Passion, and redemption of Stonewall Jackson and empire of the summer moon, a finalist for the National Book critics circle award. Sam spent most of his career as a journalist including national correspondence, Senior Editor with time, executive editor of texas monthly. Delighted to have you here this evening to discuss your latest book hymns of the republic, the story the final years of the American Civil War and to my immediate right is donald miller, the author of several New York Times bestsellers including masters of the air, americas bomber always who filed the air war against nazi germany, which is being developed as a miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and tom hanks, the closest i have ever gotten to meeting those guys. He previously worked as a consultant for the hbo series pacific and contributed to several episodes of american experience. Doctor miller received a phd from the university of maryland. We say lafayette. Where he don is the john Harry Mccracken in lafayette college. It broke the confederacy. I would like to start out by asking each of you to give a brief overview of your book and if you would, how and why you chose this subject to write on. We start with you. I had written a biography of Stonewall Jackson. We started to do further reading, and it is a different place. And a vengeful, however it is a hard war. They use the term band box, these were young men, and dreams of glory. It is about the early war and i thought not only was the latter war more extreme place and influenced the war. When i looked at doing that, i knew bruce won a pulitzer in 1953 with a wonderful book about appomattox. The army of the potomac, they are not covered by that. They have done that 75 times are now. Nobody has done it and there have been grant lee books and there was appomattox, to me the last year seems like a valid lens or aperture through which to look at the war. It starts with grants arrival to take command of the union army and roughly at appomattox roughly a year later. The election of 64. The original driver, capturing this very much harder war that came about staffs refusal to lose unleashes all sorts of nasty demons, these guerrilla wars, anticivilian wars, things that happened the south wont lose but that is the best i can do. Im a storyteller always looking for a good story. I was shopping around for something. I was watching him burnss series. I will get in trouble because i know can. It is a sketchy story of the battle of vicksburg in his documentary of the civil war which reunited interest in the civil war in an important way. I was curious why the western war, started to do a little reading on it but a transforming experience was coming down here. I was struck by the majesty of the site, with commanding view of the river and horseshoe turn of the river, mysterious delta to the north, louisiana country with the bayous, i was struck also, and in vicksburg, an amazing number of people dying of disease and smallpox and not yellow fever. I thought this thing, i read a couple books on vicksburg. I wanted to do broad confidence, and it begins with farragut coming up to the golfing taking new orleans in april 18, 62 in that part of the mississippi, grant comes down the other way with gunboats. And they cant take the place. Grant comes down and he failed again and again and it was a long campaign. I wanted to put this campaign into context where it wasnt bullet by bullet. I noticed, i read an article that the National Park is down and park guides saying people want contextual stuff. What about slavery, what role did it play . After gettysburg who picked up the bodies of families down here . What role did women play in gettysburg . I did the women of vicksburg, great diaries of women caught in the circle of violence. And a granddaughter with jeff davis over here in the archives and published, a biography by her, diary or autobiography. So much needs to be done on this end and i wanted to treat it as a campaign, not a battle. I dont think battles win wars. We won world war ii because of the day. Individual battles mattered. Same for the civil war. With a relentless campaign, grant came up with this campaign. The Mississippi River was open, really important things, not trying to dismiss them but a big outtake on the battle as he learned about salad and he fought at that time what was considered a total war. It was pretty rough stuff and it was relentless. Sherman learns to fight from grant, not vice versa. I kept running into sherman. He said go after it. They fit the narrative, grant did not have the supply line. He had a helluva supply line. Warren took me to the battlefield and took me to his home. Minute details, grant was getting hundreds of wagons a day in louisiana and steamboats, and out to his army and being a quartermaster in mexico, he knew how to handle that. I want to tell it right and to encompass. In a book that would be read by a general reader, not just narrow military history. Where did that myth come from. I learned not that long ago that was wrong. He is headed to vicksburg and cut free of supply lines and didnt do that. Like everything i read within those books. This military secretary and grant approved the book and worked itself into the memoirs. The funny thing in the memoirs, to actually cut the supply line, 7 or 10 pages later he says, we cut it at jackson, too long and vulnerable. The answer is in the book. The pleasure of reading both of your books. They are very good by the way. If you havent purchased when you better go do it. How much in sync they were, almost as if they took your book and your book, but for the Chattanooga Campaign you can follow grant after military career, at the end of the war. I want to ask, you have alluded to this already, from your different perspectives, how would you grade grant as a commander and is there anything you discovered about grant in your research that surprised you that you didnt know . Grant has a reputation in vicksburg, i learned about the overland campaign, those battles grandfather against that. They called grant for the hammer, he hammered and was relentless and driving through a wall kind of idea. When you look at what that meant, here is the perspective i had on it. Take it how you want to, was this good or bad . The battle of spotsylvania, one of the generals these were mean, they learned how to do this where we had nasty things in front of them and it was artillery and as one point of the crescent, 6 mile crescent warren was ordered to attack. There is no way we would take that. Warren was a fine engineer. He knew you couldnt take it by frontal assault. There was a chance it was so slim. He was ordered to do it. His men were cut to pieces. He was ordered again to do it. He protested you cant, you are not going to take this on a frontal assault. It happened a third time. Finally happened a fourth time and each time warren said no and destroyed his military career but the point was warrens point was this is insane. You are feeding these men to slaughter, they are going to die, why are we doing this. Grant saw it differently. Grant side holistic we along a 6 mile line. He wanted to pin lees men to focus attention here and deal with lee as a whole and he was willing to let a lot of people die. Warrens men, youre being fit into the chopper and will be horribly maimed or killed. To see that meaning of who grant was on the worms i level and being set in again and again and again, gigantic casualties, more famously at cold harbor but whatever you think of grant as a commander and i wont get into it, im not qualified to talk about everything from shiloh and donald and and Everything Else in chattanooga but one thing is true, as lincoln said he was a general who understood the mathematics of the war. The mathematics of the war, we are going to see who bleeds to death first. Grant understood that. It was a military tactic which you saw are being read out in the form of massive Union Casualties in the overland campaign. Im not saying this is that a good. I dont think he was a butcher but he was willing to do what people like George Mcclellan would never have done in 1 million years would i dont think george mead would have done that in 1 million years. People like whoever the commanders do sure were they never would have done that. Grant was willing to do it and lincoln. Didnt answer your question. Grant is hard to understand. I have tremendous appreciation for grant. Vicksburg is his masterpiece but a real testing ground and every kind of terrain and battle situation, hes fighting insidious warfare where the serpentine rivers, recklessly taking guns. I dont think people realize he would send sherman to roland for and there was no way sherman and four or five of his best gunboats he loses the battle of vicksburg and is surrounded by fellow gorillas and caliphate and he was behind four or five miles and got to him, or the votes, he put mud on the boat and handed out rifles, lincoln was furious for that and kept making these calamitous mistakes and learning learning learning and the other thing, he wasnt forthright about a lot of things. He made two charges. There are military reasons for doing it. He is between jackson inside vicksburg, wanting to take care of this siege. But then there are men in the field screaming, 40 of these kids are injured, 50 already dead and confederate fortifications. Pemberton requests a truce and explains that. At the battle of fort gibson the confederate commander approached him after the battle and grant said no. There are these really cool decisions. When he wrote to lincoln about one of these charges, in his official report, minimal casualties, he was so afraid of getting sacked that he didnt want to pile up an indictment against himself. He is learning how to fight as he goes along. A strange kind of dialect here. Grant is incapable of taking vicksburg in 1862, doesnt know how to do it. Vicksburg at the same time isnt the most important city in the confederacy. Only when memphis goes down does vicksburg pop up. Same with grant. All of a sudden he is right there when vicksburg becomes the bastian so it is a great heavyweight fight. Before that was lightly armed but after grant invaded vicksburg, after the navy invaded vicksburg, bombarded the place and wound up being a rebel victory. In memphis. They built up defenses, vicksburg at its peak. It is like fraser and ali and is a great battle. It was a match with temperate in. He has geography to battle and has to fight a battle to maneuver. Imagine taking an army. They talk about sherman in carolina, took an army from louisiana, 160 miles from louisiana and crossed the river, all that area was flooded. Entire towns were underwater and he gets that army down there and across the river and 5 battles in a month, boxes into vicksburg, wins what churchill called the most important battle of the civil war, defeats jackson and after these two assaults, i dont want to take anymore casualties. Not actually a verse, when you have to lose men you have to lose men but we will do it anyway we can to win and that is what strikes me about all these mistakes, stubborn resolve and had the confidence of his men and he is one of them. There was a story about being so reticent in the camp, a different kind of guy. You mention the battle of Champion Hill on may 16th, you state categorically. And the decisive battle of the war, strategically more battles on the eastern theater. You get a lot of agreement in this room on this point, that sort of moment after the wilderness when grant decides to do what no other Union Commander had done to that point when facing robert e lee, not so bad but turned south toward richmond in a series of battles. If you guys want to argue about that, i would like to hear that argument. I wouldnt argue but richmond fits my paradigm of the war. That is part of the larger campaign, to destroy this army, not to take richmond, in the campaign, shared the valley. The same thing in vicksburg, pushing. And digging toward the confederates. The cruel irony of people of vicksburg, no one is there to combat the raw yankee divisions that are all over the area burning corn and stealing cattle and shooting mules and carrying back to camp everything edible to start out the garrison. Sherman learns to fight like that and take that kind of battle and fighting to georgia. That is the big outtake of the battle itself. He fought in a different way and i read sams book. It could be a companion piece, a real deep difference. Hard war torn apart it vicksburg and here in vicksburg is pursued as relentless resolve. When you see grant going into mississippi in 1862 which is an undervalued campaign and a turning point of the entire civil war he crosses the mississippi and in november and december, northcentral mississippi, followed the railroad to jackson, shift right and go out to vicksburg, he has to come back but in and out he lost control of his troops, in iowa and indiana, went on occupation duty in tennessee. It reminded me of vietnam actually and redevelop a hatred in the country. Using snuff for example, gums or tobacco. And tools in the field and equipment resting. It sounds minor. This is a cultural degradation where you are reducing the person you know on the simple cultural scale and an atrocity against them. We are not talking, to free slaves. Grant didnt want it. They put 21,000 union blue. He, not lincoln. And one country declare slavery, illegally, they can to do that but under the power, war powers given to him he had a right slavery is a state issue. Lincoln couldnt end slavery on the border states. Even slaves and union occupied territory but he doesnt want to begin a social revolution but his troops he three things. They see slaves helping the confederacy but africanamericans on the field, some are picking cotton and not shooting at us. It is sold by munitions for the rebels and in addition to that all the rebel fortifications including caves women hid in in the next berg our dog by slaves. We hurt them and the key, my whole book, they tell the story. These are kids not from abolitionist families, writing home to fathers almost comprehensively and are against slavery. If you went to war and traditions war against slavery. We steal one and are closer to victory and grant loses control of the army. He cant stop the village and burning, he cant keep in northern soldiers out of the home of confederates. They have a case, the army went wild ripping earrings off of the lobes of women, going into their private chests, pulling out there lingerie, book burnings, and it is complete in the letters. Grant pools that together and gets more policy and get authorization from lincoln. And feel slaves and recruit them. Grant is running a war, trying to engineer a social revolution. He began to see it hurt slavery and bringing himself closer to victory. That is grant the abolitionist, military abolition. That is the way it could be done, by military action. The real strength of both of your books is your character development, almost like a novel even though i read about these folks for a long time i really got a new sense of their personalities. You were particularly drone to. Soon it before and after that, let me just see something. In the book, you said it had momentum. And he is running like a novelist. He is interested and intrigued. Hes interested in the mystery of things. He tries to put you behind the person news eyes at the point join they make a decision. Often hindsight distorts. And in this case he is writing join the decision is being made see almost are leaving with the character. We both come from newspaper background. This is how you write the stories. Catapult readers in. I will always lean into bringing out characters before you turn the next page. Donald before i get the characters, let me answered the question before that. I do think that grant, moved by his comfortableness was a very significant moment. The generals tended what joe hooker did a test was built, the casualties that grant took it wilderness were greater than what kurt took it. They skedaddled back and forth. That is what union stockholders to produce an interesting moment and everybody cheers and so forth. But i wouldnt. Out that there are some interesting little aspects to it. Grant became famous for staying, we are going to fight it out on this live if it takes all summer. And this byword in american homes. And the other think that is kind of famous is that grant was no longer going for real estate or something stupid like he was going for the man. Join done with his nonsense right. With this sort of idea. Actually, join grant moves by his left, it is doing the opposite of fighting it out on that live over summer and lee was more than happy to fight it out on that live all summer if that what it took. And grant was abandoning the live. In the second think is where is it going. He is going for the real estate. Because he can. He essentially warfare made it impossible to attack lee. So the two very famous things that is going to do is go for lee personally and those are myths. And it never, the following and find out all summer, just became the byword of the grant campaign. This guy is just so tough. What was tough. But he going to fight it out in that live. Anyway, having said that, also i did want to note that i know the night at vicksburg was a nasty warfare but my version became later, was to bite grants army five minutes and after vicksbu vicksburg. Were very close close here. The destruction of jackson and shermans march and when he really does cut his supply lines all of the to meridian in vicksburg, is like five minutes later we have what looks to be an awful lot like a reversal for the carolinas and the savanna march. Thus the character. We are telling stories in the way you tell the stories are you that you hang them off of characters and whenever i find myself not doing that, who are we writing about here because you can get chase to carry narrative. They will carriages great. Cool air garth, one of my favorites love her. Just unlikely here. You can get clara barton to carry the narrative. Black journalists just are who will seize the first black soldiers into richland and you can have my chester carry the but somebody has to carry the narrative and the way my book is structured is really like a relay race between characters. We just hand the baton off as we go through the narratives. Dont get most who is the wonderful character. It they can carry narrative in the big pitcher way that you are talking about. We can get the sort of a larger meaning among speak which is quite second, we can keep this work going forever like this. This is like the successful model for eternal warfare. We can look at mostly in terms of he was considered the error of the smallpox, france dorian. He was considered the heir of all of those great romantic americans and revolutionary war fighters. Environment guns and threequarter hats behind trees. He was also the air of this idea that we started by sir walter scott, who sold a halfmillion nobles before the civil war. At this nightly kind of sure all rick code of the south. This is self brought into the north and didnt as much. But as you can see, must be at that, this kind of ideal southern, the capillary, boy was he back. Buckling guy as he came to fight. He was really something. Anyway, i think of my book is work hard work, i think they were based on whether or not your reader is going to turn the page to see what happens to that character. Host i think a sense of place is really important. But the hill country, it was spectacular and youve got to situate your characters geographically at all points in time. To have the reader make sense of that character. S. C. Gwynne is one of my most favorite pieces of history in the world. Host and that can only come by walking the ground. Going out into the battlefield with our common friend. Hes an engineer, amateur historian but wrote a magnificent Geographic History of the battle of pittsburgh. Any came and took me on his wing. I didnt know much about the battle. He was visiting here and took some tours. Donald we first met there and he took me out on the battlefield we came back, i guess we both had a couple of talks. But he said miller, you know why you are going to bite this in pittsburgh. I said no. He said because you dont know nothing about it. [laughter] and i said well, you are right in the first. [laughter] and let me explain this like a point. We are arguing with a lot of other historians and we are missing the big pitcher and maybe come in fresh, youll get a different sense and dive boat battle than we are writing about in the campaign and so, we can talk about this later with the most important think that i read on the battle was not about the battle at all. It was absolute. Join i read that, i said that i cannot write a book that isnt about race. Because thomas is such a major character and he rides into town with two holsters and a gun and he has no other possessions, he has a saddlebag Thomas Jefferson mississippi oxford if you will. And he is the bunch of slaves that he bought in haiti. He bought some land outside of town and the swamp out there, they were in that swamp and protect themselves but the slaves and the others join their naked. They plastered their bodies with clay. So they beat off the mosquitoes. They hauled the wood out of there, they hold all of the kind of materials they use to build seven homes. And then was sent does is when he is finished he has no silver no chandeliers and doorknob. Slaves take we do do the mississippi and they buy furniture and silverware ten layers. And his wife now is the pleasure. It was sent a card 1830s 40s that shared me how new the south was out here. As a frontier. Its not going with the wind. It is these are ferociously entrepreneurial planners who then did it on their own with enormous numbers of slaves. For the slaves and the whites it was stressful he enormous. As a booming area in the south bite 1958. He goes to work, now he never beat me gratin the novel but join satan returns from the war, the plantation is gone. The slaves have run away. Guess what, in three years, i who shelving, saddle and galena mississippi, plain simple man, took him apart. We do think of a character and here he is, doing that in 1868, and the next year he winds the first important balance of the civil war. The next year he takes pittsburgh in the next year, he goes east to fight delaney. And next year he takes them to surrender. 1868, he is president of the united states. In galena. In the white house eight years. And he just drummed out of the army. Until Everything Else before that. Host we have just a few minutes left. I want ask you about some of the influences in some of the people that influenced you as a historian or as a writer may be a long list the make the list is it too long. S. C. Gwynne sam we will begin with you. I think the longest day. And i think that was the first real history that i remember right. I saw that you could write about dday or something and an interesting book. Along this way i guess im going to answered this question by staying who not today so much but manchester news churchill. And robert haro and massey news, on russia. These were enormously fluid juul for me and shared me i guess halverson would be there is it too. Shared me what the history could be i guess and what that was to me was notably good stories good storytelling but also coupled with a lesson if you will for the reader. A meaning. Your delivering the character and mean what is his name. What difference does it make to this person or this war or this kingdom or anything else. And i just always felt that history should be a really entertaining think to read and there is no reason why it couldnt be. I think there was something, you mentioned bullet by bullet. I never heard that before the bullet by bullet, it is certainly, i like to read it. It is a different kind of history. It is staying and excessive focus on the trees in expense of the forest and there is a fair amount of that going on. Not mentioning any people. [laughter]. I grew up in a small town in pennsylvania. His father taught my sister. I knew the town well but i was so impressed with how in the rabbit novel he got it exactly right. Better than the real think. And then to be able to write like that and bring back the past, intact. It is pretty powerful so theres an amazing book called death comes to the arch. The book was just one of the Great American novels about a group of dominican priests is that of omission in southwest in the 16th century. It is terrific area history,. S. C. Gwynne i was in grad school, knows we did was history. Youll start study the war of 1812. You store with historians you study with them is what did they see what is their interpretation. I am not running anything. I stumble into the library monday and i see this multivolume history by alan nevin. I actually read all eight volumes. Transfixing. And really solidly researched. Not by a phd. I consider him the greatest historian. That book, was a game changer for me and getting me interested in civil war history. Ive written ten books. Those are the kind of books that really brought me. I would see another one was because book the bridge. The roebling news, canada, the river, engineering, politics, all wrapped in one. Who wouldve. Host inc. You both for being with us today. I hope you will give our authors a warm round of applause. [applause]. Thank you for being here and i am sure there are books for sale in the back. If some of you havent made the purchase yet, thank you