victory.

after meeting with lee briefly the next morning, grant travel to washington, d.c., missing the ceremony of laying down the arms. joshua chamberlain conducted the ceremony, which featured a notable effort of demonstrating forgiveness and reconciliation. when grant got to washington, he expressed his unqualified approval with the terms that he had given lee. we think of this being one party in the north after the fall of richmond. there was actually a lot of criticism of grant's document. an editorial of "the new york

times" say that it was very evident that a large number of our citizens would not have allowed lee and his men their paroled. another newspaper portray's the terms as unqualified indignation. these feelings were checked by lincoln steadfast determination to stand behind his agreement. indeed, despite some misgivings,

the overwhelming evidence suggests that the majority of loyal citizens conflated combined, and treated the appomattox terms with the union victory. my conclusion is this. the last part of the simple document was something that he gave a lot of thought to expressed in a concentrated form. each man and officer will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by united states authority, so long as they respect their paroled. this sentence reveals his view that when the war was over there should be no predictive -- vindictive policy to the enemy. it revealed his belief that reconstruction would not, and should not, be simply an indulgence and revenge. grant surrender document was not a product of a fleeting moment suggested by the statement that i only knew what was in my mind,

but reflected policies and actions. grant's sentiment and judgment form to him firmly with the reconstruction policy, conducted with as little rancor as possible. here, the final sentence actually made the military surrender into a peace agreement.

they offered peace and reconciliation to those who would embrace it. many commentators have made that observation. they are right. grant exceeded his instruction and made a promise that rightfully belong to another but one that was rendered so perfectly that no complaint was lodged by his president. this talk has been about grants, but it has equally been about the nature of surrender during the american civil war. surrender has multiple levels of meeting. in the context of the civil war, surrender is advised as giving up something valuable. it can also mean something else. it can mean something beautiful, tender, or forgiving. it can mean surrender to a lover, or surrender a soul to god. it can mean surrender of selfishness to a greater good. all three places were once a site of brutal warfare and conflict. sites of reunions, reconciliation, and almost immediately, sites of memory. the scars of this awful war, as we know in this room, were too

deep to heal quickly or easily. magnanimity proved easier than true union. the challenge of building a new society in the south, that included black and white, proved nearly impossible. there would be accommodations, but precious little reconciliation. what came out of the appomattox agreement was an act of mercy that secure the united states for all time, and maybe just enough reconciliation that kept the spirit of unity alive. the complex nature of the civil war can somehow be summed up in one deceptively simple sentence -- i only knew what was in my mind. thank you. [applause]

we have time for just one question. don't stand in line, but i would be happy to answer. >> good morning. i will break the one question. how well did the soldiers stick to parole when they went back on? did they enter battle with no permission again? second, does lee's aid have an irc? and, there was a portrait of george washington in the white house in a depiction. i was wondering if the artist put that there. i thought i read once that lee's wife was a descendent of

washington. dr. waugh: you have gone way beyond three questions. -- one question. how about i answer, yes, no, yes. the picture of george washington -- i don't remember. it was commonly placed in civil war images, both in the confederate and union side. both sides look to him for inspiration in their cause. the fact is that we do not really know the exact number of paroled soldiers at the vicksburg that went back into the fighting forces. we know there were a number of them that did go back. there were a lot of them that were permanently removed from the fighting. we do not have the numbers.

thank you. [applause] >> american history tv was live today for a conference on the and of the civil war and its aftermath. next, more of our coverage from the symposium. >> it is my pleasure to introduce to you, dr. stephen cushman. he has been teaching there since 1982 and he has published multiple books. and a civil war book entitled "bloody promenade."

it is an outstanding book and as you will discover he has a way of taking evidence that historians see as a transparent window into the past and he is able to interrogate sources and he writes about the beauty of it. it is absolutely superb. today he will be speaking on one part of the most recent book. that book is entitled, belligerent muse. five northern writers and how they changed our understanding of the civil war. there was life for joshua chamberlain after gettysburg and we will be talking about him at appomattox.

please welcome, steve cushman. >> thank you very much and good morning everyone. it is great to be here. i want to say again, thanks a lot to everybody who is making this possible. a lot of you go to conferences and some of us help run them and you find out how much work this is. you would think that somebody planned this conference you heard joan say in the last couple minutes of her talks that after grant finished the surrender he went back to washington and three days later on april 12, there was this

surrender ceremony which involved somehow, joshua lawrence chamberlain. i want to begin by asking the students here and i realize it is very early on a saturday morning and thank you for being here. how many have been to appomattox? adults can play in a moment. students, keep them up. look around everybody. it is not that many. grown-ups? so, students you see what you can aspire to. if you go, when you go, the chances are very high that if you take a tour led by a park ranger, he or she will say something like on the 12th of

april, 186i-5 there was a formal surrender ceremony and joshua lawrence chamberlain was in charge. what i want to do today is talk about that. i want to talk about what he was in charge of and what he thought he was in charge of and how he talked about it over the 50 years. after we talk about that, what i want to do at the end is talk about how whatever he did his or membered today in popular culture. one more thing and then we are off and running. the handout was at the back. if you don't have one, can you

become friendly with someone who does? it is not imperative, but remember that you are on television. if you don't want to look dumb have a handout. look at it once in a while. here we go. picking up where joan left off. in his personal memoirs, this is grant commenting on what he describes as the famous apple tree at appomattox. he offers by way of introduction this typically lean, efficient sentence. wars produce many stories of fiction. some of which are told until they are believed to be true. among the many produced by the

civil war and by the events of wednesday, april 12 1865 at appomattox in particular are those connected to brigadier general joshua chamberlain and his involvement in the surrender ceremony. and giving us his ride formulation -- wry formulation of how stories are told until they are believed to be true he provides us with a useful story place -- starting place to give us an idea of his role at appomattox, sup was -- subsequent -- and the willingness of many people to believe this representation even as late as the second decade of the 21st century. what was chamberlain's role on

that damp, chili, wednesday morning at appomattox. most of what we know comes from chamberlain himself. the fact that immediately put many healthy skeptics on their guard. even the most heavy skeptics would be unlikely to quibble. at 5:00 a.m., almost four years to the minute after the signal shot was fired at fort sumter, the officer from maine having requested a transfer from the first brigade back to his old command again assembling the third brigade. there will be a lot of this brigade stuff. the third brigade along the southern side of the richmond,

lynchburg stage road known as the appomattox state house -- this location put chamberlain west of the courthouse building with chamberlain himself positioned at the other end of the line about 300 yards away from the river on the extreme right. the only unit of the army on the potomac of appomattox at this point. wanting to start his own 24th core, john gibbons had ordered griffin to relieve john turner with one of his own. i don't have to tell this audience that chamberlain was no stranger to extreme positions on the central flank.

as we know from wherever it is we are, the only congressional medal of honor awarded to a soldier at this court in this particular position put him closest, this is the important part, it put him closest to the surrendering southerners under john d gordon who would be marching into the north and east. the next day, april 13, chamberlain wrote a letter to his sister sarah and from this letter, which is now in the possession of bowdoin college we know of this position of the troops under chamberlain's command. on the extreme right -- then came the first second and

20th and then the first -- first, fourth and 16 then -- over the years of his subsequent retelling, this basic configuration of massachusetts maine, michigan and its vignette remains consistent. in 1903 maryland slipped into the picture. so far, so good. as for subsequent events when the second core came marching from chamberlain writes and finally came abreast of these federal soldiers the simple truth is, we just don't know what happened. we can be reasonably sure that

some command was given and you notice here that the passive voice reflects the uncertainty. the federal trolled -- federal soldiers made some change and how they were standing and whatever change they made it changed the tone of the surrender ceremony in some way, the meaningful significance of which many are still willing and eager to believe. as chamberlain came to represent the moment he ordered his soldiers to shoulder arms. this order constituted a salute to the surrendering confederates. even this simple claim has stirred controversy and disagreement. there is some question as to

whether or not this was really a salute. shouldered arms, the musket was held vertically in the right hand and in the hollow of the right shoulder. a salute would have required that the peace be held by both hands vertically opposite the center of the body. here, versus here. in other words, a skeptic could argue that the famous salute may have convicted -- consisted of nothing more than chamberlain calling his own soldiers to attention for the sake of imposing stillness and silence thereby assuring there would be no taunting that grant wanted to avoid. among chamberlain's skeptics, the lead one is william marvel

who criticizes the man from maine and not one but two books. a place called appomattox published in 2000. in the first, marvel describes chamberlain this way. general chamberlain proved as magnificent a soldier as he was a literary stylist. while he was courageous and coolheaded he tended to wrap life's little dramas in romantic imagery which he was somehow inclined. a college professor from maine just three years before saw the world as one grand romantic cavalcade in which he participated prominently. if he did anything common, he

seemed unable to remember it that way. the important point to make is that the fact that chamberlain revived and improved his subsequent representation is the end of the story. that is it. whereas, what i want to say those later revisions and improvements are the beginning of another story. one that has considerable historical -- not just literary importance. claims and counterclaims have docgged chamberlain's account all along. chamberlain made it appear that his command alone took part in the ceremony, ignoring other

elements. he implied that his command received confederate flags all morning and afternoon and set of only during a portion of the day. he maintained that he was designated by others to receive the confederate surrender when in fact his division commander and the superior of us are bartlett was really in charge and most important for this discussion, he insisted that he and gordon exchanged salutes although they may have not done so at all. having summarized these criticisms and counterclaims, he then draws what is an admirably and judicious conclusion. he says, these criticisms notwithstanding, it seems clear that some gesture on chamberlain's part made the ceremony something other than

the degrading humiliating experience that lee's army might otherwise have found. since we cannot know, since we cannot determine the exact nature of his gesture what i want to do instead is focus on how his represent -- representations of the gesture evolved over 50 years and how history has interpreted that gesture. six documents. you can refer to each by its number. number one chamberlain's letter to his sister, written the day after the ceremony. number two, the surrender of generally published almost three years later.

number three the third brigade at appomattox. number four, the last salute of the army of virginia number five, appomattox published in 1903 and chamberlain's book "the passing of the armies," which cannot posthumously. which -- which came out posthumously. chamberlain's representation of his own thoughts about offering a salute to gordon's troops. in the first version, the letter to his sister, april 13, 1865, he gives his sister this very report. you have it in front of you on page five. the second chunk of print. we received them with the honor

due to troops at shoulder in silence. we preserved perfect order. in his version he makes no mention of deciding to salute or issuing orders for the salute. his depiction of his own thoughts takes this shape. poor fellows, i pitied them from the bottom of my heart. inversion two 1868, new details emerge. page five. the bottom paragraph. soon, the rebels were seen slowly forming for the last time. their ranks were thick with banners. google sounds not -- bugle sounds not present, that would have been too much honor. the silence is as if the dead

past. it is a funeral salute. they move along the front, face inward toward the lines, take off their cartridge boxes and placed them on the pile and then reluctantly and painfully furl their flags and lay them down some kneeling and kissing them with tears in their eyes. chamberlain shows the confederates behaving in ways which could arouse the pity to which he can gases -- confesses in version one. employing one of his favorite rhetorical techniques which is the shift into the present tense even with all these flourishes he does not take credit of issuing an order for the salute. nobody seems to push any buttons and he already shows an awareness of potential confusion

or misunderstanding of the historical record of this moment as we see the distinction he draws between shoulder arms and present arms which would have been as he says, too much honor. this last both location suggests that he knew very much what he was about. it implies a shrewd recognition of limits, not at all characteristic of some misty eyed romantic sentimentally sloshing his way into unqualified recognition with a defeated enemy. with version three delivered in 1893 and published in 1894 things get more complicated. now i am on page six. we pick it up with that about halfway through with that bit paragraph. we could not content ourselves to simply standing in line so instructions were sent that at the given signal at the head of

each position of the surrendering column approach to the rights they should in concession bring their arms to the kerry and then resuming the ordered arms and the parade rest as became opposite our right and bugle sounds that repeated along the lines. each organization comes to attention and takes it up. the narrative now includes a representation of the thought process behind the order to salute and a first-person pronoun has emerged to authorize that process. it is plural. it remains unclear who is thinking this. chamberlain only? chamberlain with his fellow officers? which he mentions across the richmond pages or bartlett, the division commander?

his use of the passive voice again, instructions were sent, further obscures the link and command. finally, new details. instead of coming to shoulder arms and standing silently chamberlain soldiers now cycle through the sequence from order arms which is musket butts resting on the ground, to carry and back. he has them doing a sequence with version four, first published in the boston journal and -- subsequently, this is very important, picked up and circulated throughout the south by the southern historical society papers in 1904, he clearly positions himself as the originator of the salute.

which is on page seven about three to four inches down the page. at such a time and under such conditions i saw -- thought it eminently appropriate to show some token of our feelings and i instructed my officers to come to salute. not hard to see what is happening. in this iteration, the first person secular i has relieved the earlier we. the active voice has replaced the passive. the term salute blurs the specificity of shoulder arm carry arm, and order arm. most important of the fourth version is the role that it plays in southern imagination of the surrender. in john b gordon's reminiscences and subsequently in douglas

freeman's work, it splices the fourth version with the sixth and final of chamberlain. version four presents one other striking development in the salute. back on page seven, down at the bottom. it can be well imagined, that there was no lack of emotion on our side, but the union men were held steady in her lives without the least show of demonstration by word or motion. there was a twitching the muscles of their faces and their battle drawn cheeks were not altogether dry. our men felt the import of the occasion and realized how fully they had been -- would have been affected if the surrender had been their loss. what the english romantic poet

william wordsworth calls the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings tends not to be a favorite topic of conversation among many american males. especially not among many military historians. but clearly the surrender at appomattox was emotionally or psychologically charged for the men gathered there. and clearly chamberlain had many versions of his salute because he wrestled with how to convey the feeling without sentimentality. in version one he mentions his pity and inversion two -- and in version two he mentions confederate soldiers weeping and kissing confederate flags. most compelling treatments. chamberlain's own feelings of pity for and identification with

his feelings transferred to his own union soldiers. chamberlain's narrative achieves something real. and not only anticipates ernest hemingway's strategies that has meant setting themselves under the influence of violent emotion produced by combat and war, it adds another layer of the salute offered to gordon. instead of the officers method or preserving or preventing the tonsil of soldiers, his salute now becomes what it no doubt was a manly or even heroic feat of unfaltering self-control under unusual and extraordinary emotional pressure.

in version five, he consolidates his role as the originator of the salute and now i am on page eight. i am picking it up with -- halfway through that section. this was the last scene of such momentous history, some honor also to manhood. when the head of each division column comes opposite our group our whole line from light to -- right to left, regimen by regimen gives the soldiers salutation from order arms to marching salute. this version adds nothing new to

the representation of the salute itself, although this one is with a maryland unit makes its appearance but it does show them straining toward greater eloquence which phrases such as last scene, momentous history and compelled to render some token of ignition now strutting where the pros of version four formerly did its work. finally with version six, and the passing of the armies, we get a new wrinkle. page eight down at the bottom. momentous meeting impressed me deeply. my resolve to market by some token recognition could be no other than a suit of honor.

nothing of that kind could move me. here chamberlain has scaled back some of the straining eloquence but now we have feisty self-righteousness absent from the other versions. coming at the end of his life, this defiant declaration sounds like the proud hindsight of an old warrior has tenaciously survived both. in fact, this bit of valedictory bravado seems little more than old warrior shadowboxing, since there is no evidence that there was anybody who criticized his salute. some have questioned the facts but nobody has questioned

whatever gesture he made. by the time of his death his salute showed him spoiling for a fight he never got. although it is pure conjecture to say so it may be that his readiness to take on anybody who condemns the salute was the strategy of distracting potential critics from the inconsistencies. if so, that strategy did not work in the case of the skeptics. the problem with this kind of skepticism is that it risks oversimplifying the nature of memory and the nature of truth telling.

the later memory is less true than the earlier. if it were true, psychoanalysis would be out of business. the letter that chamberlain wrote his sister certainly had the raw immediacy that makes it compelling, but the hurried quality may also reflect its inability to encompass all of the details that chamberlain might have recovered later when the eclipsing urgency of his immediate duties subsided. more is it necessarily true that just because he may have embellished the accounts that they have no veracity about them. comparing the surrendering confederates to a procession of the dead or describing the soldiers as battle bronzed does

not negate the reliability of other claims he made. finally, it is not necessarily true that inconsistencies among his accounts negate the reliability of those claims. did he place the first brigade with the second brigade on the north side or behind his own third-grade -- third brigade on the south side? this kind of imperfection or flaw in recollection actually may be a sign of authenticity, rather than falsehood. whereas, exact, undeviating repetition could characterize the rigidly rehearsed consistency of a liar. i have talked to people who are professional interrogators, i am happy to say, on social terms. [laughter]

they confirmed this. that if somebody's story is always the same, watch out. then, there is the matter of john b gordon's role. if we say that chamberlain made up the story, despite whatever claims to his many years of service has with the college president and state governor may have entitled him to, must we then say the same as gordon? a u.s. senator and governor of georgia. it is easy to be cynical especially where politicians are concerned. it would be easy to claim that chamberlain merely brought his men to attention for imposing silence on the and gordon, not to be outdone by yankee chivalry

ordered his men to civil -- attention also or that they consciously or unconsciously collaborated to spin out a reconciliation yarn for each's own political advantage. if we take a cynical line, we might also be inclined to see artifice in chamberlain's own presentations of gordon during the salute itself. beginning with version three, he began polishing his account of gordon's response to the salute where it reached its final form and was subsequently repeated in the passing of the armies. i am on version five, about seven or eight lines from the end. gordon catches the sound of

shifting arms, looks up and takes the meeting and one uplifted figure drops the point of his sword to his boot toe. then gives the word for his brigades to pass us the manual of honor answering honor. on our part not a role of drum, nor cheer her whisper nor motion of man standing again but an odd stillness and withholding as though it were the passing of the dead. a tight scripted precursor of this package shows various interlinear alternatives written in chamberlains hand. alternatives such as sword point to the boot toe.

it makes a difference only in prose rhythm, not in meeting. we could argue that this is a characteristic of verbal polishing and instance of what he calls his tendency to wrap life's little dramas in a ribbon of romantic imagery. i suspect that not all of us would agree that it was one of life's little dramas. most would suspect the assertion that honor answering honor which describes gordon's response has become the most famous and subsequently quoted phrase to come at a chamberlains many versions of his role there. he says send me a postcard if somebody says honor answering honor. i'd that my mailbox will be

full. we can probably return to his statement about war, stories and believe. wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true. with this statement in mind and want to move toward conclusion by considering three recent implications of chamberlains salute and their different contexts. i have not resolved whether anything really happened. when questions come, don't ask that one. i have tried to show you how complicated it is. what i am interested in now is whatever happens how are people writing about it and remembering it now. the first of my three appears in a 1996 book by gordon r sullivan and michael harper entitled hope is not a method, but

business leaders can learn from america's army. catalogued by the library of congress under the headings, industrial management and strategic planning. here is how they make use of chamberlains story. you don't have this in front of you so you will have to listen. when we think of what it means to value and respect people else -- our thoughts go to joshua champlin. grant selected his division to formally accept the surrender at appomattox, forming a line in front of gordon's second core and battle flags as they marched off the field. he quotes some of what he has sees -- seen and their conclusion -- chamberlain and gordon, citizen soldiers who understood the most basic truth:

leadership always comes back to people. write that down. [laughter] the second invocation appears in -- to forgive is human. how to put your past in the past. it is classified by the library of congress under forgiveness and interpersonal relations. they say, the next act of healing was initiated by colonel joshua l. chamberlain who had been a professor of rhetoric before enlisting in the army. nearly 100,000 men asked by the appomattox courthouse. chamberlain led his men in a gesture of forgiveness to those

he tried to kill the previous week. war six justice but tamblyn understood that his enemies -- but chamberlain understood that his enemies deserved more than justice, they deserved respect. that although justice would be served, mercy would be extended. that is forgiveness. in a third and final example roger j. wick conjures up chamberlain in his book published in 2000 and classified by the library of congress under clergy, religious life and pastoral theology. he says, at the end of the war chamberlain's chosen to be the officer in charge of the union troops receiving the confederate soldiers. as they pass the union soldiers, champlin orders respect for these gallant men.

confederate officers recognize the salute and order a similar salute back. honor answering honor. then he returns, is god in all this? can god be apart from it all? our theology does us that the world and god are inseparable. god is the upper level of all human experience. industrial management. strategic planning. forgiveness. clergy. religious life. pastoral theology. this list covers the spectrum from the commercial and the pragmatic through the social and onto the spiritual and religious at the other end. the spectrum is distinctly american. chamberlain's relevance to any point on that spectrum, or the widespread belief in his

relevance, testifies persuasively to the power of the story he developed over 50 years. what i find remarkable, if not moving is that they appear in the writing and work of people who do not know much about the civil war. containing a wildly exaggerated figure of nearly 100,000 men passing by the appomattox courthouse. lee wished. people who don't know much about the civil war but recognize a paradigm, or fable, or fable for complicated and difficult moments in contemporary civilian life. to make this claim is not to pretend for a moment that skeptics about the details will or should be persuaded. to accept everything he has

written as credulously as the nonspecialist writer making use of his story now. it is to make use of the claim that the gesture he made toward gordon, and the confederate second core on the rom morning of april 15th, 80 -- on the r aw morning of april 15, 1855, -- against the backdrop of reconstruction and its and against the war with spain and the various degrees of reconciliation between the white antagonists. as we see now a second aspect of his legacy continues today in widely different and social and a spiritual life. each with its own set of attitudes and concerns, which

shows little and no awareness of or need for, the uncertainty of that raw april morning. thank you. [applause] i am told that we have time for questions. if you would like to come up and ask any, i am happy to try to answer them. or i can sing. [laughter] >> you mentioned that gordon wrote some memoirs. did he comment on all that they perceived happened.

>> gordon's reminiscences came out in 1903 and he talks about what happened, but the two men appeared in new york. he says now i want to shake the hand of the man who offered such a magnanimous gesture and he introduces chamberlain clearly -- chamberlain. clearly they had figured that they had something here and it is in the reminiscences of john gordon. >> were there other accounts from other participants? >> this is a good question. what william marvel would argue, his line is a hard-line, all the accounts we have confirming that shamblin led the salute came from soldiers.

it is not quite true. i did find one from a man deemed william h powell who wrote up the history and he was not in any unit amended by chamberlain -- commanded by chamberlain. he said that chamberlain ordered a salute as well. >> john from chicago illinois. what is the role of these myths or stories that may or may not be true? we historians cringe when we hear that it might not be factually correct, what role do these play? >> thank you so much. that is the question i love. that is completely what i am involved in now. the question is, what role did these myths of fiction play in the work of serious historians?

is that a fair paraphrase? in my opinion they play a huge amount. there are a few things to remember. it is just true -- it is not my fault. the ancient greeks had a muse of history cleo. if you have a use that -- muse, that suggests this stuff is coming from somewhere. it is inspired. are you working with facts? we would like to say yes. i will confess freely that when it comes to empirical data, i am a positivist. i do believe that things happened. i don't believe that nothing happened except what is written. i am not that far gone. [laughter]

but for civil war historians in particular, this is an important thing. the amount of writing that we have and the degree of literacy of the people who generated this writing, is so large and so great that if we are going to try to recover the texture of what the war was like for them, we have to become better readers. they were so literate. they are steeped in the bible they are steeped in shakespeare they are steeped in the classics. they are using all kinds of language that has been transmitted culturally for a long time. we want to say -- did it happen or did it not happen? like a courtroom. even a lawyer -- especially a lawyer will tell you eyewitness testimony?

what's that? you get one, i get one. they don't agree. already things are shaping and going around how you say it. i was once on jury duty and the judge strictly charged us not to talk to one another. he said, as soon as you start in their rate, you start making judgment. as soon as you start to narrate you start making judgment. there you go. as for fiction, that is something i feel strongly about. all that fiction means is shaped or manipulated. there is nobody -- all of the people whose books you see back there, a lot of them are back there. you ask any one of them who have written a book back there

whether or not he or she revised drafts. as soon as you start doing that, language is creeping in. the other thing you say is, we are born into a language. we don't make the rules of english. we are born into it and have to use it and it governs us in ways we cannot control. the myths -- when i hear, honor answering honor. or the one that i love which is apocryphal meeting on the river queen among grant, sherman and lincoln lincoln is the first to have said, "let e'em up easy." we have no documentation of that. i want to believe it. there is a way that has shaped utterance and and largest my sense of what is going on.

i would say, embrace the myths. yes ma'am? >> i have a mechanical question. i am curious to know how you found those disparate quotations of chamberlain. how do you do that? >> bloodshot eyes. [laughter] a lot of seat in the chair with lots of words. here is my research secret. i go to the reference desk and i say, help. and they do. they live for that. i just started finding where the papers were i got in touch with the librarians at bowdoin, the internet is hugely helpful. search engines that can help you find where these things are. but as anybody here who has

written a book will confirm that is the hard work. i cannot make that up. i have to read all of this stuff. i wish i could say that it were inspired but it was just bloodshot eyes. >> i wonder if you would confirm something i have read. chamberlain taught every subject except math. i would say that the change in the writing style has something to do with the fact that he was such a well-rounded fetzer. >> i have heard that. alice says that, too. what a loser, he couldn't do

math, too? [laughter] he should have done that as well. i think that is the thing that puts a lot of skeptics on guard he taught rhetoric. for us rhetoric is a word that has undergone the technical process of agile ration -- p ejoration. it's meeting has worsened. all the rhetoric is, is the art of persuasion. it is an ancient and crucial part of every aspect of civic life but now we mean it to mean i am trying to hoodwink you. he clearly was a man who loved language and reveled in language. lived through language, but he was also as lots of other

accounts confirmed an impressive man of action. he wasn't just in the ivory tower, he was capable of doing all of these amazing things that he did and yet he was going to write about them. you write something and look at it and say i could do that better. he does that over 50 years. >> darrell roberts. living in gettysburg. two things. i sensed a little bit of skepticism, maybe i misinterpreted, some of what chamberlain said as he went on describing the events that occurred. especially for a man who has been in the military, and i have done some reenacting of appomattox there is a certain protocol they would have been

used to doing when information -- when in formation. some of the actions he describes later would have been kind of normal to be in position. as soldiers presented or approached, it would have been not out of context to then go to order arms. the present arms, i get that. the sloot he does with gordon, if he did -- the salute he does with gordon, if he did, would have been personal. but i get the impression of what he says about the military would not have been a crazy thought. one of these things, i don't know what would be aware of this. it could give an example of his influence even in places he might not have participated.

in greensboro, north carolina there is a minor-league baseball field it was built in the early 2000's. i was there recently and when you first enter the field through the main gate, up on a wall above the gift shop are the words that chamberlain presented at the 50th, when he says in great moments, great things abide. ssed up the quote. but i was shocked to see that quote, not in the context of the war, on a baseball field and second, in a southern location. i thought that was interesting. >> thank you very much for that. i did not know that. it confirms the sense that his

legacy and achievement circulates widely. the first part of what you say it makes sense, but i want to point out there is no script for the surrender ceremony at appomattox. there are manuals of tactics and there are moves that the soldiers would make if you order them to attention but it had not happened before in the civil war. this massive -- as joan said the other surrenders dispensed with this surrender altogether -- ceremony altogether. the ceremony aspect is being made up on the fly. we don't know -- again, grant doesn't mention it at all.

he wasn't there but he could have read about it. long street doesn't mention it. porter alexander doesn't mention it. we are not quite sure what kinds of things were being assumed as normal, and what kinds of things are innovations that are happening at that moment. i think that skepticism is probably not a bad position to adopt. that is a greek word that means to judge. it is a good thing to judge evidence. but it is the kind of skepticism that just assumes that nobody could ever do anything from a noble motive, something that chamberlain's story invites us to protest against. >> and one of the accounts that you read chamberlain's unit was

selected for its bravery to specifically anticipate in the ceremony, yet other accounts i've heard from others said they just happened to be the ones who were available. >> there is a perfect example. javelin had nothing to do -- chamberlain had nothing to do with the fifth corps, and nothing to do that they were the last left at the potomac. how lucky for him that he was. the idea that he was selected for his bravery -- grant tensions chamberlain once in his memoirs and it is for his gallantry at white oak road during the petersburg evacuation. grant could have said i selected him for his bravery but he does not say it. it may be that chamberlain was the right guy at the right time and he made hay with the fact

that he was in the right place and carrying out the orders. that is it. thank you very much. [applause] >> american history tv, featuring c-span's original series "first ladies, original influence and image." next week we look at eliza johnson. this is american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span 4. -- c-span 3. >> he has been a longtime contributor and as many of you know he is a leading expert on the presidency of abraham lincoln. he has authored, edited and

co-authored or than 50 titles related to the civil war. >> recent books, lincoln and the power for the press. it is the most recent recipient of the lincoln prize. i am very pleased to introduce harold. [applause]

harold: thank you, peter. wow, what a great view of all of you. it is wonderful to be back at the cwi. peter calls me a regular visitor, so he has to make sure that that is the case. we love coming back to gettysburg and particularly seeing so many i do want to see him old friends, but friends who we like to see often. and i am going to speak on -- on the press and lincoln. i entitled the talk, "like an and the press: the last full measure." but a little truth in advertising, i am not going to talk only about the end of the press' relation with lincoln's i want to offer some context to get to that point and i cannot resist doing local context when you are actually present in the most inspiring civil war venue in the united states. bear that in mind as i me and

ander here. 150 years ago, this month, the last tribute among the first wave of eulogies for lincoln -- and that is praised by the newspapers following his assassination and funeral -- finally begin to yield to the inevitable resumption of business as usual by the press highly partisan responses in this case to the first effort by democratic and republican military and civilian officials to define their visions of reunion and reconstruction. but for the months leading up to, say, july 1865, opposition editors who had long describes the late president -- described the late president as a tyrant had been likening him not to a

caesar, but to a saint. it was the last full measure of a once very partisan press response to abraham lincoln. the last full measure and also the first draft of lincoln biography and civil war history. take the "new york daily news," not the same as the current daily news. harassed by the lincoln administration only four years earlier, its editors threatened, it had been expressing profound emotions in common with grieved and horror stricken people. the new york world shut down by presidential order in 1864 now gravely reported every heart must suffer the terrible shock and swell with overburdening grief at the calamity which has been permitted to befall us. i always like their language. he speaks so beautifully about the language of civil war writing. it would be terrible if the world admitted to creating the

passions that inspired the assassination. it is a calamity that has been permitted by you know who to be followed. anyway, tributes of an even more effusive nature came from the pages of republican papers. and so began what we call the first draft of history. but all press, like all politics, is inevitably local and, as i said, we want to go back to some reputation building moments that have their roots here in gettysburg. newsworthy events to say the least. historic events that occur right here. how the press covered them, or in some cases, did not cover them. and how legends were forged i admist the glory earned in this historic time. keep in mind as i give you these

examples that we are talking about a partisan press culture. democratic papers and republican papers who interpret politics and even military actions quite differently. not only that, we have two tensions operating at the same time. one is the overarching fear that the government will crack down as newspaper editors walk the thin line between dissent and what the administration and the military regards as treason. part of that is not just political. there is also a fine line, says the administration, between scoops -- is that still a word in the internet age? yes? a scoop is when a reporter has the first story, the first report on a story. so what is the difference between a scoop and giving aid

and comfort to the enemy with a report that shouldn't be published? that is not a modern expression -- aid and comfort to the enemy. i want to go back to 1863 to begin not with lincoln and the press, but with joe hooker and the press. he might have easily been the commander of the army of the potomac at gettysburg. the press liked general hooker. he was charismatic, he was newsworthy, he talked to the press, he drank with the press. it didn't get -- i mean -- things got a little different. except to say he was a terrible commander. hooker, of course, immediately worried that he had been to

o chumming with the press. an interesting report i found that hooker went awol after chancellorsville and snuck into washington for one of his infamous evenings of revelry whether the word hooker was actually created after general hooker, no one is sure. but he was in washington reportedly without permission of the war department and he wrote a letter to lincoln saying don't believe what you read in the press about me. he is perfectly happy to have lincoln believe how terrific he was, but not now. hooker rights to lincoln, don't believe anymore than what you choose of what is in the associated press dispatches concerning me tomorrow. this is june 26, 1823. think how close it is to what happened here a week later. lincoln replied the next day, in a wonderful letter, he says,

don't think about the negative reports. i heard about you. they did not come from the newspapers in any case. [laughter] harold: i like that. of course the president no longer believes in hooker because he replaces him. meanwhile, keep in mind that lee is charting his course. by reading the guide to troop movements. it is true, the same day as hooker is worrying about lincoln , june 26, the editor of a federal grand jury in washington brought charges against william harding, the editor of the "philadelphia inquirer." for treason, for printing information, and i quote

concerning the army movement to the aid and comfort of those engaged in rebellion against the united states. reputation changing reports fear that lee is reading the "philadelphia inquirer," based on reports of wherehooker is. of course, now, we have general mead on the scene. mead fending off lee here at gettysburg. and mead might have become the great hero of the civil war. indeed even a great hero of the civil war. but to the press, he was a villain. one of those generals who hated journalists, and there were plenty of them, and who inspired the same reaction in response. sherman is another story, but sherman, as i always say, is too big to fail. mead is not too big to fail. mead is angry about press

coverage always. he expels a "new york times" reporter because he criticized mead after gettysburg. mead's reaction is based on not to lincoln's famous unsent letter, you have prolonged the war, you should have gone after lee. we all know, i think, that lincoln wrote this agonizing letter to meade about what a terrible blunder he had made about not being more aggressive after gettysburg into pursuing lee into virginia. and we know he pocketed it, a great example of his severance -- sufferance and lack of ego and his brilliant management style. get everything off your chest, but don't humiliate people. may be all true, but some people have inferred from that that no one criticized meade until later for not pursuing lee. the press was all over him.

lee's escape is the greatest blunder of the war. and that was saying a lot in july 1863 for the union side. mead is unpopular and his unpopularity dates back to when antitiem when he had written a ridiculed one correspondent. later meade, orders the arrest of a new york tribune reporter named william kent for filing stories, quotes, full of malicious falsehoods. he would have arrested thomas cook of the new york herald are wh wrote that lincoln plan to relieve mead, but cook left cap

just ahead of his paper. all of the papers were prounion papers. pro-administration papers. of course, whatever meade's adversion to the press and they to him, gettysburg produced a flood of celebratory press coverage in the north. the "new york times" immediately called it the most splendid triumph of the war. it is interesting, southern accounts of what was going on july 1 through fourth 1863 were quite different. one paper as close as richmond reported that the confederate army had routed the union and taken 40,000 union prisoners. branching northern reports of meade's victory a yankee lie. a vicksburg paper printed on wallpaper, no less, published

one day shy of fleeing town in the wake of the occupation by ulysses s grant erroneously declared, today, maryland is ours. tomorrow, pennsylvania will be. and the next day, ohio. but in at least one instance the battle inspired pure poetry. samuel wilkinson of the "new york times" -- knowing that his own son was serving here, he arrived in gettysburg on the evening of july 1. only to learn that his boy had been struck by an artillery shell and mortars in a field hospital when union forces retreated. young wilkinson died that first night. who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are a movably fastened upon the central figure of transcendentally absorbing interest, wilkinson wrote in a very brave story published a few days later.

stephen talked about rewriting and enriching language. for better or for worse. this is wilkinson's first draft of what had happened. absorbing interest, the dead body of an oldest born crushed by a shell in a position where batteries should never have been sent and abandoned to death at a building where they dare not stray. and then elevating journalism almost to scripture, he added, my pen is heavy. oh, you dead who at gettysburg have baptized with your blood the second birth of freedom in america. how you are envied. did lincoln himself read those words? no one knows, but they certainly won enough acclaim to compel his attention even during this time where he sort of ended a lifetime of reading newspapers

almost obsessively. he just didn't have the time even to read news summaries. but if he did read the story that one phrase may have inspired him because with his own new birth of freedom declaration, obviously, he would eventually consecrate all of the suffering and all of the casualties here at gettysburg. back to meade for a moment. in the midst of the triumphs that follows life, he learns a little from his experiences with the press here and elsewhere. a full year after gettysburg, he punished a philadelphia journalist named edward cropsey for supposedly libelous statements. in other words, writing something critical about george g meade. before banishing him from camp which was sort of his right,

meade forced him to march their camp, carrying a sign reading libeler of the press. meade boasts in a letter to his wife that the sentence, as he puts it, was carried out to the delight of the whole army. journalists reacted by ignoring meade in their subsequent dispatches, except to report his failures. although he continues technically to command the army of the potomac for the duration, journalists began treating him as if he no longer existed. later, the first generation of wartime memoirs, many compiled by former war correspondents did likewise. unlike sherman, again, too big

to be ignored, meade's hostility contributed to a future in visibility, at least in the rank he may have thought he deserved and maybe did. after 1863, the reporters who had been or became his victims wrote him out of the civil war. his troops may have been baptized in blood, their general was buried in ink, or at least the absence of ink. in some ways, however, and i'm going to skip ahead a few months, the other union leader who made his mark here at gettysburg was as suspicious of the press as mead, though nether -- never as clumsy in dealing with them. and i am speaking of abraham lincoln. working closely with republican newspapers, working in their headquarters, using their

headquarters as his, plotting strategy with newspaper editors, etc. of course, he mastered this not just by befriending reporters, and that was a big part of it. he visited reporters everywhere he went. and annoyed at first, they always inevitably were charmed by him and his knowledge of local politics. i saw it again and again in reading the memoirs of the most obscure editors in illinois, for example. but there was something more which was not just his charm. it was the fact that if you link your star or whatever the expression is to a rising politician, you don't expect just to say after election day i'm so proud that i helped this fellow i will tell my children and grandchildren about my -- my good intentions. you expect reward and newspaper editors got rewards. they got advertising contracts. they got printing contracts. if the leaders they supported

became successful. most of all, they got patronage jobs. and lincoln had lots of reporters and editors on the federal payroll, both civilian and military, during the civil war. there was a joke that was rooted about in the early days that the new york tribune would not be able to publish anymore daily additions because so many editors have been named to diplomatic posts. so there was a lot of patriotism. -- patronage. again, also, suppression. the newspapers who disagreed with lincoln were subject to very close scrutiny once the war started. in one case i always talk about, and it starts in the border states, of course, which lincoln cannot afford to have secede and he thinks newspaper editorials supporting secession are dangerous and are to be suppressed.

one of the victims of that policy early in the conflict even before -- or right after sumter is an editor named francis key howard, editor of a baltimore paper, a democratic paper. he is arrested and sent, ironically enough, to prison in fort mchenry. some of you are laughing because you get it. francis key howard's grandfather had seen the star-spangled banner waving at fort mchenry 50 years earlier. and, of course, written the national anthem. that was not the case in 1861. after the battle of bull run and i think kind of the shame that some of the volunteers felt as they were returning after their first enlistment, there was a huge, dozens more, cases of suppression and censorship confiscation of printing presses, banning of newspapers the detaining of editors and mob

attacks that were tolerated or even participated in by the army. but this vast outbreak was not restricted to the early days of the war. as close to the battle of gettysburg as january 1963, a union general arrested the editor of the philadelphia evening journal, unleashing an uproar in the pennsylvania about the efficacy of military control where the civil courts were in operation. huge conflicts that lincoln were -- was not very happy about. and to keep this. in 1863 following the arrest trial, and conviction on former

ohio democratic congressman -- , union general burnside, who was equally popular with the press ordered the shutdown of the democratic chicago times for criticizing the arrest and the banishment to the confederacy. that was quite a moment for lincoln because, oh, you must have at least take a few moments of pleasure. the chicago times had been criticizing him for almost 10 years. he must have loved the idea of the editor being detained just a little bit. and the newspaper shut down for a few days, but ultimately he reversed the order. he never said it was improper to interfere with the press. he said to the chicago times, i can only say i was embarrassed with the question between what was due to military service on the one hand and the liberty of the press on the other.

sort of a tortured double negative that betrays the delicate balancing act that haunted him. and he admitted, i am far from certain today that the revocation was not right. that is a double negative. far from certain that the revocation, which is a negative, was not right. in other words, maybe he should have let the chicago times stay shut down. lincoln also found a way to deal with the press by bypassing the press, and that is crafting these series of special messages or letters. we call them public letters. that did not require him to give speeches because in this period, presidents did not give public speeches except for their inaugural adjusts. lincoln issues -- publishes letters so that the people can directly read his thoughts.

comments to be made by editors later. so this is lincoln's mastery of the press. of course, he had -- though he had used the public letter format to prepare the country for the emancipation proclamation, no public oratory connected directly with that most important act of his administration or, as he put it, the most important act of the 19th century, there is the one invitation he cannot resist, gettysburg. and he thought about his ideas even before he got the invitation. how long ago is it, he said, from the white house after the victory. 80 odd years since on the fourth of july for the first time in

the history of the world, a nation by its representatives assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. the following morning, those rambling impromptu words appeared in the press and lincoln may have been embarrassed when he read them. not his finest moment. but the thought behind them seemed perfect. and he resolved to express it when he got an opportunity to do so. and that opportunity was here, and of course it came out with a great exordium, four score and seven years ago, etc. for his closing, maybe he remembered samuel wilkinson's obituary to his fallen son. the second birth of freedom in america. the nation would now be dedicated to a new birth of freedom. jared he has written about this in his book on the gettysburg

address. lincoln had not lost at his prodigious memory for press reports nor his abundant gift for rewriting. that is the whole of the story. not only a great writer, but a great rewriter. a few days before his trip, he heads off to the photographer alexander gardner's washington gallery to have some pictures made. more on that later today in this conference, but during the session, which is amazing to me because he always seems to have his photograph taken around the time of important moment in his life, oratory moments. cooper union, the first inaugural, gettysburg, the second inaugural. noah brooks, a correspondent, is there at the scene. have you written your remarks yet? yes, but not yet finished. his draft was brief, or as he expressed it to brooks, short, short, short.

for those of you who have heard james mcpherson speak last night about lincoln's advice to law students, work, work, work lincoln liked these triplets. of the people, by the people for the people. so he embarks for gettysburg the day before the ceremony. not alone. among the passengers are his secretary, who double as press secretaries. and a core of supportive reporters prepared to pick up the slack if positive coverage falters. lincoln goes, as we know, to the home of david wells on the town diamond. but his two secretaries did not rest or even work with him. they go over to hang out with a man named john, one of the favorite characters i wrote about in my book. the editor of two newspapers. the philadelphia press and a

pro-lincoln paper into a daily during the war, the washington chronicle. he looked a lot like bill murray. i am almost sorry i didn't have a slide of him. picture bill murray. he was drinking a lot. that evening. and was feeling a little ugly and dangerous, he writes particularly on the subject -- he wants them out of the cabinet. so they go over and instigate him to give his own gettysburg address. this figure who is not considered a guy of great humor is the one who eggs him on. the prankster of the two is horrified because they are -- there are journalists all around.

if i speak, i was speak my mind, he says. so he actually gets a reporter to take notes and gets a brass band to play in his honor first. lincoln is now, the next morning, at gettysburg, at the cemetery. he goes on this way. before drink overcomes him and he sits on the curve. one of his editors is with him. he says, that's each must not written out. they ran anyway.

to be careful when you speak in front of the press. the employee was named john russell young. i want to get to him in a minute. lincoln is now, the next morning, at gettysburg, at the cemetery. i do not know if john wayne ever sobered up enough to get to the cemetery. there is no proof that he was on the stage. he might have had the most colossal hangover, and having been a veteran, i know you have to do a lot of drinking to set the record. john russell young, who told someone to be quiet and told the press to not write about it, turned to lincoln.

this is astonishing. imagine anybody saying this to president obama. lincoln stops the speech pauses, and john russell young says, is that all? lincoln glanced at him, and said, yes. for the present. meanwhile, his friend is on the stand. the most important person -- a young man named joseph gilbert. young, very young harrisburg-based reporter, hired by the associated press to cover the gettysburg address. he is a stenographer. he later claims that he has become so fascinated by

lincoln's earnestness that he unconsciously stopped taking notes. just as lincoln glanced up, he remembered to read he lived almost as long as chamberlain and gave talks well into his 60's and 70's. he glanced up, appealing to the few thousand below him, whose his words were to reach. this copy was in order. -- he needs to see if his copy is in order. one of the interesting secrets of the gettysburg transcripts is that gilbert shows is copied to lincoln and lincoln does some work on it. gilbert constructs the first draft of history, the first nationally published report of the gettysburg address, complete with mistakes, by the way.

but lincoln approved it. the most remarkable thing -- i will give you an example. "the government of by and for the people," came out as "the governments." editorial commentary. they were varying according to clinical party. had it not for joseph albert the biggest story of lincoln's presidency, as far as oratory might have been missed entirely. here is the contingency of an ap reporter getting a helping hand from lincoln after a two minute

speech. without it, i don't know what would have happened in press coverage. as it was, the media coverage was not strong. everett dominated the press coverage. why? it was not the greatest speech but it is making a comeback. the veteran, well past his prime, lincoln joked that he did not know why it was famous. he was sort of just famous for being famous. he was still clever enough to plan things very well. although, he told lincoln later that he wished this he could say what lincoln said in two minutes . he arranged for the printing of his two-hour oration, and distributed it to editors around the country.

they preset it in type. everett's speech in a really covered nearly the entire front page with abraham lincoln's brief address, if appearing at all on page one, relegated to the right-hand corner. there were a lot of difficulties -- i'm trying to say -- for reporters and covering the war. circumstances made it difficult, contingencies, censorship, administrative censorship made it difficult. contingency did not work on april 4, 1865, when lincoln entered richmond. imagine the president of the united states making a trip to a war zone, which both president obama and president bush did to the middle east, without press

to broadcast it or report on it. lincoln's visit to richmond was ventured only with his son at his side, and a few guards that were with him. there was a small knot of journalists in richmond, but they were not expecting lincoln anymore than the african-americans that gather joyfully to greet him. i always thought that the journalists, who heard about lincoln's arrival, had something to do with that perception. i am wondering, or i have always wondered, how did african-americans know -- enslaved people know -- what abraham lincoln looks like. if the president united states arrives with no fanfare, how do they know?

well, admiral porter, and perhaps the journalist said, that is father abraham. whatever the reason, dozens, hundreds of african-americans, literaly freed by his arrival, in some sense, swarm around him joyfully. one elderly man fell upon his knees before the president and kissed his feet, prompting lincoln to plead, do not kneel to me, that is not right. you must kneel only to god, and thank him for the liberty you will enjoy. a scene and a quote not recorded by the press, but by a navy man. they did not write about the

african-americans who welcomed lincoln. they wrote about how abraham lincoln kpet swiveling in jefferson davis's chair, and running his fingers through his hair. the tribune could not talk about the reception by african-americans, but said the following -- it is not known if the occasion reminded president lincoln of a funny story, but it is to be presumed that it did. once again, the new york journalist, i believe they missed the gettysburg address and a certain sense, they missed

lincoln's arrival in richmond. fortunately, thomas mars chester, and african-american correspondent, working for the philadelphia press reported that one enthusiastic negro woman greeted the president by saying, i know that i am free for i have seen father abraham and felt them. the boston journal's correspondent caught up just in time to write. this is a report that i would like to believe. this is a beautiful one. an old negro removing his hat to him with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. in response, the president removed his hat and bowed in silence. a very quiet moment of mutual

respect. that small, but momentous, gesture upset the forms, laws, customs, and ceremonies of centuries. it may be as important, even if temporary, in the story of reconciliation as the story of chamberlain and gordon. back in washington, the ap's bureau chief who had tonsils with lincoln over access to o early stories, watch lincoln gave his reconstruction address on april 11. reports on lincoln are beginning to change. i had never seen him so quietly happy. it seemed that his tall form had received an additional foot of stature. three nights later, goldberg was

sitting alone in his office, as he reported having filed his last dispatch. shortly after 10:00, he put it maybe a little early in his recollection, he heard the sound of boots steps, and then a loud pounding on his door. a breathless person throws the door open. it is a friend of his. he said, i was just sitting in ford's theater, watching a play and the actor wilkes booth shot at the president. the doctors are attending to him. he says, this better be right because i going to file a dispatch. the man is clearly telling the truth, goldbright knows him. he then sends out what is probably the most famous dispatch of the entire civil war.

and, utterly harrowing in its simplicity. the president was shot in the theater tonight, and is perhaps mortally wounded. goldbright then races to the scene with his friend. ford's theater is abandoned. he goes in. he actually gets to the presidential box. as he puts it, we saw the chair where the president sat during the presentation. we could see. as it turns out, it probably was not lincoln's blood, but they saw blood. then, he gets down on his hands and knees to feel what is there. he feels a handle, and lifts up the dagger that only hours

before john wilkes booth had plunged into the major. it is then taken from him for evidence. he tries to get into the peterson house, but is told that he cannot come in. then, he goes back to his office on 14th street and rights of -- writes a full account, as he puts it, of that night's occurrences. though my fingers were nervous and trembling, he said, he had a job to do. he did it. as lincoln's body was carried back to the white house, the three newspapers, the major newspapers of new york that had covered him over the four years

in distinctly different ways not always distinguished or distinctive. the herald, the tribune, and "the new york times" had disagreed on just about everything. now, they produced thick black headlines that remarkably echoed not only the nation's grief, but each other. "our loss, the great national calamity." "our great loss, the national calamity." lincoln had died, by the way, with a wallet full of interesting objects, including a bunch of carefully clipped newspaper cuttings.

i have seen a lot of articles that lincoln clipped over the years. i think he did them, because sometimes he would just write descriptions. he was very careful about it. guess what, they were all praiseworthy editorials about him. he liked to keep his good press on hand so that if anyone asked, what is new in the press -- he could say, look at this. beecher had helped introduce him to cooper union five years earlier and had been sometimes a supporter or sometimes a critic. now, he writes, lincoln may well be another jackson. having suffered for four years he is now entitled to four years

of peace. how do we take the last full measure of the press reports on abraham lincoln and the civil war? we take it with the proverbial historical grain of salt. a lot of the reports are written through the filter of partisan politics. a lot of it is constrained by censorship and prohibited by the fear that is it may be interpreted as aid and comfort to the enemy. i love the fact that after the assassination, the three rival new york dailies spoke with one voice. they finally found something that they could agree about, and it was the assassination. you can be absolutely sure, i

admist the rivalries that had existed for so long, within one week of the funeral, they return to the practice of assassinating one another. that is one of the great lessons of civil war journalism that i have enjoyed sharing with you this morning. thank you. [applause] >> we have time for a few questions. hi. wait until the mic is on, right? here comes someone to help. >> yeah. hi. sherman was famous with his hatred for the press. where there any examples of

certain papers that were certain reporters that sherman allowed? >> i was hoping you would ask for a great anecdote about his hard hand against journalists. you know, he had this wonderful quote after he was prevented by lincoln, who conveyed his orders through general grant, because he didn't want to criticise sherman directly. he was going to have a court-martial hopefully executed for traveling with his army. sherman was infuriated that the court-martial proceedings ended. he testified in the case twice before was ended, was suspended. he wrote, i'm paraphrasing, to come to our army bearing a musket, and you will be

accepted. come with just a pen, and you will be treated as the coward that you are. what my friend john said, he never met a journalist that he did not hate. the remarkable thing is that he emerges from the civil war certainly unpopular in the south, but revered in the north, leaving out greensboro. even the press could not write him down. remember, in 1861, some journalists had declared that he had gone temporarily insane. that was a story that hurt him deeply. it may have been true, but he believed it would cripple him professionally. he never forgive the press after that. my favorite sherman press story is that sherman happens to be at a railroad station, and t a

train pulls and -- i think in ohio -- and a person gets up to say, i'm here to cover the war, i hope to speak to you. sherman takes out his pocket watch and says, it is now 2:50 there is a train out at 3:10, be on it. [laughter] >> recently in hanover, i uncovered a story of the apparent only female journalist to cover the gettysburg address. allegedly, she was one of the few praising the address. can you confirm that there were really not many pro-lincoln journalists present at the gettysburg address.

the republican papers praised it, but apparently a lot of these people were not there. >> good question. forney was here. john russell is here. the ap was here. the ap is reasonably loyal, or else they can't get to the wire. in a sense, it almost doesn't matter. the reputation of the speech is built not on the crowd reaction, which is of course disputed, and still disputed -- do they like it, did they not? lincoln knows it is about the reprints and the editorial. that is why he works with gilbert to make sure the text is accurate enough to be representative of what he said

like, "under god," which he adds as he speaks. the press is partisan in nature. "the chicago tribune" says that his speech will live in the annals of the war. it all depends on which position you are writing from. the shorthand answer is lincoln brings some journalist here, but it all depends on the reprints. >> mike, smithtown, new york. i was wondering if you found in

your research any way that lincoln altered the champions of the press during the election. >> how did lincoln alter his treatment. press crackdown happened throughout the war. in fact, i found evidence of one in january 1865, when you think he would have just coooled it already. kentucky, missouri -- one of the western boarder states. a guy wrote a letter to lincoln to say, please reopen. one religious paper was shut down in maryland in 1861. then, the guy denounces him as a tyrant. i found press suppression, which was a continuing thing, stopped

in two key periods throughout the war, though elections are a continuous thing. in the 1862 congressional campaign, and again during the other campaign, lincoln and others do not enforce the same sort of censorship that they did before. it is almost that lincoln believes that the political process is so sacred. he shuts down the "new york world" on june 8. after he gets the nomination the paper goes after him with a vengeance, issuing political cartoons saying that he is creating a biracial society, heaven forbid that africans and whites will co-mingle.

they write that he came to antietam and requested a song. lincoln got so angry that he drafted a letter to the editor one of the famous letters that he does not send, but he does not shut them down. he even allows the editor of the tribune to become a self appointed ambassador to conduct peace negotiations in canada. good question. >> i am mark, i work at the frederick douglass house and washington, d.c.. my question is if we know if lincoln followed the abolitionist press, and was there any sort of fear of their criticisms of him early on that he was not acting fast enough?

>> i think he did follow the abolitionist press to some degree. no one knows whether he read frederick douglas's paper. to some degree, it is a little glib, i said in my book, but had if abraham lincoln had been caught reading and african-american newspaper, it is equivalent to a modern-day politician looking up or not -- reading pornography. i'm not sure that he read frederick douglas's papers, but he talks about, in 1859, "right makes might. and in 1860, at his speech and cooper union, lincoln says the same. i know that he read garrison. he jokes with garrison about his application -- publication and

the terrorism level against his neighbor. -- paper. we know he read the "new york independent." again, you don't talk about the extremist press because to talk about in the instream world is to give the position that is not except appearing is a complicated issue. one more. really quick question. i'm sorry, i did not see you. sorry. maybe i will be so quick that i can do you. >> can you comment as to meade

and sickles. >> no. it is a good story. i do not mean to be dismissive. >> i was just curious as to what forces may have been play why the critics had such a turnaround and if that was common in other presidential assassinations? >> his was the first. there was the fear that you have to be on the page when such an occurrence takes place. it is unprecedented. the readers are grieving. as martha and others have pointed out, and i did in a new book that i did called "president lincoln assassinated," there are plenty of southern newspapers there are not quite as friendly about the passing of lincoln.

there are some liberal republican papers that editorialize, a few days after maybe he was too forgiving and god has interfered, and gotten a more sophisticated and deft politician to manage reconstruction. andrew johnson. thank you. [applause] >> american history tv was live today from gettysburg college in pennsylvania for a conference on the end of war. next, more of our coverage. civil war in the two organized this event. -- institute organized this event. >> good afternoon. i am in the history department

here in gettysburg college. it is my pleasure to introduce jim. he is the associate professor of history. he has been on the faculty since 2000. he earned his phd from columbia university. his research interests are the history of race and that is in in 19 entry america. his recent book is entitled? african-american illness and suffering during these war and reconstruction." it considers the health consequences of immense nation and how for many, newfound freedom brought direct confrontations with sick and health. i should add is going back to

school next fall. he just got a fellowship to go to harvard university. this is a new direction fellow. he will be going back is fall to harvard university. fantastic. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] l, thank you so much for having me here. i'm excited. for the opportunity to participate in this institute and to talk about medical consequences of emancipation. during the civil war and reconstruction. as a way to begin, i'm going to have three major points that i want to focus on today. the first is the politics of disease. the second is how we can think about doing the history of medicine as a detective story.

and the third piece is uncovering the lost, unknown history of the smallpox economic -- epidemic that began in washington dc and culminated in the south in 1865. in order to begin this talk, i want to -- i want to sort of lay the framework for the intersection of race and disease and sort of talk about the ways in which 19th-century americans understood the relationship between race and disease before the civil war started. in the antebellum era proslavery thinkers believed that there was a relationship between medicine and race. to that and, they often -- end, they often argued that if in fact slaves ran away from slavery that they were mentally ill. they also argued that slaves were unable to take care of

themselves. so, part of their sort of opposition to abolition, which argued for the emancipation of slaves, was that slaves were better off under the rule of southern planters. if they were independent, they would grow sick, they would be dependent, and they would go instinct. on this particular level, from the vantage point of the proslavery south, there was definitely some thinking about how people conceptualize race and medicine. if we turn to the north and we look at how abolitionists dealt with this, at that particular time, they, too, understood a certain relationship between race and medicine. and they sort of denied -- did not necessarily believe that blake -- black people were not

meant for freedom. instead, they pointed to slavery that in many ways cause people to become sick. it is important to understand this context for when the war starts. when the war actually begins in 1861 disease explodes. and we know this from many civil war historians. and people have been talking about this for many years. there were diseases like pneumonia, dysentery, small amounts of smallpox breaking out among the troops. fact, some have argued that over 600,000 people that died from illness -- let me get this right -- of all the people that died during the civil war, more died from illness than from battle. now, this statistic was recently updated with a very important yet controversial article a couple of years ago where again, a historian did work that proved that the death toll was

higher. in all of these accounts, the death toll, what we are seeing is illness not from the battlefield but from the cap site. so what we need to think about is when emancipation first unfolds, freed slaves enter into an environment that is devastated with illness and sickness. and instead of responding to the sort of illness and sickness that is happening among freed slaves, it eventually sort of makes its way into the very politically charged context which i am describing during the antebellum era. namely that people are saying black people becoming sick during the war as either a result of the fact that they are unable to handle the challenges of emancipation, or from the abolitionists' perspective, that they are suffering from the problems of war. in many respects, the health of freed slaves has again become

politicized. so historians have also struggled with this. 19th-century americans struggle with this. in the early part of the 20th century, they struggle with how to talk about this question of illness during the civil war among black people. as some of you might know, the school who was one of the first chroniclers saw these episodes of sickness in the historical record and like proslavery thinkers began to blame the high rate of illness among newly emancipated slaves on the fact that they were lazy. unable to handle the challenges of emancipation. in many ways, the school propagated, they advanced that proslavery logic. after that idea of sickness in

the record, in the archives, as a result of either a biased medical system or a racist logic or if -- potentially both in many ways clouded how historians understood the question of illness during this period among formerly enslaved people. by the 1960's and 1970's inspired by the civil rights movement, do boy -- dubois, a brand-new bunch of historians came along and they wanted to investigate the question of reconstruction. they didn't believe in this argument that he put forward that black people were lazy. they didn't believe the argument that they were feckless, that they were incompetent. instead, they put forward a notion, a portrayal, of freed --

freed people as robust political actors. sort of invincible. able to take on the challenges of emancipation. and when they saw comments, remarks, details in the archival records about the health conditions of freed slaves, they dismissed it. they dismissed it because they believed that, in many ways illustrated proslavery and the 19th century. they dismissed it because they believed it was a consequence of the school. and so as a result, in the 1980's and the 1990's, in the early 2000, the image that we get of freed people in 1865 is of healthy robust, independent herculean almost, ably bodied

people willing to take on the challenges of emancipation. and what we have forgotten is the extent to which the were created biological crisis. a biological crisis that left many soldiers both on the north and south sick. and a war that created a massive biological crisis for newly freed people. given this context, the next question is -- how can we find evidence of what actually happened during this period? how can we ask we begin to unearth archival evidence that is not -- that has not been compromised by either proslavery thoughtthought or even abolitionist thought? that is the reason why i'm going

to get into the second part of the talk and explain why i think during the history of medicine during the civil war and reconstruction is like -- is like following the sort of steps that a detective would take in order to find out information about this period. so i am going to turn back to the antebellum period and. jacobs. perfect. it is for a point. harriet jacobs was born in slavery in north carolina long before the war. as some of you may know, she publishes this riveting story of what it meant to escape from slavery and then live in her grandmother's attic for a number of years in order to be close to her children, pretending that she had run away. she eventually leaves the south and makes it to the north. while she is in the north, she comes into contact with many abolitionists.

and abolitionists like post child, women's activists that come most out of rochester, they encourage her to publish her own autobiography. they know frederick douglass had sold his biography and it was definitely supported and had advanced the abolitionist movement, so they want a woman's story. she publishes it and child rights the editorial note to the book. so the book is widely circulated. it is part of an abolitionist network. it is ready northern reform circles, but after the war, it sort of falls by the wayside. by the 1880's and 1890's, people began to doubt if harriet jacobs ever wrote that the book. and you can get this book anywhere today. the prose is absolutely beautiful. the writing style is excellent. the word choice is really

impressive. so it is because of this because she got this begin of what many people understand to be a black vernacular slavery they dismiss it. they say this is a modern day case of rachel dolezal. this is a white woman who wrote pretending she was black. there is no way that harriet jacobs wrote this. it is a white woman pretending she is black in order to publish it. so in the 19 30's, 40's, 50's completely dismissed. however, among black circles, it is continuing late mimeographed and circulated among black people and it is red. it is not until 1980 that a literary scholar begins reading through the black newspapers,

the christian recorder, the other sort of periodicals published by the quakers in new york and in philadelphia. and she begins piecing together this information. she reads about a woman named -- remember her name is harriet jacobs -- but when she publishes it, she publishes it under the pseudonym linda. so she reads linda jacobs, sort of a hybrid of the name. or you may have heard of this woman named harriet who is working among the three people, she is linda. so she is piecing together the stories of how harriet jacobs during the civil war and after was working in contraband caps on -- camps -- that grew up adjacent to union camps where free slaves migrated to once they were emancipated.

and they were living in these camps and they had very little to eat, very poor shelter, they suffered from malnutrition. so what happened was northern reformers, having this idea that slavery would, impact, sort of lead to full fitness and ship, sent women from the north, from pennsylvania, new york, new jersey boston, to go into the south and establish schools for these people. once they got there, they realized they were suffering from high rates of sickness and disease. the same diseases and illnesses that plagued the adjacent union camp. so jacobs was sent to these camps in order to establish a school, which see eventually does. but before she could do that, she must first respond to the health conditions of the freed slaves. so in these letters, she writes

about their conditions. she writes about their suffering. she writes about the epidemics that swept through this community. so, how does this connect to the health conditions of freed people? how does this tell us, a question about how during the history of medicine is a detective story? well, when i came to graduate school, i was fascinated with harriet jacobs, i was fascinated with the story that proved she actually wrote her own diary, i was riveted by the story of fugitive slaves, and i started to work with them on harriet jacobs' biography. and in reading through the newspaper accounts, letters, and other correspondence of jacobs' life in alexandria in 1863 and 1864, i begin to uncover

numerous details about the sick and unhealthy conditions of freed slaves during this period. so when i brought this to my advisor, the academic team, the historiography, they said, no, no, that is just proslavery thought. ignore it. then when i tried to contextualize these sources within the historiography, people said, what are you doing advancing the school? proving that black people are unable to handle the challenges of freedom? then when i placed it within the context of the new civil rights historiography, we can't talk about the problems of health because it could potentially dismantle this notion of freed people being robust, political agents. however, i took my cue from jacobs. for decades, people believed

that she was a liar. people believed she was fake. people believed she was inauthentic. but she was writing about the health conditions of freed people and she was explaining the various problems and struggles that they encountered and using her as my muse, it opened up the archives in completely new and fascinating and rich ways. so what i began to do is i began focusing on the contraband camps. they essentially are these areas that are set up -- that are sort of adjacent to union camps. this camp -- this is a better illustration. this is actually a pretty decent contraband camp because in many ways they have tents, they have some form of shelter, some form of resources. what happens is congregated in

these camps exacerbate the spread of disease. why? another footnote. in the mid-19th century physicians have not yet reached the conclusion that will, with microbiology and with bacteriology. that is just a long way of saying they don't understand germ theory. so they don't understand that in an environment like this, people -- you could spread disease very quickly. in the 19th century, people believed you were sick because of your social status or because of a moral or ethical region -- reason. perhaps you are a sinner. perhaps you are getting sick because you are shielding out the light of the creator. the reality of it is that they haven't yet figured out how overcrowded mess, lack of ventilation, and other issues

lead to the spread of disease. and so as a result, disease begins to spread a lot in these camps. these issues are actually a lot better than some of the sort of desolate conditions in which freed slaves encountered in -- immediately in 1865. one of the ways -- i am just going to give you an example that a give my students because i think it is helpful in order to understand germ theory because i think we can understand germ theory as a concept, but emotionally and personally, we may not get it. at the university of pennsylvania, i remember my professor telling me the story she said that before the civil war in dormitories, which you are all in dormitories now there was one toothbrush per floor. [laughter] why? wide you cringe?

[laughter] you cringe because you have a concept of germs. you understand the possibility of an invisible bacteria even though you can't see it. similarly, we have to realize to get into the vantage point of 19th century americans, they don't see how sickness can spread. instead, they look at this image and they see black people. they see black people living in poverty. and then they fall back on a claim that people fell back on in the 18th of 17 century that it is something about being black, something about race that explains illness. in order for me to explain the -- the problems of illness during this period i am going to tell you a story for my book about joseph miller. joseph miller and his family escaped from slavery someplace

around kentucky. they make it to cap nelson -- ca mp nelson, a refugee camp for emancipated slaves. and there is someplace in november of 1864, someplace around 800 to 1000 free people congregating in this region. and the united states army has said we realize that you have come here, we have very limited resources, but if the men in your family well and list in the army as contractors or even as soldiers, we will provide used tents, shelter, and you will be able to qualify for rations. so joseph miller thinks this is a great idea and decides to enlist in the army so that he and his wife, isabella, and therefore children could get -- their four children could get some type of basic necessities.

on a cold winter morning -- everyone that i has read has discovered november 24 as freezing -- a mounted guard arrives at the miller's tent and he has a rifle in his hand. and he orders miller and his wife and their four children to get into one of these wagons that are leaving the camps and expelling the freed slaves from this region. and miller turns to the soldier and says, i can't get over my family to allow them to go with you right now. i understands the camp is being dismantled, but my son is very sick. economic the journey. and -- he cannot make the journey. he points the gun at the family and says i will shoot every last one of them if you don't get into the wagon right now. so miller has no other choice

but to tell isabella and his children to boarding wagon and to sort of -- board a wagon and sort of go out into the unknown kentucky territory. later that day, he searches for his family. according to his affidavit, he finds them in a boarding house belonging to the quote unquote colored people. as he walks in, he sees a group of freed slaves congregating around the fire and he notices how cold it is in the room. and he looks around the room and he can't see his family. finally, he spots them in a corner. he sees isabella, his other children, and he asks how she is doing. and she said that their son, who is seven years old, froze to death on the journey from camp nelson to this unknown boarding house. with that, joseph miller has no

-- no idea what to do with his son. his family had, and again according to his affidavit, not a morsel to eat. he then must carry his seven-year-old son, who is quite -- not an infant, not a two-year-old, a seven-year-old. he then has to carry his seven-year-old son's dead body 20 miles back to the union camp with the hope of being able to barry his son. -- bury his son. remember, this is november, the ground is frozen. i always remember this moment of what it must be like for him, to carry his son back to a union camp -- a camp that one represented freedom and opportunity and now it represents the place of death, disease, and starvation. so miller does barry -- we don't know where or what else happens.

that is where the story sort of ended for me. i found the story in 2002, 2003. up until 2010, that is all i knew. new archival evidence developed and that is why it is so exciting to do civil war history because we are constantly uncovering new documents constantly learning more about the period. what i learned was on november 24, joseph miller's son died. by december 1, his eldest son died. a few days later, his youngest daughter died. by christmas, his wife died in and then by mid-january there is a note that joseph miller died. it is unclear if joseph miller died from one of the unknown camp diseases that killed so many soldiers or he died from a broken heart.

we know about the labor and land division that help them negotiate contracts and distribute land, but few people talk about the medical division. the medical division establish 40 hospitals across the south. in employed over 120 physicians, and it provided medical care to an estimated one million newly freed slaves. this institution, this division, began in 1865 and lasted until about 1871-1872. i explained more in my book.

what is interesting, some of you may know, is howard university. howard university hospital began as a friedman cost at all. of the many different hospitals that closed during this time, that one survive. one of the major points that the medical division had to respond to was a smallpox epidemic. not only were free slaves suffering from illness starvation dysentery, and other diseases but a smallpox epidemic breaks out in washington, d.c. in 1862. by the early part of 1863, it spreads to the upper south. by 1864-1865 it is in the lower south in the carolinas, and moves west to the mississippi valley and louisiana.

what we begin to notice is the number of black people far outnumbered the number of white people who become sick with smallpox. it is very easy to fall back on a race of logic -- racist logic. 19th-century newspaper reporters and doctors see images like this and immediately blamed the health condition on black people. in fact, i have a few quotations. "the nation" wrote, there has been considerable speculation as to the effect of freedom on this physical condition of the former slave. by many, they thought the ultimate fate would be that of the indian. throughout the 19th century what we were beginning to see is

a huge mortality facing the black population. one of the ways said 19th-century journalists rationalize it is they compare it to the extinction of native americans. they argue, "the new york times" argues that like his brother, the indian, the negro will soon melts away in freedom. yet, the reason why many freed slaves were dying was not because of the pro-slave logic that they could not handle freedom or that they were becoming distinct like native americans, or something about their race that made them sick. it was that they were living in these camps where they had very little access to basic necessities. they were living in places where they were unable to actually

find employment. one of the things that we have to think about is in some of these camps, the number of men -- the number of women and children outnumbered the number of men. so that the men would sometimes enlist in the army, work as construction workers or possibly soldiers, but what would happen to the women and children? they were left in these places like the mill, where they did not have access to the basic necessities. what people began to see was a disparity between white and black populations. now, where white people becoming ill as well? yes. many white people became sick during the civil war and reconstruction. they were also expelled, and also in many cases, refugees. many white people had access to

the charitable hospitals voluntary associations, and other civic groups that whites in the south organized to help white people. a 19th-century house that used to be for everyone would start to only allow white people to receive basic support. as a result, you would see statistics that would say, for example in georgia, 5611 people were suffering from small parts as -- smallpox, as compared to much less whites. the reason is often a result of the lack of resources. the medical division attempts

very arduously to stop the spread of illness. by 1967, 1968, the smallpox epidemic does quell. there is an outbreak of call around, but because cholera came from india than to russia, then europe, then into the caribbean then into new orleans and your new york. the government become efficacious in decent sanitation measures. as a result, the health conditions improved somewhat profusely. i talk more about the medical division in my book. i'm coming close to the time for questions. i want to wrap this up with a question about public history and how we can think of 1865 today and what it means. as i said with the joseph miller

story, when i found it, i found as an affidavit in the national archives, listed in army records in a file named "miscellaneous p ago according to the army's logic, that would make sense because of the bureaucracy. where does this affidavit go? if all is the logic of the archive, but in many ways, it was symbolic about how people thought about health and the experience of free people during the civil war. that is changing. what is really exciting is a number of public history efforts have been devoted to a technology -- to acknowledging the refugee camps where refugees lived after the civil war. this is just another illustration of the kind of labor that emen did. this is an image of someone with smallpox. i always hesitate to show it

only because i think this is a late 19th century image. i'm not sure it is exactly from the civil war. there is also a fascination about seeing how the epidemic, how smallpox arrested from black skin. ethically, i hesitate. doctors wanted to help, but they were also curious. i think this photograph is more about being curious. here is one example of this commemoration of the public history efforts to acknowledge that freed slaves, when they left slavery, they did not immediately go to the north or to find a job or their families. they were also in these refugee camps. this is fort monroe.

this is very exciting. the society of civil war historians met in kentucky a few years ago, and i have a great opportunity to check out cap nelson -- capmp nelson. in order to commemorate all of the women and children, and many of the freed and who died, there is this emblem. it reads, thousands of african-american women and children, most of whom were families of u.s. colored troops entered cap nelson in 1864-1865 seeking freedom from slavery. this did not exist when i began my research. i think it is absolutely fascinating. when you talk about 1865, there is a change within the public memory about the civil war.

1865 was also a period of a number of challenges for freed slaves. notice the language here. they are not called friedman or former slaves. they are called refugees. what does it mean to us today to say that there are black refugees from the civil war. that is a new way of thinking about this period. this is my toni morrison moment. this is what i consider to be very haunting. as a way for them to knowledge what you see right here is the commemoration -- the statue, and then just land. what they have done is lefti a small space. he can see this plotted area where the grass growth a little higher and the ground is a little lower. that is to commemorate all of

those people who died unmarried. i think, to me, it is a haunting reminder of the civil war and reconstruction. the acknowledgment of death does not always come in a mantelpiece or statue that is erected. it does not come in the bust of the soldier. does not even come in song or in the novel. instead, it comes in the ways that the land just sort of hovers a little bit. thank you very much. [applause] i will take questions. can you just come to the microphone please. i have been told to say that. >> i have a question about the

degree of the medical knowledge or ignorance at the time, specifically with regard to cholera and smallpox. i had thought the colorado in the 1850's in england -- thought that cholera in 1850's in england was through the water supplies spreading. >> that is absolutely true. what we begin to see, just to respond to the cholera park,t, there was the spread to the water. when cholera breaks out, the federal government is incredibly effective in stopping the further spread, in part because of this knowledge. what happens is when smallpox

breaks out, the government always says, we do not have enough resources, we don't know or we can't send doctors there at this time, or we are unsure of how it is spreading. the federal government is limited institution. people in washington d.c. need to send supplies and convey information in louisiana or south carolina -- yes, that will be a bureaucratic nightmare. when cholera breaks out, although those bureaucratic problems go by the wayside. it is fascinating. all of a sudden, an army general publishes an interesting 450 page encyclopedia --

encyclopedic book that they distribute about what to do when cholera spreads. make sure you're fal following sanitation. in other words, i use cholera to say that the federal government does have the knowledge and manpower, and resources, when they think the epidemic is going to affect all people. with smallpox, when they think it is only affecting black people, they fall back on an argument that they do not have the materials, or to somehow the slaves' fault. prior to the 18th century, they understood basic concepts of quarantine. i think that is why the images that i was showing you before about the camps are really important.

one or two outbreaks of smallpox in the cap -- the best way of solving it, even if you don't have access to vaccinations or knocking nations was to just quarantine the infected person. that is what they do in the union army, and even in the confederate army. in this case, there is no quarantine. that is what causes the explosion. >> was there any attempt to vaccinate? , yes. it depends. one thing that i discussed much more in my book is that the medical division has 40 hospitals, scattered throughout the south. there are some physicians who will try vaccinations. i remember this case where one doctor said -- now, there is a difference between inoculation and vaccination.

inactivation is when you infect someone -- in occunoculation is when you infect someone who is laudable. doing my dissertation defense one of my visors is from public health. she blew up saying, no way, it would not work on 32 people. i get it, but the point is that is where it gets complicated. even when they were based reaching for vaccinations, we cannot measure how effective it was in those cases. >> good afternoon. keith higgins from canada, studying classics. i am wondering if you can speak

to the development of medical technology and more importantly, terminology among rural communities in the south. you mentioned the medical division and that this is prior to the widespread publication at acceptance of the germ theory. i know from my research and from that of my peers, it is alsoa a period of treatments. what was the reaction and development? >> there are a couple of different answers. first, a technical answer. i can only observe what is happening in certain regions based on the archival trail that i have. if a doctor is in a place like south carolina, in a rural place, and it is a big treatment

hospital, then i know. if we go into the interior of louisiana, and you have black communities, which they called the 19th century parlance grannies providing health care. according to the logic of the medical division, if said area was in fact given medical assistance and help from a granny or midwife, they would just move along. they only went to regions where there weren't. if there was not a communal roural understanding of health, the doctors did not stay there. they were fine. i always think about this when i was teaching. i remember teaching this to my students. it reminded me on how to think

about the sources. one of the things to think about is who is your audience. the audience for all of these doctor reports are federal government officials. the doctors do not speak in a lexicon, or jargon, that would be translatable -- they spoke in a language that would be translatable to federal officials, but they are not detailing the medical and scientific knowledge that they might think about on their own. in other lives, very ready to a guy that does not know anything about medicine. the guy only wants to know -- the federal official only wants to know how many people are sick and how many people can return to work. as a result, the archive has set it up that you really can't get past how the communities are understanding it. other people are. charlotte's work on the antebellum period is brilliant.

pete mentioned that i'm going back to school next year. i'm going back to study of apology to answer this question precisely. i think there are ways in which history as a discipline, and me being so wedded to the archive has not allowed me to see it. maybe at the paul logical -- and the biological methods or archaeological methods could yield more results. >> two quick questions. you pointed out the use of refugee, and the shift of language. how do you feel about the use of contraband, if that is problematic, and maybe terms that we should use. and, the experience of union soldiers -- how did that challenge the experience of black bodies. >> i like the term refugees.

contraband is the language that they use in the 19 century. in this case, i think the term refugee is really important for us to knowledge -- i've knowleacknowledge that african-americans were refugees. i think it is a much better term than the term friedman. i think that puts a polish on the experience whereas "refugees" attends more to the dire predicament. the second point, i think that with the case on black soldiers and bodies, i think it is complex. in many ways, a lot of 19 century white medical doctors definitely prescribed to an early racist logic about

medicine and science. there are many white doctors who don't. there are also a few black doctors who work for the hospitals who also don't either. it is hard to generalize. go ahead. >> you seem to be focusing on the professional medical services. a 2013 book looked at this particular situation regarding soldiers and their particular camps and the situation with the environment. the general statement was that most of the lower level soldiers were in social classes that were entirely distrustful of the fragmented medical system that is out there. they are much more dependent on talking to other persons in similar circumstances to find remedies and approaches for what needed to be done. any evidence of that?

>> i just want to give a shout out to my girl. are you saying cap admire -- catherine meyer? >> right. >> that is a brilliant book and a very important book. the sort of response to the previous question. it is about the sources that i have. i have not seen the same sources that she has seen from the perspective of free people. in part, we have to remember, the documents that she is getting are from archives from soldiers. remember, one of the things to think about -- i set of the context in the very beginning about health being political.

free people also don't want to showcase how sick they are during this period either, because they think it will perpetrate a post-slavery logic. i have one source where a family is hiding a member who has small part because they don't want them to go into the hospital. there is a politics around health of black people that is not the same for soldiers. go ahead. >> my name is dexter. i am an infectious disease specialist. i'm also affiliated with the national civil war museum. i want to thank you for this because one of the things in the museum and i have noticed i deficiency in talking about african-american medicine. one of our volunteers -- he has

written a book on african-american surgeons. what he was finding when he would go out and try to talk to him african-american groups, he found, why is the research not being done by an african-american historian? my question is if you have run into any of that. there is also jill. >> i know jill's work very well. of course. the answers are too long to get into right now. is that it? ok. thank you. [applause]