grant's papers? of course the ones i'm looking at are the first dozen or so. again, another situation not only did julia not write often but the few letters she wrote mostly not saved. there is one letter that was of hers to him that was saved. and michelle actually let me go look at the real letter which is amazing. mostly you're just seeing it onhin. and it was saved because she wrote it on the back of one of his letters. she wrote on it. she said save this letter and give it back to me. she was so determined to save all of his letters that descentally one of hers got saved, too. >> so it's to the point of this gentleman in the first row's question that you describe all four of these as tough and fearless women. they were obviously in tune to politics. and the interesting thing is that you wrote that all three -- three for sure and possibly all four are now supporters of women

sufferage d that surprise you? >> it particularly surprised me that jesse fremont opposed women sufferage, opposed women getting to vote. she seemed the one to be most obvious to it. but i think she didn't want to be public about that because it would reflect poorly on her husband later running for president in an era when that was not a popular political position. >> when you did the first first lady series, we discovered by course of doing our call ins and the like that there was a real hunger for women's history. and we have so many moms and daughters watching the series together. and they were calling us, even three generations and the like. so what we realized, we tapped into a vain of not enough told in this country. and they're not understanding the role of the civil war. thank you very much.

>> we'll have more american history tv tomorrow night from our american artifacts series. we'll look at artists of the american revolution and visit the andy warhol museum. later, a conversation on the life and heart work of georgia o'keefe. it starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. c-span's washington journal, news and policy issues that impact you. coming up thursday, center for public integrity reporter talks about the politics behind the opiod epidemic in the u.s. and the author of "twilight

warriors" which explains how the national security apparatus adopted to fight terrorism. be sure to watch washington journal 7:00 a.m. eastern thursday morning. join the discussion. >> next, author stephen davis talks about the 1864 battle of atlanta and the engagements on july 22nd outside the city highlighting confederate general john bell hood's attack on unor forces. atlanta fell to sherman's troops about six weeks later. this 40 minute talk was part of a symposium hosted by the emerging civil war blo blog. . >> it's my pleasure now toinlt deuce to you a man that i know as dr. edge. steve davis has got a little edge to him. if you want to know what it's all about, his business card said author, historian, tour guide, yankee killer.

so that should give you a little bit -- [ laughter ] so that should give you a little bit of context about the program we're about to here. i had the pleasure of meeting steve a couple of years ago at a visit to kennesaw mountain. he lives in the shadow of atlanta's great battlefield. and as we got talking, our mutual publisher said, when you sit down with steve, he's going to make eye contact with you, and it's like his eyes are going to bore right through your head. he's intense. and i found that to be true, but what ted didn't tell me which i discovered on my own and ted affirmed later is not only is steve intense but also an intense pleasure. talk about a man who is just so deeply devoted to the story of these armies in the western theater. he's quick to jump up and remind everybody there was fighting out there, too. so we're going to shift from the overland campaign to look at the corresponding action that took

place through georgia that led down toward the gates of atlanta and with the city on the brink of peril and the armies struggling and clashing there. steve davis put together the text and information for the civil war trust's electronic version of their tour of the bat atlanta. so you can take a look at some of steve's handiwork there. he's a former editor of -- book review editor for blue and gray magazine and civil war news. he's got a pair of books on the atlanta campaign in the emergino civil war series. most importantly, i'm delighted to introduce to you my friend from the great state of georgia, steve davis. [ applause ] >> i want to thank doctor mackowski for that very, very kind introduction, and i want to thank you all for having gone through and endured the travails

of an overly hot room now into our sixth or seventh hour of lecture. i'll try to justify your attention. as chris implies, jim ogden, lee white and i are the three antidotes to what i call in the symposium eastern theatricality. we're the guys from the western theater reminding you that it was fought and won there by the yankees. it was fought and lost by my guys. now i'm drawing from my paperback that will come out, i think, chris, in about a month or so. my brace of paperbacks covers a narrative of the atlanta campaign up to the chattahoochee, the first volume, second volume from the chattahoochee to the city surrender. i want to thank them for allowing me to write for them. let's talk about hood's great attacking battle of july 22nd,

which has been called a the battle of atlanta. a misnomer as i and others will argue. first of all, after the battle, both yanks and rebs simply called it by date. here you've got general sherman in his report, a confederate artilleryman called it the battle of july 22nd. but general dodge and other yankees after the war started calling it the battle of atlanta. and the name stuck. look at this map from battles and leaders. you'll see the battle of peach tree creek. the battle of ezra church and the battle of atlanta. when it was put together in the 1880s, they called it the painting of the battle of atlanta. it wiz albert castel who said let's call it something different. maybe the battle of build hill from decision in the west. but i still prefer calling it the battle of july 22nd. first of all, there was a lot of

action on july 22nd, not just around the bald hill, and anyway, the hill has been kind of bulldozed through in the '50s by i-20, and even the marker that once rested atop the hill at moreland ave and i-20 has been moved south of the interstate. and finally, i'm a rebel, y'all, i object to any piece of georgia real estate being named after a yankee general. general cleburne held that hill for a day. let's call it cleburne's hill. there were three battles of atlanta, not just one. i'm surprised russ bonds who wrote this fine book "war like the thunderbolt" called it the battle and burning of atlanta. there were three battles of atlanta. battle of peach tree creek and west of the city, ezra church. moreover, why should we commemorate it?

it's been on a civil war bubble gum card. i was in the seventh grade when these things started coming out and look at this. here's the 5 cent packet of gum from 1961. that's a great, great bubble gum card, you'll. but the main reason that i'm boring in and i want to thank the sponsors of the symposium again for boring in on the battle of july 22nd is it allows us to compare what happened when the confederates sought to launch two flanking attacks. one was successful. we've talked about it. general jackson at chancellorsville and hood aspired to be jacksonian in his own right. he failed. let's talk about it. first of all, a step back. retreating joe johnston from the first week of may to the second

week of july, gave up nine successive positions from dalton all the way back to the chattahoochee. sherman, of course, outnumbered him at the start of the campaign, two to one, but did not use his superior numbers to bludgeon his way through the rebel lines like grant was doing with spotsylvania and wilderness but using them instead to fix on a position with shelling, skirmishing, faint, while he would send a flanking column, usually mcpherson's army of the tennessee, around the rebel left flank. and forcing johnston to retreat, as i say, successively. finally, when johnston got across the chattahoochee on july 9th, 10th, president davis had to fire him. he feared johnson was going to give up the city. the president and his cabinet and advisers spent a full week gathering the -- all the

information that they could, especially from general bragg who was in the city july 13th through 15th. he even held a cabinet meeting. he talked with bob lee. lee didn't quite like the idea of relieving army of tennessee commanders, but the president went ahead and did it anyway firing joe johnston on the 17th in appointing hood the next day. as i say, hood, lieutenant general, wasn't even the senior corps commander. was placed in command of the army of tennessee over sloughing hardee. hardee had turned down the tennessee command in december after the disaster at missionary ridge. the local guardian angel of history where i come from atlanta is wilbur g. kurtz. here's his oil painting of the transfer of command. sherman has he holed up close to ñ intend to use his superior numbers, especially against the

rebels fortifications, which as i show here in a diagram that was drawn april of '64, were formidable and even then, a month before the campaign started, ringed the city in circumference. sherman planned to capture atlanta by cutting off the rebel railroads. it's a testament to the weak cartography of the atlanta campaign that i had to draw my own map to show the railroad emanating from atlanta. the georgia railroad going to augusta. the macon and weston down to macon and eventually savannah. the atlanta and west point eventually to montgomery. cut the railroads. and his plan was succeeding. david evans of athens, georgia, has written the book on sherman's cavalry in the atlanta campaign. he reminds us that rousseau had cut the line to montgomery in mid-july cutting fully 26 miles or so of that line.

it was knocked out of operation for at least a month. moreover, when sherman was throwing his cavalry and mcpherson's army east of atlanta, they descended upon the railroad to augusta at stone mountain and started marching in tearing up more railroad on july 18th and more on the 19th, 20th as mcpherson was coming toward the city from the east. hood, on his first full day of command faced this situation with at least four of thomas' 14th, 14th, 21st, 4th divisions and corps south of the peachtree creek. schofield coming in from the northeast. as i see, mcpherson's army of the tennessee, the 15th, 16th and 17th corps coming from decatur. hood saw an opportunity to attack at peachtree battle on

july 20th and as castel said, they actually had favorable odds when the attack began around 4:00 p.m., but they were repulsed by the end of the day retiring to their outer line of works. mcpherson was approaching from the east. we've talked about the perils and pleasures of colorization. his map colorized but poor wheeler, later joined by cleburne was trying to advance the attack. he was thrown in in a night march to help bust res wheeler's troopers who were trying to defend leggett's hill. it was on the 20th at the yankee artillery got within a couple miles of east of atlanta and started lobbing shells into downtown. night of july 20th, 21st, sherman's biggest blunder of the

campaign. he had a fixation about wrecking the rebel railroads. so even though gerrard's cavalry had wrecked the road, he orders the cavalry division to leave the left flank of mcpherson's army and start riding off toward covington to burn a couple more bridges and tear up more track. this left mcpherson's left flank in the air. mcpherson was alarmed and notified shortly after gerrard headed out, notified sherman, who didn't care. he didn't rescind gerrard's order. meanwhile, however, mack is worried and starts ordering grenville dodge to send troops down to help guard the flank and also an infantry brigade to guard his wagon trains in the rear at decatur.

frank blair's 17th corps held mcpherson's left and warns him on the afternoon and evening of the 21st, watch out for attack. sherman's blunder gave hood a great tactical gift. wheeler within an hour or so of gerrard heading off to the east, wheeler reports circuit 230 to hood that the yankee flank is in the air. this gives hood the immediate opportunity to decide to launch his flanking attack. in the rear and flank. so on the afternoon of the 21st, he develops his plan. he's the outer line of confederate works. here's the perimeter.

during the night of the 21st, 22nd, they're going to withdraw from their outer line into the main confederate works. hardee's corps, one of his three, would keep marching through the city out by the