antietam, if you know it, is a relatively small battlefield. he moves his camera to one or two spots and the shots find themselves. but what you find is what he did at gettysburg, which is this light -- and this is an entirely different lecture so i will make this quick. he manipulates the titles of his shots where he associates them erroneously and fraudulently with major figures who died on , if you, where in fact will come our the ordinary casualties of the ordinary soldier. but then the famous rebel sharpshooters are notorious, where he and his assistance poll an infantry men out of the line and manipulate him about 70 miles. visual tableaus of the fate of this unfortunate soldier and it is complete fraud. it was discovered later. in the 1960's, i forensic theographer actually found soldier who appears in the rubble sharpshooter picture in a previous photograph in the line of dad being ready to be buried. gardner, that is why your question is so interesting. at the very moment at which photography is claiming absolute truth and in which lin

it was gettysburg not antietam. wait a minute, -- >> to what extent did lincoln's death and mourning publicly memorialized by photographers. >> there were a tremendous number of fakes. this competition to get -- what everybody wanted was in the coffin. what happens -- none of those exist. what happened was -- and you cannot overstate the deepness of the way in which americans mourned. the cataclysm of having lincoln assassinated and killed at the very moment of union victory -- this emotion which psychologically and -- individually and collectively white people out. this in tents, -- this intense, overbearing grief. buildings all in black and the body of lincoln is projected into our imaginations by the photographs. but a lincoln then disappears is this you have attempt to come to grips with him in religious terms by him rising -- going to heaven. what you have is photography disappearing for a while. he cert -- you have a certain amount of landscape photography --re there is a famous somebody in new york has a very

where practically, again, lincoln goes out to antietam to find out what mcclellan is doing. mcclellan does not pursue south. lincoln is desperate for a general who will pursue lee. lincoln, i think him i had to wear the stovepipe hat as a passive aggressive gesture, the fact that i'm really tall. instead of minimizing the height -- and in the great election with douglas, douglas was not called the littlejohn for nothing because he was only 541. here, -- 5'1". here, lincoln is towering over little mac. this, again, or mcclellan -- and mcclellan thought lincoln was a fool and treated him terribly rudely. lincoln is incredibly patient and he says mildly to mcclellan in one of these meetings before he fires them, he says, general, if you are not using your army, may i borrow it? [laughter] and mcclellan being of two self-important, he didn't get it here in -- get it. this is not the meeting in which lincoln fires mcclellan. it is where he is strong to find a what mcclellan is doing. i'm showing this picture because it is the beginning again a photojournalism. that camera was big

in graduate school, i learned that antietam was the turning point of the civil war. the gettysburg chamber of commerce never ceases its claim. facts and reflection say otherwise. on for 18d been going months when the bloodiest one-day battle occurred at sharpsburg. thereafter, to an a half years of combat would follow. that hardly signifies a turning point to me. gettysburg came in 1863. they make good magazine articles. jefferson davis maintained from the beginning hostilities that the south should wage what he called an offense of/defensive strategy. confederates would defend their homeland using inner lines of communication. ,hen an opportunity came southern armies would counterattack. davis reasoned that in a war, three things will happen. side b will win, side a will up, or the war ends unresolved. side a is the south, it could win. what about if the war ends up in a tie? nobody has won strategic hold over the battlefield. has not one side won? stilluth won because it exists. as long as the confederate flag is flying in the breeze, the south is winning. this is

. >> people would generally say antietam. jennifer: the bloodiest day is antietam. anybody have a gas? euess. ? when you don't know something, where do you go? do not lie to me. i know what you go. [laughter] the most lethal american battle? i.ber one, world war i will bet nobody has heard of the offensive, i'm what you say that is a safe bet for most people right there. battle from september until the last day of the war, 47 days, 1.2 million men involved. killed, 100,000 stragglers on the field. this is the most lethal battle in american history. nobody knows about it. why is that? why is that? i think those are really good questions, right? it is why we remember certain things and why we do not remember other things. and i think for a lot of people even at the time, they did not want to dwell on this. because the questions you can ask, why did so many of these men have to die? it raises uncomfortable questions about american leadership, sending untrained men into battle not ready to fight. and also, thinking about the needless slaughter narrative of the first wor

they fight in antietam, and the worse for the irish is fredericksburg in late 1862 where it's going to be a complete slaughter. they have to go up this hill and take this stone wall up on this hill, and general burnside order the irish brigade to take this wall. there's no cover, it's utterly exposed. meagher tells his men to take a little sprig of green boxwood and put it under their cap, and he says when they find our bodies, they'll know we died as irishmen. they are just destroyed. he leads 1200 men on several charges of the wall, only 200 lee. and when john f. kennedy -- it still gives me goose bumps when i see the speech -- when john f. kennedy goes to ireland in 1963, a few months before he's assassinated, he gives a speech to the irish parliament, and he talks about the boxwood sprigs that the irish brigade put under the caps, and he talks about general meagher. he said that blood sacrifice, that's what made them american. and then he gives to the people of ireland a flag from that battle which was a harp and a sun burst. and it hangs in the irish parliament to this day from th

his next significant civil war activity was the battle of antietam, where he and his regiment and couplewere suddenly surrounded by confederate troops, led festival jackson. holmes -- led by stonewall jackson. holmes was shot in the fleshy part of the shoulder, the neck. the bullet again missed any vital organs or blood vessels, and his family learned of it and they received a telegram from an --y surgeon le name named leduc, who said, captain holmes wounded, through the neck, not mortal. holmes had a severe case of what i believe to be survivors guilt, that is when one says i am glad i survived but i don't deserve to have survived. there were so many other people who died. at the other end -- the very end newly life, when inaugurated president franklin d roosevelt was arranged to see him, roosevelt said to holmes, what advice can you give me? follow what the soldier does. form your battalions and fight. >> so here we have the justice assigned to write the opinion in the case, a twice wounded civil war veteran who believes man's destiny is to fight. but this is a case about draft evasion

that, leed of doing for whatever reason went on the strategic offensive, the antietam campaign and the gettysburg campaign. between two of those he lost 75,000 casualties. in virginiaion the seven days battle, the first major battle and , it was a his army one series of attacks by lee on another army. he didn't strategically -- he did in the strategically bite going away from mcclellan, mcclellan certain fleeing the instantly and attacking. -- lee started attacking. the end of one day, and by the end of two days, lead you from reports by jeb stuart that this was the case. reports by jebm stuart that this was the case. he took 20,000 casualties in this campaign to mcclellan's 16,000. they were soft areas they included missing. casualties, all killed and wounded. not a good start, not auspicious beginning because the south could not afford a fight in the war in that way. one may -- one man you may not have heard of was in the offensive and took very heavy losses in the back. and then gettysburg, on days two did nothing but assault strong federal positions on high ground against long 'sre