Was so upset by the whole affair that he wrote a letter to his uncle, and in the letter he we went to bed Old Fashioned, conservative, compromised union wigs, and waked up start raving mad abolitionists. Plus, spencer crew on the great migration of africanamericans from the south to the midwest, after world war i. Workers to a lack of help prepare the mediations and supplies needed for the war effort. Began to do was figure out, where else can we find people to hold these jobs . And for the first time ever, positions for africanamericans in northern industry began to become available. There is no reason to move to the north. Because there are jobs. Tv, allcan history weekend, every weekend. Only on cspan3. Civil war authors discuss how they started writing about their topics, their process of researching, and at some of the unexpected information they have discovered. The Gettysburg Heritage Center hosted this hourlong talk. My name is tammy myers, welcome everybody. I am pleased to welcome our distinguished panel. Our moderator for the evening will be storyteller and comedian tim parchman who also happens to be the illustrator of. Iscovering gettysburg without any further introduction, i am going to present to you mr. Tim hartman. [applause] historian orther a an author. I just draw silly pictures. Im happy to be here today to discuss, discovering gettysburg. Im just going to throw your name, and give me a brief introduction of who you are, so the folks out here can know what you are up to, and maybe tell us about the book you just published. Let me introduce first, my partner in crime, dr. Stephen coleman. Hello. Yes, we have been very pleased that the book was published by is beatty. Tvus it is called discovering an unconventional introduction to the town, and the battle that made it famous. For 50 years,er and as my career in theater waned, i found my interest in theater waning with it. I needed a new interest. I said, lets go see the beautiful foliage in pennsylvania. And that little altercation in gettysburg, maybe we can find out a little bit more about that. I found a hotel and discovered the battlefield guides. Is try toe have done come at this whole question of the gettysburg phenomenon, from a fresh point of view. It is not academic. Deep foot noted history. It is a combination of an approach to take a look at the town, what is this town, who are these people who live here now, and who have lived here in the past . And of course, happy talk about gettysburg without discussing the battle . So, we got into the history of the battle and that led me to the next step, which was, because i like to hike, well, why dont we go out to the battlefield . And that became a series of anecdotes. I climbed down into the railroad cut. The first time i saw lost avenue. That was an amazing event. So we put together this book, andvering gettysburg i dont want to let him get away completely here. As he does this kind of work on the side, which is quite amazing, as an illustrator. The book is filled with caricatures. There is only one photo of a human being, and that is a friend of mine who is posed in that wonderful place, devils den, where they did a false picture and they brought that confederate soldier over where they posed, and i had my friend sitting there and do the duplicate, sidebyside. Andthats the gist of it, if you have an opportunity to read it, we very much hope you enjoy it. Jeagene barr. Barr. Name is gebe a civil waror of soldier and his lady. It is about a captain and a woman he met in camp, in peoria. 75 letters between the two. It is a civil war romance, courtship. Both very educated, very religious people. And through my research i discovered a number of unpublished source materials about or donald son, shiloh, and fort donaldson, and gettysburg. Myn i am not doing these, daytime job is that im president and ceo of the Pennsylvania Chamber of industry. Largest the states largest advocacy group. Scott mingus. I am scott mingus. Im a scientist and executive and the pope and paper industry. I maybe the only civil war author who makes his own paper. I have written 18 books. My specialty is the two weeks before the battle of gettysburg. There are four monuments here at the battlefield here to the first battle. And more than a thousand, to the second battle. Many people arent aware that gettysburgrates took on friday, june 26, and had to turn around and fight their way back into a town that they had already won before. My specialty is confederate andations in pennsylvania, i leave in york county, pennsylvania, the next county to the east. And many of my books are histories on that particular county. Great. Thank you. How about frank marnie . How about frank varney . My book focuses on general grants record. How dom looking at is, we remember history and why do we remember the way we do. I was trying to answer a very simple question. Why was William S Rosecrans the only Union General who did not have a statue, anywhere. This is a guy who was an army commander, who won all but one of the battles that he led his forces in. Yet, he is pretty much forgotten today. I will give you an example. Days atr i spent a few the Memorial Park and tennessee. Plaques, telling you what happened, in the Visitors Center , this is national, it is a big deal. Is official. You walk through the early days of the campaign and the rosecrans name is there. And you look through after the campaign, and his days there. st during the battle of stone river, the name of the Union Army Commander is not mentioned at all. It is as though it just sort of happened. And ulysses s. Grant had an interesting thing to say about that. During the war, Abraham Lincoln was talking to his cabinet and grant was there. And lincoln rattled off a list heunion victories come and mentioned stones river. And grant interrupted the president of the United States river was not a victory. And lincoln replied, we will have to disagree. So the question i wanted to answer was, why is what you miss williams a forgot s. A forgotten man . He now has a statue. My book was not responsible for that. At the statue was completed a few months after my book came out. Several people in this room were here for that dedication, as were 41 descendents of william rosecrans. Justice has been done. Bradley gottfried. I am probably the most recently retired person in the room, as of friday. After 41 years in Higher Education i am now retired. I am pleased to be part of the panel. Istudied the civil war when was very young, probably about nine or tenures old. I went off to college, put the books away. When he came back to pennsylvania, and i went all around the country, i decided to pull the books out and started looking at them. Andnt to gettysburg realized there were no two are guides back then. There are lots of tour guides now. This was 1990 or so. There was a book by general stackpole. Theyke a long story short, allowed me to revise it. And my life is always been, one event leads to another. I have written 11 books. Two more are close to being published, and i working on the 14th, for the 15th. I have been quite a bit on gettysburg. The brigades of gettysburg, the artillery of gettysburg, the roads to gettysburg during my philosophy has been, if im going to spend all that time researching and writing, i want to write about something people really want to read about. Do is go to this battlefield and compared to stones river, antietam, and you know people are very interested in this battle. Claim to fame now his maps. That is my passion. I have written five campaign books. Imagine when hundred 20 maps. If you open up the book him on one side is the text and on the other side is the map. And you can go to go campaigning get a great understanding of what happened. I wrote those books from the 10yearold inmate. Because i remember, when i would read about gettysburg or any of these campaigns, couldnt visualize what was going on. And even today, there is never enough maps in a book. People have told me they can now better understand campaigns because of this. I have to live for at least another 10 years, because i want to map every campaign in the Eastern Theater of the war. I have five more to do. It will take me about two years to get them published. But that is my passion and is something i really enjoy doing. People ask, how can the College President have the time to be so productive . I get up at three clock in the morning. Now, i may be able to sleep in until four clock. 4 00. Chris brenneman. I worked for the Gettysburg Center three that is my day job. I also am a licensed battlefield guide. At the of my job foundation, i show people the cyclorama painting. It, theng that is in officers, the groups of soldiers, the terrain, the farms. Spent, probably about 5000 hours, in the painting, looking at it while i do my job. And i started writing down all the Different Things and trying to figure them out. Using maps and photographs, trying to triangulate places, s worth ofd a book information. And my colleague who also works at the foundation, her specialty is the history of the painting. So we teamed up and wrote the First Comprehensive book about the gettysburg cyclorama. The painting was in such bad shape it did not really inspire people very much. The, in the old days, battlefield had so many trees and things that you did not have itelines. In the painting looks so good now, and the battlefield matches up with the painting, now. So our job was to compare all these Different Things, the painting, the photos from back then, and to seal the simulators. That is vertical. Jeff hunt. Good evening. I am director of the Texas Military forces museum located at camp avery, texas. Im also an angelic professor of history Austin Community college, and the author of lee. And of the books about the Gettysburg Campaign come to an where my interest begins. My interest grew out a conversation i was having back in the 1980s with a professor of mine. We were talking about the Gettysburg Campaign and he suggested, maybe it was not as important a turning point in the war as was generally accepted. I have had a lifelong fascination with American Military history. My brother swears my first word was combat, the name of an old tv show. Part of my dna from the very beginning. So, by the time i was in college, i thought it a lot. And when my professor says, well, you know, maybe you dont, i was taken aback and challenged by that. I defend then assertion that gettysburg is the turning point in the war . Which led me to start asking the question, how would you do it . Lets look at the five months after gettysburg, before we go into Winter Quarters in 1863 area before the arrival of grant area and, what in virginia iar look like, after gettysburg. Doesnt look any different than it did after chancellorsville, antietam, and so forth. I had to start at the Gettysburg Campaign. Of when i looked at the end the Gettysburg Campaign, it is not july 1314, it is actually august first, when the armies get back to the rappahannock meade and for two weeks, and lee gould with each other in this giant chess match in the Shenandoah Valley. Lee, trying to get back into the mountains to defend central trying toand meade, prevent them from doing that. There was a great possibility that there would be another large battle in virginia, that would be the culminating fight thate Gettysburg Campaign, meade had a chance to do south of the potomac, when he had failed to do north of the potomac. And that launched me into backing up my original study, which was going from august 2 december, into starting in the middle of july. This book is the first in a series of what will be ultimately, three books that will examine that time. This is my second book. My first, was published 17 years ago, that is kind of a long lag time. The last battle of the civil war. The banksgy texas, on of the rio grande, in midmay of 1865. Theyt was always said that did not know that lee had already surrendered, but they did know. The texans won the last battle of the war for the south. I have a habit of trying to find stories that people think they know the end of, and saying, not quite. Not yet. Excellent. Thank you. And finally, john michael priest. Schoola retired high teacher. 30 years in the classroom. Retirement is interesting because it is actually more work than working. I have been writing since the 1980s, and giving tours at antietam since then. Was, stand to it and give them hell. It was written from the standpoint of the soldiers. My purpose has always been to present the war the way the men on the ground site area and does not mean the generals were wrong, but they have a different perspective. When in the textbook, there is the story that the high command talked about, and then there is the story that happened. It requires knowledge of the terrain, the tactics, and i wanted people, in any of my books, i wanted people to experience the war from the ground up. No agenda, just writing it like it has been presented. Result has been, the oldest living Civil War Veteran said, what i did for civil war soldiers, already pile did for the soldiers of world war ii. Ernie pyle did for the soldiers of world war ii. And i thought that was quite an honor. Deeper insights into how the battles were false, and that is , as a guideret them at antietam. I dont interpret from a generals perspective. I never understood them. I dont understand my supervisors either, but that is just my particular perspective. Fantastic. I have a general question that anybody can answer, if they want. To me, it always seems like who are writers it interested in history, seems like a passion for whatever you are writing about can sneak up on you. Where does it start for you . Is it a passion for something very specific, or is it something you falling to accidentally, that gets you going on whatever journey you are on . I will take a run at that, if you dont mind. In my case, i was trying to answer a specific question. The answerppened is, to that question to me to places i never expected to go. William s. Was, was rosecrans a better general than they history books tell us . And the answer was, yes he was. So the next question was, why do they history books have it wrong . And as i researched it, i was surprised to learn they have a wrong because of ulysses s. Grant. S. Nt did not like william rosecrans. Grant wrote his memoirs 20 years after the war. People attach a lot of weight to your words. Grant was the chief of the union armies, he was a to term president of the United States, he wrote his memoirs while he was dying, people knew what was going on. And he somehow managed to manipulate things. And i was surprised to discover that a lot i thought i knew about the war, not things that i was sure about, turned out not to be true. Im not accusing anyone who has written histories of the civil war of malfeasance. Is, lets start with mike. He writes a book. And he says something. And the next guy writes a book him. And the next guy writes a book them. And by the time you get to the end of this table, it is innate books. Exactly the same thing. And so, when you pick up the book, you assume it is true. I started checking footnotes, and noticed all the footnotes referred back to the same source. And far too often, that source was the memoirs of ulysses s. Grant, to the detriment of the truth. In to whatd going other people were saying about, the battle of corinth, the battle of chickamauga. And i found it we were getting a different story from the men on the ground, that mike likes it right about. I found a lot of it was wrong and it will give you two quick examples. If you pick up standard histories of the battle of chickamauga, you will read two things that are not true. Rosecranst william s panicked on the battlefield and ran. And the other is that the army was starving in chattanooga until ulysses s. Grant relieved William S Rosecrans of command, and within days opened up a supply line and saved the army. Neither of those things are true. I will not try to explain it because we have a lot of people who have something to say. I will be in the lobby. Anyone else . This wastigation of just like they want of the battle of gettysburg, a meeting engagement. I had no intention of writing a book. Event led to events. Rediscovering it in 2008. I was here as a child when i was about eight years old. And uncle brought me and my cousins. I myself at and mini ball. And i have no idea where it is. It is long gone. But back in 2008, we made the mistake of hiring one of those gs. And he was wonderful. And my eyes started opening. And it just started to happen. That is where it came from. Probably everybody up here has the same. We came here at an early age. Many of us has studied this for decades. In my case, i never really had a burning desire to write a book. That i have, someone unheatedm in an unheede cabin in wisconsin. And a colleague, used to work for me, found them and asked me if i could help him sell them. Is how this came about. We write a lot about generals, but we dont know a lot about what motivated people i wanted to not only talk about the courtship between these two people, but what motivated this meant to join, what motivated him to stay in, what kept his girlfriend on the homefront going, the political aspects. Senatorer was a state during the work, a tremendous copperhead will be to lincoln. You find all these great rings. Things, theyhese popout you as we do research. In addition to the letters, i acquired the original mustering sheet for the unit. Wyatt earpsout, brother was in this company and was wounded in the first battle wasnt any use at tombstone because he could not lift his arm above his shoulder. For me, one project leads to another. Book, the the first revision of the tour guide, i was intrigued by picketts charge and the philadelphia brigade. I am from philadelphia and there was not a history and i felt that i owed those young men a history. Pop up. Or me just dont i learned from these experiences. From the artillery, and the devastating impact of the federal artillery and how that helped to break the charge. So i wrote about about the artillery at gettysburg. I learned about the horrendous marches that led to the battle of gettysburg. We dont talk a lot about this, these forced marches on the federal side, were these men were exhausted by the time they got to the battlefield. And it talk about it, felt i owed it to them to tell that story. For me, it is one thing leads to another. An article in gettysburg magazine, about rights charge wrights charge. These georgians were able to pick it up and go farther than etts man. N pick me, it is an interesting journey because i grew up as the son of a military veteran from world war ii. Ancestors fought in the american revolution, the word 1812, the civil war, world war i, vietnam. Where i grew up in southern ohio was 10 miles no, 20 miles from william shermans house in 10 miles from phil sheridans house. Southeastern ohios steeped in civil war history. I moved here in 2001 from ohio, and became fascinated by the two battle ofre the gettysburg. In the Business World there is an old adage, find a need and fill it. That twoweek. Was a big need. Twoweek period was a big need. These are human stories that nobody has ever told before. I hadving in york county, a massive amount of resources of things that had never been published. Lots of stories on what happened, and then, for the unique things i have taken a lot of advantage of, most arent aware the pennsylvania, after the civil war, if the Confederate Army of the union army took something from you, horses are supplies or Something Like that, you could file a sworn damage claim with the government. Ed a lot of york and adams county records, and could find what roads some regiments were on at certain times. I could put together the complete story, of not only the drivethrough, but i wrote a stuart,nt book on jeb and what he was doing on july 1 and second. I knew exactly where he was at every minute. He wasnt gallivanting, he was stealing horses. It was a giant supply rate. Most people dont realize, the confederate concentration. Oints were york and carlisle it wasnt gettysburg originally. , ands york, dills berg carlisle. And i realized nobody had told a story before, in any depth. Inyou are all detectives, some way, which i find fascinating. The is more exciting, journey of discovery of the writing of the book itself . The research. A battlefield is a crime of bodies, lots unfortunately, and lots of witnesses. And, just working through that of piecing it together develops a totally different picture than the traditional. And it is not deliberately looking for, that is the problem with it. Very often in doing the research, the discovery is what is exciting. I have always told my students, if you are not offended a history, you havent learned it. My great, great grandfather told my grandma that he hauled cannonballs during the war. And he did. He made corporal in 1863 and hauled tail. He deserted. Trying to piece it together is the hard part. The hard part is you start with a question and you find it leads to more questions and then those who lead to more questions and then that leads you to evidence you do not expect to find. It is so exciting. You lose track of time. On are doing this, pulling this thread and that thread. And once he basically think you have figured it out, you never completely have figured it out. People appear will say that as soon as the book was published you will say you will find that they you wish you had before it went to the printer. And that is such excitement about what you discovered, the hole you filled, the wonderful story that you are anxious to share. That is where the writing comes from. None of us are writing to make money. Because you dont. [laughter] jeffrey maybe stephen king does. We wont. We get enough money to keep doing research. One of the most interesting things that happened to me early on. I was working on my project, this was about seven or eight or nine years ago when i was looking for a publisher, i had the University Press look at my manuscript on this august through december, 1863, which produced no big bottles battles. Lots of fighting lots of maneuvering, but no giant bloodbath. Too often military history follows giant bloodbaths, they are only interested in the giant crime scenes with a lot of bodies. And when i got the report back from the reviewer, the first thing they said was, why would anybody want to study this period . And i have never been, as a historian, so offended in my life as to have somebody that new enough history that they would say, look at this manuscript for University Press and to say, why would you study it . First off, it happened. It is part of the story. More than that, men died, men suffered. Peoples lives were forever changed. It does not matter if this soldier died and edging and it can in magic and extrapolate gettysburg, or he died at the station, he gave his life for something he believed in. His family had to live with that, children would be growing up without fathers, so how can you say anything in history is not important . I think that is something that we all fundamentally believe here, because all of our stories are a piece of a giant jigsaw puzzle. None of our stories will change the way that the war turned out for the general concept of how the war played out, but it is part of the human fabric. These are all very human stories. Thatnk that is the thing compels us to want to share that. Ephenwas very honored st asked me i drew hundreds of faces from the battle. The most fascinating thing was defined as many pictures as i could of them before the war. Tim and then after the war. Because the way they took photographs back then, nobody smiled. You could take a picture of anybody in this room and he will go of coarse they could not. It was course they cannot. It was all resting faces. And what i found is you could see their souls through those faces. John burns, anything but no . And some of these guys are haunted. At one point Andrew Lincoln and he said, do him like he looked after the war. And he was correct, because the faces completely different, it is a different human being. And that is what i loved about this book. And i think that is what you guys love, that there are people in all of these stories. People who each have a story to tell. That is important to the whole fabric of it. When you find something that astonishes you. That i knewe that grant had used his memoirs to influence the truth. It should not surprise anybody. What was surprising is that found falsification of records on multiple occasions. Frank disruption of documents, alterations of documents, and for the second book, which im working on now with the toxic relationship with john hooker. I found very strong evidence of perjury. On the part of a former president. I did not expect to find these things. An interesting thing happened to the newhen i was in york state archives. I was flipping through a folder it was telegrams. Telegram, this a from george meade, and i look at the response from warren saying i follow the orders. And some pages later i come across the same telegram. And i thought, something is wrong. It is 45 minutes after the first one, but same telegram. Why was it sent twice . The first one, a wire was down and it did not go through. Warren had it sent again, but thats a lot different but the center altered one word and it alter the meeting of the hotel is in. And nobody ever noticed that before. Little things like that can blow you away. I wanted to jump to my feet and yell, wow for those archivists frighten easily. [laughter] one thing i uncovered was one of the reasons that lee can escape the show until a valley the Shenandoah Valley is that once he is in the valley south of the potomac, meade stops his infantry cold for 36 hours. They sit and do nothing, the reason is he has been a southern newspaper that says lees is being reinforced by the army of tennessee. Is hovering ine the Shenandoah Valley in preparation for invading the north again, and swinging around and came between army of the potomac and washington. And so meade bought it. He thought it was probable and he thought it was happening. And minor things the confederates did convinced him he was right and those 36 hours work article. You never heard about that. They were retreating. The army is ripe for discussion and here is the army worried the rebels were about to resume the offensive and it percolates all the way down into the ranks. Soldiers saying, there is a rumor that the reds are making for pennsylvania again. Like i said, other astonishing things. One thing i found out that i thought was fascinating is the little details. Most people probably do not know the first confederate that died in gettysburg was james shackleford. A victim of the battle of good for of gettysburg. And to your point, his family probably missed him. He died of alcohol poisoning. And he was left behind junk as a skunk. Drunk as a skunk. Another guy to die in the area is charlie brown. Unfortunately got the truth. Scott his Service Record says murdered by the citizens. So they were victims of the battle of gettysburg . No. Of the campaign . Absolutely. Tim lets get a question. Is there anything that absolutely surprised you that you thought, i ever saw this before and what did you end up doing . One of the big discoveries in our book was it had been changed and nobody knew that they had closed down the cyclorama for six months. General meade was not initially in the painting. [laughter] they added him later. They added flags and more troops. We found out that they were taking suggestions from the people going to see it and they wanted to make it better in order to keep sales up. Tim did they make a better . Yeah. They sent it to philadelphia and philadelphia had already had one in town for a few years. And the advertising said, not the one that was here in years past, but the greatest and most expensive of all. Chris most expensive because of the money they spent jazzing it up. Why do you think the people of philadelphia did not like it . It did not have general meade. He was from philadelphia, a hero of the battle, and the painting comes to town and the hometown guy is not in it. I think that was local marketing. In a way it was the george lucas second version of star wars, directors cut. I was really excited. And people had been looking at a painting for hundreds of years and they forgot that that happened. And we had to rediscover when, how and by whom all the changes were made. People thatve eight published, including yourselves, and we are not telling what we have known for years, we are telling what we found. Which i find tremendously impressive and important. And having read about the war for years and years, there were things that i knew about. Gene the men joined to keep the union together. Many came to be abolitionists, but maybe not the beginning. So what shocked me when i got through it, and one of my favorite parts of the book is the epilogue, reading about how ptsd was prevalent among them and we didnt know how to diagnose it. We called it nostalgia. The other one was the analogy between Civil War Veterans and the veterans returning from vietnam who were not respected, they were not hired, there were companies that refuse to hire civil war vets, because they had killed people, stolen, burned buildings. I always seemed assumed the grand army of the republic started after the civil war, but it was nothing after the civil war. It was not started until the 1880s. In my research, there was part of the Presbyterian Church in iowa that banned them from their property as being an extra organization that was full of secret oaks. Oaths. And my head character had become a presbyterian minister. And so i think what we are finding are things that we are discovering for us it is. Us. It is what we found out. And it is not indictment, it is truth. Gene it is true that and it is human perseverance. Tim i would like to take him to open it to questions that people might have. Yes, sir . I think i am the same eight as most of you. A big thing. L was wonder 50 years later, not so much 150 years later, not so much. If you look at civil war actors do you think there is a steady decline and interest and how far will it go . I am a reenactment after. Actor. We actually spent time talking about that. The hobby is older. But i do not think the interest has gone away. Jeffrey for reenacting what happened is for 15 plus years we have been fighting a real war, and young men go do that instead of reenactment. Now there are different types. In the 1980s, you did french and indian war, civil war. Now we have world war i, vietn am, add on top of that paintball into video games, so the interest in military history and history in general is out there, but it is diffused more. More ways for people to access it. When we were growing up, it was books and that was it. Now you have documentaries, you have history channel, American History channel, you have all of these websites and that sort of thing. And as a museum director, i roll around with the question of getting young people interested in it and keeping people coming in and what ive discovered in my museum career, as well as my teaching career, is human beings are inherently interested in history. Because if it is done right, it is telling stories. Telling stories about people. Do whatle love when you we have done and take them to the side and say, let me tell you what really happened. The kind of gossip. Plus visitors000 a year into our Little Museum and young people, old people, people who are veterans, people who are not, people who have no knowledge of any of this and they come through and they stand in the presence of things that were there and the pictures and stories and they are fascinated, impressed, excited. And so it is there. It is just not concentrated the way that it used to be. These things i think im even think, it runs like a roller coaster. I see a lot more young faces in the ranks of reenactors than i did five years ago. There are a lot more old, bald fat guys too. But in our living history the attachment at the museum we get a lot of young people coming in. Very often they go out into the real military. I lose them for 510 years, but they cycle back and they come back because of the love of history. It is something you are born with and you never lose it. Like some of our projects, you have to put it to the side for some time and deal with the real world, but you will always come back. I think you need people that are excited to tell the stories again and obviously that runs like this as well. I was talking to a woman today who said, i have a passion for gettysburg. You could see it in her eyes. Kids hate it. My if my mother looked at me that way with gettysburg i might have been freaked as well. Tim now she says she has her grandkids on board and it skipped a generation with her. It does cycle i think. We have to be, really it is important to tell those stories to kids and that is what i do. I think it is, we need people who know how to tell a story well and know how to engage children in a way that will make what they are hearing applicable to their lives as well. One of the things i will add. I think a lot of it is the methodology of how to keep kids entertained. When i was a young father, i loved miniatures. And i started playing with army men when i was a kid. Scott we would make up battlefield and stuff. Both of my boys ended up his college professors. And to tell you how far it is, tonight, my two sons surprised me, they said they would be joining me and buy me dinner and my loveyearold grandson says, we need to start writing our own book. I want to talk about gettysburg from a childs perspective. You got a get the kids interested in finding that interests them. Tim another question . Sir . Touchiked the personal you talked about, looking from the perspective of the frontline. Does anybody have stories about interaction with the people that you did research on. . When they show the antietam video and they have the handshaking between the lines, i met the great, greatgrandson of the confederate officer, he was of the 34th North Carolina. And it was interesting. That was my great, great grandfather. Out atook one lady the southern end of the field, her great, greatgrandfather was the color bearer at antietam. And he got wounded. I was able to take her out on the ground. We walked it and it was like, this is neat. She was able to track down the history. John a lot of people do that. Many of the people that i see either have no interest whatsoever and they want to do it to get it done with, and others are in it with their eyeballs. The most perceptive thing i think i have heard was last week there was a lady taking her father around and she was not a civil war person. We are talking about incidents with the confederates and their uniforms. He was shocked, why do you think they were rebels to begin with . Yeah, that was the whole point. Rebels are rebels. Contacted byn about three descendents of josiah and you know they got married and all that, they survived the war and got married three days after. The biggest contact i had was the year after acquired the letters, the greatgrandson contacted me and said, you have all those letters i would really like to get them. Up connecting. He was a tremendous resource. His name is david, he lived outside of chicago. And in the book is a picture, asked them to sit on this loveseat. Family history said this was the loveseat in which josiah proposed. I had his grandson and his wife sit on that. David contracted alzheimers and out about eight months before the book came out, which was the tragic part, because he was so interested in seeing the story of his greatgrandfather and greatgrandmother, and he did not get to see it to completion. But these things happen. Those who look at their own and history ancestry, people want to be related to the monarchs, but everybody ive met that go to the effort to do that, if you did not fight in a war, it is not worth talking about. [laughter] you are not interested. Anybody else . Yes, sir . This applies to each one of your genres. I will ask a jeff first, because we have gone around many battlefields to see the lay of the land. So as jeff would say, understanding the land and understanding the tactics and how the battle occurred. Im kind of curious, what are the tactical nuances that you have to become familiar with to write an effective book . If you would, and understanding the land, i would appreciate. Jeffrey i think mike will echo this, one of the big advantages i think i got out of 30 plus sears of reenacting his in an innate sense of the tactics. What it means to move in a flank. Moving into line. Forward into line. How long did it take to form a column. What does it mean to dress. If you do not understand that, i think it is very hard to understand the official reports. Because they reference these things all the time. Brigade columns, regiment columns, all these sorts of things and an idea of how long it takes to do this and why you would not wheel of brigade in someplace like between cemetery and the seminary ridge, because you would be slaughtered trying to do it. It leads to something that everybody up here would agree with, you have got to put yourself in the shoes of the people of that period. You have to see their world through their eyes. With all the nuances and limitations that go with it, we should not judge the people of the past by the standards of the president , certainly. But we cannot understand them if we do not try to think ourselves into their moment in history. And try to understand their very human motivations, the motivations of grants, of the reality of the soldiers on the front line. And brad would tell you that the terrain is everything. So i think that is something, you know, you are spot on. Very quickly i will add, what mike and i both, we shared a hobby of miniature wargaming. Most of my books, i model the battlefield in miniature before i wrote the book. And i have looked at different scenarios from this position, where were the fence lines, could you get across the creek, how long did it take the guys to do that sort of thing and then that just comes from massively walking the battlefield and understanding the fight lines and how they have changed, and recreating things. You have a lot more appreciation for these types of things and for these guys. I have been fortunate i have been able to teach courses on the battle of gettysburg, including here in gettysburg. One time i thought it i had a student, a very bright young man, and he was outspoken that the end of day one he shouldve attacked. And he would go on and on at great length about it. Walked came here and we the ground and he stood at the bottom of Cemetery Hill and he said, this changes everything. You cannot fully understand the battle until you have walked the grounds. And today i had a gentleman come up and say, i do not understand how lee could have ordered 12,000 men across the field in this attempt to destroy the union line. So i tried to explain that it was a common tactic in the war. The mass charges. Name theyou can battles where it occurred, where it succeeded and where it failed. And we have to remember that the civil war was literally the transition point between the napoleonic era style of warfare, and what became trench warfare in world war i. Runner inwas a wire world war ii. I had a friend that did three jumps in sicily and the whole thing. Keegan,ed to read john brilliant writer. Soldiers have not changed a great deal. One of the most common questions i get is, why do they margin line . March in line . You suppress them. And people say it is stupid. But you are not in fog, you are not in smoke. They were not planning on it. They walked into each other. Once the shooting starts they do what a lot of soldiers did, if there is cover, they are taking it. They did it at the ridge. And really, we have a hollywood image of how it was done. Soldiers have been the same forever. Picketts charge, i can preload prove because i look up every cut of the by name i could document. But for a brigade of 500 men i could not find it. And you start asking questions, why did the line shrink as much as it did . And men looking across thank him and no, im not doing this today. And after the book came out i got a letter, i found a letter from North Carolina from an artillery captain who said, you exaggerated the casualties, some went 100 yards and a something not go that far. And when i tell veterans that, basic mud that makes sense. How many of you have walked pickets charge . Ok. So walking the ground is obviously difficult. Then ask yourself where the gaps dictated how you moved and what angles you took. The same experience a soldier has except that there is smoke, confusion, and lead flying through the air and you are making a decision in that kind of environment. Jeffrey so there is no substitute for walking the ground and seeing the ground. I tell my students, i am sure all of us who teach history, people do not do things because it seems like a bad idea. [laughter] it makes sense to them at the time. Tim one more comment. We talked about the process of writing a book. This is my first book. And i said to somebody, it is Like National lampoon vacation. What are you talking about . Look at the griswold, they were going to their home from wally world and along the way they took sidetrips, the grand canyon and the second largest ball of 20. Twine. You have to decide what to put in the book and what is apart from the book. And after you make a decision you have an editor and publisher that tell you what you just put twinee largest ball of and they send it back and do start all over again. [laughter] tim i hope you have enjoyed your time with the panel. Are our is over. We do not have time for more questions, but we will be out here for awhile with the books and we will have posters of those figures i drew in the book. And we will be happy to answer questions that you have out there. Thank you so much for having us. And thank you gentlemen for all your good comments. Thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] tammy i would like to thank everybody for coming this evening, a special thanks to cspan for covering the event. And for all of our panelists for being on the show. Thank you all, have a great evening. [applause] [chatter] announcer coming up this weekend on American History tv, on cspan3, tonight at 10 00 p. M. Eastern on reel america, a 1970s film on the mission and operation of that short news. Of the detroit news. In some things we are liberal, others we are conservative, but there is an effort to give to the best of our ability both sides of the question and give our readers a balanced diet from which they can select to their own opinion. Announcer sunday at 11 00 a. M. Eastern, former National Park service chief historian Robert Sutton on the immigration of new england abolitionists to kansas. Particular bostonian by the name of amos adams lawrence. Does that name sound familiar . [laughter] upset by the whole affair that he wrote a letter to his uncle, and in the letter he said we went to bed Old Fashioned conservative compromised union wigs, and we woke up abolitionists. Announcer at 6 30 p. 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