watch the out smith memorial foundation dinner with hillary lenton and donald trump thursday , and at 9:00 eastern listen at 9:00 p.m. eastern with the c-span radio app. war, chrisivil makowski discusses the battle and spotsylvania courthouse, pitting ulysses s. grant against robert eva lee. he details the movements in military tactics employed by lee and grant and gives attention to the union assault. after two weeks of fighting, the armistice engage without a clear lee your, but tactically failed to stop >> drive south towards richmond. this 45 minute talk was part of a symposium hosted by the emerging civil war blog.

>> chris is the historian here. bed andworking breakfast, conference center, a great place to hold the symposium. he has just written a book, which will be available. he has co-authored two magazine articles on the battle of the spotsylvania courthouse. those are available through the emerging civil war website. chris and i have known each other for 11 years. , fightlike john and paul a little bit, get along, but we

are best friends. he met his life right where our projector is set up. chris, one of our friends described him as the rupert murdoch of civil war publishing. he is now becoming a very prolific author. atwas a former historian fredericksburg and spotsylvania national parks. chris will talk about the battle of the spotsylvania courthouse. pleasure toor and bring you this prolific speaker, author, and my best friend. [applause] that the firsty symposium i spoke at here, jennifer was where matt is.

no offense. he is here all weekend, folks. tom delighted to be able share with you the story of spotsylvania. to walke had a chance around spotsylvania, you know what a beautiful landscape it is, easily one of the best preserve civil war landscapes available to us. it is pristine. few monuments out there, but your seeing what the , the treeaw an 1864 lines and fields are accurate, and then over the course of two years, they transform that landscape so dramatically that it is still there today. i will be happy to show you some of those traces here, but i hope i will be able to help you understand that some of those

traces still exist, so you can see for yourself the story written on this most beautiful of landscapes. we pick up with chris left off, fighting in the wilderness for two days, then they fight and stalemate for a third, and grant changes the war. it is the turning point of the civil war. up to this point, the armies clash him a withdrawal, then spend a couple of months , reequiptheir breath equipping, resupplying, reinforcing. it gives thes that confederates a chance to do that as well if he does that. he opens his spring campaign realizing that if by no other means than a tricia -- then attrition, he will wear the confederacy down.

care about the village, the courthouse itself, it is those roads. he doesn't care about richman except that he knows that lee has got to come out and defend the confederate capital, and that is where he will get me into battle. the wilderness is often that direction, the far corner. we're going to head down the road here to spotsylvania in this area here. togrant makes that decision go left and south, his men realized that there is no turning back, grant is holding true to his word, and they cheer wildly with the wilderness burning around them. blockalizes he has to grant, so he sends his cavalry to delay the union advance. will send their

cavalry to try to flush them out, and they fail. by the time grant gets halfway down that road, he finds his trooper spread out in the field sleeping. the commander of the army of the get up,starts ticking, clear that road, where is your commander. nobody knows where sheridan is. when sheridan finally comes gallivanting into cap, he is irate because he has had the gall to order his own troopers around. imagine that. the two get into an explosive argument. both of them have incredible tempers, but it is an act of insubordination on sheridan's he goes to grant and says, can you believe this guy. grant backs sheridan.

order and let's sheridan ride off with 12,000 calvary men. i want to call that very important fact to your attention , because what unfolds over the ,ext two and a half weeks thousands of union lives are lost because phil sheridan has left with the eyes and years. he tends to get a free pass in history, but he also kills thousands of his own men by leaving the army blind and deaf. will continue to advance down that road toward spotsylvania. the calvary is still blocking them.

ineffectivelvary is at flushing them out, so infantry will have to do the job. the first division is trying to lead the way. ofy will deploy in the line battle, push forward in this direction to drive the calvary away. if you look at these rows of road,, if you ride that it is rich, rich, after ridge. the confederates ride from one to the next, the lady advance again, they have to get back in doublee of march, race quick, redeploy, push the calvary away, hop on a horses, the next one, lineup, again. affected thats so it slows their advance, and so that gives lead the chance to cut his way out of the wilderness, creating his own

road to get here. final union push gets to this area, it is known as spindle field. suddenly the armies appear on either side, the family flees to safely as the battle erupts around them. the union infantry realize they are getting pushed back. the calvary aren't just mounting up in writing away, they are getting pushed back to that is because the infantry is piling in. stewart has sent the message to , run intodoubletime position, boys, because if you don't, the yankees will. the confederates are rushing to the spot even as the federal fifth corps is deploying.

stewart puts those men and the exact right spot at the act right time. because of this cat and mouse that has been going on, the union advance is discombobulated, so there is a lot of confusion, not a lot of cohesion, so the last push is at brigade strength. line, exhausted, confused, mixed up, so the first brigade comes up on the side of the road, just enough men at that spot to stop them. kershaw's brigade, bone. the next advance comes up this side of the road, stops in. a third, then a fourth wave come across that field with the confederates getting just and position just in time. commander hass

had a few rough days. again for a concerted effort. more confederates flooding onto the field. now he is really upset, so he s andtake his whole corp tried to do it. half of the union army is coming on. the confederates rush onto to the field, extending lines, moving in this direction, taking advantage of ridgelines to give himself good fields of fire, good elevation. as they do, the ridgeline curves up and around. it is horse shoe shaped.

so confederate defense here holds and the line forms. comes, both may armies assess their situation, creating a roadblock. the union army is bottlenecked. corps had to shift over to the river. they can't get to the battlefield over here. they're going to open a second front. lee is shifting his troops and realizes that he has his bold,

pretty inconvenient. it is inherently unstable. you guys are union soldiers and you are lined up on the outside, how many of you can be firing at me? all of you. how many of you can i fire at once? only one. they have converging fire. i have diverting fire. it's also unstable because if somebody breaks through, there in the rear of the whole position, so everybody has to pull back. we are subjected to crossfire. you might miss me, but hit my buddies over here comes so that's why it's inherently unstable. it formed again to take advantage of the ridgeline.

there is a piece of high ground right here. worried thatare they can bombard them if they have that spot. as robert e lee looks at this, it he realizes it is bad news. he talks to his second-in-command, and he says that i can defend that if you lee me enough artillery, so says ok. going to put 30 guns here. lee is going to let the position stand. that's important, because what richard into ams scapegoat. lee, the buck stops here guy says, yes. this and also understands how inherently vulnerable this position is, so

he will look at ways to get at it. he has an up-and-coming officer from new york, fresh out of west point. he proposes an attack against the bolts -- vault. are out even further, ok. that's right. you are like a bowl john the you are vulnerable. you are only a couple of hard yards away. he is to run for janet isn't punch through you. don't hit a lady. what he wants to do is different. instead of the typical line of battle, he wants to line his

with 12 regiments, 5000 men, and he has to punch through an open a whole. the stakes are not very high, are they? upton launches his attack on may 10. to get support, he will have the fifth corps over here. he will also have the division come straight down and punch the tip here. is, upton is running late, so he doesn't launch at 5:00 like he is supposed to. meanwhile, he just decides to jump off early.

he launches at 430, so his attack suspends itself. they prove without tillery -- they can win. upton launches with no support on either side. he runs across the field, punches through, splits open the , nobody knowsul what to do next. it is such an innovative tactic that he is a victim of his own success. there are no union reinforcements to flood into this gap, so confederates come rushing to the front. there's another lead and the rear incident. becauseearn his star

grant recognized the failure was not upton's fault, but his own. one of the things i admire most about grant is that he is a quick learner. experimenting, trying, maneuvering. he looks at this attack and says of upton can break through here with5000 men what can i do 20,000. 20,000me i have another reinforcements ready to take advantage of the breakthrough. to put into motion a plan where he will use that same idea to punch the confederate position right on the nose. these can have the reinforcements ready to put into play. he wants to use his second corps to execute this attack.

he's been a shift all the way up and over into position. it will take them hours. as they begin the march in the rain, darkness falls. flooding streams turn the roads into my. many soldiers described this as the worst march of their entire career in the army. nobody is telling them where they are going. finally, they assemble at a place called the brown farm.

they fought to a stalemate, and now reports of federals moving left. what do you think that puts in lee's mind? grant is on the move. lee will start to mobilize portions of his army to hit the road. the first parts of his army that he's going to move, artillery, the slowest part of his army. it is raining and turning these roads to mud. the first artillery pieces he will pull are these. they are the farthest away from the roads. .e polls these out

one of his subordinates comes over. he has to go ask for his artillery twice before lee finally acquiesces and since artillery back, but things are so far away that lee thinks it will be morning. know muchow if you greathim, but he did some work until he was wounded in the foot in 1862.

he goes back to richmond to convalesce. reputationearns the of being a man about town with the ladies. i don't get it. when he comes back to the army, he has a walking stick because of that injury. he is pacing the lines, worried about these reports, convinced that something is coming. he finally goes to bed that night with his boots on and his cane next to his bed, ready to jump up at a moments notice. coming, 20,000 federals under hancock. hancock is going to take upton's model and build on it. the left part of hancock's , and a traditional line

of battle, sweeping ford in this direction. time of the attack is set for 4:00 in the morning, but there faulfog.conjuring up it has been hot, but this rain has cooled it off. the fog has made the forest impenetrable. no one knows what they are heading into. they just know they are heading into trouble. the men stand there, some so exhausted that they sleep on their feet. with fear ored up adrenaline that they can't sleep at all.

when 4:00 comes, hancock can't have the order for those men to advance, making them even more nervous, jacking them up even more. a.m., dawn is0 just breaking enough to turn that fog. hancock is going to order his attack forward. men coming000 forward, sweeping through the forests.e force -- there's a lane that runs right about where you guys are, runs away from this position. eyesderates have advanced and ears. it is a farmland they have fortified more.

they have a good position out there. come sweepingey out and onto that farmland, they think they have captured the main confederate line. when they grabbed the position, they are so excited that they yell and give away their element of surprise. the yell at goes across field and alerts the confederates in the trenches. lines, third are in the about a third are sleeping, and another third are huddled , tryingtheir campfires to hunker down against the rain. the skirmishers come running over in the wake of that echo. there are yankees coming. everyone floods into the trenches. there will be blood enough for supper. day, it wasf the blood enough for all.

the federals, having given away their position have to reform and flood ford even as the confederates launch their first volley, but they were aiming at the ridge line. into a swalewn that cuts across that field, so confederate fire goes over their heads and they advance sweeping ford. they come around like a big left hook, smashing through right between, peeling open a gap in the line. his men begin to drive in this direction. in fact, they are so sick vessel that they get all the way down are goodhis men stalwart soldiers, hard fighters, dependable, but they have been plagued by the shadow of having killed stonewall jackson accidentally a year earlier. they are putting up the defense

against a feeble assault, so they're holding off her inside like this. they are having to do a two front defense. field, sweep across the hit right at the tip and begin to sweeping in this direction. they literally wipe confederate units right off the map, some of the most storied, hardest-fighting veterans in the army. gone. the stonewall brigade, gone. , trying to rally the brigade is shot down in his efforts to stem the tide, but nothing can stop the federals. they get down to where upton was two days earlier. there they are stopped.

robert e lee has a whole and his line half a mile wide. these federal are filtering into the interior with 20,000 more getting ready to flood into that cap wearied here is where he rides to the battlefield with his army on the brink of annihilation and they have to figure out what to do. the first man he looks to is his second in command him but he's going off like a teapot on the boil. they continue to stream past him in panic.

he's going to turn to one of his subordinates, an aggressive lawyer from georgia. gordon is ready to go. lee will lead his men to plug the gap. the men won't go. they start yelling, general lead to the rear. we will not go to the ford and less general lead goes to the rear. is in full cheerleader mode. these men are virginians, georgians. they will not fail you now. the crowd goes wild. that's right.

gordon pushes forward and kenexa begins to plug the gaps. -- pushes forward and begins to plug the gaps. things over here go a little differently. field we'veoss this got steven -- who gets shot down leading his men. his second-in-command will have to finish that charge and connect and drive the federalist s out and push of the line. sent inamians will get next to her he knows this is a suicide mission. he says i'm even coming back a live major general or a dead brigadier. city buried in the cemetery in fredericksburg. men connect and drive the

federalist out and begin pushing apart. the mississippians will connect and drive the federalist out and continue to plug that gap. the south carolinians whose monuments resembles a coffin plugs the gap and continues to drive up a small hill in this even asaof the line, 20,000 reinforcement begin flooding forward. they get down into that swale he bullets flying through the air, they want to stay protected as long as they can. instead of coming straight across into the gap, they let that swale funnel them over to the spot even as sam mcgowan's men are driving up toward it. so that particular angle in the line 13 degree bend becomes the center of the maelstrom.

mcgowan's men have to fight their way to reverse by traverse up to that spot as the sixth corps comes pouring into that same area. thatiers will later call area hell's half acre, a goal gothic, the place of the skull, saturnalia of blood, monopoly of horror. today most of us remember as the bloody angle. men but asere not as demon. for 20 straight hours, they will fight hand-to-hand in the pouring rain, and water in those trenches up to their knees, shooting each other at point-blank range, stabbing each other with their bayonets, using their rifles as clubs, throwing him like spears, using sticks,

teeth, anything they can. a seething, bubbling roaring hell of hate and murder, one soldier said. 20 straight hours. this fight has already been going on for two. 22 straight hours. of the most intense personal hatred you can imagine up close and ugly. the earthworks were slippery with rain and blood, one soldier said. men wounded, getting trampled into the trenches. too injured to pull themselves out, bodies's stacking up five deep. men suffocating or drowning or being unable to do anything but suffer and be trampled. men jumping up onto the works firing a rifle and throwing it like a speer. then someone will pass another

rifle, and they will do it again over and over till they are shot down. then someone else jumps up and takes their place. lee continues to feed men into this fight, because he is trying to save the life of his army. he needs to buy time, so he's going to trade lives for time. and he is going to seal off this bulge. in order to do it, he's going to keep sending men into the meat grinder. 3 a.m., theyabout get word that that line is finished. no order is given for these men to retrieve. they slip back into this final position. just before dawn, the federalists make a final push lastthe works, catch the couple of confederates and begin the cautious advance into the interior. with those artillery pieces i

talked about earlier many of them had gotten back just in time to get captured. the rest of them are in this line. they opened fire on that federal advance. discouraging any sort of pursuit and the federalist go back, hunker down just as dawn begins to lighten the drizzling sky. is scene -- they find unprecedented in their experience. one union soldier talks about being able to walk from headquarters to the angle without ever touching the ground with a carpet of bodies out there. casualties,deral compared to 8000 confederate casualties. these men don't even look like men anymore. they are so shot up. driver describes

the courses as looking like aslyfish -- the croporpses looking like jellyfish. like a sponge, they had to scoop the corpses into stretchers to evacuate them from the field. they have to pull bodies out of the mud. the fighting isn't over at spotsylvania. it will go on for yet another week. as grant continues to find ways to break through these lines once and for all. he'll shift, maneuver and try to attack across the same ground again, on the 18th of may. this last line is so impregnable that the federalist cannot make a final assault confederate- position is so daunting. grant realizes he

cannot get at lee at spotsylvania and will begin plans to pull away. lee will try one last step on the 19th that harris farm. in that direction in the corner. federalist will stop that. if we're talking about the toll of battle, when richard -- march is his second corps to harris farm, he has got 8000 men. a year earlier when stonewall jackson march that same area, he had 28,000 men. where are those 20,000 men? that, grant waits for any other confederate shenanigans. nothing comes. he will begin to pull out on the night of the 20th and head down to the north anna river. to pickup that story come back next year and we will tell you that one, too. the landscape they leave behind

is devastating. but if you go out there today, you'll hear the birds sing, the whir of insects in the trees. if you're lucky, you feel the breeze. we could use one of those, right? it is beautiful,. pristine. just as it was when they were fighting. but i invite you to go out there and visit. standard that spot and listen to those birds, hear those insects, feel that breeze. think about those men. the men who suffered and died, sacrificed there. they would be glad you could come there to remember them. thank you. [applause]

[inaudible] >> so, any questions? right over here? a yes, i've heard tell of napoleonic war tactic called the - -that was popular with the french revolution armies especially in the napoleonic army. >> you should direct this question to chris because he has the great expertise. >> how does upton and barlows' assault formations compare to the traditional french assault columns? >> they are a little bit more compact than you would see. if i remember correctly, one of the readings i looked at -- thanks for throwing me on to the they likened it to waterloo. when he is trying to make that

one less final assault. what he was trying to do on the change of that was to try to punch his way through with that first line. and the second and third mines with upton would be the tactic. now wherever you go with the corps size level that will take it to a whole new level. >> the key to remember is that the technology is vastly different by the time these guys are fighting the war. column is pretty unusual because the idea, and napoleonic times, mass yourself and you give yourself strike. they learned that when you mass yourself you make yourself a huge target for highly accurate weaponry. that works as a disadvantage. here instead of marching, it is a sprint. upton tells his men to not even doesheir rifles because he not want them to stop and shoot on the way over. it is a sprint, get over here, start stabbing. then you can start shooting. so, it really has a lot to do with speed and technology as

well. ris under the bus because he spent a lot of time studying napoleonic tactics. mike hardy has a question over here. >> afternoon of may 12, 1864, in your opinion, if burnside does not stop to see what is going on on his left, does he have enough men to punch through the confederate line? >> that is a great question. i call this spotsylvania's forgotten front. because burnside slides in here on the 9th and has the opportunity to burst through. and a lot of confederates talk about if he had acted aggressively, there is nothing that could have stopped him. and that is the story of burnside on this flight for the first week. he is ineffectual because he is tepid in his advances.

so, on the morning of the 12thth, he launches that weak attack -- to use stevens and riggs as the staging for that -- then he refocuses and tries to attack a bluulge over here ad gets caught up. it is a matter of not enough, not enough men, not enough attempt, not enough ambition, not enough aggression, not enough, not enough. whether he could have on the 12th broken through, i don't know. lee's saying, i'm going to launch my own attack to ease up the pressure. lee's got hies eye over here. does that answer your question? a question in the back. do we have time for one more? >> one more. roleat's emory upton's

after that first battle? does his union continue to participate or are they pull back? >> he does. after this breakthrough -- they get shifted around to several positions over here on the 12th. they will be pulled back and thrown back into the fight. he is going to then go on and try to capture mayors hilla couple days later, which is the position over here. -- myers hills. if you went outside, you would see a radio tower. upton's men will successfully capture that. again, provides a great union artillery position but does not strategically break things open. upton will go on to a highly successful career in the united states army. he will be of very influential tactician. attack manual that it would become the standard bible throughout the army, but he has a very unfortunate personal life, has problems with his wife, has

migraines that are sparked by a brain tumor and eventually commit suicide at the presidio. a very promising young man goes into a very unfortunate end. thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. i really appreciate it. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you are watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span 3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook @c-span history. tch c-span's live coverage of the third debate between hillary clinton and donald trump on wednesday night. our debate preview from las vegas starts at 7:30 p.m.. 8:30 and theg is at 90 minute debate is at 9:00 p.m. stay with us for your calls, tweets and facebook postings.

watch the debate live or on-demand using your desktop, phone or tablet at guest:. listen to live coverage of the debate on your phone with the free c-span radio app. downloaded from the app store or google play. up next on american history tv, historian lori stokes addresses five myths about the puritans that have given the negative group a reputation. the boston public library hosted this one hour and 10 minute event. >> hello, everyone. i am happy to be here tonight. i hope everyone can hear me. i'm pretty allowed on my own but i also have a mic. i am glad to give your opening up this lecture series for the partnership of historic boston's charter day. 2016. hereappy to see you all ready to learn about some myths about love and longing in 17th