and finally, on the 1st of july, the terrible battle at malverne hill. in the course of one week the battle of the seven days, robert e. lee would lose 20,000 casualties. a fourth of his army. in doing so, he was somewhat disappointed that he didn't get the resounding victory that he'd planned for. he wrote his wife our success has not been as great or as complete as i could have desired, and in his official report to the confederate war department he stated under ordinary circumstances the federal army should have been destroyed. this is a word you see in lee's communications throughout the war, destroyed. oddly enough, it's that word that so frequently emanated from abraham lincoln, i want the rebel army destroyed. not discouraged. destroyed! but the army of the potomac was not destroyed. in fact, it continued to be quite a potent force. and although they had suffered themselves nearly as many casualties as the confederates, 15,000, a distinguished historian that we just heard from in his marvelous book entitled "battle cry freedom" said that although

maybe lee believed that his defensive position would be sufficiently strong to achieve a malverne hill in reverse, that is, let the enemy beat himself to pieces attacking me. let the federals bleed themselves to death attacking him this time. maybe he was anticipating fredericksburg when they, in fact, did. lee, more than anyone, knew the costs of offensive operations in this war, programs the stand at sharpsburg was perhaps his chance to pursue an offensive war by means of defensive tactics. whatever lee thought about this, one conclusion was pretty obvious, he believed he could win. he didn't lose at sharpsburg. it was a bloody draw, and barely so. now, i know that jim mcpherson contends and -- contends nobly and righteously that sharpsburg, antietam was a significant turning point in this war, that this was the point at which the war was destined for union victory. bob crick insists, who is not with us -- he's now watching virginia v. north carolina in baskll

episode in the aftermath of the seven days when jefferson davis rode down past the battlefields to malvern hill on the morning of july 2 and came into the room where lee was for a conference with the leading commanders, jackson was present. he immediately stood up, stiffly at attention and then promptly left the room and there were evidences that he just didn't want to be around davis. he never said in writing what he thought about the davis. he would never say such a thing. that would be contrary to that by the book world view that he embraced to keep his life online. we have precisely used up our time. thank you for your attention. [ applause ] >> okay, gang, as bob gets mic'd up to do q and a with the c-span audience, we're going to take a break for 15 minutes. we'll be back in here at exactly ten minutes of the hour. and we will hear david blight next. i just want to give you just a highlight. david and bob will disagree on who the person of the year is for 1862, but i think that the greatest disagreement is bob is a hopeless san francisco giants fan and david equally with the detroit

and dejection in the rain that these poor injured soldiers who were just coming from the battle of malvern hill and other battles had right on this spot where i was standing when i took this photograph, evacuated from harrison's landing. very interesting, too, that the man who now owns that -- the house there on harrison's landing, his -- he inherited it. his grandfather had owned this house, and he said my grandfather was in the civil war. i said, well, that's unusual, you don't meet too many people these days whose grandfather was in the civil war. he said, yeah, my grandfather was a drummer boy with mcclellan's army on the peninsula campaign and was evacuated here out of harrison's landing and then he survived the war and went on to new york city and made a fortune in the tugboat business in the late 19th century and when he retired and had something to do with his fortune he came back and bought the estate at harrison's landing and it's still owned by that family. other interesting ways to experience the "monitor" which i never thought i would do was to actually get to work on the ship