the antietam battlefield languishes. it receives very little visitation throughout the 1860's, 1870's, and 1880's, barring the one instance of national cemetery created in 1887. the battlefield itself linkages. in 1881, however, the shenandoah valley railroad operating between hagerstown, maryland, and waynesboro, virginia, starts to bring newfound attention. today is your driving north into maryland the station will be on the left-hand side. it is marked with signs talking about the history. indeed, by the mid-1880's, veterans start coming back to the antietam battlefield in great numbers. as it ends up, in 1888, 1 of the veterans who chooses to return to the antietam battlefield is none other than james hope. he comes to the battlefield, we think, with a group of veterans who are celebrating the 26th anniversary of the battle. from what we can gather, the men probably share stories about the events of september. they recall what happened on that momentous day and before and afterwards. there's no archival record tellin

they have a list at the front desk, because we both volunteer at antietam. there is a list at the front desk of women soldiers that fought at antietam, so if anyone asks, it is available for folks to read. they so spotlight demons in the bookstore -- sell information in the bookstore there. if you don't know, you don't know. tracey: right, right. >> before posing my own question, i guess something of an additional answer to that, in the town of song min, illinois, there is preserved the house where albert cashier lived. i have been there. >> it is on our bucket list. is, in yearsn after the war, from officials, there was a real attempt to downplay and deny all of this happened. i ask you to talk about that a little bit. eanney: i know that d mentioned in they felt like demons, people writing to the archives requesting information on women soldiers were told flat out there where non-. there weren't any. it is a question whether it was expunged from the records, you know, the regimental books. took -- feltnders it was -- >> embarrassment. >> it reflected badly

civil war enlisted with the union armies second vermont volunteers and witnessed the 1862 battle of antietam firsthand. shepherd university professor james brimhall teaches a class about his life and art, focusing on his paintings of antietam's bloody lane, and the artillery. this class is about 70 minutes. afternoon,l: good everyone. we are going to continue our discussion of the maryland campaign, but instead of the topic itself, we're going to deal with the idea of representation and memory. in some ways, it deals with the broader course themes of the class, so today's lecture is a bit of a departure from what we .ave done thus far i want to start with a vignette from one soldier, a private, calvin leach. he is a soldier in the first

teaches a class about his life and art focusing on his paintings of antietam's bloody lane and the artillery in front of dunk or church. this class is about 70 minutes. good afternoon. today, we will continue our discussion of the maryland campaign.

lincoln relieved mcclellan of command soon after the battle of antietam in late 1862 in mcclellan fled to europe for a time to escape his humiliation. when they returned they spent much time in the fifth avenue hotel in new york city. the well-known haunt of the most fervent anti-lincoln democrats who convinced mcclellan to run for president against lincoln in 1864. after he lost that election they fled together again to europe. we know for certain that george loved nelly. what did nelly love george? though his biographers state that as fact, the answer is not obvious in my opinion. tale of her youthful passion and engagement to the future confederate general ap hill which was cruelly thwarted by her mother. but i found even more convincing evidence of her ambivalence toward mcclellan in her behavior during the war and later in life after her husband died. widowsmany civil war nelly abandon responsibility for defending mcclellan's reputation after his death. nelly left her husband's legacy to the not so tender mercies of a very misguided literary executor who published perhaps the most

like antietam, a more well-known battle in the east, it changes the way people think about the war. lot of soldiers and civilians thought the civil war would be over in months. shiloh confirmed for grant that they'd have to win the war by conquest, that this was all or nothing. brian: that was 1862. how long did you spend their? ms. samet: i spent a nice day at shiloh. i looked around at northern mississippi as well. there still is an important railroad junction there. that was the site of a battle in the war. it took about a month for union troops to make it down to corinth. by the time they get to corinth, grant had been criticized heavily for not being prepared and for being surprised. there was some controversy that raged throughout the rest of the 19th century. when henry halleck arrived on the scene, he pushed grant off to the side and made him second in command. grant had not much to do. the army took a month to make its way to corinth. halleck and the confederates were convinced that they were reinforcing corinth when they were evacuating. he said the used to put their ears

we are not going to talk about antietam or gettysburg, you can take my civil war seminar and we will talk about the battles. but about the political side of the civil war. between 1861 and about 1874, there is a big midterm election. that he did 74 election is a big deal. i think it's the closing point for reconstruction. the democrats make big gains in 1874, the result of the big economic crash and panic. it is impossible to imagine any further reconstruction legislation happening after 1874. before that, the republican party is not only the majority party, they are the majority party with a bunch of their opponents gone, so they have a super majority. here are some of the things they do. one of the things they take from the whigs is an emphasis on economic development. they create a new national banking system. they pass a homestead act. they pass more land grant acts. they are focused on getting people educated. education is a big focus on f republicans, and the land-grant act creates state universities with the idea that it sets aside federally owned land that each state can sell

nelly andllan brought their daughter to the antietam battlefield to marvel at the sight of his greatesthard to imagine that nelly would not have known that lincoln and hallock were frantically urging her husband southward. them, andlan ignored nelly allowed them to do so. yes, she was still a relatively young woman and he was an important military person. balance ofparent power in a victorian marriage tilted heavily toward the husband. nevertheless, she could have found a way to convert his ill-advised arrogance at times, just as julia's freak, as she called it, forced grant to refuse the invitation to the theater. nellie's inaction was matched on occasion by regrettable action, as when she urged her husband to defy hallock's orders in the second battle of bull run. when she coyly tried to get mcclellan to start into washington solely for the purpose of retrieving their table filter. and when she gave his literary executor unfettered access to ,heir private correspondence which he later published in his version of mcclellan's , therebys memoir damming mcclellan for eternity in his own w

at the battle of antietam, the single most bloody day of battle in our history, he was two miles behindhe lines because his job was to provide provisions and he heard about a unit that had gotten caught, trapped essentially in an area of the battle where they couldn't move, they couldn't get out, nobody could get in to help them, and they were starving and they had run out of water. the battle began very early in the morning and hadn't had breakfast and it was late afternoon and hadn't had lunch and they had run out of water well before noon. so these troops were in trouble and young mckinley concocted the idea of loading up a wagon with hard tack and bread and coffee and water and a few other things and getting that wagon to these troops. well, he had to go right through the battle to do it. he gets a friend or some other young associate to help him load up the wagon and get in the wagon and they head out through the surrounding forest and encounter two officers who say this is ridiculous, you can't do this, go back. but after they left, mckinley and his associate ignored it and went o

james hope, a landscape painter who enlisted with the union army and witnessed the 1852 battle of antietam firsthand. includes mentingly draped over the fencing rail and if you can recall, the description of vermont soldiers. one said there is a man hanging on the fence that had eight bullets in him. had been witnessing these things himself. he sought to portray them on canvas during a time when many audiences were consuming the war like this. fashiony orderly, clean doesn't convey the horrors that he, himself witnessed. and other veterans were determined, audiences would continue to consume. why he chooses this particular scene of all the scenes is interesting. on the one hand, it is the demonstrates the horrific effect of small arms fire. stillness in an area that had been wants alive with wretched screams. audiencestwo civilian what they had never understood. many veterans argued about the experience of combat as something they could never fathom. that disconnect wasn't as part -- it is something soldiers often felt. the civilian audiences couldn't understand. he puts it before audience

a landscape before the civil war enlisted with the union army and witnessed the 1862 battles of antietam firsthand. teachesr james broomall a class about his life and art. this class is about 70 minutes. dr. broomall: good afternoon, everyone. we are going to continue our discussion of the maryland campaign, but instead of the