Is hes a military historian. Hes an expert in military history. He is published at least four books on anything from weaponry, weaponry from the civil war, revolutionary war, he collects a host of artifact which is he has brought and will share with us today. Hes a ph. D. He earned his doctorate from Texas Christian University what year was that . It was a while ago. But hes an expert. If you get an opportunity to take a class with him, take a class. Were going to continue to discuss the civil war. We get to look at the aspect of weaponry and its impact on the war. Without further adieu, i will hand the class over to d dr. Kinard. Thank you, doctor. The theme for todays lecture is going to be about technology of warfare. A lot of our classes we deal with the politics of warfare and the historical record of warfare, but a lot of it comes down to the individual in the war field. One thing that i found fascinating in research was looking at the early 19th century, in other words, from the year 1800 up until the American Civil War from 1860, 61 to 65. 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. Things everything from steam ships to Steam Powered factories to the telegraph, just layer after layer of invention. Creativity. And in a strange, unfortunate way, 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. You see this throughout history in 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 had happened decades earlier or even napoleon just a few years earlier. That was their hero. A lot of these american generals, their hero was napoleon bo napoleon bonapart. But they had new weapons where they were planning making their planning based on old weapons. Thats one thing im going to go through is to show this the advances in various weaponry that we see because 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 an american copy of a french musket that was used at the time. This is a singleshot, flintlock, musket. Anybody know anything about these . They are very slow to shoot. And just the weapon itself dictated how any battle would have happened for really over 250 years. From the revolution well, American Civil War back. This kind of weapon dictated how a battle would happen. And its just because of the limitations. This weapon cant really be aimed. It is a smooth bore weapon which means that the barrel do we know the do we know the makeup of these . Possibly not. 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 a metal pipe. And its plugged up at one end. Ill plug it up here. And its open at this end. This is the barrel. And what we have here is that we drill a small hole on this side and what happens is if youre going to load this, the soldier is told to load. Thats the order. They dont use a military guy a soldier would have taken a cartridge. It was essentially a round ball like this, this is a round led ball. Threequarters of an inch, about an ounce of led. This ball itself would have been in a paper tube with gun powder in it. The soldier himself would have been told to load. He would raise the musket like this and this is the lock. You would have to take this, which is called the battery, its very hard steel. You flip that up. This is the hammer. At that time they called it the cock because it looked like a roosters head. Thats why you say cock the weapon. You would bite off the end of the cartridge, pour a tiny bit of powder in the pan. You 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, drop it in, you pull out your ramrod and that is where you get it like that. You have to do that. Can you imagine if somebody was shooting at you while you were doing this . Its taking a long time. It is. Imagine somebody shooting at you while youre doing this. You finish that, youre now pretty much ready to go. Your officer or sergeant says ready, you pull it to full cock and then you they never said aim. They said level. You cant aim these things. You would level it at the other side like that, 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. Its flint hitting the steel. Thats why its called flintlock. If youre lucky, whats going to happen next . Well, what happens next, 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 this powder will explode and the ball will go rolling out of the barrel. And if youre lucky that ball might go, how far . 50 yards, 100 yards. Its not going to go very far. Because its rattling down the barrel, its not going to be accurate. If i were shooting towards the back of this room, i might nbe able to hit somebody, i might not. Whats going to happen if its raining . Would this work . No, because of the spark. If its raining, if its really humid, muggy, that might make it not work. Thats also why you as a soldier are then issued the bayonet which turns your musket into a spear. And so thats why we have that. Youve got maybe two or three shots in a battle, then you are trained to go at your enemy with the musket like that turned into a spear. That is typical fighting. In other words, if you didnt follow a set of rules, the battle wouldnt have worked. Not only does it take so long to load, a musket like this, if it went off, would create a huge amount of smoke. If youre thinking you have several thousand guys firing at the same time, youre going to have massive amounts of smoke. Thats why we see a kind of its almost rules of war for a couple 100 years. To make a battle work, youre going to have very inaccurate, slowfiring musket and is a lot of smoke. 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 something. If youre shooting at me, you might not miss me, but youre going to hit the guy next to me. Thats why they have to be close to make it work. Its why you see the soldiers are color coated. What color did we wear . We wore blue. Do you know why . We got our cloths, weapons from the french. Guess what color the french wore, blue. If you go to the American Civil War, you see thats why we were wearing blue coats like this in the American Civil War. Federal United States troops were 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 kippy, french for cap. This is the why people thought like that. You have to have those colors so you can see each other in the distance, you had to be close together to be able to hit what youre going to shoot. Then we have a breakthrough in technology as we go into the 1840s. One part of this breakthrough is the use of the rifled musket or rifling. And youll be able to see this in a minute. Something figured out that if you take this barrel and cut grooves in the barrel and make them twist. 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, it will fit tightly into those grooves. You have the soft led bullet. Ill pass these around. Here is a round ball and there is a bullet, what we call the minia ball. Im doing a little bit better now. If you look at the base of it, its kind of hallow isnt it . If you look inside, its shaped like this. When you fire the musket, the power of the charge will make this spread out a little bit. So it will spread out and grab the rifling and go down the bore and be much, much more accurate. Youre going to hit what youre shooting at. You can hit somebody 300, 400 yards away. Accuracy jumps way up. You have superaccuracy with these things. And you can fire them quickly because instead of having the loose powder to set it off, they invent whats called a percussion cap. Ill switch to the musket im talking about. This would have been produced at harpers ferry, virginia, at that time. This rifle has the percussion cap right here, they can use a percussion cap. It uses the minie ball and your loading is going to be much faster. Ive taken this car tragedtridg it on the floor doing archaeological work, you can see where people are trying to load. You can tell the soldiers who were nervous. You see that they dropped cartridges all the time. They were afraid. And you can find minie balls where they dropped them and theyre in perfect shape. The soldier would grab the cartridge and use the ramrod. The guys would stick it in the dirt like this it would be faster the next time. You pull this back, put the cap on here and you can fire. The thing about it is, you can hit somebody hundreds of yards away and accurately. This is what led to a lot of the casualties in the civil war. Guys got way too close. There was no way to miss and you see 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 theyre toy cap guns. When you cock, it pulls the cap forward. Its automatic. The problem with this, what happens when you run out. And that was a problem. The soldiers couldnt find the caps and also they got wet sometimes. Its a little bit more complicated than using just the cap. Some soldiers again, a lot of these soldiers are straight off the farm. Theyve had almost no experience with real machinery and it got them confused. The soldiers or officers figured out maybe this is too complicated. On it. But you see an attempt to make these more efficient. So it was a pretty decent idea. In practicality, i didnt work. If you got any questions at all, feel free to ask. Go into the idea of ideas that didnt work. This is does this look different from that last one . This was an attempt to make a soldiers weapon that you did not have to use a ramrod with. It was meant to be what we call a breachloading musket. And the idea is, they equipped it with a bolt. If you do it right, you pull it back, kind of like a modern weapon, you take your cartridge, put it in there, you close the bolt and then it still needs the percussion cap. Guess where . Its on the bottom. So this was what this was how this one was made. Again, you take your percussion cap and put it there. Whats the problem with that . It could fall out. We noticed that earlier. But its a great idea. It just confused soldiers and was not all that practical, only about 1,000 of these were made. It was a great experiment. I didnt work. Brilliant idea. But in practicality, it doesnt work. Another great idea that doesnt work. Do 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 americans in a battle thought that american explorers should have had more shots in his guns, so he creates a twoshot musket where you put two cartridges in the barrel, and then with luck, one trigger fires one hammer, shoots the front cartridges, the next trigger shoots the other cartridge and you have two shots in one barrel. How successful do you think this was . No. It was a great idea. Sometimes great ideas 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, we go it would not be for infantry. If you know about the military, you have three fields or at least three branches. You have artillery, you have infantry, you have cavalry. The infantry guys pretty much had these kind of weapons. They were trying to keep it simple. We do see, however, with the cavalry, there was much more innovation with cavalry. These are the soldiers that are on horses. They wanted shorter weapons that could be easy to use while on a horse. And you also wanted weapons that could be fired fairy rapidly and loaded easily. This is where we see most of the innovation, i would say, or the useful innovation. So i brought several cavalry weapons here which were invented by individuals and each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. First one i pick up, does that look a little bit neater . This is whats known as a burnside carbine. Guess what style we have that comes from burnside . Side burns. The term side burns comes from burn side who had magnificent side burns. He was famous for that. But he invents this carbine. He was a terrible general and terrible businessman. He didnt make a penny off of this, really. But it is a brilliant concept. The burnside carbine has the rifle barrel. Its short and easy to carry. It has a ring so you can put it on a strap so you dont loose it. To fire it, instead of using a ramrod, you press this lever and this drops open. You have the entire inside of this exposed. Thats easy. You dont have to ram things. You do that and it uses a metallic cartridge. Its got a brass or copper holder for the powder. The powder is in the 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 precaution cap. But its much, much faster to use. It works in the rain and you can fire probably five to ten times more rounds in the same time as it takes to fire two rounds in one of these or one round, really, a big breakthrough. Not to be outdone, another inventor named smith invents his own carbine. And this is the guess what its called, the smith carbine. Brilliant idea. 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 led bullet with a rubber hard rubber cartridge in the back. That fits in there and you close it and youre ready to go. It also, though, needs a percussion cap. After the talk, if you want to come up and i love people being able to examine these. This is a good example of looking down the barrel and actually seeing the rifling in it. You can see the grooved cuts in the barrel that makes the bullet spin. Brilliant idea. If youve ever heard the term sharp shooter, a lot of people think it comes from this particular carbine. One of the most carbines used in the American Civil War. Its not, light, its handy. To load it, you use a cloth cartridge, cloth, linen or made out of animal skin. To load it, you pull that down, the back of the cartridge has to be opened. Theres a raiser blade in the back of this. You cut it off and ready to go. It also uses the percussion cap. This is one of the more popular guns used in the civil war. Some of the longer ones were used by Sharp Shooters for sniping. After the civil war, this became one of the most popular types of weapons used for buffalo hunting out in the west. It became a popular weapon through the entire 1800s really. This is the famous sharps carbine. The most revolutionary carbine was this carbine. This was invented by a man named christopher spencer. And spencer came up with several brilliant ideas. One of which was the new cartridge. His cartridge was totally selfcontained. It looked like pretty much like a modern cartridge, doesnt it . It looks like a giant. 22. His cartridge was the standard led minia ball, but its in this copper case. The primer is in that rim around the base of it. It has the rim going around the base of the cartridge so you dont need a percussion cap. Is that a big jump . It was a huge jump. To load it, he invents a magazine that goes in the back of the carbine. This magazine holds seven cartridges. So if you have a spencer carbine and if 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 attached to their saddle. To fire it, all you had to do was load it, do that, cock it, fire it. You could shoot it dozens of shots within a brief time. It was incredibly effective. Does the army adopt it . Why would the army not adopt it . Its simple. Its very efficient. Superwell made. Why would they not adopt it . Expensive . It was expensive to shoot. The army the guys counting the beans were going, soldiers will waste too much ammunition. 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 was one of those guys who doesnt give up. Spencer takes one of his carbines, frustrated dealing with the army, he goes directly to the white house, gets a meeting with Abraham Lincoln and in a famous story, they 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 a president ial order to take one of these. So or for us to adopt this. This is the famous spencer carbine. Works wonderfully. As soon as lincoln was dead, at the episond of the civil war, t took them back, put a device on them that turned them into singleshot carbines. They were still worried about the money but still a beautiful idea. Going back to the cavalry. We also see another jump in technology. Before the civil war, if you had a pistol, this was probably what it looked like, a singleshot either flintlock or percussion pistol. You notice its shaped like a club. It works great with one shot, and then you can bonk somebody with it. 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, he was a sailor at the time, he invents the revolver while hes in a ship sailing around the pacific. He liked to carve stuff. And he comes up with the idea of the revolver. He creates the cylinder, this is rifled, by the way. Its a cylinder with six cart rin ri ridges in it. Its got the powder and a piece of skin or paper and with a colt revolver, you take your cartridge, put it in the front of your cylinder, this is a ramrod. You ram each one in. You put your precaution cap, you use this little tiny ones. Put your percussion cap on it. You load it, put your cap on it back here. In that effect, you have six cartridges in this pistol. Just to fire it, all you have to do is cock, pull the trigger. And with each cock, the cylinder revolves and you have six shots. Its a big jump from having a singleshot pistol to yes, maam. I. Did you have to use severa percussion caps . This would have six percussion caps and six cartridges in it. 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. Most of these guys would carry two pistols at a time. That gives you 12 shots. If you had the spencer carbine, youve got a massive number of shots from the carbine. With two of these, you have 12 shots from the pistol. Ive seen an archaeological site 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 cavalry unit and you could tell this tiny unit held off a much larger confederate unit because the cavalry soldiers had revolvers like this and spencer carbines. You could tell because you could see these cartridges left on the ground that were about three inches under the dirt. You could see how effective the massive firepower coming from cartridge carbine and cartridge revolver. Colt, even though a great inventor, held back invention in america for decades because of his patent rights. He patented this revolver action. And nobody else could really use it unless they bought a patent or infringed on the patent. He held it back. A much better pistol came out during the same time which was this one. And i can illustrate this. This is a remington revolver, the second most used pistol in the American Civil War. Its a better pistol than the colt. Especially if you like to fire rapidly. Its much heavier made. It feels much more solid and it could be loaded faster than the colt. To load this thing, it works the same, but you cock this and all you have to do to load it, you can drop the cylinder out. Here is the cylinder. Its a little bit heavy, isnt it . You put those caps on the back. You load it from the front. And some of these sacavalry soldiers would carry a bunch of that in a bag. They would have much more shots than otherwise. Lets see here. I think so we can have a little bit of questions, i will show one thing that is 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 they had developed their manufacturing skills in their factories. It was not like that here in the south. This was agricultural. We did not have the manufacturing skills in the south to match the north. And you can really see that in some of the weapons that were 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 pike or a spear. Soldiers out of georgia were issued spears to use against union forces. Not really a good idea, was it . But thats they did last, but they were using something as primitive as that. They decided to copy union weapons. Heres the basic cavalry saber of federal soldiers in the civil war. It was made in massachusetts. Beautiful leather, beautiful workmanship. Makes a nice ring, doesnt it . You can see it is beautifully made and balanced. You can see its dated, inspected, manufacturing marks are all over it. Beautifully made. Is it that sharp, though . Its sharp enough. One thing they found out, 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 this one of these, who is going to win . It got to the point where people its almost like you had to have a sword, you have to have one, but they didnt get used that much this is a good example of a federal sword, beautiful quality. On the other hand, this sword was made in North Carolina 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 well balanced, its not as well made. It has no markings on it other than a couple of roman numerals. You can see a seam 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. Beautiful workmanship. Inspected multiple times, beautifully made. The problem in the south was, they just 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 a confederate musket which is a copy of the union musket, the federal musket. And you can see, its darker, not in as good of shape. You can see the federal musket had this mechanism here. In the confederate version, they didnt know how to make that so they left it off. Its a little bit cruder. Another issue we have, skilled workers in the south. Biggest example locally, there were multiple riflemaking shops here in Guilford County. Multiple. And one of them was out off of 85 on lets see, rock creek road. One of the exits off of 85. There was a 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 or in Guilford County. And im finding in the paperwork that this is sort of sad they had been working and working and working. They had almost finished all of these muskets. They had a big order really to go, but muskets need springs. To make it cock back, you need a big spring. They need two to Three Springs in the musket and it wont work without them. Here in Guilford County we had one man in Guilford County in 1862 who could make food springs. In the whole county. One guy who could do this. Thats kind of sad. And what was the problem with this one man who made springs for this one factory . Did he die . He was really good friends with the local moon shiner. He would disappear for weeks at a time. They would have everything ready to go, but because of one guy, that held up production. That was another one of the issues. Any questions at this point . Were getting kind of close to time. Yes, sir . Between the first bull run and appomattox with the change in weapons, is there a shift in battle tactics. Have you found that there were the proximity was further away for the soldiers or did they realize, we have these better weapons, lets keep the close proximity, well come out better for it. Sadly, no, not really. You would think. You see some changes in cavalry tactics. But for the most part, they dont seem it doesnt seemed to have registered on them. You still seize massive casualties towards the ends. Big groups marching in and getting mowed down. One volley can drop dozens of guys at one time, they were still doing it. That shows after the war they had them turn the spencer carbine back into a single shot. Yes, maam . What are those big bullets over there . The big bullets. These are artillery shells. And they also show that jump in technology. This is what you would have seen fired at in a cannon during the revolutionary war. This is a cannonball from the battle of guilford courthouse. 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 a civil war war cannonball found at bentonville. The big jump, you had explosive inside of this and a very complex fuse. These would explode. You could time it by doing the fuse, fire this at troops, and up to five seconds delay, and when it got to where you wanted it to go, it would explode, it was filled with bullets and this was much more deadly. And here is one. This was found at bull run or manassas. Thats one little bit that throws people off. 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, in the south it was called manassas and in the north it was called bull run because of bull run creek. But thats where this was found. And this was an artillery shell fired out of a cannon. It weighs ten pounds. Its shaped like a bullet. This came out of a rifled artillery piece. It could go much farther than a revolutionary war cannon. It has a fuse, it would explode, and this would go much farther, much more accurately, and, again, it would explode, making it much deadlier than anything else you would have seen in the revolutionary war. Its heavy, isnt it . Anyone else . Ive also got other things. Basically articles of clothing, again, what you would have been wearing in july at manassas, if you were in the union artillery. Wool. So this was what people wore at the time. These soldiers are wearing wool clothes, wool pants, long sleeves, shirt, jacket, vest. And thats it would have not only been pleasant being fired at, you would have been burning up hot. I just wanted to know, like, how did you, like, gather all of this stuff and then also i noticed theres some initials on that gun. Is that your initials or 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 my profession, ive been doing this for years. And, yeah, it is true, youll see some of these have been personalized by soldiers. 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 personalizing it. A lot of times in the military, you spent a lot of times bored. Youll see things like that. Somebody with the initials j. E. Had that. Over here, you can see very a lot of the guys personalized their muskets and they did other things, for example, what else do you do when you get bored . Here is a bullet that a person carved into a fishing lure, a weight for a finishing line. You can tie your line here. This was made for fishing. Soldiers personalized just about everything they had. So but, yeah, thats exactly what they would do. You see that quite often. Somebody else . Yes, sir. With black powder rifles, it seems like they kick pretty hard. What inventions would come around that would make the recoil a little better. I like that. Yeah, they do kick. And they kicked more the more you fired it. That was another issue that i didnt mention. You dont really see something that will lower the kick. You can put less powder in it, thats going to do that. They wouldnt want to do that, that takes away range. Black powder is dirty. If you fire a black powder weapon, it leaves a lot of crude, residue in the barrel and its grainy and black and messy. But ever time you fire a black powder musket, it leaves this residue in the rifle which means it gets harder and harder to load. Each time you load it, you have to ram the ramrod down. That was one of the problems. I didnt see any issue with the later on they invent devices that help with the recoil. But these things, they do kick. And, again, they kicked more when it was harder to load them because you had more buildup in them. Ive got bullets heres that you can see where the soldier had to ram it. You see the impression of the end of the ramrod in these bullets before they got fired. The guy had to cram it down like that. That was a good question. They still kick. Anyone else . I know you showed us the wool coats that they wore during battle. Were there numbers that were shown that showed large casualties not from puncture wounds from ammunition, as in heatstroke and things like that, from hiking and traveling for war. More people more people during that was a great question. Thank you. More soldier died of disease and other problems than really bullets. 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 enough to the other guy to use it. If youre a civil war soldier, what do you use your bayonet for . It makes a lovely candle holder. 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 comes from the rifle musket. This is the biggest weapon. But the soldiers are in camp. This is pre the idea of pregerms and things like that. The big killer would have been things like well, any kind of disease going through camp. Measles could kill people. But you see dysentery being a big killer, typhoid being a big killer. Ive seen 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. To me, its just you can this is summer weight. Its winter weight. But a soldier would have been wearing really long johns with a linen shirt and that coat, and you couldnt leave it unbuttoned. It was part of the uniform. Youre wearing that. You would have been wearing woollen pants and almost useless woollen cap. And the shoes, by the way, leather soles and the shoes would have been uncomfortable. Youll notice they were not the sole was not sewn on. They were pegged on with little pegs. If you want to see that. Theres evidence that you would have seen these soldiers. Ive read a lot of letters where they were dying of thirst. You would have seen people dropping from heatstroke. Since this is nationally televised, im going to ask you the milliondollar question. In your mind and research, is gettysburg still considered the major turning point or do you see it as being Something Else or another set of circumstances . Yes, i would say it would be the big turning point. Its i know some people would disagree. But gettysburg was a desperate mood by the confederacy of trying to get a major victory on Northern Home soil. And his biggest purpose for that would have been to bring in european help to the south. A lot of people in the south, a lot of the 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 one of my Research Topics was a french nobleman who right up to the very end was hoping to bring france in on the side of the confederacy. What these northern im sorry, what these european powers were looking for was to see if the south had a chance of winning or at least coming up with a negotiated truth truce. So 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. It was a little bit delusional i think, or very delusional. That was the big goal. Once he lost that, the war still goes on. There are horrendous battles afterwards, but i think that really was the turning point. Any other questions . Thank if anybody wants to come down and enjoy, take a look, if youve never held a musket, heres your chance. Lets give a hand. [ applause ] again, be prepared for your second exam coming up next week. Thank you for being here. If you would like to come down and look at the weapons, please come down. Hell hang out a little while and let you sort of touch and see what he brought. Thank you so much. 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 discuss how we remember the civil war and whether to remove or contextualize confederate monuments. Sunday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on american artifacts, well preview photographs of native americans from the Smithsonian National museum of American Indians which includes more than a half million images. At 8 00 p. M. A look at president ial retreats including lincoln, hoover, and stories of the kennedys, clintons and obama in marthas vineyard. And monday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, august marked the 74th anniversary of the bombings of nagasaki and hiroshima. Look back at the events that led to the bombings and their legacy with ian toll and Clifton Truman daniel. Exploring the american story. Watch American History tv this Labor Day Weekend on cspan3. The contenders about the men who ran for the presidency but lost and changed history. Barry goldwater. The contenders, this week at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. You know, when you read the things that were said about thomas jefferson, you know, that he was an infidel and he was an agent of the french government sounds a little reminiscent, doesnt it . The things that were said about Abraham Lincoln, the things that were said about fdr, that he wanted to be a dictator. So, it does kind of come with the territory. But i think in trumps case, at least in the modern political era, postworld war ii, ive never seen anything like it. Sunday at noon eastern on in depth. Our live twohour conversation with author and faith and Freedom Coalition founder ralph reed, whos books include awakening, act of faith, and most recent, for god and country. Watch book tvs in depth sunday at noon eastern on cspan2. Now on lectures in history a class from university of connecticut about the reconstruction era and the civil war and whether it should be viewed as a success or a failure because Racial Discrimination was legal and africanamericans remained unequal. So, today we are going to be talking about reconstruction, right . So,ha