these understand, this book is not a whitewash of braxton bragg. his image among historians is too low. it needs to be balanced. my attitude was when i started this that if you look at bragg fairly it is inevitable that his stature will rise because he is starting from zero anyway. as far as most people are concerned. [laughter] -- they can be seen as a rehabilitative biography of bragg. at the same time, as i was talking earlier, you cannot afford to let the pendulum go all the way to the other side import trade bragg as the second robert e. lee or anything. he was not that. somewhere in the middle. nathan bedford forrest is the opposite situation. so much that any balanced biography would inevitably bring him down a few pegs. anyone who wrote a book like that would have to have state police escort when they drove across tennessee. i don't think i'll be doing that. [laughter] bragg i don't mind. i don't need to do that. well, one thing i arguing here, in terms of bragg's inability to win battles and campaigns, my gosh. how many other confederate ge

today we will be talk about braxton bragg. earl has written a fantastic biography of braxton bragg. it is published by university of north carolina press. i believe we have some copies of that volume. we come here because we want to complicate history. we do not want to put forth easy answers, and i think earl has done this on all of his work, he will get you to think long and hard. he will not get you to think that bragg was the second coming of napoleon, but he will get you to ponder and to think about this very important confederate general. it is my pleasure to welcome earl hess. [applause] hess. [applause]

-- you know the story about a famous historian writing the first volume of his siography, and braxton bragg getting to hate him so much he never wrote the second volume, and getting his graduate student to do it. but what does that say about me? i do not know. >> at the very beginning of your lecture, you mentioned that actor, how i came to washington, he was involved in every major decision. player --ink of any north or south -- that could have done his job almost as well or as well, or maybe even better than he did? dr. marszalek: good question? did everybody here that? hear that? is there anybody else who could have done that job? i am sure there was. but sometimes people say you know, lincoln really blew it when he pointed halleck instead of grant to be general back there in 1962. i do not think so. i do not think grant would have done the job. i think he grew into that position. sherman could not have done that. the thing about halleck was that he was somehow able, even though it's steamed people because he would not make decisions -- he would say look, you are the commander on a batte

general braxton bragg, departmental commander abandoned the fourth at the mouth of the river. he withdrew to fort anderson. soldiershen the most were in fort anderson during the war. about 2300 confederate soldiers here, 4500 across the cape fear river. a division of troops that have been sent by generally -- general lee to make sure wilmington remained in confederate hands. it had to be safeguarded. remember, if wilmington fell, they could not maintain his army. you have troops over here. you have troops directly across the cape fear river. general grant wants to capture notches for fisher and close the harbor, he needs to capture wilmington. why? well, at the time that the federals were being defeated in christmas, on they gained an important victory 300 miles to the south. general william sherman's army captured savannah. after capturing, occupying and destroying atlanta in the fall of 1864, general sherman marched his 60,000 man army the entire breadth of the state and captured savannah on december 21. he presented the city to president lincoln as a christmas gift. now saf