professor allen guelzo's books are fascinating.we are watching professor allen guelzo's show until 11:00. one review of his book said that he has written a revisionist history and i'm curious to have him explain what is meant byby revisionist history and every time is during write somethinge it's revisionist and that like to get your thoughts on that. thanks so much for the program. >> was it fateful lightening a new history of the civil war? >> caller: it was a review of dr. guelzo's look on general lee. >> jonathan has provided the answer is that every time mr. insists on a rights history you do a revision. no historian simply duplicates what has been said before. everyew historian comes with new ways of looking at things and questions that you ask in my wcase for instance i am interested obviously in lee as the great general the civil war and the great commander of the confederate armies. one could not interested in the civil war and not pay attention toe that. and yet i'll be the first to admitt that is not what draws me to lee

you are on with historian allen guelzo, thank you so much.professor, i so appreciate your appearances on c-span. you always have words of wisdom and you are the voice of reason. the question i have is, recently you on c-span discussing your biography of lee and you discussed potential implications and potentially leading to a settlement with the north and balkanization of north america or the united states. and i know there's always a risk for historians to sit and play the what-if game but you and i thought very brilliant observations about the geopolitical impact that that would have taken with respect to world war i and world war ii. i thought it would be very helpful for me any audience to hear your review and perhaps expand on that again. i think it has profound implications for many of the discussions we are having today. >> host: thank you, steve. >> guest: steve, thanks for that. i start off, i start off by asking a particular question of people. what kind of world, what kind of world would we be looking at if pickets charge had succe

guelzo. >> the answer is they miscalculated utterly. they miscalculated they had the resources to carry on a car and miscalculated that the north would respond by refusing to admit the rebellion and making a war and they miscalculated by assuming that foreign nations would come to the rescue and intervene. at every moment they misclavated and nobody criticized them more than that than robert e. lee. he said this is how i knew, this is how i always knew that this would end. >> host: you mentioned your 4 by 6 cards at your side for your current project which is what? >> guest: it is another book about abraham lincoln. so i'm returning to some original turf. >> host: we will close with text from al in new york, who plays the base that's in the back end? >> i do. i was a music major my first year. a composition major actually. you discover that you don't have enough talent and i've been doing something else but i still play it. >> host: professor allen guelzo has been our guest for the past two hours talking about the civil war era and syst

allen guelzo is a senior research scholar in the council of humanities and the director and the director on politics and statesmanship in the james madison program at princeton university. formerly, he was professor of history at gettysburg college, where i attended two of his talks while visiting the battlefield. i was very impressed, his knowledge and his speaking skills, and he has been on my list of historians to have here at the art of command conference for some time now. alan grew up in pennsylvania and focused his career to build biblical studies, receiving his best from karen university in bucks county. he earned his master's degree divinity from the reformed episcopal seminary near where he taught church history for a number of years while earning both his master's and his doctorate degrees in history. from the university of pennsylvania. he became a member of faculty of eastern university in, st david's pennsylvania, and in 2004 left there to join the at gettysburg college, where he taught until his recent to princeton in 2018. alan was awarded bradley prize for his outstandin

allen guelzo is a research scholar at council of humanities, princeton university.. he's a specialist in early 19th century american history. he won the lincoln prize three times, a prize for military history and other honors. allen, welcome, and thank you so much for being here. >> thank you very much, claire for hosting this program, monique for acting as our wonderful technical support and hello to all of my friends in atlanta, a city i have known and enjoyed for more than 35 years. many, many wonderful visits. i'm delighted to be appearing with the atlanta history center once again. and i'm sure there are a number of members of the civil war roundtable, which i've spoken to as recently as just seven years ago about the battle of gettysburg. but now, let me turn to robert e. lee. mary chestnut first met robert e. lee just before the war at white seltzer springs in west virginia. his wife was plagued by rheumatoid arthritis, they came to you like silver springs to benefit from her baiting in the hot springs there. one of the few things that could give her a relief

. >> host: professor allen guelzo has been our guest for the past two hours talking about the civil war era and some of his 12 books we very much appreciate your time. >> there are a lot of places to get political information, but only at c-span2 you get it straight from the source. no matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here, or here, or here or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. >> c-span now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what's happening in washington live and on-demand. keep up with today's biggest event with life streams of floor proceedings entering from the u.s. congress, white house events, the courts, campaigns and more from the world of politics all at your fingertips. you can stay current with the latest episodes of "washington journal" and find scheduling sce information for c-span's tv networks and c-span radio plus a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span that is available at the apple store in google play. do

. >> host: professor allen guelzo has been our guest for the past two hours talking about the civil war era and system - his thank you, everybody for being here. the best and worst thing about the book festival that there's so many amazing panels and a lot of them conflict with one another. so i appreciate that, folks chose to be here as someone who's read all the books on this panel, i can tell you that their quality lives up to both the architecture and everything else of the room. so you're not going to be disappointed. i'm on this panel is called history the open sea. it features the works of eric j. dolan immediately to my left rebels at sea privateering in the american revolution. we'll also be discussing ben raines. his book, the last slave ship the true story of how clotilda was found. her descendants an extraordinary reckoning. the third author who was on this panel and tom, unfortunately can't be here today. but i do hope that everybody will spend some time with his book to the uttermost ends of the earth the epic hunt for the south's most ship and the greatest sea battle of t

. >> host: allen guelzo let's begin with your latest book, robert e lee a life, who was he be >> and that was the famed cavalry commander who served under watch washington and called one —- coined that first in war first in peace the other thing that people would have known robert e-the was his service in the mexican war and especially on the staff of general winfield scott the fabulous amphibious invasion moving towards mexico city and served in many respects has eyes and ears performing over and over again feeds of reconnaissance so much so that afterwards scott made a confession for all the honors he had one and i great campaign in mexico city almost all credit goes to robert e. lee so those two things he would have been noted for before the civil war which taken together really don't do a whole lot to explain what we know about robert e. lee when it begins. >> but that he was not necessarily a good father? >> a splendid cavalry commander to carry out the light cavalry raids with arkansas small jobs like that he was good like that but as soon as the revolution was over and he move