Degree in writing in addition to his book hes of the author of rebel yell, and empire of the silver moon, it was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in National Book critics circle award. Sam spent most of his career as a journalist including bureau chief, National Correspondent and Senior Editor for time and as executive editor of texas monthly. We are delighted to have you here with us this evening your latest book, hymns of the republic, the story of the final year of the American Civil War and to my immediate right is Donald Miller and i hope i can call you don. He is the author of several New York Times bestsellers including masters of the air, americas bomber boys who bought the air war against germany which is currently being developed as a miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and tom hanks which is evobably the closest ill ever get to meeting those guys. [laughter] he previously worked as a consultant for the hbo series, pacific, anchorage abated to several episodes of american experience. Doctor miller received his phdpe from the university of maryland and joined the faculty at Lafayette College in m tanzanian 1978. We say lafayette and im sorry but fayette. Hes spinning in his grave. [laughter] john is the john Henry Mccracken at Lafayette College and we are happy to have you here to discuss your brandnew book, vicksburg grants campaign to stop the confederacy. I would like to start out if i may by asking each of you to give a brief overview of your book and if you would, tell us why you chose this particular subject to write on. Sam, lets review. Okay, ill take a back at that. I had written a biography of Stonewall Jackson two years ago and it was a life but covered the first two years of the war where he died in may 1863. I started to do further reading after i finished that book in the final year of the war, at the end of the war, i was struck by how different the war was and he absolutely was a different place. Much more bitter, vengeful, hate filled, dire, extreme, whatever the world might be. It was such a hard war sometimes historians have used the term ban box perversely discover describe the early work, meaning young men leaving small towns while bands played with strings of glory and it died hard. There was a certain innocence about the war. I just thought, not only was the latter war far more extreme place but i think that it influenced the legacy of the war. Then when i looked at doing that and i thought i said you know, i knew bruce cannon, won a pulitzer in 1953 with a wonderful book called [inaudible] at appomattox and that was a book about the last year of the war but was seen from grants army. Sherman was not covered by it. I thought to myself it be great to do the last year of the war and i thought im sure someones done that 75 times by now but in fact, knots. Nobody has done it. There have been grant versus lee books and there was 1861 and appomattox in april 1865 but not the last year it to be the c like a very valid lands or aperture lens through which to look atid the war because it starts roughly at least in my book with grants arrival to take command of the union armies and roughly app appomattox which is roughly one year later and you have these things that happen in the election of 64 and grants march and the advent of the 180,000 black soldiers in the union army and so forth so it seemed like the original driver i guess was to capture this very much harder war which came about because the south refusal to lose on leashes all sorts of nasty demons that in addition to the economic destruction of the south with the great casualty list who have these guerrilla wars and you have these anti civilian wars here of sherman and all these things that happen because the cell phone lose but anyway thats thats the best i can do. Thanks. Well, im a storyteller always looking for a good story and i was shopping around for something and i was watching ken burns series and here i will get in trouble because i know ken and i thought its a sketchy kind of trail of the battle of vicksburg and his magnificent documentary on the civil war which reignited an interest in the civil war in an important way. I was curiousnt about that and y the western war was so undervalued. I started to do reading on it but transforming the experience was coming down here and i was struck by the majesty of the site. Small town of 4200, commanding view of the river and a horseshoe turn of the river in 1863 leads this mysterious delta to the northcom louisiana country with the bayous and i was struck also by Tulane University in new orleans and did work for the museum and looking up the tremendous records they have of the casualties at vicksburg an amazing number of people died from disease and small box of thank god, not yellow fever and i thought maybe this thing and i read a couple of books on vicksburg and there are good books on vicksburg but i wanted to do a broad compass. I see this thing is a battle for the whole mississippi valley. It begins with [inaudible] coming up to the golf and taking newe orleans in april 1862 and that opened up that part of the mississippi. Grant comes downns the other weight with the gunboats and the two fleets, ironclad fleet and the saltwater frigates and in the summer of 1862 and they cant take the place. They dont get the army cooperation. I thought and then grant comes down and he feels and fails again and again and its a Long Campaign and i thought i wanted to put this campaign into some kind of context where it just wasnt bullet by bullet. I noticed recently maybe getting off tough but i read an article that the attendance at the National Parks are down and parked either same people arent contextual but they dont want to go bullet by bullet description but what about slavery and what role does it play herein after gettysburg who came to pick up the bodies and did families come down here and what role did womens play in the role of gettysburg. So there was great diaries inside vicksburg by women caught in this circle of fire inside the city in great diaries of mistresses outside, joe davis had a granddaughter who is living in these [inaudible] and i found over here in the archives 500 page unpublished biography by her and its a daughter diary or autobiography and it was spectacular. I really wanted to treat it as a campaign, not a battle. I dont think battles when wars. We won world war ii because it was a Gigantic Campaign began on the day they went to [inaudible] and individual battles mattered. That is the same thing with the civil war but it wasnt one at tshiloh or anywhere else in a single battle but it was a Relentless Campaign and i think grant came up with in this campaign with the mississippi and yeah the river was open and it was an important thing and not trying to dismiss them but the big outtake on the battle is he learned how to beat the south. He fought, what was at that time considered, a total war. It was pretty rough stuff. It was relentless. I think sherman learned to fight for grants and vice versa and i kept running into sherman in Light Reading and he called for restraint and grant said no, go after it. I guess i kept finding things that didnt fit the narrative that grant was not supposed to have a supply line but he had a hell of a supply line. Then a guy named warren [inaudible] took over the battlefield and took me to his home and he has done, as you know, minute detailed every wagon that grant got hundreds of wagons a, day in louisiana through louisiana and on steamboats to a place called grand golf and out to his army and being a quartermaster in mexico you know how to handle that. Myth after mythh seem to be exploded in this whole story so i wanted to try to tell right and tell it in a book that would be read by federal reader woman as well as a man, not just narrow military history [inaudible] where did that myth come from . Now i realize that i learned not that long ago but the myth was grant was headed to vicksburg, cuts free of his supply line and it had never been done before but he did not do that but where did that come from . Its like everything i read it came from [inaudible] who was his military secretary and grant approve the book and it worked it self into the memoirs. The funny thing of the memoirs is if you go where he says that he took the supply line, seven, ten pages later he says well, we really had a supply line but we caught it at jackson because it got too long and vulnerable and i thought he has it right in your been he has it right in the book. Very persistent myth. It is. I have had the pleasure of reading both of your books and one thing they are very good so if you have not purchased one you better go do it. What really struck me is how much in sync they were. Its almost as if you took your book and your book and but for the Chattanooga Campaign you could pretty much follow grants military career and in some ways shermans route from the beginning to the end of the war. Id like to ask you and you have alluded to this a little bit already bute from your differet perspectives how would you rate grant as a commander and is there anything you discovered about grant in your research that surprised you that you do not know . I will take a whack at that. Ill take a specific angle on that. Grant has a reputation for im not a grand scholar and i should say that and vicksburg was his alleged masterpiece in many ways but what i learned in writing about the overland campaign, the battles grant fought against the wilderness, cold harbor down to petersburg was of the meaning of they called the grant soared the hammer. He was relentless and he just put his head down drove it through a wall. But when you look at what that actually meant it is true, he was but here is the perspective that i had on him. You can take this however you want to but was this good or bad or indifferent but what im talking about is the battle of spotsylvania and governor warren was one of his generals in order to go and lee has set up his trenches and these were mean trenches, they just learn how to do this, these things over 12 feet thick full of nasty things in front of them and would reinforced dirt that was artillery proof so lee has himself up in a crescent and at one point of the crescent 6mile crescent warren was ordered to attack and6 warren said theres no way we will take that and warrant was an engineer and a very fine engineer and you you cannot take it by frontal assault. The chances were so slim that he was ordered to do it. He did it. His men were cut to pieces. He was then ordered again to do it and again he said he protested and he said you will not take this on a frontal assault. Tagain, the men were cut to pieces. It happened a third time and this iss i write about this in y book and it happened a third time and finally it happened a part time and each time and finally warren said no, effectively destroyed his military career paid the pointd was warrens point was this is insane. You are feeding these men to slaughter and they will all die but why are we doing this and grant saw it different. Grant sought holistically, if you will, on the 6mile line he wantedfe to pin these men here o focus attention here and he with lee as a whole and he was willing to let a lot of people die. If you are warns men and youre being fed to the chopper and will be horribly maintain maimed or killed to see that meaning of who grant was on the actual worms eye level set in on again and again it was gigantic casualties and granted it famously at cold harbor but whatever you think of grant as a commander and i wont get into it because im not really qualified about shiloh and donaldson in chattanooga but one thing is true that he was as lincoln said he was the general who understood the mathematics of the war in the mathematics of the war were basically going to all cut my wrist and you will cut your wrist and well see who pleads a first grade grant understood that and it was a military tactic that you saw being read out in the form of just absolutely massive Union Casualties in the overland campaign. Im not saying its bad or good about grant but people in the south saw him as a butcher and i dont think he was a butcher but he was willing to do what people like George Mcclellan would never have done in a million years but i dont think george meade would have done that in a million years but people like, whoever the commanders were pope and burnside and they never would have done that. Grant was willing to do it and lincoln approved. I did really answer your question. Thats fine. Yeah, grant is a hard guy to understand but i have tremendous appreciation for grants and vicksburg is a masterpiece but also its a real testing ground because mark twain points out that in every terrain and every battle situation whether fighting amphibious warfare and the delta where the serpentine rivers lead through there and hes taking recklessly taking gunboats up there. I do think people realize he sent sherman to a place called rolling fork and there was no way i dont think sherman and four or five of his best gunboats he would have lost them and he wouldve lost vicksburg but he was thrown up by guerrillas and calvary and sherman saved him. He was behind him about four, 5 miles and didnt march my date night march with candles in their guns and he put mud on the votes and when the confederate ordered them they handed out rifles and lincoln was furious with him for that and he kept making these mistakes and hes learning and learning and the other thing is he wasnt forthright about a lot of things. He made to charges like the one you describe it vicksburg and as soon as he got there and both of them were suicides. There were military reasons for doing it, Joseph Johnson was in jackson raising an army and this is between jackson and vicksburg and he went to take care of this as quickly asg, possible and avd the siege but then he goes to bury his dead and theres men in the field screaming and some, maybe 40 of the kids are injured, 50 are dead and the stacked is waving over the fortifications and finally pemberton goes and requests a truce and grant doesnt put he never explains that. At the battle of fort gibson the confederate commander approached him right after the battle and said, can we permit to go on the battlefield and bury the dead. Bute he said no. They were cruel decisions. When he wrote to langan about the charges of vicksburg it was one sentence. In his official report is one sentence. Minimal casualties he writes. Thats it. He was so afraid of getting sacked that he did not want tont pile up an indictment against himself and because hes making these mistakes and hes learning how to fight as he goes along. Its a strange dialect here but grant isnt capable as a general of taking vicksburg in 1862. He doesnt know how to do it. Hes not equipped mentally for it. Vicksburg at the same time isnt the most part city in the confederacy. The early part of the year was only when] but memphis goes down does vicksburg popup is important. Same with brantford all of a sudden hes right there when vicksburg becomes the bastian of the mississippi so its 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. The defiant city held on. They built up their defenses so vicksburg at its peek and grant at it peak when they miami. Its like frasier and ali. Its a great battle. Because brants not only fighting just a match with pemberton. A 10second knockdown but he has geography to battle and then fight a battle of maneuver. They talk bit shermans march in chains took army from the bend, louisiana, 160 miles, through louisiana, south of vicksburg and then crossed the river on april 1st, just getting all that area was flooded. Entire towns were underwater. And he gets that army down there in a month. Amazing feat and then across the river, and then wins five battles in a month. Boxes him into vicksburg, whens what churchill called the most important battle of the world, chapel hill. Defeats johnston at jackson, and then hes got after these two assaults, he said im going to outcamp them because i dont want to take anymore casualty. So ease not casualty averse but when sam said, you have to lose men, but preferably do it any way we can to win and thats what strikes me about grant. All these mistakes and everything, stub been resolve, absolutely stubborn. He had the confidence of his men because home one of them. Catched with them, ate with them, loved stories, the story but him being reticent and closed, not around the guys in camp. I learn a lot about grant. Great appreciation for him. Now mentioned the battle of Champion Hill on may 16inch. The your book you state categorically in your opinion, that it was the decisive battle of the war and strategically more important than any of the battles in the eastern theater. And youll probably get a lot of agreement in this room on that point. However, sam, theres also that moment after the will wilderness when grant decides to do what no other Union Commander had done to that point when facing rabbiter e. Lee not to go back but turn back and head towards richmond. You want to argue which one is more significant id like to hear that argument. Go ahead. I wouldnt argue. Richmond sits my paradigm of the war, thats a layin campaign. The individual battles are part of the larger campaign. And the campaign is to destroy lees army, not to take scrimped he was relentless about pursuing it. Sends sheridan into the valley to one a scorched earth operation. Its aggressive siege in vicksburg, and the great cruel irony nor people of vicksburg is the longer they healed on the more they lost. No one there is to combat the marauding yankee divisions over the year, burning corn and cotton and stealing cattle, shooting mules, carrying back to camp everything that is edible and destroying Everything Else to starve out their gay son. So sherman learns too fight like that and takes that battle into georgia. Thats the big outtake of the battle itself, how grant fought in a very different way, and i read sams book. I liked its lot. Could be a companion piece. We have one real deep difference, and that is that i argue that hard war began at vicksburg, not in the east, and here in vicksburg is pursued with relentless resolveoff see grant go into mississippi in 1862, which is unvalued campaign. I think its the turning point of the entire civil war. Crosses into mississippi and in november and december, North Central mess miss, wants to follow the railroad down to jackson and then shift right and and go after vicksburg, he supply line is cut but going in and out the lost control of his troops. Young kids from wisconsin, iowa, indiana, a lot of them on occupation duty in tennessee. They developed a hate hatred for everything and reminds me of everything. Remind me of vietnam. Develop a hatred for nerve in the country. Even womens habit of using snuff, running the gums we tobacco and iowa boys would complain but the way they didnt take care of their barns the way iowa kids did. Found tools in the feet and equipment rusting and dogs and pigs unfenced. Sounds minor but this is the beginning of kind of a cultural deprivation, and using a person and its easy to commit atrocity. This is social warfare and becomes a campaign to free slaves. Grant didnt went it to be that way. He becomes a liberator, he freed 110,000 slaves and put 21,000 of them in union blue. He, not lincoln. The proclamation doesnt free a single slave. One country declares slavery, and the other country says they cant do, the confederacy, but grant understood he could because under the war powers given to him he had a right to good after slaves. Slavery is a state issue. Lincoln couldnt end slavery in the border states where the proclamation was passed, still slaves at the bored slaves and slaves in union occupied territory but when he goes into mississippi he doesnt want to win a social revolution, this troops see slaves help the confederacy. If those africa africanamericans arent in the field southern boys are picking cotton and not shooting us, cotton is sold to buy ammunition for the rebels and in addition to that, all the rebel forthifications, including the caves that women hid in the vicksburg, theyre dug by slaves. So, slaves we hurt them and i the key for me in my whole book, was the letters, the soldier letters, they tell the story. These are kids who arent from abolitionist families, the kids from abolition families are writing homes to fathers who are copperheads saying theyre against the slavery and the dad says, you come home. I told you if you want to war ask turn this into a war against slavery, you come back home. And he said one less of them and were closer to victory with steal one, were closer to victory and grant loses control of his army. Cant stop the pillage or burning and cant keep northern soldiers out of the homes of confederates. The army went aisled up there, ripping earrings off of the lobes of women, going into their private chests and pulling out lingerie. Book burnings, and its replete in the letters. Grant finally pulls that together and makes it war policy because he gets the authorization from lincoln. Now theyll just steal slaves dont just steal slaves, recruit them and put them in yankee blue. Grant is trying to engineer a social revolution he wanted no part of but began to see that to hurt slavery was to bring himself closer to victory and thats grant the abolitionist, military abolition. Thats the only way slavery could have been end by military action. One of the real strengths of your books is your character development, almost like a novel in some ways, even though ive read about these folks for a long time. Really get a new sense of their personalities, and we talk about grant already, but theres some other really interesting people, david dixon porter, sigh simon chase, sarah morgan. And of course, sherman, but among all these other characters, there is someone that you are particularly drawn to . Before he answers that, let me say something. He wrote a hell of a book. Because it had momentum, and hes writing like a novelist, he is interested in intrigue, hes interested in the mystery of things. He tries to put you behind the persons eyes at the point when they make the decision. Often hindsight distorts, and in his case he is writing when the decision is being made. So your almost living with the characters. I thought that was a real strength of your back. We both come from newspaper browns and this is how you write stories. You have to pull readded inch i put a thing over the desk, will the reader turn the next page. You do that with character. Before i get to character, let me just answer the question before that. I want to say i do think that grants moved by his left after wilderness was a very significant moment. The Union Generals tended to do what joe hooker did at chancellorsville and the casualties that grant took at wilderness were greater than what hooker took. They skedaddled across the river. That what Union Soldiers do. Its an interesting moment and everybody cheers but i wanted to point out that theres some interesting little aspects to it. Grant became famous for saying, were going to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer. Thats became a bye wore in American Homes homes and the thg that was famous, grant would no longer going for real estate or something stupid like a city. He was going for lee, for the man. Were done with this nonsense, this sort of idea. And actually when grant moved by his left, he is doing the opposite of fighting it out on that line. Lee was more than happy to fight it out on the line all summer. Grant was aban abandoning the line, and where is grant going . Hes going for the real estate because he cant essentially trench warfare made it impossible to keep attacking lee. The two very famous things he is going to do go for lincoln lee personally and going to those are myths, and it never the line fight it out all summer became the bye word of the grant campaign. This guy is so tough. He was tough but wasnt going to fight it out on that line. Anyway, he said that. Also, i did want to note, no one denied at vicksburg was nasty warfare but my version of the beginning of the hard war that came later was by grants army, doesnt by grants people five minutes vicksburg. We are very close here. The destruction of jackson. Shermans march where he does cut his supply lines to meridian from vicksburg so five minutes later we have what looks like a full dress rehearsal for the carolinas and the savannah march. Back to character. I agree entirely with what you said. Were telling stories and you hang them off characters and whenever i find myself not doing that, who are we writing about sneer because you can get simon. Chase to carry a narrative. Clara barton, unlikely hero. And Thomas Morris chester sees the first black soldiers come into richmond. Somebody has to carry the narrative, and the way my book is structured, its like relay race between characters. Just hand the baton of. Get to mosby when we get to most by, and mostby can compare a narrative in the big picture way. Get to the larger meaning meanif mose by which is wait a sect. We can keep the war going over like this. This is a successful model for eternal guerrilla warfare. Mossby was period the air of the swamp fox. The heir of all the great romantic American Revolutionary war fighters, and hats behind trees. The heir of those people and also the heir of this idea of started by Sir Walter Scott who sold a half million novel nets year just before the civil war of ivanhoe in this knight locoed of the south that the south bought into and the north didnt as much but you can see mosby, this ideal southern the plume head cavalier. He was the swashbuckling guy who ever came down the pike. Really something. And so its if my books work or dont work, they work i think based on whether or not the read are is going to turn the page to see what happens to that character. I think, too, and i think we agree on this, sense of place is really important. I think of robert carrows chapter inline don johnson about the hill country, and its spectacular. And you got to situate your character geographically at all points in time to have the reader make sense out of that character. That carrow thing is one of my most favorite cases of history in the world. He has an excellent essay on the place. And that can only come from walking the ground. Remember going on the battlefield with our common friend, warren gray, an engineer an amateur historian and wrote a magnificent geo graphic history of the battle of vicksburg and warren took me under his wing. I didnt know much about the battle. We first met there and he took me out on the battlefield with warren and we came back, and i guess we had a coup of mops and he said, miller, you know white youre going write the best history on vicksburg bus you dont know an fing thing about that. Said, ed, youre right on the first point. But i can jed said let me explain the second point. Were battling in the trees and argue with a historians, and were missing the big picture. Maybe you come in fresh. Youll get a different sense of this thing. A different type of battle than were writing about, campaign and things. So, we could talk about this later but the most important book i read on the battle is not on the battle at all. The book by william faulk. I said i cannot write a book that is not about race beau thomas rides into town with two holsters and guns and has no other possession. Satle bags. The town is jefferson, mississippi, octoberford, if oxford, and sefton about some land and they went. The swamp and the went in there naked and they caked placer their body with clay to beat off the mosquitoes and hauled wood out of there, and they hauled all the kind of materials they needed to built his home and then what he does is he doesnt have silverware no chandeliers no doorknob. He hires a wagon, slaves take the wagon to mississippi and buy furniture and silverware and chandeliers and the goes into down and buys a wife. Shows me how new the south was. This is frontier. Its not gone with the wind which was published in the same year at absolute maximum. These ferocious people who went this on their own with the slaves and the death rates of the whites was enormous. The booming cotton area in the sotheby 1858. Sunton goes to war. Huh never meet grant but when he returns with his son from the war, his plantation is gone. The ground is fallow. The slaves had run away. Its over. And guess what . In three years, a guy who was shelving saddles in galena, mississippi, plain, simple man, took him apart and took the south apart, ulysses grant. When you think of a character, here he is doing that in 1861, and the next year he wins the first important battle of the civil war at donaldson, takes an unconditional surrender, the next year he takes vicksburg and then going east to fight lee and next year takes lees surrender and think commander of the army and the next year hes the president of the united states, galena to the white house in eight years, and head drum out of the army for drinking. A great character. We have just a few minutes left. I want to ask you about some of the influences, the people that have influenced you as a historian or as a writer and there may be a long list, but dont make the list too long. Sam, well start with you. I think if i go back in my own personal history, the first history that i loved was cornelius ryan, bridge too far and the longest day. And i think that was the first real history i kind of remember. I saw what it could be youve could bright dday and have it be an interesting book. Along the way i guess ill answer this by saying who not too much today. But manchesters churchill, and a great book. And robert carrow, and masseys stuff on russia. These were enormously influential with me and showed me what i guess hallber symptom on we war, too anded so to me what history could be and really good stories and good story, telling but also coupled with a lesson for the reader, meaning, some. Youre delivering the character in order to deliver meaning, what does this mean . What difference did this make to this person or this war or this kingdom or anything else . And so that was he just always felt that history should be a really entertaining thing to read and there was no reason why it couldnt be. Just and i think theres something you mentioned bullet by bullet. Never heard that before. Bullet by bullet is its certainly i like to read it. But its a different kind of history. It is seeing its excessive focus on the trees at the cost of the forest. How about your influence. I grew up in a small town called reeding reading, pennsylvania, and john updike is from reading, and i knew the town well and some impressed how in the rabbit novels he get it exactly right. Its almost better than the real thing. And to be able to write like that to bring back the past , in cat, with all its essentialist. And the book death comes to the archbishop and that is one of to Great American novels about a group of dominican priests who set up a mission in the southwest in the 16th century. Its terrific. And history, francis parkman. I was in grad school and all we did was historiography. You study who it thehart jane but the war of 1812. Its interpretation and it . A seminar and doing that and im not learning anything. I stumbled into the library and i see that multivolume history by allen nevins, and i read all eight volumes. The coming of the war, the war, transfictioning transfixing, and solidly researched and commodity by a ph. D. And that book was a gamechanger for me and getting me interested in civil war history, a little hardly a specialist. Written ten books and only this last is on the civil war. So im kind of a trespasser on the peoples ground. So those books grabbed me. And another one was David Mcculloughs brooklyn bridge. The bridge, politics, all wrapped in one. Who would have thunk you could do a book like that on the brooklyn bridge. Million dollar book for him. Thank you both for being with us today, and hope youll give our authors a warm round of applause. [applause] thank you for beg here. Im sure thats books for sale in the back. Of you havent made your purchase yet. Thank you. Great questions. Thank you very much. Kept it moving well. A special evening edition of the washington journal on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Our guests, governor john kearny joins us to discuss the covid19 response in his state, and historian, author and commentator, doris carnes good win will talk but her 2018 book, leadership in turbulent times. Joint the conversation tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Television has changed since cspan back 41 years ago but the Mission Impossible continues to provide an unfelt at thed view of government. We brought you primary election coverage texas president ial impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch on television, online, or listen on the free radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily washington jacques prom. Cspan created by private industry americas cable