[applause] tim i am neither a historian or 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 savis beatty. It is called discovering gettysburg an unconventional introduction to the town, and the battle that made it famous. I was in theater for 50 years, 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. So, what we have done is try to come at this whole question of the gettysburg phenomenon, from a fresh point of view. It is not academic. It is not deep, 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. The first time 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, discovering gettysburg, and 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. So, thats the gist of it, and if you have an opportunity to read it, we very much hope you enjoy it. Gene barr. My name is gene barr. I am the author of a Civil War 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 the expired fort donaldson, shiloh, and gettysburg. When i am not doing these, my daytime job is that im president and ceo of the Pennsylvania Chamber of industry. Its the state 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 the confederates took gettysburg 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 operations in pennsylvania, and 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 fra how about frank varney . My book focuses on general grants record. What im looking at is, how do 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. And yet, he is pretty much forgotten today. I will give you an example. Last year i spent a few days at 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. But during the battle of stones 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 of Union Victories come and he mentioned stones river. And grant interrupted the president of the United States to say, stones 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 rosecrans a forgot william 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. I studied the civil war when i 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. I went to gettysburg and 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. To make a long story short, they 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. I have done 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. All you have to do is go to this battlefield and compared to stones river, antietam, and you know people are very interested in this battle. My 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. So, 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. As part of my job at the foundation, i show people the cyclorama painting. Everything that is in it, the officers, the groups of soldiers, the terrain, the farms. And i have 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, until i had a books worth of 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. Unfortunately, the painting was in such bad shape it did not really inspire people very much. Also, in the old days, the battlefield had so many trees and things that you did not have the sitelines. 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 modern, 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 meade and lee. Most of the books about the Gettysburg Campaign come to an end 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. That was 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. So i said, can i defend the assertion that gettysburg is the turning point in the war . Which led me to start asking the question, how would you do it . And i said, 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 does the war in virginia 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. But when i looked at the end of the Gettysburg Campaign, it is not july 1314, it is actually august first, when the armies get back to the rappahannock the Gettysburg Campaign, it is river, and for two weeks, meade 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 virginia, and meade, trying to 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 of the Gettysburg Campaign, that 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. It is called, the last battle of the civil war. It was foggy texas, on the banks of the rio grande, in midmay of 1865. And it was always said that they 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. Im a retired high school 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. My first book 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. There is the 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. And the end 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 how i interpret them, as a guide 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 folks like you, who are writers and interested in history, it 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. And what happened is, the answer to that question to me to places i never expected to go. My question was, was william s. 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. Grant did not like william s. 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. But what happens 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. So i started going in to what 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. One is that William S Rosecrans 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 . My instigation of this was 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. Anna brought and i myself a 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 lbgs. 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. The letters that i have, someone found them in an unheated cabin in wisconsin. And a colleague, used to work for me, found them and asked me if i could help him sell them. And that 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. Her father was a state senator during the work, a tremendous copperhead will be to lincoln. You find all these great rings. We all find these things, they popout you as we do research. In addition to the letters, i acquired the original mustering sheet for the unit. And it turns out, wyatt earps brother was in this company and was wounded in the first battle of the war, and wasnt any use at tombstone because he could not lift his arm above his shoulder. For me, one project leads to another. When i did the first book, the 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. Things for me just dont pop up. I learned from these experiences. I learned 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. We dont talk about it, and i felt i owed it to them to tell that story. For me, it is one thing leads to another. I had an article in gettysburg magazine, about rights charge wrights charge. These georgians were able to pick it up and go farther than tickets men picketts man. For 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 weeks before the battle of gettysburg. In the Business World there is an old adage, find a need and fill it. And to me, that twoweek. Was a big need. That twoweek period was a big need. These are human stories that nobody has ever told before. And living in york county, i had 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. So i mined 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 subsequent book on jeb stuart, 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. And most people dont realize, the confederate concentration points were york and carlisle. It wasnt gettysburg originally. It was york, dills berg, and carlisle. And i realized nobody had told a story before, in any depth. You are all detectives, in some way, which i find fascinating. What is more exciting, the journey of discovery of the writing of the book itself . The research. A battlefield is a crime scene, with lots of bodies, 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. So yes, he did haul cannonballs. [laughter] that isy coming across the total the detective. Trying to piece it together is the hard part. To that, because you start with a question. And as you try and answer that question, you find it leads to more questions. And those lead to more questions. Very often, that leads you to evidence you do not expect to find. It is so exciting to do that. You lose track of time. Youre sitting there, going through all this pulling on this , thread and that thread. And once you finally basically think you have figured it out, you never completely have figured it out. I am sure everybody up here will say that once the book is published, you will find something you wish you had before it went to the printer. Then, there is such excitement about what you discovered, the hole you filled, the wonderful story that has never been told that you are anxious to share it. 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. If anything, we buy enough money to keep buying books to do more research. One of the most interesting things that happened to me early on when i was working on my was 7, 8, 9his years ago, when i was first looking around for a publisher before i had the luck to run into ted savas i had the University Press look at my manuscript on this august through december, 1863, which produced no big battles. Lots of fighting, lots of maneuvering, but no giant bloodbath. And too often, military history follows giant bloodbaths. They are only interested in the big crime scenes with a lot of bodies. And when i got the report back from the reviewer, the first thing they said is, 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 who knew 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. Widows and orphans were made. Peoples lives were forever changed. And it does not matter if this soldier died at a gigantic struggle like a gettysburg or he died at a little fight like rappahannock station, he gave his life for his country for , something he believed in. His family had to live with that. Children would grow up without fathers. 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 is going to change the way the war turned out or the general concept that we have all why there was a war and how the war played out, but it is haris part of the human fabric of it. These are all very human stories. I think that is the thing that compels us to want to share that. I was very honored stephen asked me i drew 150 faces from the battle here. The most fascinating thing was i had to find as many pictures of them as i could before the war 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 you will go but of course, they could not. It was all resting faces. And what i found is you were seeing their souls through those pictures. John burns, for instance. He is never anything but [laughter] no . And some of these guys are haunted. At one point, i drew lincoln, and stephen said could you draw him like he looked after the war . And he was absolutely correct, because the face is 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. And when you find something that astonishes you. I found evidence that i knew grant used his memoirs to influence the truth. But everybody is the hero of their own memoirs. That should not surprise anybody. What was surprising is that found falsifications of official records at the War Department on multiple occasions. Destruction of documents, alterations of documents, and for the second book, which im working on now, which is grants toxic relationship with john hooker. I found very strong evidence of perjury. On the part of a former president of the United States. And i did not expect to find these things paid it just astonished me. An interesting thing happened to me, too, when i was in the new york state archives in albany. I was flipping through a folder. Telegrams, in the runup to the battle of five forks. And i looked at a telegram. This from george meade, and i look at the response from warren toically saying, ok, i had change a few things, but i followed the orders. A few pages later, i come across the same telegram. And i thought, something is wrong. It is 45 minutes after the first one, but it is the same telegram. Why was it sent twice . I look at it and found that the first one, a wire was down, and the telegram did not go through. Warren had it sent again, but telegrapher altered one word , edit change the meeting of the whole telegram. And nobody ever noticed that before. Little things like that can blow you away. I wanted to jump to my feet and yell, wow. And the archivists, they frighten easily, so i did not. [laughter] one of the things i uncovered that i had no idea was one of was able tothat lee escape the Shenandoah Valley and get to the rappahannock is for 36 hours, once he is south of the potomac, meade stops his infantry cold for 36 hours. They sit and camp and do nothing, and the reason is he has read a southern newspaper that says lee is being reinforced by braggs troops and the army of tennessee. And a reinforced lee is hovering in the Shenandoah Valley in preparation for invading the north again, and swinging around and getting between army of the potomac and washington. And so meade bought that. He thought it was probable, and he thought it was happening. Some minor things that confederates did convinced him he was right. And those 36 hours were critical. You never hear about that, because the confederates were beaten. They were retreating. The army is ripe for discussion, and here is the army of the potomac worried the rebels were about to resume the offensive, and it percolates all the way down into the ranks. Soldiers diaries saying, there is a rumor that the reds are making for pennsylvania again. Like you said, other astonishing things. One thing i found out that i thought was fascinating is the little things. The details. Most people probably do not know the first confederate that died in the Gettysburg Campaign was a guy named james shackleford. A victim of the battle of gettysburg. And to your point, his family probably missed him. James shackleford died of alcohol poisoning. When they pulled out of gettysburg he was left behind , drunk as a skunk. Another guy to die in the area is charlie brown. He is also a louisiana tiger. His family, unfortunately, got the truth. His Service Record says murdered by the citizens of york county, pa. So were they victims of the battle of gettysburg . No. Where they victims of the Gettysburg Campaign . Absolutely. Tim can i ask a question about the author of cyclorama . Is there anything that absolutely surprised you that you thought, i never saw this before, and what did you end up doing . One of the big discoveries in our book was it had been changed, and know when you that they had closed down the cyclorama for six months. They added more stuff to it. General meade was not initially in the painting. [laughter] they added him later. They added flags, they added more troops. What we found out was they were taking suggestions from the people who were going to see it, and they wanted to make it better to make keep the ticket sales up. Tim did they make it better . Yeah. What is interesting was it was in boston, and then they sent it to philadelphia. And philadelphia already had eight cyclorama a cyclorama in town for a few years. And the advertising said, not the one that was here in years past, but the grandest and most expensive of all. And 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, hes a commander hero of the battle, and the painting comes to town, and the hometown guy is not in it. So i think that was local marketing. In a way, it is like the george lucas second version of star wars, directors cut. So i was really excited. And here, people have been looking at this painting now for 100 plus years, and they forgot that that happened. We had the kind of rediscover when, how, and by whom all the changes were made. What is interesting is you have eight people published him including yourself, who have obviously done lots of things, and we are not telling what we have known for years, we are telling what we found. Which i find tremendously impressive and important. Despite the fact of having studied the civil war in college and having read about it for years and years, there were that i knew about why men joined. The men joined to keep the union together. Many came to be abolitionists, but maybe not the beginning. What absolutely shocked me when i got through it, and one of my favorite parts of the book is the epilogue reading about how Civil War Soldiers, one, ptsd was prevalent among them, and we didnt know how to diagnose it. We called it things like nostalgia. The other one was about the analogy between Civil War Veterans and, unfortunately the , veterans returning from vietnam, who were not respected, who were not hired. There were companies that refuse to hire civil war vets, because you had killed people, stolen, burned buildings. In fact, at one point, the g. A. R the grand thought 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 the g. A. R. From their property as being an extra Legal Organization full of secret oaths. And my head character had become a presbyterian minister. So i think what we are all finding his things that were discoveries for us. We are not sitting here saying look what we know, it is look what we found out about American History and the people in history, and we would love for you to read it. And it is not indictment, it is truth. Gene it is truth. It is knowledge. And it is human perseverance. Tim i would like to open it up to any questions that people might have. Yes, sir . I think i am the same eight as most of you. The centennial was a big thing. 150 years later, not so much. If you look at civil war reenactors, most are guys our age. Do you think there is a steady decline and interest, and how far will that go . Well, i am a civil reenactor. I went through the 125th years, when it seems the mana from heaven fell for the reenacting community. We spent a lot of time talking about that. The hobby is older. But i do not think the interest has gone away. For reenacting, for example, is what has happened is we, for 15 plus years, have been fighting a real war. And young men go do that instead of reenact. And there are different types of reenacting now. In the 1980s, you did french and indian war, civil war. Now, there is world war i, vietnam, add on top of that paintball, add on top of that airsoft, add on top of that video games so the interest in , military history and history in general is out there, but it is just diffused more. There are more ways that people can access it. When we were all going up, it was books. And that was it. But 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 in this question of, you know, getting young people interested in it and keeping people interested. And what ive discovered in my museum career, as well as my teaching career, is human beings are inherently interested in history. Because history, if it is done right, is telling stories. Telling stories about people. And people love it when you can do what all of us have done and take them off to the side and say, let me tell you what really happened, or the way it really happened. We all love the kind of gossip, dont we . And we get 46,000 plus visitors a year into our Little National guard museum. And young people, old people, people who are veterans, people who are not, people who have no knowledge of any of this whatsoever, and they come through and they stand in the presence of things that were there and the pictures and stories, and invariably, they are fascinated, impressed, excited. And so, it is there. It is just not concentrated the way that it used to be. And these things, i think even reenacting, it runs like a roller coaster. I look around now and compare it to everywhere five years ago, and i see a lot more young faces in the ranks of reenactors than i did five years ago. There are a lot more of us old, bald, fat guys, too. But in our living history detachment 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 five to 10 years, but they cycle back. 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. Need peoplenk you who are excited to tell those stories again. And obviously, that runs like this as well. I was talking to a woman today who said, i have an extreme passion for gettysburg. You could see it in her eyes. She was always crazed. [laughter] and she said, my kids hate it. If my mother looked at me that way with gettysburg. I might have been freaked as well. She said now she has her grandkids on board, and it skipped a generation with her. Thing i, that cyclical , think. But we have to be it is really important to tell those quote stories to kids. 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 just add is i think a lot of it is the methodology of how to keep kids entertained. When i was a young father, i loved miniature wargaming. I started playing with army men when i was a kid. Then i started painting the figures. We would make up battlefields. You might think it funny, but both of my boys ended up his college professors. And tonight, to tell you how far it is my two sons surprised me, they said they would be joining and buy me a pizza for dinner, and my 11yearold 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 and find something that interests them. And you are fine. Tim another question . Sir . One thing i liked is the personal touch you talked about, how you are looking from the perspective of someone on the front lines. Does anybody have stories about interaction with the descendents of the people that you did research on . When they show the antietam video, and they have the handshaking between the lines with the officers, i met the great, great, grandson of the confederate officer there, a lieutenant of the 34th, North Carolina. That was my great, great , grandfather. And i took one lady out at the southern end of the field. Her great, great, grandfather was the color bearer at antietam. And got wounded. I was able to take her out on the ground. I had not been out on it yet. We walked it. And it was like, yes this is , neat. She was able to track down the history. Then you can connect them. A lot of people do that. Many of the people i see either have no interest whatsoever and just what to do it to get it done with. And others are in it up over their eyeballs. But the most perceptive thing i think i heard was last week. There was a lady taking her father around. And she was not a civil war person. And we were talking about incidents with the confederates and lou uniforms. He was shocked and said why do you think they were rebels to begin with . Yeah, that was the whole point. [laughter] rebels are rebels. Since the books came out, i have been contacted by about three descendents of josiah and you know they got married and all that, he survived the war, and they 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 and ited the letters, would really like to get them. And we wound up connecting. He was a tremendous resource. His name is david. He lived outside of chicago. And in the book is a picture, asked he and his wife to sit on a settee. And the reason i asked him to sit on the loveseat was Family History said this was the loveseat in which josiah proposed. I had his grandson and his wife sit on that. The tragic piece is david contracted alzheimers and died 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 told, and he unfortunately did not get to see it to completion. I wish i worked maybe little quicker but these things happen. , for the people who research there ancestry and stuff, i guess people in europe want to be related to kings and monarchs. But everybody ive met that go to the effort to do that, if they do not find a military connection in their Family History, if you did not fight in a war, it is not worth talking about. [laughter] you are not interested. Tim anybody else . Yes, sir . This applies to probably each one of your genres. Address it to jeff hunt first, because he and i have trudged around many battlefields to see the lay of the land. So, as jeff would say, understanding the land and understanding jeff is very knowledgeable about 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 want to comment on understanding the land i would , appreciate. Jeff what of the things, and i think mike will echo this, is i feel like i got out of 30 plus years of reenacting is an innate sense of what the tactics were. What it means to move by the flank, to go by the right, file into line, or do it on the right into line, forward into line. How long does it take to form a column. What does it mean to dress . These sorts of things. 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 and regimental columns, and the sort of things. An idea of how long it takes to do this. Why you would not wheel of brigade in someplace like between cemetery and seminary ridge, because you would be slaughtered trying to do it. It leads to something that i think everybody up here would agree with is you have got to put yourself in the shoes of the people of that period of history. 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 present, certainly. But we cannot understand them if we do not try to think ourselves into their moment in history. And try and understand their very human motivations, the motivations of grant, the reality of the soldiers on the front line. And brad would tell you that the terrain is everything. So i think that that is something you know, you are spot on. One thing i will very quickly add is mike and i, as i mentioned, share a hobby of miniature wargaming. Most of my books, i model the battlefield in miniature before i wrote the book. I have read fought refought the battle using miniatures. 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 comes from just massively walking the battlefield and understanding old maps and understanding modern fight lines and how they have changed, and recreating things. You have a lot more appreciation for these guys. I have been very fortunate in that i have been able to teach, on a number of occasions, a 16 week course on the battle of gettysburg, including here in gettysburg. One of the times i taught it, i had a student. Very bright young man. And he was a show me out outspoken that ewell blew it. That at the end of day one, he shouldve attacked. And he would go on and on at great length about it. Then we came here, and we walked the ground, and we 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. Today, i had a gentleman who came up to me and said i do not understand how lee could have ordered 12,000 men across that field in this mass attempt to destroy the union line. So i tried to explain that that was a common tactic in the war. These mass charges. You can name the battles where it occurred. You can name the battles where it succeeded and where it failed. And then, you have to remember that the civil war, our civil war, was literally the transition point between the napoleonic era style of warfare and what became then the horrors of trench warfare in world war i. I was raised around world war ii veterans. My dad was a wire runner on canal. An now guadal i had a friend that did three jumps in sicily and the whole thing. And i used to read jack john keegan, brilliant writer. Soldiers have not changed a great deal. One of the most common questions i get is, why do they march in line . The same reason you spray and pray on a battlefield. You suppress them. It is stupid. Yeah. But you are not in fog, you are not in smoke. When you study battles, the reason you get the stand up fighting is they were not planning on it. They walked into each other. Once the shooting starts, they do like what a lot of american soldiers did. If there is cover, they are taking it. They did it out bloody lane. Really, we have a hollywood image of how it was conducted. Soldiers have been the same forever. Where i get in trouble at picketts charge is i can pretty much proof every casualty i can name by 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 . Sunstroke, heat stroke, and men looking across, veterans, and saying no, im not doing this today. And after the book came out, i get a letter. I find a letter from North Carolina from an artillery captain who said you exaggerated the casualties. Some went 100 yards. Many did not go that far. And when i tell veterans that, that makes sense. Go ahead, colonel. You proved it. How many of you have walked picketts charge . Ok. So walking the ground is obviously difficult. Then ask yourself where the gaps in the fences dictated how you moved and what angles you took and that sort of thing. This is the exact same kind of explains a soldier has on the battlefield, except there is smoke, confusion, terror, and lead flying through the air. And you are making a decision in that kind of environment. So there is no substitute for walking the ground and seeing the ground. I always tell my students, i am sure all of us in education do 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. You had asked about the process of writing a book. This is my first book. I will be honest. I thought for a minute and said it is kind of Like National lampoon vacation. What are you talking about . You think about the griswolds. They were going to their home from wally world, and along the way they took sidetrips, the grand canyon and the second largest ball twine. What each of us decides is do you go to the grand canyon or the second largest ball 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 a publisher that tell you what you just put in a bunch of the Worlds Largest ball of twine, and they send it back and do start all over again. [laughter] tim i hope you have enjoyed your time with the panel. Our hour is over. We do not have time for more questions. But we will be out here for a while with your books. And i will have a poster of the 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 great comments. Thank you. [applause] tammy i, too, 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] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] interested in American History tv . Visit our website, cspan. Org history. View our tv schedule, preview upcoming programs, watch college lectures, museum to hers, and more. American history tv at cspan. Org history. We are at the New Hampshire state house in concord where cspan is learning more about the areas history. Up next, we speak with governor chris sununu. Spoke withncord, we republican governor chris sununu inside his office at the New Hampshire statehouse. Governor sununu, thank you for joining us today. Gov. Sununu thanks for having me. Starting out, for what is New Hampshire bestknown . Gov. Sununu when you come up to New Hampshire, i think it is obvious. Our state is kind of bound by the ocean to the White Mountain national forest. It is the foliage in the fall. Skiing in the winter. Our beautiful oceans and lakes in the summer. We are a state that tries to enhance as much as we can and highlight all the good Outdoor Recreational at remedies
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