Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Civil War Weaponry 20240712

Muskets, carbines and revolvers. The professor describes technological advances that allowed soldiers to fire faster and with more accuracy. All right, guys. How are yall doing today . Welcome to class. Today as i talked about a little bit earlier this week we have a special lecturer here. You may have a class with him. He is the chair of our history and Political Science here at gillford Technical Community college. What you may not know about the doctor is that hes a military historian. Hes an expert in military history. He has published at least four books on anything from weaponry, he collects a host of artifacts which he has brought and will share with us today. He is a phd. Earned his dockerate from texas christian fort worth. It was a while ago but hes an expert. If you get an opportunity to take a class with him, take a class. So were going to continue to and we get to look at the aspect of weaponry and its impact on the war. So without further ado i will hand the class over to the doctor. Thank you. The theme interest todays lecture is going to be about technology warfare. A lot of our classes we deal with the politics of war but a lot comes down to the individuals in the field and the weapons they were issued because thats what you need for warfare. One thing i found fascinating in research is looking at the early 19th century in other words say from the year say 1800 up to the American Civil War from 1860, 6165. This was also a period in the United States of intense invention. Americans were incredibly creative at this time. We were really a world leader in inventing just about everything, everything from steam ships to Steam Powered factory tuesday the telegraph, just layer after layer of invention, creativity. And in a kind of strange unfortunate way, though, we see that a lot of these inventors started using their talents in inventing weapons. In other words, there was a certain technological revolution in weaponry technology during the early 1800s, and this is one of the factors that leads to such high casualties in the American Civil War that you see this throughout history or repetition that it takes military leadership very often if you look through the past to catch up to military thinking and strategy. It tends to stay in the past war, and Technology Goes ahead and then military thinking has to catch up with technology. And what we see is when we enter the American Civil War that most military thinking was still along the lines of the American Revolution. In other words, warfare that have happened decades earlier or. A lot of these american generals their hero was napoleon boneparte. And they had new weapons based on old weapons. Thats one thing im going to get through to show the advances in various weaponry that we see in the American Civil War and how thats going to affect how casualties happen. First of all, i brought in the basic weapon of an American Revolutionary war soldier. This is a its actually an american copy of a french musket that was used at the time. This is the french call it a sharliville, but it is a single shot, flintlock musket. Anybody ever know anything about these . They were very slow to shoot. And just the weapon itself dictated how any battle would have happened for really over 250 years. From the American Civil War back this kind of weapon dictated how the battle would happen and its just because of the limitations and this weapon cant really be aimed. Okay, the basic idea behind the flintlock musket im going to use my artistic genius here. What would be the basic part of this musket . The most important part is the barrel. Now you can understand why my freshman art teacher started crying. But if you think of a barrel its really just a long pipe. Its just a metal pipe, and its plugged up at one end and its open at this end. See this is the barrel. And what we have here is we drill a small hole or they drill a small hole in this side. Im making a lefthand musket here. And what happens is if youre going to load this, the soldier is told to load and it was essentially a round ball like this. These could be 69 to 75 caliber, three quarters of an inch, about an ounce of lead. The soldier himself would have been told to load. He would raise the musket like this and this is the lock. So you would have to take this which is called the frizzen or the battery. Its very hard steel, flip that up and this is the hammer. At that time they called it the cock because it looked like a roosters head. Youd pull that bike, bite off the paper and youd put a little bit of powder in this pan, this flips back, it holds the powder in place. You then drop the musket like this. You take the rest of your powder and the ball, you drop it in, you pull out your ramrod, and that is where you get it you have to do that. Imagine somebody was shooting at you while youre doing this. It is taking a long time. Imagine someone shooting at you while youre doing this. You now finish that. Youre now pretty much ready to go. Your officer or your sergeant says ready, you pull it to full cock, and then never said aim, they said ready. You cant aim these things. You kind of level it and then pull the trigger. You have a piece of flint. This illustrates much better. This is a pistol from the same time, this is a piece of flint. This is the steel. If you do like this you saw the sparks come out. So its flint hitting the steel. Thats why its called flint lock. If youre lucky whats going to happen next . Well, what happens next is when the gunfires this goes forward, the sparks fall into the pan right here. The sparks go through the hole, hit the powder inside the musket, and with luck the ball this powder will explode the ball will go rolling out the barrel. And if youre lucky that ball might go how far . 50 yards or 100 yards. Its not going to go very far. And because its rattling down the barrel its not going to be very accurate. If i were shooting to the back of this room i might be able to hit somebody, i might not. That would be kind of discouraging, wouldnt it, and it takes a long time. Whats going to happen if its raining . Its going to get on the powder, the spark will spark. If its raining, really, humid, muggy that might make it not work. Thats why you then as a soldier are issued a bayonet which turns your musket into basically a spear. So thats why we have that. So youve got maybe two or three shots in a battle and then you just are trained to go at your enemy with the musket and in other words if you didnt follow a set of rules the battle wouldnt have worked. A musket like this if it wept off would create a huge amount of smoke. And then if youre thinking youve got several thousand guys firing at the same time youre going to have massive levels of smoke. To make a battle work for this reason you have to follow certain rules. Soldiers would line up shoulder to shoulder in line and face another group of soldiers, the enemy soldiers lined up, in other words, shoulder to shoulder. The idea is i might be aiming at you but i might hit him. So if im shooting at least im going to hit somebody. And the same thing happens. If youre shooting at me you might miss me but youre going to hit the guy next to me. Thats why they have to be very close to make it work. Its also why you see the soldiers are color coded. In the American Revolution what colors did the british soldiers wear . Yeah, they were known as the red coats. What color did we wear . Yeah, we wore blue. You know why . Very good. We got our clothes, our weapons from the french. Guess what color the french wore . Blue. So if you go to the American Civil War you see thats why we were wearing blue clothes like this in the American Civil War. Federal United States troops wearing blue. The hats they wore, the only reason they wore the hats like this, the french wore hats. We copied everything french. This is called a kepi, like french for cap. This is why people fought like that. You have to be close together to be able to hit what youre going to should. Then we have a break through in technology as we go from the 20s and then the 30s to the 1840s. One part of this break through is the use of the rifle musket or rifling. Someone figured out if you take this barrel and cut grooves in the barrel and make them twist, in other words the grooves twist as they go down the barrel youre going to take that bullet and instead of having it rattle down the barrel, if you have the bullet just a little bit smaller than the bore, the inside of the barrel, then it will fit tightly into those grooves. So youve got the soft lead bullet, and ill just pass these around. Heres a round ball, and theres a bullet, what we call the mini ball. Its shaped like what we think of as a bullet. Im doing a little bit better now. The mini ball youll see if you look at the base of it, its kind of hollow, isnt it . So if you look inside its shaped like this. Its got this hollow in it. The idea is when you fire the musket that the power of the charge will make this spread out a little bit. So itll spread out to here, itll grab the rifling and go down that bore, and itll be much, much more accurate. So instead of missing that person at 100 yards youre going to hit what youre shooting at. As a matter of fact you could hit somebody 300, 400 yards away. You have super accuracy with these things, and you could fire them quickly because instead of having the loose powder to set it off whats called a percussion cap, and ill pass this one around. This is is the percussion cap, which ill switch to the musket im talking about. This rifle has the percussion cap right here. It uses the mini ball and that means your loading is going to be much faster. You would take a cartridge like this, drop it on the floor. By the way, if youre doing a archiloical work you see they drop cartridges all the time, they were being shot at, afraid and you can find mini balls like this where they just dropped them and they were in perfect shape. The soldier himself would grab this perfect cartridge, put it in the muzzle like that, and youd still use your ram iron but its fast. A lot of guys would stick it in the ground so itd be faster the next time. You pull this, put that percussion cap on here, and you could fire. The thing about it is you could hit somebody 100 yards away accurately. Guys got way too close, there was no way to miss, and you see union tens of thousands of soldiers getting killed in a single battle. So this is, you know, one of the reasons why we see the casualties, something very accurate. And its also showing a lot of the invention. The one thing about this particular rifle, though, and it Shows Technology that was too far ahead of its time. The rifle itself has an invention on it that was made to make the percussion cap even obsolete, and you see whats going on in there. This is a roll of caps. And these caps are like today you could get it, there are toy cap guns. When you cock, it pulls the cap forward so its automatically priming itself. Whats the problem with this . What happens when you run out . And very often that was a problem. The soldiers couldnt find the caps, and also they got wet sometimes. Another problem was its a little bit more complicated than using just the cap. Again, a lot of these soldiers are straight off the farm. Theyve had almost no experience with real machinery and so the soldiers or officers figured out maybe this is too complicated so they can still use the cap on it, but you see an attempt to make these more efficient. So it was a pretty nice idea in practicality. If you have any questions feel free to ask. Going to the ideas that did not work. This is an attempt to make a soldiers weapon you do not have to use a ramrod with. It was meant to be what we call a breach loading musket. And the idea is they actually equipped it with a bolt, so if you do it right you you pull it back like a modern weapon. You take your cartridge, you put it in there. You close the bolt and it still needs a percussion cap. Guess where . Its on the bottom. So this is how this one was made. And you take your percussion cap and put it there. Whats the problem with that . It could fall out. But its a great idea. It just confused soldiers and was not all that practical. Only about a thousand of these were made. So it was a great experiment, brilliant idea. But in practicality it doesnt work. Another great idea that doesnt work, you see anything odd about this . What is strange about this . Its got two hammers. The idea behind this was an inventor whose brother had been killed out in the west fighting native nativeamericans in the battle thought american explorers should have more shots in their guns, so he creates a two shot musket where you put two cartridges in the barrel and then with luck you have your hammers cocked and with luck one trigger fires one hammer shoots the front cartridge, the next trigger shoots the back cartridge and youve got two shots in one barrel. How successful do you think this was . Not. But it was a great idea. Sometimes great ideas just get pushed out into the field and not tested. I think the biggest jump in technology we see in the civil war as far as firearms it would not be for infantry. If you know about the military you have at least three branches. You have artillery, you have infantry, you have calvary. We do see, however, with the calvary there was much more innovation. They wanted shorter weapons that could be easy to use while on a horse. And you also wanted weapons that could be fired rapidly and loaded easily. So this is where we see most of the innovation i would say or the useful innovation. So i brought several calvary weapons here, which were invented by individuals and each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. First one i picked up. Doesnt that look a little bit neater . This is whats known as a burn side carding. It was invented by a famous civil war general by the name of embros burnside. Guess what style we had . Sideburns, they just switched it around. The term sideburns comes from general embros burnside. He didnt make a penny off this really. He got cheated off his patents but its a brilliant concept. The burnside carding has a rifle barrel. Its short, easy to carry on your horse. Its got a ring so you can put it on a strap so you dont lose it. And to fire it you press this little lever and this drops. So you have the entire inside of this exposed. So thats easy. You dont have to ram things. You do that, and it uses a metallic cartridge. In other words not a made out of paper that can get messed up in the rain. Its got a brass or copper holder for the powder. So the powder is in the copper back. Its got the bullet in the front, and to load it you just place it right here. And then push this forward. You still have to use the percussion cap, but its much, much faster to use. It works in the rain, and you can fire probably 5 to 10 times more rounds in the same time as it takes to fire two rounds in one of these or one round, really. So a big break through. And another inventor named smith invents his own carding. Its called the smith carding. If you want to load this you press a button right here. It pops open. It uses a cartridge like this. It was made out of the lead bullet with a rubber hard rubber cartridge in the back. That fits right in there, then you close it and youre ready to go. It also needs a percussion cap. This is a good example of looking down the barrel and actually seeing the rifling in it. So you can actually see those grooved cuts in the barrel that make that bullet spin. Brilliant idea. If youve ever heard the term sharpshooter, a lot of people think it comes from this particular cardine. Its called the sharp cardine, one of the most popular used in the civil war. Its light and to load it you use a cloth cartridge. Either cloth, linen or made out of animal skin. And to load it, you pull that down, you put your cartridge right there. The back of the cartridge has to be opened. Theres like a razor blade in the back of this. It cuts it off, youre ready to go like a cigar trimmer. And then it also uses a percussion cap. This was one of the more popular guns used in the civil war. Again, some of the longer ones were used by Sharp Shooters for sniping. After the civil war this became one of the most popular types used for buffalo hunting out in the west. So this is the famous sharps caring. The most revolutionary was this carding and was invented by a man named Christopher Spencer and spencer came up with several Brilliant Ideas one of which was a new cartridge. His cartridge was totally selfcontained. It looks pretty much like a modern cartridge, doesnt it . It looks like a giant. 22. His cartridge was the standard led mini ball. The cartridge itself is totally selfcontained. It has the powder in this copper case. And instead of having a percussion cap for priming, the primer is in that rim around the base of it. So you dont need a percussion cap. Its a huge jump. And if that wasnt a jump enough, to load it he invents a magazine that goes in the back of the carding. So this magazine holds seven cartridges. So if you have a spencer and youre in a battle, a fight the soldiers would typically have the thing loaded with this magazine like that. They would have had seven magazines in a pouch or box attached to their saddle. And so to fire it all you had to do was load it, do that, cock it, fire it, so you could shoot dozens of shots in a very brief time. It was incredibly effective. Does the army adopt it . Why would the army not adopt it . Its simple, very efficient, super wellmade, but why would they not adopt it . It wasnt that expensive, but it was expensive to ship. The army they were looking at and going soldiers will waste too much ammunition. They say its too easy to shoot. Soldiers will waste ammunition. Were not going to buy this gun for the army. That makes sense, doesnt it . Spencer is one of those guys that doesnt give up. In a famous story spencer takes one of his cardings, goes directly to the white house and gets a meeting with Abraham Lincoln and a famous story he and Abraham Lincoln go out on the white house grounds and Abraham Lincoln gets to test fire one of these himself. As soon as he does this lincoln orders his generals youre accepting this rifle. It took really a president ial order to take one of these or for us to adopt this. So this is the famous gun. It works wonderfully. As soon as lincoln was dead at the end of the civil war the army took back all these, put a little device on it that turned them into single shot so they were still were aeorried about money, but still a wonderful idea. Going back to the calvary we see another jump in technology. Before the civil war if you had a pistol this is probably what it looked like, a single shot either flintlock or percussion pist pistol. It makes great with one shot and then you can bonk somebody with. Not very accurate. Doesnt go very far. 20, 30 yards maybe. Not an efficient weapon. Famously an american inventor by the name of samuel colt who was a sailor at the time, he invents what we call the revolver while hes in a ship sailing around the pacific. Sitting around he just liked to carve stuff. And he comes up with the idea of the revolver. Its a percussion weapon and again this is a rifle, by the way. A cylinder with six cartridges in it. The cartridge was a little thing like this. Its got the powder, and with a colt revolver you take your cartridge, put it in the front of your cylinder. This is ramrod, so you ram each one in. You put your percussion cap. You load it and put your percussion cap pack here. So you have six cartridges in this pistol. Just to fire it all you have to do is cock it, pull the trigger and you have six shots. Its a big jump from having a single shot pistol to a six shot pistol. Yes, maam . Its each cylinder has to have a percussion cap. So this would have six percussion caps, then six cartridges. Yeah, it takes a while to load. Thats the disadvantage of the colt. It takes a little while to load it. You load it in advance, and most of these guys would carry two pistols at a time, so that gives you 12 shots. If you consider a calvary men you have a massive number of shots from the carding and then you have 12 shots from the pistol. Then ive seen the site out of greensborough where you can see there was a confederate position of local confederate soldiers who had conventional muskets like this, and they were facing a much, much Smaller Union or federal calvary unit, and you could tell thisty tiny calvary unit held off a much larger infantry unit because it had these. You could see these cartridges left on the ground that were about 3 inches under the dirt. You could see how effective the massive firepower coming from cartridge carding and cartridge revolver. That remind that colt even though a great inventor held back invention in america for decades because of his patent rights. He patented this revolver actually and nobody else could really use it unless they bought a patent or they infringed on the patent. So he held it pack. A much better pistol came out during the same time which was this one. This is a remington revolver, the second most used pistol in the American Civil War, but its a much more better pistol than the colt especially if you like to fire rapidly. Its much heavier made and could be loaded much more faster than the colt. Again, it works the same but all you have to do to load it you could drop the cylinder out and its a little bit heavy, isnt it, but you can see on the back you put those caps on the back, you load it from the front and some of these soldiers would carry a bunch of nose in a bag. It would be like loading it like a magazine. So theyd have much more shots than otherwise. I think we can have a little bit of questions. I will show one thing that i find somewhat interesting in that the ability to manufacture modern equipment during the civil war, theres a difference between what was issued to the south, what was issued to the north. When the civil war started the north already had good resources and theyd developed their manufacturing skills in their factories. It was about like that in the south. We did not have the manufacturing skills in the south to match the north, and you could really see that in some of the weapons produced at the time, also the thinking. At the beginning of the civil war there were very few arsenals in the south. There were not that many resources to create weapons. Thinking about behind the times, one of the first weapons produced by southern arsenals, and this is excavated, this is called a pipe or a spear. So early confederate soldiers out of georgia were issued spears to use against union forces, not really a good idea was it . They were using something as primitive as that. They decided to copy union weapons. Heres a basic calvary, beautifully made and it was made in massachusetts, beautiful leather, beautiful workmanship. It makes a nice ring, doesnt it . But you can see its beautifully made, beautifully balanced. You can see its dated, inspected, manufacturing marks all over it. This went through an intense inspection program, beautifully made. Its sharp enough, but one thing they found out that very quickly its almost like you had to have a sword because it was part of your ego, but you probably never would use it. Because if im going at you with a sword and youre coming at me with one of these whos going to win . It got to the point where people its almost like you had to have a sword because you just had to have one, but they didnt use it that much. This is good example of a sword, beautiful quality. On the other hand, this sword was made down in wilmington at about the same time. Do you see any differences so far . If you look, very simple, very crude looking. The blade is dark, but the blade is not as wellbalanced. Its not as wellmade. It has no markings on it other than a couple of roman numerals. But if you look at the scabbard you can see a scene down it. Its like whoever made this was not that good at it. So the stuff made in the south is not as good, its cruder made and not of quality. Another example of that well have a sword fight in a few minutes. Another example of that is as i showed earlier this is a federally made, United States government made musket and inspected multiple times, beautifully made. The problem was they did not have the manufacturing capabilities. They tried to copy federal designs. This is a musket made this was made in richmond, virginia. This is confederate musket which is a copy of the union musket, the federal musket. And you can see its darker, not in as good a shape but you can see the federal musket had this mechanism here. In the confederate version they didnt know how to make it so they left it off so its a bit cruder. Another issue we have, skill workers in the south. Biggest example locally, there were and one of the exits off 85. There was a confederate rifle factory there, North Carolina made. They were doing a great job of making muskets but i found the paperwork for this musket factory here in town, and im finding in the paperwork this is sort of sad theyve been working and working and working. Theyve almost finished all these muskets. They had a big order of muskets ready to go, but muskets need springs. They have Something Like Three Springs that need to be in that musket, two to three, and it wont work without them. We had one man in gilford county in 1862 who would actually make good springs, in the whole county one guy who could do this. Thats kind of sad, isnt it . What was the problem with that one man who made springs for this factory . No, he was really good friends with a local moonshiner. I mean, he would disappear for weeks at a time. So they would have everything ready to go but because of only one guy that was not dependable, that held up production. So we see that was another one of the issues. Any questions at this point . Were getting kind of close to time but yes, sir . So between the first bull run and appomattox with sort of the change in weapons is there a shift ipbattle tactics. Have you found that the proximity was further away from the soldiers, or did the federals or union realize, hey, weve got these better weapons, lets go ahead and keep the close proximity, well come out sort of better . Sadly, no. Not really. You would think. You see some changes in calvary tactics, but for the most part it doesnt seem to have registered for them that you still see massive casualties towards the end. These big groups of soldiers marching in and just getting mowed down. You know, one volley can just drop dozens of guys at a time. Again, that shows after the war the department had them turn the spencer carding back into a single shot. The big bullets, these are artillery shells, and they also show that jump in technology. This is what you would have seen fired in a canon during the revolutionary war. This is cannonball from here in gilford. Basically its just a big iron ball. If it hits you its going to make a mess but it has to hit you. That was one of the other changes during the American Civil War. They made the jump to shells. Inside of this, this is civil war cannonball found in a big battle here in North Carolina in 1865. You had explosives inside of this and a very complex fuse, and these would explode. You could time it. By doing the fuse you could fire this at troops and up to 5 seconds delay. And when it got to where you wanted it to go it would explode, chunks would break off, and this was much more deadly. And heres one. And these battles during the civil war typically had two names. The south named the battle after the local town. The north named it after the local body of water. So the first battle of the war, the first battle in the south was called manassas because of the town. In the north it was called bull run because of bull run creek. Thats where this was found. This was an artillery shell fired out of a canon, weighs 10 pounds but you can see its shaped like a bullet. This came out of a rifle artillery piece. So the canoneers firing this, it would explode and this would go much farther much more accurately and explode making it much deadler than anything else you would have seen in the revolutionary war. Its heavy, isnt it . Anyone else . Ive also got other things if you want to see. Basically articles of clothing. Ive got what you would have been wearing in july at manassas if you were in the union artillery, wool. So this is what people wore at the time. These soldiers are wearing wool clothes, wool pants, long sleeves, shirt, jacket, vest. And it would have not only been unpleasant being fired at, you would have been burning up hot. Yes, maam . I just wanted to know, like, how did you gather all this stuff . And then also i notice theres some initials on that gun. Is that your initials or is that like a soldier from back in the days initials . I love that. Okay, actually im old enough these were issued to me and i just kept them. Ive been this is part of my profession. Ive been doing this for years, and yeah it is true youll see some of these have been personalized by soldiers. And you dont see it as much in union weapons, but in the south sometimes like this was made in the north. This was captured by a southern soldier and he was just personalizing it. A lot of times in the military you spent a lot of times just bored. Someone with the initials j. E. Had that. This one i think right over here a lot of the guys permized their muskets, and they did other things. What else do you do when you get bored here . A bullet a person carved into a fishing lure. He took a bullet, he carved it and you could tie your line here, so this was made for fishing. You see things like that, soldiers personalize just about everything they had. Yeah, thats exactly what they would do. You see that quite often. Somebody else. Yes, sir . It seems like they kicked pretty hard. What inventions would come around this time or even later that would make the recoil a little better . I like that. Yeah, they do kick. And they kicked the more you fired it. I mean, that was another issue that i didnt mention. That you dont really see something that will lower the kick. You can put less powder in it, but they wouldnt want to do that. That takes away range, but it does illustrate one of the problems with these muskets. Black powder is dirty. If you fire a black powder weapon it leaves a lot of crud, residue in the barrel. And its kind of grainy, and its black and its messy. But every time you fire a black powder musket it leaves this residue in the rifle. Which means it gets harder and harder to load. So each time you load it you have to really ram that ramrod down. So that was one of the problems. I dont see any issues with later on the license that helped with the recoil. But these things, they do kick. And, again, they kicked more when it was hard to load them because you had more buildup up in them. If you want to come up afterwards ive got bullets here that you can actually see where the soldier had to really ram it. You see the impression at the end of the ramrod in these bullets before they got fired because the guy had to really just cram it down like that. But that was a good question. They still kicked. Anyone else . I know you showed us the wool coats they wore during battle. Were there numbers that were shown that showed large casualties not from puncture wounds from ammunition and things like that, heatstroke from hiking and traveling from war . That was a great question, thank you. More soldiers died of disease and other problems. When youre looking at casualties you see almost no casualties from say the bayonet. During the revolutionary war you were supposed to get close to use it. It was great, but youre not going to get close to the other guy to use it. Stick it in the ground and put a candle in it, makes a lovely candleholder. Thats what they would use it for. Ive looked at all sorts of casualties. You rarely see wounds from a bayonet. You rarely see wounds from a sword because you couldnt get close enough. You see quite a few wounds the biggest wounds, damage guns from the rifle musket. This is the biggest weapon, but the soldiers are in camp. This is the idea of pregerms and things like that. So the big killer would have been things like any kind of disease going through camp. Like measles could kill people. But you see dysentery being a big killer, typhoid being a big killer. I see issues of heatstroke because i do not see how people could have fought in weather at that time like gettysburg is in the middle of the summer, its in early july. And to me this is summer weight. Its also winter weight, but a soldier would have been wearing flannel long johns with that shirt and it was part of that uniform. It had to be button. And so youre wearing that. You would have been wearing woollen pants, and an almost useless woollen cap. And the evidence in the shoes, by the way, leather soles. And the shoes would have been hideously uncomfortable. And youll notice the sole was not sewed on. They were pegged on as little pegs. But, yeah, theres evidence you would have seen these soldiers and ive read a lot of letters they were just dying of thirst. They have a very low capacity canteen, and you would have seen people dropping from heatstroke. In your mind, in your research is gettysburg still considered the major turning point, or do you see it as being something else, another set of circumstances . Yes, i would say it would be the big turning point. I know some people would disagree but gettysburg was a desperate prove by the confederacy, robert e. Lee trying to get a victory on home soil. And his biggest purpose for that would have been to bring in european help from the south. A lot of people in the south, a lot of leadership in the south were really counting on bringing in france and england on the side of the south to go against the United States. And, you know, one of my Research Topics was a french nobleman who right up until the very end of 1865 was hoping to bring france in on the side of the confederacy. What these northern im sorry, what these european powers was looking for was to see if the south had a chance of winning or at least coming up with a negotiated truce. Thats what lee was doing. It would have been a great victory on northern soil. It might have persuaded some foreign powers to at least recognize the confederacy as a as an independent government. But that fell through. So it was a little bit delusional, i think, or very delusional, but that was the big goal. And once you lost that, the war still goes on, theres horrendous battles afterwards, but i think that really was the turning point. Anybody else . If anybody wants to come down and enjoy a take a look, and if youve never held a musket heres your chance. Lets give a hand to the doctor. Again, be prepared for your second exam coming up next week. Thank you for being here. If youd like would like to com and look at the weapons, dr. Kinard will let you hang out and touch and see what he brought. Thank you so much. Week nights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, we visit Georgetown University for a class on the progressive era where professor katherine bentoncohen. She explains how politicians and reform groups in the early 20th century attempted to improve social and Economic Conditions through trust musting. Interstate regulation, and prohibition. We also hear about the policies and campaigns of theodor roosevelt, the periods most dominant political figure. Watch tonight, beginning at 8 00 eastern. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. American history tv on cspan3. Exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up this Labor Day Weekend, saturday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on the civil war, historians kevin levin and hillary green discuss how we remember the civil war and where wl to remove or contualize civil war monuments and on american artifacts, well preview photographs of native americans which includes more than half a million images. At 8 00 p. M. , on the presidency, a look at president ial retreats including Abraham Lincolns summic cottage, herbert hoovers fishing camp, and stories of the clintons and obamas in marthas vineyard, and monday night, august marked the 75th anniversary of the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki, and americans history tv and washington journal look back at the events that led to the bombing and their legacy with author ian toll and president trumans grandson, Clifton Truman daniel. Exploring the american story. Watch American History tv this Labor Day Weekend on cspan3. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Now, on lectures in history, a class from the university of connecticut about the reconstruction era and the civil war and whether it should be viewed as a succe