vicksburg was a big one in the western theater. bull run, prior to this battle, but you're getting into frederiksberg, et cetera. little ft. donelson in the western theater gets overshadowed by many other things. i think that is unfortunate. i think that's also changing, too. the work here at the park is helping to educate people and the interpretation of this battle is also improving. i'll get more detail of that. again, think of what is going on here in the winter of 1862. the union suffered a big defeat back in the east with the battle of bull run. first manassas. not much has really happened since that period up to the february of 1862. so, you have six, seven months with agitated public in the north. in particular, okay, guys, where are we going? let's march. on to richmond. president lincoln is exasperated with the lack of activity. what's it take? it finally takes a brigadier general in illinois battling his superior saying, let's move. finally that word comes. and general grant, as the story goes, will come with combined fo

i did a battle study on vicksburg and when i was doing the battle study on vicksburg, when i looked at the information that african-americans were delivering and even vetting for the union it meant they had an organization. and it was very clear that they had an organization. this information was too good, it was vetted too well to simply be happenstance of a contraband showing up and saying something. no, the particular contraband that showed up, that particular individual knew what he was talking about. that's not a coincidence. so that's where i begin. that was some 20 years ago. and as i have been working here at the museum, i would say often i get good information from people that come in because ultimately the members of this organization have descendants. and their little stories that i piece together, but every time comes in and shares a part of their story i put it in the whole picture. like i do with the women. any story i get i put it into the whole picture. i want to see it, how it works in the whole picture. what part does it play? does that story -- so that's the privileg

they don't want to remember vicksburg either, but that one is hard to brush aside. for the southerners, this was kind of an embarrassment. the loss of both rivers is so tremendous and traumatic. they never got it back. it was hard for them to really remember this kind of thing. the generals who fought here, commander generals on the southern side, two of them escaped, billow and floyd. they never received a command after this. they spent a great deal of their lives afterwards -- general floyd didn't live much longer after the battle, by the way. general billow tried to exonerate himself out of this, but his conduct was fairly questionable, so he never got a command. general buckner, who was the one who actually surrendered, he was in ft. warren, michigan -- ft. warren, massachusetts, for six months. so, he was kind of -- he was not allowed to communicate with anybody, so it was -- the action report was able to pass through, but by and large, he was out of reach. and bushrod johnson, who walked out of here on his own he was pretty quiet about the whole thing too. it

had about seven major fortifications, starting at columbus working their way down past memphis to vicksburg. there was about seven of them. and they're all fairly substantial works. if you get to columbus, kentucky, it's well worth the trip. if you see what they have built there and what's still around there, you see these walls that are 20, 30 feet high. they're 30 to 40 feet wide. they're massive construction. then you see the little chicken scratchings in the water battery at ft. donelson. you can see where the confederate majority of effort was. where they were concentrating was the mississippi river. they knew that's what the federals wanted -- they wanted to control the mississippi. so, they built fort on the mississippi river. for the tennessee river, you had ft. henry and hyman, across the river from each other. that's it. that's all they have. and ft. henry was built on a swamp. ft. hyman was uncomplete, on the kentucky side. ft. donelson was stronger, but even then it only -- 14 guns along the river. columbus had dozens on the river. you could just see where they're focusing their

inboard to battle rand and forced, shiloh, vicksburg and chattanooga the campaign that doomed the confederacy, jack hearst studies the battle between general grant and nathan bedford forest during the civil war. the supreme court justice antonin scalia and brian gardner, editor-in-chief, explain the process of judicial decisionmaking in reading law:interpretation of legal tests. these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and in booktv.org. >> next author interview at the campus of u.s. c is basketball great kareem abdul-jabbar his latest project is "what color is my world?: the lost history of african-american inventors". tell me about this project. >> the project started, in 1996. in one of the chapters, lois -- made the life of the invention. checking out what in vendors did in the nineteenth century made me aware of the fact there were a lot of black inventors people did know anything about. i got the germ of the idea from that experience. i would do a book on inventors related to children because they are unaware of these things. >>

companies see from pennsylvania managed to fight carolina, virginia, box bill, vicksburg back in time for the overland campaign. a lot is a real movement. some of that was reporting by journalist when of the reasons mead is not better remembered he had no time for journalist. 1864, a journalist bios a pat me false report. mead has the journalist put to back words. they rally around their own. hot they make a compact not to mention in mead unless it is unfavorable. he is written now and alienated their journalist. the southern general's are jealous. i have been interested in mead. kids are smart. i knew robert e. lee and mead and yankees. it made sense that mead one. i was only later that was told all the reasons why he did not win and why. he had a lot of help. some came from mistakes but again, he saved the union and we have all but forgotten him. >> in the book you talk about there are 160,000 people on the field and you also spent time talking about stuart and rear is the confederate calgary? how did robert t. find out where his opponent was? >> he was 26 years old and was brillian

in "born to battle," grant and forest, shiloh, vicksburg and chattanooga, the campaign that doomed the confederacy, jack hurst documents battles during the civil war. supreme court justice antonin scalia and brian garner, editor-in-chief of black's law dictionary, explain the process of judicial decision making in "reading law: the interpretation of legal texts." look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> the world's a big place, but certainly the most powerful additives are these huge corporations, corporations like goldman sachs, for instance. because i spent so much of my life in the developing world, places like africa, latin america and the middle east just to give you a small example, i saw what happened when commodity futures were bought up by corporations like goldman sachs and wheat, for instance, which it has in the last year increased by, its price increased by 100%. i saw the human consequences of that. the children who were malnourished and even in some cases died of starvation because t