Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War Gettysburg Civil War Institute Conference 20240714

20 books. I have a long list here. One of my favorite books is girls. Is earls. Is one of the first books to explore soldier motivation and ideology. It is an outstanding book. He has done any others that charge, ackets book on field fortifications. A lot of people dont love braxton bragg. Im not sure you will love him after you read earls book, but it is a fair and well researched , deeply analytical look. He has won a number of awards. I should note, this book fighting for atlanta, is published by the university of North Carolina press. Let me welcome earl hess. [applause] pete, veryhank you, much. Fighting for atlanta, tactics, is the and the civil war topic. The purpose is to understand one of the more important elements that influence the course of operations in the Atlantic Campaign. It is a followup to a trilogy that i did several years ago on field fortifications in the eastern campaigns. That was volume two of that trilogy coverage. Atlanta campaign was one of four that heavily used fortifications. Atlanta, vicksburg in the western theater. Generalr two may be in about the Atlanta Campaign for people who may not have that much familiarity with it. It is a major, long campaign. Under0 union troops william p sherman. Divided into three armies. They were pitted against the Confederate Army of tennessee, led by Joseph Johnson until july 18 when he was replaced by john bell hood. The Campaign Began near dalton, georgia. There were nine or 10 major battles along the way until atlanta fell on september 2, 1864. Sherman drove 100 miles into confederate territory. A campaign of that length and size is unusual. History of operations was affected by many factors, however i look at one factor. That when i did my trilogy on fortifications, it became clear to me that it is very dangerous to look at the history of field fortification without understanding typography as well as tactics. That is why the subtitle is tactics, terrain, and trenches the civil war. You have to add soldier life. To me, that is one of the more fascinating aspects. How do soldiers live and fight in field works . Very briefly, what do i mean by tactics . Topic. Complicated i have written a book about some of it so i wont go into a lot of details. Divided tactics into two major components. The tacticalcs, formations and maneuvers that were designed to organize masses of men on the battlefield and on the march. Those maneuvers and for nations were used by union and confederate. They did not change during the course of the civil war. I wrote a book on primary tactics, which pete mentioned a moment ago published in 2015 tactics. Vil infantry i dont cover them in this book because theres no need to. Instead, i deal in the atlanta book with the secondary level of tactics which used to be called grand tactics by civil war historian spirit i think that is out of favor. The color operations today. This is the level of the field Army Commander, do i attack or act on the defensive or try to outflank the enemy . Higher level than the primary level. This is what is covered in this commanders, because johnston, hood, sherman, they all had to deal with field fortifications in one way or another. Briefly, sherman adopted what i like to call it cautiously offenses mode of operation in the Atlantic Campaign. If that doesnt sound silly. Offensive mode of operations. Sherman wanted to conserve his manpower and avoid costly frontal attacks, but at the same time put a lot of continuous pressure on johnston and hood so he could keep the ball rolling continuously for four months. One of the interesting aspects of the Atlantic Campaign that historians dont point out is that it took place simultaneously with the Overland Campaign and the petersburg campaign. Grant and sherman coordinated themselves. Grant told sherman you need to keep johnston so busy in georgia that he will not send reinforcements to help lee and i will keep lee so busy in virginia that he cannot afford to send reinforcements to donson and both agreed to that. That is one of the most uppermost things in shermans mind cannot let the confederates lay around or they will do something dangerous. Of the cautiously offensive. Ays sherman conducted himself if he comes on a fortified position he fortifies in a debate and hold confederate attention with sniping and artillery fire so they are distracted and he moves part of his army group to try to outflank johnston right or left of the fortified position without having to attack it. This is a motor sherman learned to do well through the Atlantic Campaign. , butnd then he did attack generally speaking a conducted his campaign with a wonderful balance of attack and caution. Offenses mode of operations. Joseph johnson, very conservative defensive mode of operation. Ground, hope they will attack and do nothing. Passive defensive. Johnston rarely thought in terms of counterattacking against sherman. He didnt even do very much to harass the federals when they tried to cross the three major rivers. He was ready to evacuate strong positions at the first sign of a u. S. Flanking operation. He conserved his meds and his men loved him, but he gave up tons of territory quickly. He frustrated jefferson davis, that is why davis ireton am on july 18 and replaced him with john bell hood, who talked big about the need to counterattack and hood did on july 20, twice second, and 28. He attacked, failed, lost 11,000 men and reverted to relying on earthworks and a passive defense like johnston had appeared we will talk more as we go along about that. Terrain. The terrain of the Atlantic Campaign is fascinating to how many have visited this region . I am glad to see that. More than i anticipated. This map will show the general theater of operation. I would like to divide the geography into three primary zones. The first zone goes from dalton, georgia about 30 miles south of to the river. Wn there we go. They kind of worked a little bit. It doesnt seem to be working. Etowah river, right in the middle of the map, between the etowah and dalton is a largely appalachian campaign characterized by large bridges wonderfulthat are defensive positions. Face line on top of rocky ridge and it is unassailable by a frontal attack. All the problem is they have gaps in them every few miles. Sherman has to find the nearest undefended gap to the right or left and he can outflank his position easily. This first is topographic zone is good for the federals. It facilitates their movement. Sherman is able to move through zone number one quickly in only three weeks. He has battle set dalton on may , cass phil on may 19. Once the campaign crosses the river and enters the second zone between the etowah and chattanooga, piedmont country. Piedmont designates a topographic terrain that is halfway between the mountains and coastal plain. It so happens that in this part of the piedmont, there is not much development. Only a few small farms. A lot of ground that is covered by thick woods and brush. Ahead and few roads. And terrain favors johnston the confederates pit once you find out what road sherman is taking coming you block it with troops, you stymie him. When sherman enters this zone on may 23, rain begins to distend, turning the roads into reverse of mud. Sherman is stuck. The second zone is the worst phase of the Atlantic Campaign. So three favors the confederates. 9 took from may 23 until july. Sherman is worried. He is worried johnston may use the delay to send troops to grant her that is why he orders a massive assault at Kennesaw Mountain on june 27. 15,000 troops dont even dent the confederate line and he loses 3000 men in the process. He learned his lesson. Generally, sherman has to pry the confederates out of each fortified position in zone two. Once the campaign crosses the chattahoochee river, it is a different story. It is shermans advantage in the terrain game. South of the chattahoochee is still piedmont country but welldeveloped. , theof farms, plantations big city of atlanta with 10,000 people 10 miles south of the chattahoochee. The federals dont have much difficulty maneuvering troops. Atlanta is defended by a massive ring of earthen fortifications that we will see photographs of. Sherman has to deal with that. He will do that. The three rivers are part of the terrain. I remember a long time ago, Richard Mcmurray giving a talk in which he said at the three big rivers of the Atlantic Campaign were major impediments to the operations. I disagree with him. Those rivers, and they are stan rest . , and south of then the second one is the etowah south of kingston and cassville, and the third is the chattahoochee, short of atlanta, they were natural barriers, yes. Sherman however had little difficulty crossing them. Primarily because the confederacy had not bothered to contest the crossings. They did not position significant numbers of troops to harass the federals as they tried the task of crossing those rivers. Passive defense by johnston, even by hood, there were a couple of exceptions to that, yes. But for the most part, the lard the crossings were largely uncontested. They had people who knew how to lay them. The rivers were no impediment. Then, to the main event. The main course. These are just the hors doeuvres so far. Ins is a photograph taken april of 1866 of union earthworks all took ash artillery position. You can see the mountain itself, that is little kanas all right there im sorry, little kenne saw. Union earthworks in the foreground, it eroded and degraded, yes. Temporary field fortifications made out of local material. Eroding as time goes by. Commanders let me give preface about how field fortifications were constructed in the Atlantic Campaign and elsewhere. A generic explanation. Number one, the first step, the Army Commander decides where we stand. Johnson has to make a decision on this ridge of cassville on the kennesaw arrange. Then he tells his chief engineer to go out and stake out the line. The chief engineer has to look at the topography, he has to figure out how to place the trench as close to the military crest of the slope as possible. The term military crest refers to the spot on the slope where you can see all of the ground in front of you, so there is no dead space that the enemy can advance on that you cant see him. The military crest can be near or oftentimes it is different from the natural crest. You have to be smart enough to tell the difference between the two of them. They literally stake it out. They take stakes. The next step is for the infantry troops to lineup there, you issue them shovels and spades. And corder masses are responsible for the entrenching tools, they have to be issued every day. You do not yet have these little individual shovels let you do in the modern world, and world war ii for example. 90 of the trench digging in the Atlantic Campaign, union and confederate, done by infantry troops. There is not enough black slaves available to johnston or engineer troops to be able to do all that. The basic trench, you dig a trench at least three feet deep into the ground, you pile the group the dirt and front of you to form a parapet, a bank of earth that shields you. Cost income above 40 often, before you do that, you have the time to gather loose trees and rocks and pile them on the ground in front of where you want to dig so when you pile the dirt on top, you can add quick height and get better protection. Basically are waist deep or so in the ground and the rest of your body is protected by a built up berm. If you have time, you improve the basic trench with all sorts of embellishments, i like to call them. A traverse. Invention torful protect yourself from flanking fire. Flanking fire is called on salida. If the enemy gets artillery in a position where they can shoot along your trench line, against your flank, you are in deadly trouble. The only thing to do is to dig a trench and a parapet at an angle to the mainline. Ofk at this photograph resaca. [indiscernible] if you have the time to do it, this is the best way to deal with fire. You can hold on, protect yourself from flanking fire, and hopefully, stay in place. That isembellishment widespread in the Atlantic Campaign is the head log. You want to put some sort of log on top of the parapet to protect your head while you are firing. And you raise it above the parapet by a block. A couple inches of a slit between the top of the parapet and the bottom of the head log, you stick the musket through, see through it, and fire. The best thing to do is to cut down a pine tree. They are straight usually. They are soft would come easy to cut, and a light to lift up on top of the parapet. The best head log is 810 inches wide. One day, i counted the rings in a sawedoff pine tree and i estimated that a pine tree 810 inches wide is about 3040 years old. Imagine a pine tree sprouting up from a seed in the days of Andrew Jackson in northwest georgia, 40 years later, the confederates are nearby and cut it down. That is what we are talking about. I could not find a photograph of a real head log using a pine tree but this is the best i could find. Confederate earthwork at atlanta occupied the by the federals, there is a head log. It is not a pine log, it is a building timber from a house. That will do too. A couple guys sitting on it. Can see the blocks of wood there. [indiscernible] microphone . Earl i will try. You cant fire from it if you are down deep, the deepest part of the trench. The firing step is raised up a couple of inches from the bottom of the trench so you can step up onto it and be able at a height to fire under the head log. And you step back and the deeper part of the trench to save yourself. This is a pretty sophisticated form of trench. It is not a basic trench anymore if you have a bank it and it and if you have a head log in it. Also, if you have more time and you rent want to maximize your defensive position, my gosh, you do some clear cutting of trees in front of it so the enemy cannot sneak up on you. 50 yards wide, 200 yards wide, whatever you can do. It may seem ironic but in addition to that, you manmade sum of structure and to replace the trees. Different kinds of abstractions that are designed to force an attacking enemy to stop at short range of your firing line. So that you can shoot them down better in their Forward Movement has stopped. There are several categories of things. Before i point them out, i want to tell you about the ponder house. I think this is the most famous photograph to come from the Atlantic Campaign. Widely reproduced because of this ponder house, that is the white house you see there. Built by a guy in 1857 made of brick and stucco. It is near the northwest quarter of the corner of the Atlantic City defenses, near a confederate fort designated as fort x. More popularly called fort hood. Looking at the ponder house, the ponder house aframe ponder left his house in 1863 because his wife was unfaithful to him according to the story. She was blatantly having an affair with somebody. And he was humiliated and basically abandoned her in 1863. Ellen stayed there until the spring of 1864 when she also fled before sherman got there so the house was empty. Used by confederate sharpshooters perforated by u. S. All tillary artillery. He owned a 65 slaves before the war. If you are interested in the history of west point, the first africanamerican to graduate from the u. S. Military academy was a man named henry flipper. He was the son of one of the ponder slaves. This photograph so widely reproduced, you can see lots of obstructions here. Inclines and upright palisades. The upright palisades are those straight looking fence like structures just in front of the trench. Just a few inches separating each pail in it. That is an amazing obstruction, that really well obscure the fire of the guys in the trench as well as block the movement of attacking troops. And inclined palisades that are sticking at a 45 degree angle and sharpened at the end so that an attacker will catch it at his breast, you have to be careful to put the inclined palisade close enough so guys cant slip through it or you lose the effectiveness of it. There are other things you can see if you look closely at this photograph. The confederates built a massive defensive system for atlanta. The Atlantic City defenses were constructed by a guy named grant in 1863 for a confederate engineer officer. And circled the city of atlanta and was developed into probably the most heavily fortified city in america, perhaps, other than washington and richmond, by the end of the civil war. With multiple layers of obstructions, heavy earthworks. They were impregnable. Sherman had no intention at all of trying to attack them. X is in the northwest car quadrant. It originally was one of five detached redoubts that grant planned. But after hood took a main took command, he took orders of those to be connected by infantry trenches p that is why we call this hoods addition to the atlanta city line on the northwest and in the northeast sector of the defensive perimeter. And my obstruction, fractured french horse fence. Him in the foreground. It is a straight hole with holes drilled through it. You construct it behind the lines, you deploy it in front of the fortification, you chain it together so that it will not be easily taken apart. It is a formidable looking obstruction. Layered defense. As i mentioned, if you have the time, you have several five or six different layers of obstructions in front of a heavy earthwork. Union officers, soldiers, engineers, looking through their field glasses at hoods fortifications, when they got to this place of the Atlantic Campaign, shuttered. Refused toolutely launch a frontal attack against this impregnable position. This is from confederate fort fee looking toward the next fort. What you see between is the connecting line. The confederates made 18 different fortified positions through the Atlantic Campaign, 18 of them. Some of them heavier than others. Most of them quite heavy. To the way from dalton down places like lovejoys station, palmetto station, it was constructed after the fall of atlanta. Part of the Atlantic Campaign. In addition to this, the federals constructed a line of defense is opposite each one of these lines. In addition to that, after they captured atlanta, the federals dug their own city defenses for their own purposes. You do not have to remember all of these 18 lines but i think it is impressive to have it on a slide to look at it. Those are the dates they were held. It is hundreds of miles of earthworks dug by both sides. There are estimates of it and i do not know how accurate they are, but they are literally hundreds of miles if you add them all together. The lines surrounding atlanta itself were 15 miles of continuous trenches both union and confederate. Not all of those 18 confederate lines were equally strong. Heres an interesting thing. The Confederate Army of tennessee had to learn how to dig in. They did not know it from the beginning. They had to learn it. In the first confederate fortified line at dalton, partly because of inexperience and partly because of the terrain, they relied on natural defenses. This is a rock formation on the top of Rocky Face Ridge. Look at that rock formation briefly right now. I am going to show you a map where it is located in a moment. Right there. South of a gap called mill creek gap, anyone who drives south on interstate 75 from chattanooga to atlanta will go through this map. Follow the line of the railroad and you are roughly following the line of interstate 75. The next time you do this, please remember what doctor has told you on this day. And when you drive through milk greek gap, look to your right onto the top of this high dominating Rocky Face Ridge. See how tall it is an steep it is and remember that when dr. Hess was still in the a young man, he walked up the entire length of that steep ridge, almost had a heart attack may be, but he got up there and he took that photograph right there that you are enjoying right now. That is a rocky outcropping of a palisade on top of this thin, narrow, appalachian ridge. The confederates are on the others line of it. This is taken from the union side. If the federal side elected to attack up Rocky Face Ridge to the confederate position, this is what they would have faced on the top with confederate soldiers behind the rocky palisade shooting at them. They elected not to do that, im telling you. But this is the kind of appalachian terrain you deal with around dalton. And then dug gap, look at it on the map, a couple miles farther south. The confederates had fortifications there too made out of rocks. It is part of Rocky Face Ridge that is very narrow and a lot of rocks on it. Here though confederates deliberately took together put together a rock breastwork that held against an attack in the battle of dalton. Confederates evacuated dalton. They fell back to resaca. Even at the resaca, they failed to learn how to fortify properly. Consists of ae long line of trench north and south, and then an eastwest line at a right angle. At that angle, Union Artillery had a crossfire. And they devastated the confederate troops because the confederate troops did not dig the trench deep enough. They did not they were clobbered. That night when the sun went down and the battle ended, they got tools and they spent half the night deepening their trench, building traverses. On the morning of may 15, they thought we are in good shape, the Union Artillery clobbered them again here the trenches were not deep enough. There were not enough traverses. They suffered horribly. Partly because of that and other reasons they evacuated on the night of may 15. Nevertheless, the confederates learned their lesson through hard experience. After they got south of the at awad river, they began to learn how to dig and properly. Deep, deep trenches. Sophisticated obstructions. Traverses every few yards if you have to do it. South of the etowah river, the campaign slowed. Shermans slowed. Every to deal with strongly defended positions all the time, to figure out a way to get rid of them and force them out. Photograph, it is a photograph of confederate fort v to show you what it looks like. It is a holding wall. To hold up the inside of the parapet. This is made up of post driven into the ground and small polls interwoven with it. That is another photograph of troops in it. Ion heres another indication of how much they used sandbags to hold up a parapet. How they used boards and posts to hold up a traverse through the left of the alltel or a to protect the gunners. This is a wonderful photograph that is not often shown or published. I you look to the right, think you can probably see there is a line of chevauxdefrise that stretches through the horizon. You can even see the sun glinting on the middle post of them. The trench itself is just to the left of that. There is the confederate fort on top of the hill, the Georgia Railroad is going in the foreground. It is a wonderful illustration to demonstrate what fortifications looks like on the atlantic defenses. Of 1864, sherman open fired on the city of atlanta, bombarding it to terrorize the citizens. They dug a bomb proves in their backyards. You can see that mound of earth in the middle. There is a hole on the right. That is the entrance. That is what a bombproof looked like in atlanta. I assume it is a civilian bombproof because i do not see evidence of a military bomb proofs in the Atlanta Campaign. I mentioned to you that the federals constructed fortifications. Septembernta failed 2, sherman wanted to make atlanta into a thoroughly military garrison. He ordered the evacuation of 3500 southern some somethings visors. They were forced to leave. He also ordered his engineer to construct a union earthworks to defend atlanta. They were inside the confederate perimeter. You can see those numbers those numbered lines, 14, 20 5, 16, 17, that is the union earthworks to defend atlanta. Through the southern and western suburbs, they had to tear down houses. But they built one of the most impressive earthwork defensive systems he will ever see. Photographed by George Barnard and november of six of 1862. We have several wonderful photographs, how neat they are, how well constructed according to scientific principles. Here is something you will not see any place else. This is a ditch in federal fort number seven. You see those things that look like corn stalks . They are not corn stalks. They are wooden stakes, six feet ends and theyp are planted to make a forest of sharpened stakes in the ditch. If you are an attacking rubble, andnds and they are planted to make a you see ty while you are charging, you are just going to see a bed of sharpened stakes that you will have to try and deal with, obviously not even going to try. I have never seen anything like this in a civil war earthwork fortification. This would make this fort absolutely impregnable to an infantry attack. Me jump to another issue here. I promise you some information about soldier life. I want to do that because that is the most interesting aspect of the research i have done for this book. Soldiers lived and fought in trenches continuously in the Atlanta Campaign. It might be different they were not stuck forever like on the western front of world war i. Nevertheless, the trenches were their home. They were living in holes in the ground. And it is northwest georgia, so the ground is red clay. No matter what the weather is, baking under the hot sun, swimming and mud, during the heavy rain, let me give you a quote from a federate a confederate soldier of the Fifth Company washington artillery. Keyed andnd rain, cold, storm and mud and water, come what may, we took it in the trenches. Soldiers learned to stretch blankets over the trenches as sun shake come often to be told by officers to tear them down as they interfered with a surprise attack. A Union Soldier named William Wester fell of the 70th new york noted that his trench after a heavy rain was half full of water. And sometimes, it was a choice whether he would take a bath or a bullet. As it was almost certain death to leave the trenches. Soldier namedate george lee, some of mississippi, described his comrades, he said they look as bad as a dog just out of a hole after a rabbit. Instead of being white, we are already. All red. Heres a quote from a georgia militiaman, governor joe brown did mobilize 3000 or 4000 state troops in the Atlanta Campaign. I haveife, lizzie lived in the ground until i have turned to be nothing more than a gofer or a mole. He and his comrades were a nasty, dirty set of men he said. Let me add that maybe they were nasty and dirty for this reason too. It was not just the dirt. If it is dangerous to get out of the trench to relieve yourself, what do you do . A lot of soldiers just relieved themselves in the trench. In the feces accumulated until an officer said enough is enough, get some shovels and get this stuff out of here. You have to deal with that, you had to deal with an awful lot was beef of the beef was eaten by soldiers. Fresh off the hook, you slaughtered it every day. Near the lines, that creates piles of cattle awful that rots and draws insects, flies swarmed by the million around the set around the trenches. Especially they were occupied for weeks. That, body lice infested the men in the trenches. Here is a quote from isaac foster, of 10th mississippi, numbers of them, body lice, may be seen crawling on the coals that support our like its which are spread for shade. Never before have they been so plentiful. Although he admitted the men suffered from body lice throughout the campaign. Boarding became a problem. I found it interesting that isaac implies that the body lice gave people something to do. We have this image that trench warfare is a horrible experience and obviously it was but there is also an awful lot of boredom going on. Few newspapers and even fewer books were there to pass the time here they kept in touch with friends and other units by writing notes on pieces of paper and passing them down the trench line with instructions sending send this get send this down to that guy. A lot of confederates deserted during these informal truces to get out of Confederate Service which is one reason rebel officers usually tried to stamp them out as much as possible. Sherman brought the campaign to a conclusion. He did it by doing a tactic which he had done once or twice earlier in the campaign, to temporarily cut himself off from his railroad supply lane with chattanooga, living off the land for several days to make a wide sweeping flanking movement around the city of atlanta and cut off its railroad supply lines in order to starve the confederates out. That is how he captured atlanta on september 2, 1864. The irony is again, i draw your attention to these wonderfully constructed federal earthworks of atlanta. They were basically finished by early november. You know what happened right after that. Sherman changed his plan. He does not intend to hold atlanta anymore, he wants to evacuate it, cut away with 60,000 of his troops and marched through georgia. After this wonderful but set of earthworks was finished, George Barnard quickly exposed may be about a dozen photographs of it for posterity, and then the federals evacuated atlanta and left the city behind and never used them. Sherman has other objectives. The march of this eases it. No earthworks in the marsh of the sea. It is not static warfare, it is not trench warfare, it is rapid mobile strategic rating. In the warships into another ear. What is the bottom line about fortifications and the Atlantic Campaign . The campaign was heavily vested with fortification by both sides. Did it do either of them any good . The confederates used fortifications for defensive purposes to delay sherman, they failed to stop him. Why . Usedse it sherman cleverly fortifications for offense of purposes offensive purposes. Hold their lines to attention and you can hold that line with few troops because a fortification is what the modern military calls a force multiplier. Anything that will maximize the fighting power of your troops, and sherman can therefore detachment from his army and flank the confederates out. That is what we call fortification uses for offense of ash offensive purposes. Another issue we need to bring up, there is an idea among a lot of students of the civil war that field fortifications were the result of impetus by ordinary soldiers. Who took it upon themselves to construct them. For the most part, that is a fallacy. Look at the records, look at the information. Nine times out of 10, middle ranked commanders are making that decision. Sometimes a core commander. Doesnt sherman make the decision . No. Does johnson do that . No, not really either. It is the middle ranked commander who makes a decision and fosters the repetitive use of these things. The other notion is blacks constructed the 18 fortified lines . No. Absolutely not. Blacks were used to construct two of the 18 fortified lines. The chattahoochee river line on the north bank of that chattahoochee and the Atlantic City line. All of the others were done by infantrymen instead. On the union side, all of it was done by union infantryman. Is trench warfare and inevitable . No. It just happened in the Atlanta Campaign. It didnt continue afterward. Was it a four shadowing of world war i . A lot of people say yes. I say no for various reasons. What you have in world war i is vastly different in scope and kind than what you have in atlanta or petersburg, so there is no real comparison between oranges and apples. But enough, i think at this point i would like to first of all thank you for your indulgence in what can be a technical issue. I want to hear what you have to say. Thank you very much. [applause] dennis from brooklyn, new york. Sherman accomplished in three months his goal of taking atlanta with about half the number of casualties, if that, that grand suffered in the same period of time going to richmond and petersburg. What do you think the reasons for that are . How does it reflect on shermans leadership versus grants leadership . Mr. Hess very good question. I think it reflects highly on shermans leadership. Sherman conducted the Atlanta Campaign with her balance, or care. Lovet want to be i ranch. I dont want to criticize him too much, but i think grant was operating under a vastly different environment in virginia thin sherman was in georgia. He had a better commander to oppose. Number two, grant was working with an army he didnt know and didnt know him. Number three, the biggest thing is that grant was working against the fact that the army bythe potomac had been led lee for so long. Grant thought if you look at the comments on the oberlin campaign. Says, itstent thing he is necessary to teach the army how to fight. Grant interpreted the oberlin morrell as a contest of of morale. You can with these guys if you just try to sherman saw that too. To the wrote letters Atlanta Campaign saying you are giving the rebels a good lesson, keep it up. Issues were the uppermost. Im saying this because i think that is the reason why grant so often attack and was sometimes poor preparation, because he was afraid that leave would take advantage of him if he didnt do something quickly. Sharman didnt have to worry about that, because johnston was so passively defensive he didnt have to worry about johnson taking advantage of him. Its a wonderful question that we could spend a whole hour discussing. Thank you. Whited sherman feel it necessary to build his own set of fortifications around atlanta . Why didnt he reuse the confederate once which had been built for two years already . Mr. Hess the answer is one of scale. The confederate earthworks were planned to be far enough away from the center of atlanta so that enemy artillery would not be able to reach the center of atlanta that well. That truth to be a fallacy. Because they were set so far, one to two miles away from the center of atlanta, it is a big circuit that would have required far too many troops to hold. That is the basic answer. Sherman wanted to hold atlanta with a small garrison. He needed a shrunken perimeter. The firstked about black graduate from west point. Famously, colonel Benjamin O Davis and up being a general. When he graduated from west 22, he, uponeve graduation gained a lot of friends. His classmates did not want him there because of his color. They would not talk to him. He was ostracized. The gentleman who was the first cadet at west point, he experienced the same thing. Mr. Hess he was not allowed to graduate. , thee forgotten his name first africanamerican to enter west point. Hazed so harassed and so it letdid something, himself to be open to courtmartial and dismissal from the academy. That is why he becomes the first africanamerican to graduate. He is not the first to attend west point. Speaking of the terrain advantages and disadvantages, you talked about how from the editor was to the chattahoochee, and the different advantages. How did the fact that the land was more developed swing the terrain advantage from the confederates to the federal . Mr. Hess good question. My own interpretation is that , sohave more cleared areas the federals have the opportunity of scouting header and seeing whether the confederate positions one of the things they complained was they were engulfed by the force per we can see more than 10 yards away. Another thing is, i only recently found out about this, the Atlanta Campaign produced refugees ofwave of any campaign of the civil war. Most of the southern civilians got out of the way. Federal troops constantly complained they were coming across one at abandoned house of tensed after another. They rely heavily on local civilians to tell them what is the name of this road . Does it go to this place or that place . They couldnt do that anymore so they had to send up calvary patrols and scouts. They had to go through heavily forested area where they could be ambushed. It inhibited their ability to do recon. Another thing is as you have more heavily developed area there are roads so you dont have to deal with terrible roads that are just mere tracks to the woods. You could move through a little bit better. Wonderful question. Illinois. Eaton, your slides you mentioned a shoup line but you never mentioned the shoup aids. Am interested in your idea. Mr. Hess interesting the question came appeared i have information on it but i decided to bypass it because nobody would know about the shoup line. [laughter] i am glad to be proven wrong on that. It is called the chattahoochee river line. Lets go back to that list. It usually is called the chattahoochee river line i call it the shoup line, it is number 11 up there. 1864. Through nine it is an unusual one because lead had thellery idea to do it. He had a slightly different twist on fortification. He thought instead of building a big readout on a hill, lets just have a series of small fortifications which came to be es, which were made quickly with slave labor by logs. They were like a stock aided fort. Then you have a stockade to connect them. His basic idea was to build a fortification that could be held with the minimal number of confederate troops so that johnston could mass most of his army on shermans flank johnston build it. H ahead and camusso he gathered hundreds of slaves from the region and constructed quickly. Johnston held the position for four or five days. He completely forgot about why it was held here he refused to counter attack against sherman and as soon as sherman got a hold of some crossings of the chattahoochee, johnston evacuated on the night of july 9, frustrating shoup to no end. How the confederate soldiers respond to this unusual thing . Some laughed at it when they saw it. They tore them apart. They made their own earthworks. Other confederate officers scratched their head and asked shoup about it and he explained his concept. They said they would try it. It is a controversial line, as you said it was never tested by the federals. Cached of has a certain today because of its unusual design features. If you want to know my opinion, i think we are making too much out of it. His innovation is not that different from the basic concept , just a different design to achieve the same purpose. I am not at all convinced it would have worked if it had been tested properly by the enemy. Negative aboutre the brilliancy of the shoup line than others tend to be. But it is perpendicular to the line . Mr. Hess it can be. The photograph shows them, if i can find it being not perpendicular, but more at a different kind of angle. But they are both traverses . Yes. Ess it depends on the needs and the topography of the position. Any kind of acrid entrenchment will help in this regard. Whether it is perpendicular, literally or at a different angle. The three campaigns that all featured earthworks were late in the war. Can you comment generally about the attitude of the construction of earthworks and the role that improved technology played . Could havedays, you made fortifications, but a large infantry assault still could have overrun that position. Mr. Hess good question. Thank you for asking. You are touching on and other related issue that i have talked about in a previous book called the rifle musket and the civil war. It had been the traditional wereht that both armies armed with the modern rifle musket. Because of the new weaponry, people had to dig in on the battlefield to survive. For decades, that old am a heldtional interpretation sway for when i began doing fortification study on the eastern campaigns, i broached an argument that counters it and i more fully developed that argument in my book the rifle musket and the civil war. The was not the rifle musket but continuous combat that led to the heavy use of field fortifications. Before 1864, you do not have come other band yorktown and hudson,g siege and fort continuous contact for weeks at a time of opposing forces. When you do, at sieges, you have earthworks. Rantgument was because mandated continuous contact in 1864 by the army at the potomac and by sherman, that is why you see the sprouting up of field fortifications. Even in 1961 through 1963, battles like gettysburg see no special made fortification on july 1 or second. A little bit i july 3 and a lot more on july 4. 61s is a pattern or didnt through 63, there were many civil war battles were fortifications were not used, but if the armies remained in contact after the fighting for a couple days, they built fortifications after the fighting is over. The ideae, disproves that the rifle musket is the instigator of this. Continuous contact is, i think. Lee elder from thomas, ohio appeared. A few days ago my wife and i petersburg or chi said can i assume world war is learned something from this . That is why we have the trenches support for one to it i said of course. A few moments ago you told us i was wrong. [laughter] before i get home and hear about tell whyd like you to she was right. Mr. Hess it is a good point. I glad you brought it up. Number one, i dont know if any evidence uncovered why historians that military engineers of the germany army, the french army, or commanders of those armies in 1914 even knew what happened in the civil war. There is no evidence that they did a study of this. Andu. S. Army, west pointers everybody else did study civil war field fortification. The Atlantic Campaign was a unit of study for the u. S. Army and the late 1800s. I had never seen any historian who can show any evidence that european therapist knew about this. The thing you have to keep in mind is that the erie of field fortifications and the growth of their use as a worldwide phenomenon and 1900s and not just america. Why did world war i and the evolve . Front de the primary reason is because by 1914, europe has experienced an explosion of population all over ent, because they can afford to raise gigantic military forces. You can have a National Army raised in a matter of weeks in 1914 that is big enough to span the borders of your country. In other words, you can have continuous fronts and world war i that you could not have in the civil war. There is no possibility of outflanking a trench on the western front because there is no flank. It starts on the coast of the north sea and goes to switzerland 500 miles. Every yard held by a german soldier. Shermans strategy of outflanking the enemy is impossible in world war i. In. Those germans dig if the germans dig three, which was the basic fortification of world war i, and then take another three lines of trenches half a mile behind that, you have so many layers of trench to bust through it is almost hopeless. If you look at the history of the western front, it is the german army that initiates the meant. Default theirompensated for growing lack of manpower by the engineers planning the most sophisticated field fortifications in World History that would take johnstons lines look like peanuts. That is why you say on a scale and a sophistication level, the europeans did it all on their own in world war ii. They didnt need the example of america. German engineer had looked at the Atlantic Campaign, he would have laughed. That is just my guess. That is my interpretation of it here it few can boil that down into a nutshell, tell it to your wife. [laughter] am from miami florida. My question was, is there any how thece in confederate and federal soldiers built trenches in their skill or style . If there is, why . Mr. Hess interesting question. The answer is yes. Up another interesting point i wanted to say and forgot. If you want to look at trenches in the Atlantic Campaign you are lucky. Go to Kennesaw Mountain National Park. Five to six along miles of preserved confederate trench. So peered it is red clay, they are well preserved. One of the interesting things about kennesaw is there are several sections where you can see quirky designs that only appear on this sector. Quirky Little Design features i have never seen anywhere else. Those are examples of a guy in this company of the 20th tennessee having an idea in their mind about how to rearrange their trench a little bit differently than everybody else does. If anybody was attending that material Culture Panel yesterday, there is a material culture field fortifications. There is a standard way that is explained in the fortification manuals about how to do it. Then there is also the , madeup thing and individual soldier will think about it i find a lot of those innovative little quirks on confederate fortifications and rarely on union fortifications peered does that mean the confederates are more inventive . I dont know. In the Atlanta Campaign there were no union earthworks preserved so we dont have a fair comparison here. The other thing is, the confederates were on the defensive. They tended to build their earthworks deeper and with more obstructions. Strongerals had a tendency not to dig in as heavily because they didnt worry about being attacked by johnston. Even if we had preserved union earthworks, they would be lighter and less impressive. You mentioned sherman changed his mind and it really made use of the union forces. [no audio] mr. Hess he left the earth works alone or does far as i am aware, there was no destruction of the confederate line or the union line. When they were demolished, i dont know. I wish we did know. Ally what happens is that i should probably end up pretty soon. Usually what happens is when the fight is over, went over, landovers comeback and they reclaimed their property. It is right appear. 1866, you can see evidence of a rehabilitation. Parapet has been dug into by somebody. It is half gone and look at the fence posts. The fence posts were part of the fortifications. One of the first things they did when they had to do with a postwar fortification was to pull the wood out and dry the fence post so they can reuse it. You see evidence of that in this photograph. I wish we had lots more information about when and how these earthworks were demolished after the war was over. It is a special interest of mine. There is very little evidence. My guess is the union earthworks were probably demolished very quickly after sherman left because they were in the way of the suburbs. The landowners got there former andes now and anybody else shoveled them over. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] we have about eight minutes before our next panel. This is American History tv on cspan3 p we are live in pennsylvania for the annual Civil War Institute summer conference. After this break, you will be back with historian Gary Gallagher and a panel of scholars who will highlight places related to the civil war. Next 10 minutes come our cspan cities tour takes you on the road to feature the history of an american city. Next, on American History tv we talk about former slaves, abolitionists and minister Josiah Henson who was one of the inspirations for the title character in Harriet Beecher stowes uncle tom kevin. We recorded the interview at an author event hosted by the association for the study of African American life and history. Josiah henson is one of the Unsung Heroes of the underground railroad. He had a phenomenal life as a he laide was enslaved with his in tire family. He started a settlement for other refugees. He was widely known in england, canada, and the eastern United States as father henson and was very much in demand as a preacher and a speaker. Became an inspiration, not the inspiration for the literary character uncle tom in uncle toms cabin. They were alike in some ways only p she used many sources for that character. She was writing a christ figure. She developed a character who was a devout christian, tried to persuade other people to deepen their faith, sacrificed himself or others, was beaten, tortured, died, and forgave his tormentors as he died. That is not Josiah Henson, that is christ. Though there were many inspirations for uncle tom, Josiah Henson got associated with it. Some of the best and worst things that could happen to him. Skyrocket. Is fame to he had an exhibition at the londons world fair. Even Queen Victoria met him and divided him to windsor castle. When he became associated with uncle, which originally was in had a high craze. Stowe did Harriet Beecher know about him. Did the two ever meet . Ms. Troiano they did meet at least once. Harriet Beecher Stowe had read his first autobiography. He wrote four of them. She had also read many other slave narratives and spoken with many people enslaved and free. She had a lot of sources for the character. Course,lem was of within a couple years of her famous novel being published, minstrel shows started spewing skewing uncle tom into Something Else or Josiah Henson was strong physically but the uncle tom of the minstrel show was a weak man. As i was middleaged. The uncle tom and the minstrel show was old. A buffoon. Ed into so, while the first uncle tom famousmade him even more throughout england, canada, and the United States, the second notion minstrel shows were the most popular form of entertainment and so, that notion of what an uncle tom was took over and was completely the opposite of who henson was. How did mr. Henson respond to that negative reaction to what he at one point claimed in terms of being the inspiration . Ms. Troiano he had always, when he was introduced in speeches said, you have been called here and you think uncle tom is coming. I am not uncle tom. I am Josiah Henson. You responded to it like he responded to every tragedy of his life. Hee most strong people do, just put one foot in front of the other and kept on going. He knew he was a man of faith and integrity. So, why did you want to write about him . Ms. Troiano writers are told write what you know. I came across hansen and i didnt know him. I ended up writing what i didnt know p he was born a few miles from my home. I wasbled across and when invited to an archaeological dig there. I did not know about henson or the man who owned the historical property had never heard of henson. Virtually no one has. He had just disappeared that thoroughly from history. Rescuing over 100 people on the underground railroad is a phenomenal feat just for that alone, it seems like when people talk about tubman and douglas, they should talk about henson. Why do you think they dont . Ms. Troiano uncle tom is the most important thing. There is one other thing that happens bit we are all a product of our times. When henson started the school in canada, it was to teach basic Elementary School education, provide manual training, teach girls in domestic skills, get men so they could find gainful employment. That was wonderful. It was exactly what was needed. But, 30 years later, so much had changed that nearby, another school was founded primarily but not exclusively for refugees and they had a precollege curriculum. They taught out of, geometry, latin, hensons school could not have taught those things he was working with the times had changed and what he did didnt seem as important. Thank you for speaking with us. We are back live at Gettysburg College in pennsylvania for the Civil War Institute annual summer conference. Up next, a panel of historians discussing places they deem significant to the civil war. You are watching American History tv on a cspan3. [crowd noises] welcome to our afternoon panel, everybody. This is a panel on the book civil war places. Appear a couple copies that people will be thumbing through. We will have something unusual for me. He will have a screen behind us id ayers is smiling because dont usually do anything this venture some. [laughter] of a departureng for me. Here is how the structure is going to work. I will give very reef introductions for the four people sitting here at the table with naypyidaw double to all of them at once, and then i will go in the order in which these images are going to appear and have each of our Panel Members talk about why they decided to be part of this project and why they selected the image that they selected and they will talk for a little while about the image and we will see where the conversation goes at that and at the end, as always you will be able to have some questions here its very briefly, let me introduce everybody up. I will start with carol reardon. Taught for a long time. Author of one of the first important books on civil war memory especially on the military side. , thea sword in one hand problem of military thought in the civil war north or she is coauthor with tom fossil are of two field guide books the battlefield of gettysburg and antietam. Ayersn the line is edward who is president emeritus of the university of richmond. Of uva Longtime College when i went it was a delight to be there with ed. His most recent publication as you know is the thin light of freedom. Won the 20 lincoln prize. Of thee professor calculus of violence. Far right is steve barry from university of georgia and author and editor of six books. Family divided by war. A book of essays that has had the Significant Impact on what , storiesn our world from the civil war. I am supposed to deal with this. There is the dust jacket of the book it im going to say right now, because i am proud to do so, all of the images in this book were taken by my son, will gallagher who is a photographer in austin, texas. It was an wonderful opportunity for will and me to spend time together exploring places or did was a great joy to work on this book with him. Now that i have gotten that out of the way, we will start with steve barry, his essay leads off the book. The inside of of Shiloh Church on the battlefield at shiloh. Steve, i will ask you to questions i said i would ask you why did you agree to be part of the project and why do select this place . Before you do that, i almost forgot to tell you where this book came from. I need to do this. Particularly because i want to give credit to jay Matthew Coleman coeditor. We edited in earlier book called lens of war. Historiansof senior conducted essays on one image that spoke them for whatever reason. Carol contributed to that book. Ed couldnt, but he had too many applications. On, steve, and i did. We edited that book. The university of Georgia Press did a beautiful job with it. In subsequent conversations, matt and i talked about something he might do as a followup. Matt had the idea of asking a group of our friends and other senior scholars if they would think about one Place Associated with the civil war, a distinctive place. Not a great battlefield, not a city that endured the war, but a theycular place that believe would allow them to talk about their relationship with the war, how we might look at the war and they could go wherever they wanted with it. We wanted the essays, which would run to about 10 pages to be as personal as they wanted them to bp or you could come at it as a scholar or as a much more personal level than that. The idea was to find people who had a place that would make them want to take the time from busy lives. These are mostly senior people with a great many things on their plate and we are asking them to do something that will not make their bank account that are whatsoever. They are doing it as a favor because they think there is something useful in this caret im happy to say when matt and i put together our list of potential contributors, not one person turned us down. This is really matts idea. He was the one who said how about getting people to focus on one place . That is what we did. That is not what we will talk about. Steve, i apologize for being covers and in getting to you. Not at all. A point that gary makes was the one that came home to me quite quickly. How personal this would be. If you are an academic, oftentimes, too often you are in the ivory tower or you are saying why something is important or needs to be important to everybody and you dont get to confess white is important to you. To yourt get to return headwaters of what made you want to be a historian in the first place. This was an opportunity to do that and return to what you care about personally. To write about it in the i voice. When i thought about what i would choose, for some reason i thought about the fact that wars are fought outside, but they are made inside. They are made in the u. S. Congress. They are made at kitchen tables and in parlors. They are made in state legislatures. That is where wars get made. They get fought outside. I thought how weird would it be to do and interior . Almost immediately, i thought Shiloh Church. Shiloh has been a touchstone for me. It was an early battlefield that i went to. It has a story. All of the battles the civil war have their own story, sometimes like the Founding Fathers as the xmen of the evolution. From franklin, or icky ingenuity. The civil war battles had personalities in a way they get enshrined in our story. Gettysburg is the great test. Of shiloh is this loss innocent spear the thing about Shiloh Church as have to know it was formed by a separatist, a separate methodist congregation. It starts in 1851. They left a church named union to form this little proslavery church and that church is in the middle of every aspect of the battle. Body there. Hnson its the headquarters of both armies. Then it is to store mostly, to take relics. People traveling to shiloh battlefield. They want a piece of it. So, the church was all but destroyed. So, they rebuilt it. It is a good facsimile and erected it in 2001. My favorite part of this process is actually working with will and asking him, this is what is in my head and i want this church to be a place where you dont know if everybody has left or if everybody is about to come in. If it is son of pork sundown, if the light coming in the window because the sun is setting or not. It would look like a place of possibility, where maybe we wouldnt make a war or maybe we would. That kind of valence to the image come he just got it. It is such a beautiful picture. It sayss a fantastic 46. I am 46 inches from this thing. [laughter] more rewardinghe things ive done as an academic. I said yes because this sounded like a lot of fun, to be honest. Not everything we do is just fun , although generally it is 99 fun. Atlas many years ago or die worked on the valley of the shadow that had talked about. I knew enough about gis and wondered my way into saying i could make the maps. And that took a lot more energy than i anticipated i am not a cartographer. In the process of doing that i spent a lot of time thinking tell how we tell how we stories or make arguments of things other than words. We are trained as historians to write or that is what we do. We read and we write and we know how words work and understand sentences and paragraphs and chapters. Then, visual imagery has a whole different grammar and structure to it. It took me a long time to figure that out, which is why most of the images are not frame and put on your wall youthful, unlike photographch every is extraordinary. I have been thinking about geography and about place. Photograph that we know from gardner and brady and the other people, which was the lens of war, but to commission something new that requires that we think seriously about what things look like. Most of us in graduate school dont get a lot of training and visual material aired we have a great panel on material culture. Anthropologist or trying to do this and so of us kind of learner ray into it about thinking what a picture does how a picture works to convey information. And it sells interprets the thing it is representing we are much more natural with text. I took it as an interesting so, the picture and essay that i wrote, this is a , mostlyof vicksburg looking south toward the city, but roughly where a lot of the installations were and the title wanted something that would convey or get a reader into the argument about hindsight and confederate defeat and inevitability and to try to challenge those. Ed alluded to this in his comments when he was talking about the likelihood of slavery going away in 1860, but there was a period when there was a picture of a teetering south and fear of the collapse of slavery, but i think most people suggest that is not a reasonable interpretation of people who felt quite confident of what they were doing. Vicksburg was presented as a place of defeat, as the linchpin. Arguably, it is sec alleged to say, but vicksburg is the more important one for opening up the mississippi and cutting off the transmississippi confederacy. I wanted to pull us back and stand where confederates stood and see what looks to them like an impregnable position. The preposterous miss of imagining a union that could conquer this place. Now takene right below for july 4, 1863 which might get you to the mind of those people who led the confederacy into a new nation. End. We know the that is not what they knew. Toolight is a very useful for us to understand things, but ands a super powerful drug you have to does yourself very carefully with that. It is impossible to think about the potentiality of what history shows. So, i hope this picture pulls us back from that little bit. Mr. Gallagher you can see there is a real variety of the pictures from the intimate and willof steves, use different cameras and different lenses. We asked him to offer his thoughts at the end the book, which he did. He talked about some of the images and the challenges and what he enjoyed and what was difficult, but he used a drone, as you can tell to get this one for the perspective that aaron wanted. There is a great range of kinds of images in this book as well as a great diversity of places and we will move on to carols image here which is the third one. When i was asked to be a part of this, it was an easy thing to say yes because i didnt get the opportunity to say no. [laughter] but, that is perfectly fine. It, asgan to think about soon as i came to penn state in 1991, i started doing programs at gettysburg. I started doing staff rides. I built my retirement home here in gettysburg. So, it should be easy for me to pick my backyard as my favorite place. Except come he gave me one requirement. I couldnt pick gettysburg. Mr. Gallagher did i really say that . Ms. Reardon yes, you did. It presents a new challenge. If not my backyard, where . Steve alluded earlier to what got us started. What is the foundational moment . Since we were allowed to pick not just a place connected with civil war itself but civil war memory, it was that flash of admin of inspiration that you get. How many are you from the pittsburgh area . So, some of you have been to a ande called the soldiers sailors memorial home. It is in the oakland section on the outskirts of university of pittsburgh. Lots of traffic except for one large block where there is a lot of open green space and a Little Island of silence in an otherwise easy place. How did i discover it . The most fundamental, easiest way to describe it is baseball. My grandmother was a spark pirates fan and the bus that would take us back home from pirate games, the bus stop was in front of soldiers and sailors memorial hall. You are waiting for the bus and looking up at this large lawn and there are a couple of large cannons on the front line. Largest statues beckoning you to come forward. I had that little bit of a historical itch that i needed to scratch anyway so i pestered my grandmother to let me go in. One day, she finally did hear it that is why i am sitting here today. There is my foundational story. She took me into soldiers and sailors memorial hall. What was in their . The kinds of things that gets your mind moving in all kinds of different directions. The display of relics. They are not big, fancy relics. Piece of wood from shiloh. Piece of wood with a bullet in it. Of places, a battle blog from chickamauga with cannonballs in it but you could touch it. That was cool. Those of the kinds of things that got me intrigued and started. It was also something i walked away from after a wild. Some of you know my bachelors is in biology. End uprse i took to where i am today goes a lot of different ways. Reallythe things that intrigued me was on the walls around the exterior of the building, there is a north hall, east hall, west hall but they would not name a south hall because this was after all, a testament to the northern veterans of the pittsburgh area. Around those walls were large plaques reminiscent of the plaques on the pennsylvania memorial. It listed by regiment the Allegheny County recruits in various pennsylvania regiments. I knew i had an ancestor. My grandfather helped me find out he was in the 14th however he and i could not wait to get back and find my personal connection to the civil war. My great, great grandfather. I had to find him. Looked at the plaques, i looked at every name on it, and i found a name that had the right last name, but the wrong first name. Talk about devastation. His name is there, but they got it wrong. [laughter] that almost turned me off of history, to be perfectly honest. Years later when i entered up finding a thing called the official record of the civil war and the bates history of the volunteers, i began to learn something about research. I was hooked. That visit to a place in , the moneythat was for which was raised because the people of Allegheny County voted to tax themselves to raise the funds to do it. Would we do Something Like that today, i wonder. But they did. A visit there started all of this and brought me here today. Talk about the power of place. To do aasnt allowed gettysburg place, that was the first place that popped into my mind. It is as simple as that. I think iher mentioned the other night, that the most obvious problem with oral histories is that people remember things differently. [laughter] ofave absolutely no memory telling carol she could not write about gettysburg, and i find it very difficult to imagine that i would tell carol she couldnt write about gettysburg because i know there are many places that resonate powerfully with you. But i will defer to you, since i have good manners. [laughter] i will pretend i did tell you that. I am going to skip an image because i think that ed should go next. We are now in richmond with eds image. I didnt have to think twice, nor were promises took nor extracted when i this i missed out on lens of work, so i felt especially eager to be part of this work. Anything gary does, he does right. Rate, it would be first so i thought i would try to live up to the standard. It is kind of a strange image to have chosen. Everybody else has these evocative stories. I am surprised myself by choosing the spirit i tried to figure out why. I realized everything i have ever thought about the past is the gap between the old and the new. As aaron was saying, the image an agrariane was society trapped in the past and static. South was before three just economy in the world by itself. They were arrogant. Thinking they could go it on their own. One reason was because of the industrial emergence of richmond. This is the waterwheel at ironworks which began all the way back in the 1830s as an image of coming off at canal that was imagined by George Washington and doug by slave people in the late 18th century. The idea that virginia was going to make a canal to the ohio river. If it werent for those darn mountains. It suggests that virginia and the south were not born old. They were not born backward looking, but they thought they could adapt to the modern world. So this ironworks runs off the water from the james. John smith discovered in 1607 on his way to china two weeks after he arrived in the Chesapeake Bay and made it as far as richmond and said well, well come back in 100 years. We have some plantations to establish. It sat there all that time because of these waterfalls as an impediment. They could see the time the Falling Water would be an advantage for building mills, but it took a long time to make their way back up to the falls. Then, they imported workers from wales. It is a welsh name, because there were not enough indigenous workers. Take some of the first coal in america, they were outside of richmond. Iron in richmond. They didnt know that they couldnt create an Industrial Center in virginia. However, it turns out, can you enslavedemployee or by people to do this work . Would that be something the south could adapt itself to . It turns out, yes, you could come but not alongside the immigrants who wanted to train iron sons in the skills of peddling and making. So you had strikes. Something else you dont think about in old site and the old south. Labor strikes against slavery. Virginia region that goes into the confederacy very reluctantly and ends up suddenly becoming its capital, because of the anomalous piece of scenery that virginia is essential if the confederacy will make its own cannons and Railroad Track and so forth. So, virginia goes from being highly reticent to finding itself as a target of the entire war, partly because of this wheel. There is the case where we think of something as being old, the way we think of the confederacy and the slave south as it took an artifact of the past that somehow finds itself trapped in the booming 19thcentury with all the industrialization going on in the north. I like the wheel because as they say in the english department, it disrupts that image. It makes it harder for us to imagine that it is all cotton fields in the south and smokestacks in the north. The other reason i do this is because i have been trying to take this old thing and make it into something new. Richmond,st came to they asked me to join the boards of the museum of the confederacy. See, it made sense to everybody that we would consolidate those incredible strengths and make a museum that would really do justice to having been the center of the war from start to finish and the center of the largest slave state. But, as you can imagine it was hard for people to give up the museum of the confederacy, it was 100 years old. It begun with the memories of the united daughters of the confederacy trying to keep alive this memory. So, people didnt know if these things could go together. The waterwheel had stopped turning toward it had to find a way to get water from the canal, a dry canal to turn the wheel. It is disconnected from the machinery underneath. The real question was could we have the waterwheel eight memory turn again. Could we take things that had , covered withted fines and overgrown with weeds and neglect, could we turn it into a museum that would tell the story of the defining event of our nation in a new way with a new vocabulary . It is ironic that we are using these beautiful black and white or gray scale photographs because at the museum we decided the past was in color. It was not all fiddle music and gray and thend people of the past have been alive as we were. If we persuade young people, we had to find ways to make the museum talk. Color is a part of all of that. When i was invited to participate in this, i had been thinking about it ensuring this board the last six years. Ground in 2017, no we have opened in 2019. Many days i wasnt sure he could happen. Any days it seemed it was just too hard to raise tens of millions of dollars and take this Old Industrial site. Think about this, lets take a 19th century Industrial Site and build a new building. What could possibly be in an old iron producing ground next to the james river . A cannonball larger than any canon could fire. Tohad to bring in allies examine, xray, make sure it wasnt going to explode. But were we going to be able to around these box buildings without knocking them down . Are we going to be able to get out of the floodplain . The james river floods all the time. Can we put this priceless collection, the largest election of civil war artifacts into this new place in a responsible way . Are we going to be able to persuade the political persuasions that yes, we can do justice and tell the truth . People want a place to come to see. When i agreed to do this, i didnt know the answer to that was yes. But i did note that we had the waterwheel turning again. I did know that you could come see the way that and it made me believe that, well, if we could get the waterwheel turning again, we could get the wheels of memory turning again and be able to see some things in new ways, so that is what it means for me and the fact that you cannot only come and see the wheel turn, but the doors open. It feels good to be able to share that. As i admonished you before, we will be taking names, and we expect to see every single one of you in richmond in the near future. The process of selecting images varied from author to author. With steves he and will and i and matt rawlings, on the same page. Carol and i were on exactly the same page. Ed, will took a number of shots with his drone that showed some of the iconic buildings that could be related to some of the photographs taken right after the fall of richmond at the end of the war, those famous pictures. Neither of us, neither will nor i, imagined the pictures page, and i would not have taken them, and will explain to me what he was a photographer and i was not when he took it. He said he thought ed would like to have maybe a choice of a better option, and, of course, i deferred, and it worked, and it worked with the essay, and i am now over that. [laughter] gary yes, as carol said, you can tell. My initial thought was not to pick something obvious. As someone who grew up in southern colorado, just over the line from northern new mexico, i thought it would be nice to have an image of the real west, what i would call the real west, in the book, and i was initially going to use the monument in santa fe as my place. Very earliesthe Civil War Monuments in the country. It went up immediately after the war, and in various ways, it has become controversial, and that was my idea initially, and then i decided to defer. There were some who were going to take part in the end, and it was tony horwitz who was going to. I cannot believe that tony is dead at age 60. Tony was going to do something in the far west, was going to do the Union Monument for the texas unionists, who were very badly treated in texas in the civil war, and i decided that would take care of the west in some ways, and i decided to have the first heavy artillery monument at petersburg. Suffered the highest number in any battlefield in the war. It is a wonderful monument, and it has very serious reconciliation is themes, thisiliationist themes juncture with the carnage of the war, when people cared very passionately about which side was right and which side was wrong, and on the back, this message of bringing people together, but in the end, matt and i talked about whether i had to do something related to charlottesville, because charlottesville was so much in the news because of the violence in charlottesville relating to the lee statue and to a lesser extent the jackson statue in charlottesville, so i decided to do something on the confederate mario landscape in charlottesville with thoughts about the broader confederate dashed onandscape, the confederate memorial landscape in charlottesville with thoughts about the broader confederate memorial landscape. It would have a timestamp, and i wanted to do something in a little bit broader strokes, so i selected one of the five principal confederate monuments in starlets will in charlottesville, which is at the cemetery, the first one that went up, and it went up in 1893. It is in a cemetery that has , andthan 100 confederates wasas when charlottesville converted into a confederate hospital. Ity invited the can veteran hospital to leave, and it was moved elsewhere. Confederate hospital to leave, it was moved. It was the Jackson Valley campaign. This is the earliest of the five monuments. There were also a pair of things on the rotunda that have since been removed. It listed the 500 graduates, the men who attended the university, who died in Confederate Service. There is a confederate Soldiers Monument in front of the albemarle area downtown, and then there were those involved in so much debate in august, one of stonewall jackson, which is a very fine equestrian statue, and one of lee, which was a much more clunky statue, which was going to be one done by grant in front of the washington capital, and he died before it could be finished. In any way, i chose this because it was the early stuff, and i used my essay to talk about how i used the confederate memorial landscape in charlottesville over the years as a professor at uva to talk about history and memory and how important it is to disentangle those two if youre going to come to grips with the past and how the past affects later generations, and these monuments are a wonderful tool to do that, and the fact that they are a wonderful tool for me complicates the issue about whether all of them should be taken down. All of them should be taken down. I will say right now, this is a local issue. If the local Community Things about them and decides to take them down, then they should come down, but for me, as someone who thinks and writes and teaches about the civil war, the loss of these memorial landscapes is the loss of a tool i have found very useful over the years, and that is how i use my essay to get it how you should not flatten out the more you landscape, even the confederate memorial landscape, and pretend they all came about for the same reason and were brought about by the same people, when charlottesville is a perfect example of how that is not true. Three of them, confederate memorials where former confederates and women alive during the confederacy, the ladies memorial association, played key roles in putting them up. The two equestrian statues largely came from the brain of a very wealthy individual named mcintyre, who funded lots of things in charlottesville, including two other statues at almost the same time as lee and jackson, 12 clark, part of the City Beautiful Movement towards the end of the 20th century and on into the 1920s, and i talk about when the lee statue went up in charlottesville, it was almost exactly the same time the United States congress made arlington the robert e. Lee National Memorial and the same time that the United States government put lee and jackson on a . 50 piece, a real . 50 piece, not just some collectors piece, but a real 50 set piece, the reverse of which pay tribute to confederate soldiers. The lee statue gave me a chance to talk about this much Broader Movement in the United States as you move towards the third decade of the 20th century, where robert e. Lee really does achieve in sort of fruition a national icon. Just a few years later, there was a dedicatory speech in dallas to a statue that dallas took down a few months ago. These are valuable teaching tools. They are complicated, in my view, and that is what i try to get at with this essay, to try to talk about this landscape that makes them complicated, which the past always is. If there is one thing you think you know about the past, i promise you, when you learn more about it, it is more complicated, but we use black and white now. There are a lot more shades of gray in these questions. I ended up in charlottesville because i thought i had to. Not because that was my first inclination or even my second one, and will and i, will took some wonderful pictures of the heavy artillery. Petersburg, i hated to let those go, but we did not get to the santa fe yet. I recommend all of you go to the plaza in santa fe and look at the monument, both the civil war and native american issues. It is really it is a wonderful lightning rod of memory in the plaza at santa fe, and i would recommend it to all of you. I wanted to talk for a second about the images in the book, and i am watching carols watch because i do not have a phone, and i left my cell phone over there, and i would rather not yet up and get it. I would rather just sit here. The places people chose range from the severely familiar and famous. On the win and of the scale, i put the Lincoln Memorial in washington, gc d. C. , which was written about how one woman loves to jog there early in the morning. It is great early in the morning. It is great in the middle of the morning. It is great at night. That is the thing about the Lincoln Memorial. It is always great. Steve wrote about the beautiful equestrian statue of sherman, which has recently been regilded, as many of you know. Those are on the famous and of things. One woman wrote about mclean house at appomattox. She had just written a book about appomattox, and the mclean house was in her mind. I will not mention the 20 sites. I promise you. But there are other places where almost no one has been to. Allegheny,ted camp which is in the wiles of barely western virginia right now. Will and i had a hard time finding the place and then had a hard time getting to it and then had an even harder time getting away from it the day we found it. Tim martin wrote about the soldiers home in milwaukee, which is a grand old building. That was one of wills favorite things to write about. Brenda stephenson wrote about emancipation oak in hampton, which is this grand old oak tree there. My son loves oak dreams, because he lives in austin. There are spectacular oak trees in austin, and he decided that the emancipation oak was more spectacular than any in austin, which was quite something for him. Nationale about the cemetery on santa monica boulevard in los angeles, california, not the first place you would think of if you were going to think about civil war 12,000but there are Union Veterans buried in the National Cemetery on santa monica boulevard. Place that joan used to teach her students for many years, and several years into doing this, her brother became interested in genealogy and found out that theyre great, great grandfather, who was in the second minnesota, is buried in the cemetery off wilshire boulevard in los angeles, their great, great grandfather. There are a lot of different sites. You do not have to start at the very beginning, though you should, because steve upon his essay lives on. I will start right now to start at steves and will say parenthetically you do not have to start with steves essay. You can open the book at any place, and much like winds of his which appeared in series at the university of georgia. You can sample and go in any direction you would like. I want to come back. I have a followup question and promised to leave time for all of you to become involved, but, steve, i am curious. This is a reconstructed chapel at shiloh. You go there before . Do you remember the battlefield before . Stephen yes, yes. If it had just been a reconstruction, i do not think it would have been as interesting, but i think it is how it was reconstructed that was interesting, that everyone wanted to take a piece of it home, and it did not exist on the landscape anymore, and then, yes, i went back after 2001 after it had been erected, and it was very different. You go to battlefields and are stalking around and trying to figure out where things happen, but there is this quiet when youre sitting in an interior in the middle of the battlefield. You know that the battle was raging all around you, but youre in this moment of contemplation, and that really stuck with me and moved me, and point speak to aarons about photography. It has that stillness to it. It focuses you. It makes you Pay Attention to something. You sort of drop into this contemplative place when you look at a still photograph, and this captured that mood for me to how it felt sit there and contemplate the enormous tea of what went on whatde the enormity of went on outside. That was the key insight i had during that process. Carol, i cannot resist. If i had not been brutally restrictive with you and allowed you free will and free reign to do whatever you wanted to do, what place at gettysburg would you have selected, and why . Carol i dont know. [laughter] he knew i had to say that. Offered me the opportunity to participate, and i started thinking about gettysburg locations, a lot of my interest at the time depended on what i was really drilling down deep on, when we were working on the gettysburg field guide. We all think that we know everything there is to know about gettysburg. All of you think there is you know everything there is to know about gettysburg, except we do not, and one of the things we struggle with a lot at the park these days is trying to find a way to tell the story, and i am sure it is the same issue with the museum, how to tell the story with a broader and broader audience, so people think that the gettysburgs stories are theirs, and it really came down to two soldiers that really intrigued me, and i intend to tell their story at some point in some way. One is a private resident, a name you probably would not expect to hear here in gettysburg, private Antonio Lopez with the infantry, missing in action, presumed killed after the end of the battle here. When youre talking about underrepresented people in gettysburg, trying to take the story to include a hispanic or latino name in it is kind of important, an important direction to go, and you do not have to stretch or try too hard. All you have to do is do what we do best. I did not quite finish up my story about the importance of research. All of us up here and a lot of you out there are here because we love the research, the importance of finding the story, taking the story, finding the evidence for the story, and also realizing when that story stops because the evidence trail runs out. Sometimes, we just have not gone down the path far enough to find out what the end of the story is. Finding Antonio Lopez was kind of an interesting story. The other side of the story takes me to the union side, down to the second massachusetts, first regiment to put its monument out on the battlefield where it fought down near spangler spring. Even remotely remember right now, but i found the First Sergeant of company e, who was wounded in the fight, and what i noticed about him was town,ace of birth, cape south africa. Now, who would have guessed, really . Once you start down that path and find out the locals the locals like to say the world comes to gettysburg, and the world has already been here. We just have to go back and find it. The place that has been focusing a lot of attention to find these stories is a hill area. If i had not done that at gettysburg, and if i had not had that place back home, the comments about finding that weird place or that unusual place is something that i thought about, too, and if i had not done anything about the sailors or gettysburg, the place i would go would be Natural Bridge, florida. Natural bridge battlefield in florida. How many of you have ever been to Natural Bridge battlefield in florida . There is the one guy, ok. And that is a lot for an audience to go there. When they count up the number of people who have been, it breaks 100 once in a while, but it is a state park down in florida down near tallahassee, and it has one big gettysburg connection. The union commander, the court commander in gettysburg, the one you always forget about, john newton. I would go back and tell that story if i had not done any of these other ones. Gary well, poor john newton does not get a lot of that. There is an essay in the book ,hat does deal with colts hill and then there is peter carmichael, right over there against the wall. Peter wrote about a very small, confederate burial site that you. Se to get at you are welcome to come up and talk. Hill is was that culps represented and represented by peter. A site that almost no one would go see, and if peter was not with you, you would not know what you were looking at when you were there. Yes, a historians showed me that spot 10 years ago. Burial onnfederate hill, and it is almost gone by erosion. Trace, aa moment, a ating trace, and looking that trace, that person saw that irld, that path, and so looked at the remains of that burial trench. I think that is the thing i really loved about this project. It was somewhat un, sort of and then also to talk about how i used that place as a teaching tool to discuss a North Carolina soldier who lost his brother, charlie, not far from where that burial trench was, so it was a great opportunity. A great opportunity for me to come again, let my imagination go free and also to talk about how that place has been so important to my teaching here. Gary thanks, peter. A number of the essays deal with these sites as teaching opportunities. Joan does that at the cemetery. I do that in charlottesville. Many of us do that, and many others do not. Aaron, i did not ask you at the time, but youre going to lsu, did that affect your choosing that site . We were looking at that theater. There are great photographs of baton rouge. There was one, andrew, who spent the war there, taking photographs of the region and of people, and this is something new. I think i came to this from more it was less personal and more intellectual, i guess, since i was thinking about this as an exercise. I did not have i did not have centennial history growing up, even though i grew up in michigan, and so i do not have quite the same kind of origin stories in terms of well, actually, i guess i could, except that i came to the civil war after living in d. C. It occurred to me as i was having lunch as a temp worker in Farragut Square and then the next week at mcpherson square, finding out about all of these places and how i had to walk past George Mcclellan every way down to the metro, which is not a great way to start the day when you start to read about things. [laughter] gary did that take a lot of counseling . Going a ended up different way. Gary in preferring to go backwards rather than forwards. Mcclellan is bold and for folks such as weak, because he is a bountiful source of asides that everyone gets. I wonder why. Talking, theare focus, the pictures are static, so seeing in them what people are talking about requires a tool that i try to remind my students is an essential part of what historians do and what i think most people do not understand, which is imagination. It is sort of a dirty word where people think the only thing we do is sort of like an archaeologist, sort of dust off facts, and then lined them up on the table, and then that is the thing. There is a million facts. Sort of chronicling a day would take all of us a lifetime, and we would not make any sense out it requires the ability to look at this and see one of the things that came up at almost every comment, which is transformation. The still evocative language of Steve Cushman who talks about thewood, and he talks about house of the lord becomes the house of course form and amputation. That is what wars do is they brutally transform our landscape, so standing in a place and trying to think deeply about how we see that but without seeing a video, right, sort of a time lapse video, it is one way to do it, but in effect forcing us to imagine, doing so responsibly with sources, and that is why i like doing history, the ability to understand that kind of transformation, working off of these images, and it seems as though that is one of those things that came up in one area, taking the old and making it new again, which is one of the things we do as this dorians, so that is one of the things i enjoy about it. Not grow upd reading these things, and i find i wonder, did you have civil war sites, as a east person growing up in tennessee and traveling around . Were there sites you were aware of and could have discussed in this book . No, i was basically clueless. Where i grew up was the city kingsport. I know there is another kingsport here, yes . 10 northern corporations, to take advantage of the white , andain populations Eastman Kodak and all of that, and so our city was part of the 20th century. Weking back on it, i knew were part of an area that includes bristol and near abingdon and all of that. The warriors path goes right through it, so we were really daniel boone and Davy Crockett schools. Gary but not Andrew Johnson. Ed Andrew Johnson there was a lincoln school, a jackson school, and a johnson school. So really, it seems that the civil war i cannot think of the nearest Civil War Monument or memorial in the tricities. Maybe people know of one, but i did not. Excuse me. Cumberland gap, which is pretty far away, so gary and a place that people do not immediately associate with the civil war. They associate with other things, cumberland gap, letting people get on other western areas. For nothis is my excuse being interested in the civil war earlier. I had nothing apprising me about this, and i had to create my own sort of matrix of connection, and it came from trying to be a citizen. You know, what we do to actually help virginia and richmond. Who wouldve have ever thought that charlottesville would bear the burden that it did. Moving these things forward, how can we use these things that we have learned to help move the conversation forward, so it came to me late. I just kept it fresh. Gary just waiting period steves essay really made me think. Just waiting period waiting. Steves essay really made me think. Andthe first time in 1965 1960 seven, when i was 14 and then when i was 16, i was struck by how these landscapes changed. These are not immutable landscapes, even if they are National Park service sites. I found i picture i took of a church in 1967 that had a red and white house trailer yards from the southern door to the church, with lawn furniture out and car parked in front and a mailbox across the street, and i thought, goodness. That is different. Of shiloh, pictures steve, and there was an old church in shiloh when i was there. It was clapboard and brick. It is probably gone now. I looked at that, and i thought that was the Shiloh Church as a 14yearold, and i thought, boy, it looks different than the descriptions i have seen. This looks something substantial and not something that would be lost. Putting the book together made me think again, not that i do not think about it often, all of us do, but there are these changing landscapes. They give us an endless think about and talk about and share with and ore some people with how the civil war has figured in the history of this country ever since the end of it. Thes this great lump in snake. Hard to get a sense of the snake without coming to terms with the civil war. I see by caroles watch that it is probably time for you to come up and ask questions if you want to. Peter runs a tight ship we are going to finished at 5 15. If anyone has anything you would like to offer, please step forward. I sense movement. [laughter] gary and you are first in line count down in line, it seems. This is slightly outside of the frame of the book, gary im sorry, we cant have you asked that question. [laughter] if you understand the civil war, to end in appomattox, you are not understanding the full civil war. 18 here talking about the lack of commemorative landscape and everything about reconstruction. Do any of you have a place that comes to mind for you that would tell the story of reconstruction for you . Yes, colfax, louisiana. Colfax is a northern louisiana town, the site of the worst massacre in reconstruction. It happens Easter Sunday in 1873. A Pivotal Moment in the ability or the recognition among the white south that they can mount a violence and resistance, they killed 125 or more people that day. With basic impunity and mississippi followed shortly after that. Colfax is almost it is a story and figures in every reconstruction history. That thein colfax state has still, it refers to this as the site where 15 years of negro miss rule ended. To their credit, to have the graduate students in our program have been trying to suggest to the town fathers and mothers, the people on the City Police Board that governs signage that we can do better than that. It is the thing people walk past and do not read. Mixed race group of people on this board, all of whom generally recognize that this is not a good sign to have and it does not do anything historically at all. What we need in colfax is if not a state park, then a National Park that talks about reconstruction and confronts what happened to there. We have not made much headway. The police board almost decided for the parish that we can do this and they wrote text and then it kind of, some other project got in the way. That is a site that should be memorialized and talked about and known. Thank you. Nothi. O mucha hi, i do not have of a question, more of a comment. Your guiseson description of the imagination and history, i thought it was fantastic because he did a wonderful job of outlining of outlining the battlefield for us in a way that i thought was imaginative as well as creative. We were able to envision and visualize and to see in our minds what he was saying as he was narrating a story for us about the battle of gettysburg. I foundmething fascinating was his ability to translate what we saw on a map of gettysburg and visualize that into what we saw before us. It added that texture to it that i thought was really unique but he was able to do for us. Thank you, really. Thank you. The battle of vicksburg was a great strategic victory. But we only know this with the hindsight that the army of the potomac was not destroyed here in pennsylvania. I think we have to put it in that perspective and consider it more or less coequals. But say that at the time for people in both the United States and the veteran and the confederacy, vicksburg was more important than gettysburg. It was perceived as a greater disaster in the confederacy and a far greater victory in the United States. It was unequivocal what happened at vicksburg. It was simply more important. Even if the army of the potomac was crushed at gettysburg . But it wasnt. We know that with hindsight. No, they knew it at the time after they retreated. Im talking about the aftermath of those two campaigns. Vicksburg was more important than gettysburg. Gettysburg is a fascinating example of how something percolates up and becomes the great dividing point for a variety of reasons that are not necessarily related to precisely what happened at the time. Thank you. I was going to ask if each of you, you gave the answer with colfax, if there is a monument that does not exist, what you want what would you wanted to be of . I would say in richmond, i was on the monument avenue commission, we talked about that a lot. We have a thousand letters and emails people suggesting things. To see people would love a monument to the 14 men who won the medal of honor, fighting for the u. S. Et. As we were commemorating the end of the war, changing the language from the fall of richmond to the liberation of richmond. It is an interesting perspective. Thate would love to see military accomplishment still about the civil war, people have argued that is a suitable accompaniment, may be replacement for some things. That is what i would say. Gary anyone here . I am actually working on a book about hamburg, South Carolina and Prince Rivers who was sergeant for the first u. S. Et. He was an enslaved carriage driver in South Carolina, and the first day road to freedom, became a sergeant and then a soldier. Fought valiantly in the civil war. Fought in a way that i think americans do not appreciate how important the first South Carolina was by comparison to the 54th massachusetts. It is the first africanamerican unit to really engage, take confederate prisoners and occupy majority white town of jacksonville, florida. It is really that unit that convinces lincoln to draft the u. S. Et. He goes on to be a state legislator in South Carolina. County, ittes aiken is carved out of edgefield. The most unreconstructed country in the United States. As soon as he does it, he moves there. He could have remained as a legislator. What he knows already is i do you have to create a sanctuary city for what is coming. A sanctuary city in that day and age is a sanctuary county. You need to control the sheriff and the local law. He moves there and establishes a sanctuary. In hamburg, South Carolina. A majority black town but there is 20 white and everybody is fine, and reconstruction is working. Then it is not. Hamburg, South Carolina is like colfax, one of these places where the klan tried it to test the federal government and the federal government did nothing. For me, it has to be to Prince Rivers. He returns to being a carriage driver again. The ark of his remarkable life from carriage driver to soldier to state legislator, to mayor, to carriage driver again, basically is the window of opportunity that opened and closed on an entire generation of africanamericans. Im not sure who or what the monument looks like, but since i have lived here, i work here, and all of that sort of thing, part of the gettysburg story that has not been told yet, there are parts of the gettysburg story that do not get nearly enough attention, it is the aftermath of the battle. It is the story when there are still soldiers. Some of them are wounded, some of them are parishioners prisoners. And as civilians come in the intermixture and relationships in the activities i go on here, there is the whole aftermath. There is an occupation story here. Of thes the return africanamerican population that left town, that comes back to a very different world than the one they left. There is all kinds of stories that we are just beginning to look at. Unlike the other folks up here, i come at the gettysburg story from the perspective of the broader field of military history. I have never defined myself strictly as a civil war historian. We use a phrase of elements of National Power when we talk about a war. We talk about the military but we also talk about the political, social, and cultural. It is combined into military history. Thats ok. We have not always approach the gettysburg story for most of these other stories using that broader brush approach. It topproach applied gettysburg and especially the after mirth aftermath is telling us a lot of things and theres a monument in there, i do not know what it is yet. In one morey to fit question, i think. My name is Patrick Anderson from alexander, virginia. I want to take you to get to task a little bit and ties 10 something into eds tok. He brought up the charlottesville situation. I sit on the aclu board of directors and we are the ones that suit charlottesville to neonazis to march to the violence that happened, that is a different story. I think it shows why the civil war, confederate monuments need to come down. You talk about he used them as a teaching tool. I understand that. The question ultimately is why cant that be done with the statues and monuments and museums or libraries where they belong . Talked, the last person who asked you a question asked you how do we make, i think the words he used, civil war more relevant or interesting to africanamericans . This is certainly one way. Reasons for keeping the monuments up to teach and learn history and all of that stuff are all legitimate. But all of those can be done with the monuments and museums and so forth. It seems to me that all those reasons are trump by the hate and pain and sadness and all that comes with that, that they cause to people of color. I know that a very clearly because my wife is africanamerican. We talk about this quite often how she can participate more in my hobby. She does not have a great interest in doing that but we talk about that and it is one of the reasons why she doesnt. Keepould we want to monuments up for learning purposes when there are other ways to do that and allow all of the pain that comes with that for africanamericans, people of color, to look at these things every day and to be reminded what they stood for, and of course what people use them for today in many ways to perpetrate hate . How is that for a long question . But is a question i cant answer any minutes but i will be happy to talk with you afterward. I will say very quickly, i think you are assuming a universal opinion on the part of people on both sides, including africanamericans. Africanamericans dont agree exactly on what to do with confederate monuments either. There is a range of opinion within the Africanamerican Community about how best to do this. One thing i would take issue with in what you said is that they are just the same in a museum as they are on the sites where they were placed. I would disagree with that fundamentally. We can continue this after this is over with. We can go more . I will not go more with this because there is not enough time but i would love to go much more afterward. There was someone else standing up just before this loss question. Who has since set down . Peter says we can have one more question. We will have another last question. Almost theing to ask same thing but in a different way. And that is, i was in santa fe in march and i think that they have changed the language on the site of the monument by either blotting it out or doing something with it. Gary yes, they did. That comment is about the plaza in the monument in santa fe. It talks about the civil war and sibleys movement up the rio grande and back in 1862 but it also had one part that talked about native americans and they were described as savages. Someone chiseled that off in the mid1970s off of the monument. When you go there now, that has been chiseled off on that monument in the plaza in santa fe. I thank all of you very much both for taking part in the book and for coming up here this afternoon. Thank all of you. [applause] before you rush off to dinner, let me quickly say about this panel, this is the reason why we do the Civil War Institute. It pleases me to see we can have these conversations that are so important to have as we do in todays civil and educational way. Lets think cspan, our great partner for the civil institute. Thank you so much. [applause] again, sit tight for a moment. Ashley has a few announcements. Announcer that concludes our two days of live coverage of the Gettysburg College Civil War Institute summer conference in pennsylvania. You can watch all of our coverage any time by visiting our website www. Cspan. Org history. You can find our tv schedule and view any of our programs in their entirety. And, to share with us your thoughts on our programming, connect with us on twitter. And on facebook. This is American History tv, only on cspan3. Announcer in 1950, oilrich, venezuela was the fourth most proper prosperous country in the world with an annual income of about 7,500. With only switzerland, new zealand, and the United States doing better. In recent years, oil prices have dropped and venezuela has experienced political and economic turmoil. 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