the end of my army. l be suicide. it will be the end of my army. and then he learned that there was a country lane that passed around the right flank of the union army. and once again, vandorn impulsively said, that's what we will do. we'll take that lane around the right flank of the union army. get in their rear. and we'll cut them off. but his men and animals have not rest ford three nights. they have been without food now for a day and a half. what, what little energy men and animals had left was barely enough to shuffle forward through the ice and snow at a crawl. vandorn did not care. forward he said. he is still riding in his ambulance. one disgusted arkansas soldier said, as vandorn clattered by, that man doesn't understand he is riding. but we are walking. the passage behind the union army while successful was slow, it was -- it was costly. thousand of men made it. but thousand of others simply collapsed into the ditches alongside the roads. unable to keep up. and hundred of them died of exposure. frozen where they fell. nobody remained behind to look after them. so what this meant was -- all through that night and early the next morning, w

the southern army evacuated thea city, fire burned the business e district. the union army marched in.e slavery ended and abraham lincoln himself walked through s the burn, smoldering ashes of the city and sat in jefferson f davis' chair and all that happened within 48 hours.th you just can be imagine and make up a more dramatic sequence of events.w now, to set the stage by 1865, the spring, the civil war was coming to a close, even strongest confederates goon seed their cause, the military situation was indeed dire and richmond was surrounded by of ulysses grant's army and in theo spring of 1865, general lee could not hold out against thate army, and he saw that his only chance was to retreat to the re, west. he retreated and grant followed. so the military action as it i were is offstage in my book. off to the southwest, and then l smaller union army marches in a and occupies richmond as it falls. night of april 2nd and 3rd, 1865 was a night of chaos a asn jefferson davis' government leaves on the last trains from , the danville depot, on the last rail line to the so

the two largest rebel armies west of the mississippi river. these were the same armies remember that had combined the previous august to overwhelm the smaller union army at wilson's creek. natural attrition and necessity of garrisoning springfield and other locations had shrunk curtis' army down to around 10,000 men. and then there was the very disturbing matter of logistics. the isolated union army now, in benton county, arkansas, was 200 miles south of its supply base at raleigh. despite quarter master sheridan's heroic efforts, the supply situation was tenuous. it was very uncertain whether the union army could remain where it was, it certainly couldn't go any further. curtis, therefore, determined to hold his ground in arkansas, take up a blocking position, and prevent the confederates from returning to missouri. he rode all over benton county and he noticed a line of rocky, limestone bluffs behind a body of water called little sugar creek. these bluffs ran east-west and they were five miles south of the missouri state line. below the bluffs was a creek. the top of the bluffs was the beginning of a rolling table land. it had no formal name. b

and in that two hours, what is the union army doing? they're waking up to the fact that it's not the normal morning. not the normal sabbath, sunday of april 6th as they had planned. and that alarm which will sound in sherman's camps, and prentiss's camps where he now comes to realize that apparently a force has been ordered from his own division to engage the confederates and he has to deal with this, they become aware that something is happening. so the alarm will sound in the forward camps and that alarm will be picked up through the rest of the army, straight back to pittsburg landing as these divisions become aware that there's some sort of alarm emergency on the front. and men will then be called by the long roll to get their equipment, get their weapons and move to their formation points and get ready. and that getting ready is the saving grace to a large extent to how the union army is going to encounter the confederates in the first four to five hours of the battle. so the supplies is not quite as complete as they would have desi

and among other things, asked douglass to become the leader after effort in cooperation with the union army and the war department to funnel as many slaves as possible out of the border states, out of the upper south behind union lines and into the north if possible. a grandiose plan that god knows how this would ever work but to get as many slaves out of the upper south as possible before election day in november because if he loses the election, he fears that mcclellan and the democrats will turn around the policy of emancipation and the war will be lost. douglas was stunned. i don't know another way to put it. here was abraham lincoln. he had attacked lincoln for the past two and a half years, three years. here was lincoln looking eye to eye with him and said will you funnel as many slaves out of the south as possible, be a new sort of john brown for me? douglass said sure. thank you very much. he went back up north. he sent telegrams, letters all across the north. he was trying to put together a team of people and he did for a week or two that would sort of be the agents of this system.

the army of the potomac in general. but arguably the army of the tennessee is perhaps a worse army. the confederate army of the tennessee is a worse army than the union army of the potomac. all right. so, and when i say that, i mean things in terms of -- i mean, you can make that argument that it's plagued. we don't have time to cover that in this class. is it a happy army? no because what's going on? >> none of the generals liked each other. they're all at each other's throats. >> and davis never adjudicates the issue. he should have picked one side and fired everybody else. instead he stays with bragg too long. he doesn't fire polk. they're all attempting to undermine bragg. and bragg is sort of this difficult human being. they were really cranky. there's a great story of braxton bragg, in the old army of how he -- it was a lying officer and the quarter master of his company. that happened a lot. the army was very small. you had to do double duty. he sent a requisition to himself as a line officer that he rejected. it's probably fake. but it says something about -- i mean, it says something about what everyone knew about braxton bragg. supposedly h

to march the union army to a river port that was available year round and just wait for better conditions. so curtis turns around and marches eventually across the delta through clarendon and so forth to helena. just a few days after the union army arrives there, as we'll see, a relief convoy appears. so to make a little more -- to flesh out that narrative a little bit more, with no necessity now of shielding missouri from a confederate army that has disappeared, curtis invades arkansas in earnest. logistical problems hampered the movement and then he turned away. and in the process, which is a point i really want to emphasize, somewhere there in that final week, curtis made a momentous decision, he realized his supply line was more of an incumberance than in addition. it was lightly populated, but there were enough farms to provide food to keep his army afleet. so curtis made the momentous and extremely risky decision to sever his own supply line and to live off the southern country side as he marched eastward, and for two weeks in june, 1862, the army of the southwest operated independe

at various points, the union army's in and some slaves retreat with them but not hers. and then the emancipation proclamation is passed and a union officer comes to their farm and demands his right to take away a slave woman and her children who belong to a man who has already gone. it's virginia. so the families didn't all live on the same farms. and, basically, this slave man had escaped to the union army and sent back a white officer to collect his wife and children. he didn't go to his wife's plantation himself.

and then a union officer comes and demands a right to take away her children. and the slave man had escaped to the union army and sent back a white officer to collect his wife and children. and the mistress says by what right and he waves the paper and says by the right of the president of the united states of america. and there i

for more than a year, the civil war had raged, and the union army of the potomac had only known a series of sharp defeats. many casualties were high, and the means of caring for them tragically inadequate. hundreds who could have been saved died in the field for lack of proper care. already a part of history were the battles which we know as bull run, the seven days and jackson's valley campaign. each had been a costly failure for the union forces, and in the north people began to wonder if the south could be defeated and the union preserved. in the most tragic and bitterly punitive fighting our nation has ever known, american fought against american, and the casualty lists for both sides skyrocketed as on american hills and in american valleys cannon and musket flung their hot metal among the men and horses of both sides. the spectacle of suffering was piteous, perhaps especially so to clara barton for she decided to do something about it. the already spare face of the man in the white house seemed to grow even more gaunt under a constant flood of criticism and urgent demands for an ear

the army. but as bob crick reminded us, it was not really a good dayall jat to play and decided not to. the union general, mcclellan, after glendale, sent this message to the war department. notice the tone. i shall do my best to save the army. but we know that well before the battles of glendale and malverne hill, george mcclellan's conception of how victory could be won was badly shaken. in this larger context our noted historian once again provides his insights into the character of this general who was actually just too closely wedded to his preconceived notions of how war should be fought. in a chapter with a marvelous title the historian writes, the failure of mcclellan's peninsula campaign was not alone a military failure. it represented also the downfall of the limited war for limited ends that mcclellan favored. from now on the north would fight not to preserve the old union but to destroy it and build a new one on its ashes. a concept so dear to men like mcclellan when eventually reconciliation some sort of gentleman's agreement was being washed away by increasing tides of blood, tens o

the other half of grant's army. if this is 2/3 of johnson's force against half, that leaves only what? the smaller proportion of his army against what is the other half of the union army, and that other half constitutes grant's center and true left flank. >>> we're almost two miles from the crossroads north of shiloh church. that brings us all the way over what is the true union left flank representing grant's army of the tennessee. this is colonel david stewart's brigade of sherman's fifth division. stewart had been detached throughout the encampment period. sherman was the first division to occupy. he was over here guarding the hamburg road from hamburg landing which is four river miles upstream from pittsburgh landing. so this is where his brigade will fight the battle detached from its mother division. prentiss' camps were roughly a mile or a little over from the southwest or to our southwest about a mile. that will give you a sense of where prentiss' camps were in relationship to stewart which represents the true union left and what johnston envisioned to be the union left, which was prentiss' camps. stewart fights desperately to hold this flank. stewart wil

at various points the union army's in and some slaves retreat with them but not hers. and then the emancipation proclamation is passed and a union officer comes to their

the union army loses casualties, by and large, where an army they should lose take casualties after the company, regimental and brigade level. the union generals pay a price. but by and large, it's the junior guys who are supposed to be out on the fighting line who are killed or wounded. and as a result, you know, mead has to start moving guys around. captains are temporarily commanding regiments. you've got to sort all this out. and men are exhausted. now, on the confederate side instead of the army of northern virginia, they're so into that chivalry and leading from the front even by generals, gettysburg loses 15 general officers killed or wounded. and they can't afford it. they can't afford it. it's just absolutely tragic for them and a great loss. but anyway, mead gets underway in a pursuit gingerly as soon as he can, but he's got -- if he's going to follow robert e. lee, he's got to follow him with an army capable of actually fighting. now, is given command of the army of the potomac by lincoln. everybody in washington easterfyed. his -- terrified. his mission is to defeat lee and

considering they were trying to sweep around the union army and push them into the swamps, why did they choose the battle formation they did? and if you were a confederate general that day, what battle formation might you have chosen instead or would you have used the same one? simple question, right? i may not come out of this alive if i ask the wrong questions. >> well, again -- and i'll be the guinea b

the reason i did that and we're back to this map now is the confederate high command understood the union army to be facing west. with their back to the river. because they had marched from west to east, they deployed facing east, and their entire attack plan was formulated on a union opponent who was encamped between al and lick creek facing west. that is one of the great lost facts of the battle of shiloh. it gets covered up by all the post-battle finger pointing. but it's clearly evident. it is self-evident. all you have to do is examine the records yourself. don't trust me. look for it yourself. confederate leaders believed the federals were facing west. their entire plan is formulated on that. next map, please. here's reality, though. corinth is not twice as far from east to west than it is north and south from pittsburg landing, it is exactly the opposite. twice as far from north to south than it is east to west. that geographical misinterpretation paints the entire battle of shiloh. it paints it. it paints it. if you believe your opponent is facing west, you deploy facing east. if you b

considering that they were trying to sweep around the union army and push him into the swamps, why did they choose the battle formation they did? and if you were a confederate general that day, what battle formation might you have chosen that day or would you have used the same one? simple question, right? i may not come out of this alive if i ask the wrong question. >> again, i'll be the guinea pig here. essentially, you have a complex scenario here. and there is really further study to be made in terms of the actual battle formation of the confederate army. why? because we have such new accounts as that of dudley hayden who was an aide-de-camp on the staff of albert sydney johnston and he writes in a journal, published in a newspaper that has come to light the fact that the plan per se. he is writing, you know the day before the battle, the plan was, essentially that they had a right-wing and a left wing. and this is in contrast to thomas jordan and some of the other people that were credited or discredited for the -- for the tandom attack formation of having a corps one behind the o

the federal army should have been destroyed. that's what he was after. well, at that point the union called upon john pope to command something called the army of virginia up -- back up at manassas. and with the combination of new troops and mcclellan's troops, lee sent jackson with one wing of his army to occupy pope and with longstreet and another wing fell upon him and maybe this was lee's greatest battle, second manassas. almost destroyed pope. this was august 30th, 1862. at that point lee confessed. the army is not properly equipped for an invasion of the enemy's territory. it lacks much of the material of war, is feeble in transportation, the animals being much reduced and the men poorly provided with clothes and in thousands of instances, destitute of shoes. still, we cannot afford to be idle. and though weaker than our opponents in men and material and military equipment, we must endeavor to harass if we cannot make our success -- our complete success is not impossible and we shall endeavor to guard from law. so, he's going to maryland. he writes to davis, and this is lee's r

and basically, this slave man had escaped to the union army and sent back a white officer to collect his wife and children. he didn't go to his wife's plantation himself. and the officer comes on the plantation. it's february 1863. and he comes on the plantation wafth t waving the emancipation proclamation. and he says, i want this man's wife and children, forinda and her children. and the mistress says by what right? and he waves the paper and he says, by the right of the president of the united states of america. and there is this immediate difference in how people are able to leave because now the union army's coming and offering them protection to leave whereas before they had to leave on their own. so it makes an enormous difference, but i'm not -- i think it just accelerates a military drain that the confederacy's already suffering from. i mean, clayburn writes this thing at the end of 1863. and that's the other thing. as you well know, it's far quick er here in the mississippi valley and the tennessee valley than it is in virginia. yes. >> i had a question. so in your first boo

we know 2/3 of the confederate army are engaged in the union oak right flank in the crossroads. so you start just factoring out who's not present in that fight and we know that throughout the course of the late morning and on into the early afternoon johnston's getting about 1/3 of his command engaged over at sarah bell farm, the river road and the peach orchard sector. he starts saying, that's almost the entire confederate army. what does that leave here in the center. that leaves piecemeal brigades in the center and that's the story at the nest is that the confederates attack this position held in force by the federals with a repetitive series of assaults by individual lone brigades for the most part and those brigades are heavily outnumbered. the largest attack the confederates throw against this position is no more than 3500 souls. there they're outnumbered two to one. the average attack is around 2,000 personnel. so at any point in time they're clearly outnumbered by their federal opponent and then they have to negotiate the thicket and try to attempt to storm and breast th

the army of the potomac in general. arguably the army of tennessee is perhaps an even worse army. the confederate army of tennessee, than the union army from the potomac. when i say that i mean things in terms of -- you can make the argument that the confederate army is plagued and we don't have time to cover that in this class. maybe some of you did. is at happy relationship in the army of the confederate army of tennessee's high command? what's going on. >> none of the generals like each other. >> and davis never adjudicates the issue. davis probably should have picked one side and fired everyone else. you have essentially a corrupted command climate. he stays with bragg for too long, doesn't fire polk, so they are all attempting to undermine bragg and it's sort of this -- and bragg is this difficult human being. we think he might have had stomach problems, so you got to read stories. there is a story of braxton bragg how he happened to -- i think a line officer and he was i think the quarter master of this company. you had to do double duty. he sent a requisition that he then rejected. it's probably fake but it says something

but those roads afforded logistics and communications and what didn't exist the union army could improve upon and build more roads. but suitable encampment ground, naturally defensible, as sherman described it. it was cut up, the top graphical relief that will encompass the area the union forces occupy which becomes the battlefield of shiloh, has a maximum elevation relief of 230 feet. the average is 50 to 80 feet with sloping grades of 40 to 70% on creeks and tributaries that cut up the plateau. so it's a rugged landscape ,and with only 625 acres on a cultivation, the area was covered in an old growth open forest, which would be a huge canopy. this was old growth forest. most americans have never encountered what was the old growth forest. but if you can imagine most of the trees being in excess of 100 years to 200 years old that covered the landscape. you would have the marshy zones and the creek valleys which would be choked with denser vegetation. in general, an old growth, open forest, high canopy. the average line of sight even under the canopy, was, say, maybe 100 to 200 yards. it

because now the union army is coming and offering them protect to leave. so it makes a big difference but i think it accelerates a milt drain that the confedracy is suffering from. it is far quicker here in the mississippi valley and tennessee valley than it is in virginia. >> i had a question so in your first book you talk about how the wealthy class of planters appeal to the yomen and convince them to go to war. once we get into the war were there class divisions or was there a similar rallying cry that the men used to go to war. you know, well, in this whole bunch of collar scholarship which it sounds like you know very well. and you know, i find this hard to believe. i love drew's work, but this i find hard to believe. i mean the women whose defects from the confederate cause has consequences i think are the yomen and poor white women. who knows what they thought. if you read the political coverage before the war, each side claims that the women are with them. we don't all act or think one way. it has to do with family or region or class. so i think tha

chase and stanton will actually cruise around hampton roads and he's found a spot where the union army can land to capture norfolk. once norfolk is gone, the confederate ship is untenable. lincoln orders this attempt to be made. in fact, lincoln actually gets to see the merrimac come down the river to investigate some shelling that the union maybe is doing, and there's conflicting reports. the union reports say that merrimac shows up, we withdrew trying to lure her further down so that vanderbilt and the other big rams could get a shot at her where the confederates say, well, the union saw the merrimac come and go fled. they all went to hide under the guns of fortress monroe. the union landing does take place, norfolk does fall, and on may 11 the confederates blow up the merrimac. in fact, solomon p. chase, who finds it sometimes reluctant to praise abraham lincoln writes to his daughter saying, if lincoln had not come down, the merrimac would probably still be as great a terror as previously. lincoln's presence and his forceful insistence that something be done actually garnered resul

when with general lee was the command of the union army in the spring of 1861, did he have inkling that he would take over command of the southern army? >> i don't think so. i think he turned it down because there was some irony here because he really just did not like conflict. he doesn't respond well to conflict and he does so because he can't handle conflict, what kind of conflict, you ask. he would have had war on his neighbors and relatives and he's going to do that. he would have spent the rest of his life explaining to the people he cared about and loved why he had turned on them and so i think he really thought he was fighting and offering himself his professional experience and capacity for his friends and neighbors. professor thomas and take calls, archibald is in jackson, mississippi. archibald, go ahead with your comments or question? >> and southern virginia right where jeff stewart was born. by the grace of god i'm a virginian. he came back and married a southern bell from virginia and it was concerned by this last caller, jennifer to equate, with the example of the educat

lincoln sent word to al vand ria an urgent call of the union army. general george mclellan had been in space after the campaign. now lincoln summoned him back and his orders are stop lee at all costs. those costs were to be high. on september 17th, 1862, union and confederate forces would meet near the towns of sharpsburg and haegerstown, maryland. more than 1,000 men would be involved in the battle. and one woman, clara barton, would carve for herself a unique place in the annuals of service of mankind. the day the battle began however she was just a dedicated woman driving a wagonloaded with provisions across the countryside. nears later, she would recall that day of blood and anguish and reit in her own words. >> with my tendoned i sought the hill tops and as the mist cleared away and the morning sun broke over the maryland heights, the rays fell upon the dusty forms of dying men. many of you may never hear the notes that call men to battle, but if like us, you had heard them that grim september morning as they rang through the valley and echoed fr

the country, and fought and won a major battle against imposing odds. no other union operation at this stage of the war lasted as long, covered as much territory, or achieved its objectives as effectively. the army of the southwest secured missouri, freed union resources for use elsewhere, and dealt confederate arkansas and slavery a heavy blow. few other civil war operations anywhere had such an impact on the course of events. it truly was a campaign worth commemorating, worth remembering, and i'm so glad that so many of you have come out tonight while we've had this little discussion. thank you so much. >> thank you very much for coming, and you are dismissed. >>> as commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the civil war continues, join us every saturday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. and sundays at 11:00 a.m. for programs featuring the civil war. for more information about american history tv on c-span3, including our complete schedule, go to c-span.org/history. and to keep up with us during the week send us questions or comments, follow us on twitter. we're at twitter.com/cspanhistory. >>> thamerican history tv where can find our schedules and preview our upcoming programs. watch featured video fro

on this day in 1861, the union army surrendered south carolina's fort sumter ending the first battle trouble had been brewing for sometime between the north and the south largely over slavery. just a few months earlier, a number of southern states had succeeded from the united states and after the confederates captured fort sumter, the following four years of carnage killed more than 600,000 soldiers and, of course, the union army won the war thanks in large part to the leadership of president lincoln. but the confederate flag flew 151 years ago today. and now you know the news. for this friday, the 13th of april, 2012. we're all back on monday for "studio b" and "fox report." "fox report weekend" tomorrow. for the journalists of fox news, i'm shepard smith. thanks for trusting us your news and informatio

lee, then grant, who commanded the union army. >>> april 15th, 1912, nearly 1500 perish. >> once the look outs sounds, an iceberg ahead, struck the bells three times. ding, ding, ding, which is a warning saying there's some object ahead. doesn't mean dead. means ahead. doesn't say what kind of object. what the lookout then did, he went to a telephone and called town to tell what it is they saw and the phone would finally answer, the entire conversation was what do you see? and the response was iceberg right ahead and the response from the officer was thank you. >> samuel helper on the truths and myths of that night. sunday, 4:00 p.m. eastern this weekend on cspan 3. >>> next, a biography about general douglas macarthur who served in world war ii. his military career came to a close in 1951 when president harry s. truman releahed him of his command. this was produced in 1952 by the army pictorial center. >>> the united states army presents a big picture. an official report produced for the armed forces and the american people. now to show you part of the big picture, here is sergeant

the union army is still here. the confederate army falls back to corinth and both sides are in the same positions they were when the battle began, but grant had not been defeated. buel made the juncture and the railroads lay waiting for the next union strike. >> you can watch this or other american history tv programs on the civil war at any time by visiting our website c-span.org/history. >> as commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the civil war continues, join us every saturday at 6 and 10 p.m. and sundays at 11 a.m. for programs featuring the civil war. for more information about american history tv on c-span 3 including our complete schedule, go to c-span.org/history. to keep up with us during the week or send us questions and comments follow us on twitter. we're at twitter.com/cspanhistory. >>> each week american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. you can watch the classes here every saturday at 8 p.m. and midnight eastern and sundays at 1 p.m. this week former gen