Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War Gettysburg Antietam 20240711

Six years. Peter scott, one of the things that john and i have discussed with many of our guests is interpretation on Civil War Battlefield parks. We have also talked about the partnerships with academics and we have seen with many of our guests, including our guest on thursday, nina Silver Silver was one of the first historians that came to the park and had conversations with the park staff about ways to broaden the interpretation of gettysburg and time and time again john and i have noticed that these connections between academics and public historians, you cannot conclude there is this a great gulf between these two sides as i think there once was. I thought we could open by having you reflect upon how battlefield interpretation, how it changed over time during your career and if you wouldnt mind, i would be interested in what you see as opportunities as we look ahead. Or iimportant observation my girlsy fun fact cameron and isabel carmichael, i have to give them a shout out today because they love the Civil War Institute because they say they get to spend more time with daddy, but we know why it is the ice cream. [laughter] peter they would walk over my dead carcass. Civil warrite historian in the town of gettysburg is not mr. Herwig. It is scott, who is it . Scott it is my wife. Peter i said this on the last show and i want to make another point, especially during the time in which we are going through as a nation where it is easy i think not to recognize the significant changes that occur at battlefield parks and barb sanders, who does such incredible and important work in engaging teachers as well as students, she oversees i believe the great task program. Every summer it is a program that reaches out to communities that are underserved in baltimore or philadelphia and we need to remind ourselves that people have not turned a blind eye to the fact that Civil War Battlefields have not been as inclusive as we would prefer. There are people out there who are doing that work. Barb sanders is doing just that. Orry about that a little advertisement of sorts. [laughter] pete. Well said, as far as interpretation goes, what i would say is when i 1979,d at gettysburg in the theme, if you want to say the overall theme that a visitor would experience when they came to the park was the high watermark. That was the theme. The focus was on picketts charge and the heroism of the attack on july 3. They had a film that we show that the psychodrama center. It went over a lot of peoples heads, but he got out what the war was about. It was kind of ancillary. The primary interpretation got when you came to the park was you went through the electric map. The electric map explained the movements of the troops. It was beloved by everyone. It was clear that was one of the things people liked about the electric map. It was not exciting, but it explained everything. A ent to the cycle ram that was a focus on the high watermark into the heroism of andsoldiers watermark the heroism of the soldiers. Then you would walk out from the painting then the idea was to take you down the high watermark trail, show you where picketts charge occurred and that was your interpretation. We had a large museum where the electric map was and it was an amazing collection of artifacts with virtually no theme and no interpretation. I would call it in a way , it was open storage. They had the chairs of the tavern that reynolds laid on on june 30, the night before he was killed at gettysburg. Is a little inscription there that says these are the chairs that John Reynolds laid on on june 30 in the tavern on june 30. 499 of the people who went through there, they do not know 99 of the people who went through there, they do not know who John Reynolds was. They dont care. There were efforts in the 1970s before i got there to try to broaden interpretation. They had a program called women and the war. They had programs where they tried to talk about civilians. We did not talk about slavery. We were not encouraged to talk about slavery. We were focused on telling the people story of the battle. The story of the battle that occurred within the boundaries of the battle park. We do not do an interpretation to talk about the town of gettysburg for example. Our focus was limited. The beginning at the relationship between the National Park Service Public historians and academic historians today. We did not have much of a thetionship at all, until 1990s is when it really began. There were a few things that started to change interpretation in the National Park service and specifically at gettysburg. What i always like to say about the National Park service is, when you say National Park service, you imagine the entire service is always on board with everything that a park is doing. The National Park service is like a navy where every park is its own ship and today do things kind of their own way and they do things their own way. They wear the same uniforms, but they are not all on board with doing the same type of interpretation. To brings are easier along then other parks. It has to do with who is in charge of the park, the superintendent, the chief of interpretation. There was always a feeling i encountered with park service among some people that the only thing we should talk about on the Civil War Battlefields is about the soldiers, the battle, the fighting that occurred there. Lets leave it to academics in classrooms to talk about why they were fighting, what the fighting meant. Gradually that begin to change. We siding gettysburg. We saw it in the gettysburg. It was ridiculous to do the programs we did and visitors would walk away not understanding what any of it meant. I was at the angle where picketts charge reaches its climax, and there was a couple Standing Bear at the angle. They were standing there at the angle. They were from england. They had seen the electronic map. They had done everything. Said, he at me and he goes, what was this all about . [laughter] scott i never forgot that because that really brought home for me the failure of what we were doing. We were not helping people understand why this was relevant. One of the key things i learned as an interpreter was you can have all the facts and figures, all the troop numbers, all the ranks, all the dates of commission, you can know all of make the if you cannot story youre telling relevant to the person listening, it doesnt matter. You have to make it relevant. What does this mean today to me in my life . You have to be able to do that. In the 90s began to broaden interpretive programming we were offering. We were experimenting with a lot of Different Things to see what might work. Park wide, then it became more service wide, what really was a big catalyst of change was the arrival of John Lasseter as the superintendent. Laster had a phd in history. He was also a colonel so we had a military background. He fought in vietnam, but he also had an academic background. He saw the importance of connecting park interpreters with academics and he put together with dwight decay fully, chief historian at the National Park service, a program where we brought in david dwight silver, and, nina some other historians whose broughtforget, but we them in and we had these workshops with park interpreters and i will also add that we brought in a young and very bright academic peter no gray hair back then. Carmichaeld pete doing workshops with park staff in the morning and then doing Public Programs and commenting on what we were doing as far as interpretive programs. The whole experience proved to be very eyeopening. It revealed one of the challenges of broadening your interpretation and the National Park service and do that is the people doing the interpretation. I learned that many of the people out there doing beliefs about had the war that were not grounded in the scholarship. They learned that years ago. Maybe it was their cultural background that they wanted to believe it, but they had a very difficult time coming to grips with some of the realities of what the civil war was about, some of the things that occurred during the war were challenges to help people understand those things and interpreting it to the public. Factor. A big limiting a lot of people would say you should do this, you should do that. Those are wonderful ideas but until i have the people who can actually go out and to do them, you have to move incrementally. You cannot just suddenly invent the wheel. You have to build all the spokes before you can get the wheel assembled. It was an ongoing process all the way up until when i retired in 2013. We were constantly trying to improve ourselves, better ourselves. One of the big advancements that we made was when latter lasseter was able to put together this private Public Partnership and we will do new Visitor Center and museum and tore down the old center. That gave us the opportunity to reshape how visitors were prepared for their visit. We changed to the theme, if you want to call it that a visitor would encounter from the high watermark to a new birth of freedom. In the museum we tried to challenge people to see the war in its totality. Why did it come . What were the causes of its coming . What did it resolve . What did it not resolve daca what did it not resolve . It left visitors disquieted. That is to prepare visitors before they went out onto the battlefield with a license to guide or did a selfguided tour. That has worked imperfectly because one of the problems with Publicprivate Partnership is the private partner has got to stay financially viable and that means you have to charge for people to go into the museum. As the fee for the museum has gone up, i think the people going through the experience has not been what they like it to be. It has not been what i like it to be. I would like to see the majority of people go through that experience the first time they come so they have a grounded understanding of what the war is about before they go out on the battlefield. That is kind of a broad brush of where we are now. Wynn is now, chris the chief of interpretation. Chris started with me as a college workstudy. Died dog to john and impressions all the time john and i do impressions all the time. He has now the chief and i think he has built upon the things we did when i was there. The chief and i think he has built upon the things we did when i was there. He has made excellent progress in developing programming that has a broad reach in and tells a broad story. Reach and tells a broad story. Peter i think it is i think it is also a good point that you are part of the park service that has a wide range of individuals who come with all kinds of baggage, cultural baggage and historical understandings that are uniquely their own. I sometimes get frustrated when people in a very anecdotal way will find that park service interpreter whose programs are not in keeping with the changes have described that have occurred since the 1990s. I firmly believe that every interpreter has her or his right to interpret those events as they see fit, but what i am frustrated by is pointing to those, what i would almost call exceptions now, pointing to those individuals to make the claim that nothing has changed. What you have described, it is a sea change. That foundational experience, there is nothing even remotely close to that found anywhere in a park service and i think you and john and brian fitzgerald, im telling you, for those of you who are cynical about the government, and i understand why any are, i hope you all have opportunity at some point to connect to somebody in federal service like scott, brian, barb sanders, the list goes on. I am leaving a lot of people out here, but these are people who are really dedicated and devoted and have done such Incredible Service to broaden the reach of the park. Notcott pointed out, he is satisfied. I am not satisfied. No one is satisfied, but it does not do anyone good to say that we tell the same story the same way. That is factually not true. It is a great destruction to what we are trying to accomplish. Cost, this issue about and i dont want to pin you down on this, it worries me a great deal. Notexperience is just accessible to people regardless of color. Payr middle class families for their kids and adults to go through that. Is there an alternative here that we can make it more affordable . Is that a question that is above our pay grade . [laughter] scott i cannot say i know the answer to that. I guess what i would say is that if i was still working at the park right now, was in a position where i could make my voice heard, my voice would say one of the goals we need to have weto try to find a way, and have to consider all options on this, to maximize the number of people who get that experience. That is our goal. When your goal is we need to make sure that the private partner, in this case the gettysburg foundation, is financially doing well, that is your goal, i think your goal is misplaced. Im not saying that is their goal, but if so that goal is misplaced. That cannot be your goal at a park like gettysburg. Your goal has to be we want to educate the public about what happened here and what happened in this war so they understand it and they have a rich experience. It willncial part of adjust to whatever we are able to afford here as far as the number of people who are going through. We need to find that price point at which we can survive within but maximize the number of people going through the experience. There are some organizational things that when we were ended up getting cut for financial reasons that i think would have helped a lot, of thewhich was some Visitors Center we designed based on our experience that we had at the williamsburg Visitor Center, which was very effective. I still think it is, but it was different when we went. The first thing you saw when you went in where the restrooms. 90 of theated about questions the visitors desk got. The orientation film was short but it told you all your options. Only reason you wanted went to the visitors desk was you needed to book a hotel room. After the film you knew what you wanted to do. The film directed visitors to do what williamsburg wanted them to do. We have an orientation film. It is is still there, i believe. No one watches it. They think they are at walmart and they are watching looking at a tv during a commercial. The purpose of that film was to prepare visitors on what their options were so they knew what they wanted to do, whether they wanted to walk over and buy a ticket to the museum. It was guiding people to the best way to experience the place. That is your best way to experience gettysburg. What happened was when that was lost and the visitor wandered around more, it was harder for the visitor to figure out what it was they wanted to do there and i think that is still an issue at the Visitor Center. Visitors like to be guided. As to what you are recommending they should do. Peter absolutely. When i worked in the park service, i enjoyed working the information desk. We were so critical. It would make or break that experience and i would see people who would give a long list of things you can do his, this or this. You need to first ask how much time they have. , after about two or three minutes, people shut down taking things in. Nothingout this beats a persontoperson interaction. That is true. Peter before we get to antietam, the immense pride you must feel though when you drop barb off to work and give her a peck on the cheek and go into that Visitors Center [laughter] peter that Visitors Center, of all the things you have done in your career, that Visitors Center must be an immense source of pride. Scott that was a really unique experience. I have often talked about why everything worked out well and i think it started out with laster. With leadlk about mclellan or he created a culture in which wereoices were valued and heard. I could disagree with him in a meeting and to voice my opinion and i felt perfectly fine doing that. There were no egos in the room, no one trying to control where this thing was going to go and imprint their vision on it. I think everyone in the room wanted to make this the best experience they possibly could. One of the things i am always delighted with in that Visitor Center is the visitor flow in that Building Works beautifully. It works exactly like they hoped it would work. If you were ever in the old , it was a mess. It was horrible. One last thing i will say on interpretation is jim horton one day and i were out back of the cyclorama center. Was a professor at George Washington university. Ago. Ssed away a few years just a brilliant guy. And you edited his book. Scott yeah. I have got a bunch of students who need to be there and they have to listen to me whether they want to or not. Interpreters, its tough. They dont have to listen to you. What he was saying is when you are out there, you can tell interpreters you need to say this, you need to bring that in. If they do not have the skills on how to do it, the visitor will walk away if there is something they do not onto here. You have to present complicated, controversial topics in the turn way so you dont people off. I presented a lotto of controversial topics in the course of battle programs that i did that no one ever walked away. No one ever got upset and it is the way you say it because you are not trying to label somebody as the enemy and the good guys. I always remembered that from jim horton and i always valued that advice. History is not a movie reality a morality play and i think we are losing some of that, which disturbs me. When i was young and maybe too aggressive with my interpretation, i heard too many stories about the jackson trying , what is now called the jackson death site the jackson shrine, what is now called the jackson death site. Philanderer. Stuart car, drove in her straight to fredericksburg and complained. I got other things like that. Respectful,te and critical in creating a conversation it is my hope that people understand with what has happened in the last two weeks at confederate memorial sites, confederate monuments, that they do not focus on the fact that these people dont know history, they dont respect history, we are losing our i share those concerns, but we need to remind hopefully, when we come out of this, we can create a true conversation that can be respectful in which somebody can honestly say, i have veneration for my confederate ancestor and i understand this was the cause for slavery, but i feel isolated now in a way that i cannot talk about how i understand the past. I worry about that. We still have to create a place in which those conversations can occur without alienating one side or the other. I hope it happens. Scott yeah. Peter scott, lets get to this. Scott ok. Peter did i mention mines signed . I dont know if i mentioned that yet. Scott, you were in gettysburg your entire career. It makes perfect sense youd write a book on antietam. What led you to this . I assume because, look, you worked on it for quite a while. We want to make sure we get to the second volume. Scott that was like 20 years. I was raising kids, coaching little league, working a fulltime job. You know, having a life. It became a joke amongst people at the park service that hartwig was writing this book on antietam. Yeah, hartwigs writing that book on antietam. I was like the turtle, just plodding along. I eventually got it done. I always had an interest in antietam. Maybe it was the word antietam. Theres something about that word. The second thing was bruce cattons mr. Lincolns army. His part in there when he writes about antietam was pretty unforgettable when i read it. You know, the most horrific fire anybody has ever experienced. This just terrible, horrific day of violence. There was something about antietam that just kind of stuck with me. After i got out of college and got a job at the park service, i think it was the very first summer i was at gettysburg. I was at the information desk with greg coco and paul, and we were having a conversation about battles and campaigns nobody had written a book about in recent times. Jim murfin had written the gleam of bayonets on antietam in the early 1960s. Before that, it was the 19th century. Francis palfrey had written the antietam and fredericksburg, and he was a veteran of the battle of antietam. Nobody else had written about antietam. I remember i said, yeah, im going to do that. Im going to write about antietam. Not having any real concept of what that meant. I was very stupid. That is kind of where it began, just having a conversation with some of my coworkers. Antietam wasnt gettysburg. It was a different subject, but it was civil war. That also was interesting to me. I didnt want to be working on gettysburg 40 hours a week and then come home and work on a book on gettysburg. You just get gettysburgd out. I think that was the other reason why i moved towards antietam. I would say that, in some ways, i am antietamd out, but in other ways, ill actually be really sorry to be done with this project. I have come to know these people. These people who suffered as a result of it. There is something about them that i like. I will miss not being around them. A couple of years ago i went through this collection called the gould papers. John gould, during the battle the commander of the 12 core rode down in front of his regiment. They were firing upon friendly troops. He was shouting stop firing. Someone pointed to confederates in the woods and they said those are not our friends. Mansfield gets shot. John gould is one of the people who helps mansfield back from the firing line. Afterwards, gould documented this very meticulously at the time. In the 1880s he writes an article in a veterans newspaper called the National Tribune about the death of mansfield. He gets this response. The veterans said you are full of it. You didnt get shot, he got shot in front of our regimen. We helped about the field. Gould reaches that point. He was like, was i even in the battle of antietam . They started saying he was shot in front. What gould did was say lets try and sort this out. He started writing men from all the units and what they knew about mansfield. He was writing veterans, union and confederate from every single unit that fought in the cornfield, east woods, that whole area of the battlefield. It was just this massive, extensive collection of letters from veterans. He said i read every one of them. I went to the library. I could save all of the documents because it was on microfilm. I remember telling my wife, it was the last one i read through. I said i am really going to miss this guy. One of the things i found interesting was the almost complete lack of animosity amongst union and confederate veterans. One confederate member wrote gould and said, on that day i wouldve shot you dead. Im glad now that we are where we are. That was the way they put these things. They just had a simple way of looking at things in the world that were very matteroffact. There was something about these people that i liked. Im sure if i met them personally there would be things you would find that you would not like. That is what i mean when i say i will be sorry when im done with the project. John when you wrote the first volume of this, what was one thing you really wanted to touch upon i dont want to say hardcore but one thing that is like we tend to forget about things that happen before september 17. It is always like september 17 happened. The capture of Harpers Ferry happen. Happened. A lot of people forget about the mountain, the buildup with mcclellans movements. We had a roundtable discussion last week. We had a discussion, was he as slow as a lot of people said he was. It really got interesting. When you wrote this book, what was one of the myths or things that we construe that you wanted to really dispel . Scott there are a number of myths about the campaign. Not as many as gettysburg. One of the myths is that i am not a big mcclellan defender. Theres a group of people out there who really want to make him a great general. I think he was an average general. He was a very bright individual. He never couldve won the civil war. He was not capable of doing that. He wasnt the sort of general who could accomplish that. One of the narratives that became standard was that mcclellan moved very slowly across maryland. He was indecisive. He was just the same old mcclellan of the peninsula. What i found was that he did an excellent job of reorganizing the army. It was very disorganized from the retreat from the Manassas Battlefield and throwing together the army of the potomac, army of virginia into that mix. They had not worked together and functioned as an army. They had their own separate cultures. He had all of these political things. The secretary of war is trembling with rage that mcclellan is placed back in command of the army. The government does not have his back. Two of his core commanders are going to be potentially courtmartialed. He has to negotiate with lincoln to get them back for the campaign. He has to reorganize his army on the march. His army is reinforced by about 17 new regiments. It amounted to a little less than 20 of his infantry was soldiers with literally no training. I go out and gather people in my neighborhood. Here we go. They were young, they were enthusiastic. They did not know how to maneuver. They never marched. Mcclellan had to give these men some level of conditioning so i they didnt strangle all over creation. His logistics were a disaster. You have to sort the logistics out. You have to feed your men. That is going to slow down how quickly you could move. The chief of staff of the army was deeply concerned that there was a large Confederate Army working in Northern Virginia , that this was to draw the union army away into maryland and that he was moving too far away from washington and leaving the city vulnerable. He left the capital about 73,000 troops. He had to be very careful about his movements. He had conflicting information. One of the worst Intelligence Officers of the war, his commander of calvary. One of the great things about jeb stewart is he vetted his information pretty well. He just sent it all. Mcclellan was faced with a lot of challenges in trying to move his army. He does develop a plan of attack. I do criticize some of his planning but he wins the battle of south mountain. He forces lee to retreat. He doesnt do well as far as trying to relieve Harpers Ferry. That will result in the capture of the garrison there. There are some things with mcclellan. What you need to do as a historian is you never want to enter writing something with an agenda. I will either redeem mcclellan or demonize mcclellan. What does the evidence show me about mcclellan . It is a very longwinded answer to your question. One of the big things that i found that had never been told without an angle and also in a detailed way was the capture of Harpers Ferry. It always gets lost over glossed over. Those draw most of the attention away. Theres not a lot of casualties. It seems unbelievably inept. I thought that was an interesting story that needs to be told. What happened was the biggest surrender of United States troops until world war ii. Stonewall jackson, everybody remembers him for the valley campaign. Good reason to remember him for those things. His greatest victory is the capture of Harpers Ferry. He loses very few men. Less than 500 men. Captures a garrison of over 12,000 soldiers and all of the equipment. It is a gigantic victory. It tended to get glossed over in history. The other thing i should point out is one of the tragedies of Harpers Ferry surrender was there was a large number of africanamerican slaves who had taken refuge within the Union Garrison. When the garrison surrenders , all of them are taken back into slavery. They offered them back. Most of these people did not want their slaves back. The confederacy used their very limited logistical resources to take these people to richmond, virginia to sell them. That is one of the stories of the Antietam Campaign that gets lost in the midst of history. Peter i have never heard that before. Im not surprised but that is important. Turning to the confederates here, lee coming off his victory at manassas starting to inch his army towards Northern Virginia. He already committed himself to maryland without Jefferson Davis approval. Arguedan Steve Woodward that davis and lee were not absolutely in sync when it came to the confederate strategy. I want you to answer that and the second issue i would like to explore is the movement into maryland. What went right . What is your evaluation . The first part, are they in sync here . . S lee committed once he did, how would you evaluate the handling of the army . Scott lee and davis were absolutely in sync. His for his first volume that he did, i forget the title of it. Peter i will look it up. Scott i forget the title of it. It is not a really long book. I have to close the window because the lawnmower is running out here. There we go. All right. It is not a really long book. They were in harmony with one another. It is very important as far as understanding lees thinking and davis thinking. What lee was doing, he thinks this is the proper time for the army to march into maryland. He has davis approval, hes going to do it. The reason he is writing that is he is going to go into maryland. He knows davis will approve it. He is simply making a gesture of deference to the civilian control by making sure you know that this is in keeping with what we have discussed. You are in charge ultimately. That is all it is. It was just lee showing deference to Jefferson Davis. I dont think lee was far more politically astute than he is given credit for. Peter we should quickly note overgaard beauregard, all of those men could have learned a lesson from robert e. Lee and working with Jefferson Davis. You have to think how lee believed that civilian authority needed to be informed. The key is deference. Lee, the language he employed in writing to davis time and time again, he made sure davis never felt that he was being snubbed. Scott right. Peter there will be no snubbing of Jefferson Davis. I think it is one of the share that lee and grant in common. Both of those generals certainly had egos. They knew where to check their show deferenceo to Political Leadership. That is one of the reasons i think they were successful. They created a culture within the army and with Political Leadership that enabled them to do things they thought were going to lead them to victory. I think lee was always trying to guide davis to where he wanted the strategy to go. He wasnt always successful. He wasnt completely successful in the Gettysburg Campaign. I think lees thinking was sound. Davis gave in to the politics of the moment. Youve got to execute this campaign with what youve got. As far as the confederates go up into maryland, the campaign was lees thinking on the campaign was good. He doesnt follow the Gettysburg Campaign route, which was down the shenandoah and into the cumberland valley. He crosses east of the blue ridge mountain. He advances to frederick. He knows when he goes to frederick he poses a threat to washington, baltimore, and pennsylvania. That will draw the union army out of washington. That is his objective. Just like the Gettysburg Campaign, the mistake people people make is they think his objective was to gather supplies. His objective was the union army. Defeating that is the only way you shift the political needle. He knows the army is disorganized. He thinks it is more disorganized than it actually was. He wants to draw it out of washington into the field, where , he could then fight the army. His army is beyond the end of their supply line. They are really in rough shape. Particularly the units that have participated in the manassas campaign, those units are in terrible condition. The army in maryland had about 27,000 stragglers. Portion of the army struggled. Straggled. Struggle straggle because they didnt know what they were fighting for and they didnt want to fight for the confederacy any longer. They straggle because they were physically ill, completely worn out, and they were really hungry. In some units there battle discipline was great. Their system was terrible. Soldiers just straggled off here and there. Some guys had enough. Leesburg,ets to virginia they had a quick , reorganization of the army. At least 5000 men from the army dont have shoes or they are physically unfit. They order them to go to winchester, virginia where lee establishes a depot. We know he loses at least 5000 at that point. Hes just going to leak stragglers everywhere he goes. His operation that he puts together is really demanding. There is a lot of hard marching that these troops have to do in the course of this campaign. That is what places some of the objectives at risk. When he gets to frederick, he assesses the situation. The union army starts to come out from washington, which is what he wants. Then he learns the Union Garrison from Harpers Ferry and martinsburg are still there. Rather than seeing that as a problem, he sees it as an opportunity. He conceives a very complicated plan to capture or destroy those garrisons, which ends up dividing his army. Leaves himeads vulnerable when mcclellan advances across the state and finds lees special orders. The orders for all the divisions that participated in the operation. All the divisions of the army and what they were supposed to do. That enabled mcclellan to mount an offensive against lee that nearly ends the campaign. The night of september 14, lees army has fought the battle of south mountain. They have essentially been defeated because the federals have broken through. They seized key terrain there. Decision he is going to retreat to virginia. As they start to fall back across the potomac, lee revises because he realizes they are trapped. He wants to help him get away. Then he changes his mind. Then he changes his mind and decides he decides he will move behind antietam creek. Hell set up a temporary position. He did not intend to fight a battle. It was a temporary position. What changes everything for lee is on the morning of the 16th of september he receives word from Stonewall Jackson that Harpers Ferry will be surrendered. When he gets that, lee is always an opportunist. He sees maybe it will take mcclellan a while to get over the mountain. Maybe i can reunite my army. That raises the big question that people are always going to ask. I try to answer it but i think people will continue to ask it. Why does lee decide to fight a battle at sharpsburg . Why does he take this enormous risk to assemble his army there with all his hard marching and offer a battle in maryland . The interpretation i came up with is lee is an opportunist. The moment he goes across the Potomac River into virginia, he surrenders the initiative to the union army. He never likes to surrender the initiative. If he stays in maryland and defeats mcclellans attack, what might mcclellan do . You dont know what he is going to do. What has he done in the past . He might fall back to a strong, defensive position like south mountain. If he does that, lee remains in maryland. The way to hackettstown hagerstown, pennsylvania is open. That strategically the campaign north of the Potomac River could continue. That strategically is a win for the confederacy. Lee takes a tremendous risk here. He sees the potential for a strategic game for the confederacy. Peter i will quickly send it over to john. We will go a little over today. If you do not mind we would like , to get a little preview of the next volume. I want to reflect upon your recent comment, scott. You were referring to the logistical breakdown that occurred with lees army. It is an article that you cite. Chief bohannon did a fantastic article on the maryland campaign. That piece im usually pretty good we do a lot of show and tell here. I dont have that in front of me. Gary gallaghers edited volume. If you have any interest in logistics at all, i think he was one of the first. He could do it like no one else. He could find archival material all over the place. We had a conversation. I dont think we talked about it last week when we were on the battlefield. Jeff brownings book on the environmental history of the civil war they have a fantastic , chapter on the maryland campaign. I suspect none of it would be surprising or new to you. If i remember, i will be a good neighbor. I will pdf it. You could find the book, 40 discount. I am a marketer. [laughter] we know i am so shallow. [laughter] the book, which i own upstairs is confederate tide rising. , john yes. Peter harsh is spelled harsh. He has unfortunately passed. Confederate tide rising, if you are interested in these issues. Go right ahead as we are looking toward september 17. A little sneak preview for our audience. John we are already getting questions about when is the book coming out . People are ready to jump. Scott Johns Hopkins is slating it for the spring of 2022. Right as i finish it. [laughter] i am finished with the Battle Action of the book. I have a few chapters left where i look at the aftermath of the battle, the end of the campaign, the fighting at shepherdstown, the emancipation proclamation. The reaction of the armies. I want to get into i think one of the great books on campaigns that i have read was george grables book on the fredericksburg campaign. What i really liked about his book was that it was just really well written. It was the way he dealt with after the battle, how it was received, how the battle was received in the north and south by the press. How it was received by the homefront, how people rationalized the deaths of all these young men. I want to get into some of those things. Antietam is important because it is photographed. It is one of the first battles that is extensively documented with photographs. I want to get into the rebuilding of the army of Northern Virginia because the army was damaged beyond what anyone imagines in the battle of antietam, and they were really hurt badly in the battle, and the army of the potomac and, you know, mcclellan is making all of these claims that the army is unfit to take the field. He needs to resupply it. I want to look at that rebuilding period and also look at briefly, theres a number of soldiers who write about after the battle was over. One individual comes to mind. It was a colonel of a new york regiment in the first quarter, and a soldier in his regiment said the colonel had not come out of his tent this is after the battle for a number of days. Nobody saw him. He just stayed in the tent. The major of the six wisconsin writes about feeling sick after the battle for quite some time. William robbins, who was a major , his brother was killed. His who good friend of he was talking to had his head taken off in front of him by an artillery projectile. He writes about he never wrote an after action report for his regiment because he was ill for quite some time after the battle. I want to get into this idea of how soldiers grappled with trying to deal with trauma they had experienced in a battle like antietam. Peter did you come across colonel lee . Scott oh, yes. Peter and the letters, a wonderful set of letters, but lee disappears, as you know, and they found him, and he was incoherent. He had diarrhea. He had not changed in days. He had some issues before he was captured. There are a number of things but , im glad you are going to list that issue. Im going to ask a question that its the kind of question you ask sometimes that im somewhat frustrated with. Im going to ask you that is, why im on this single day, why was the fighting so fierce . Why were there so many casualties . Is there a way you can help us understand that . By getting beyond it is just the Bloodiest Day . It has to come to the fact of command decisions, terrain, other things. Could you help us appreciate the singularity of antietam . Scott there are several factors at play here. One is that the battlefield, even gettysburg, has gotten more cover than antietam does. Antietam has a few wood lots. For the most part, the only cover in antietam is the undulations of the land, which if you have ever visited , antietam, its a very rolling landscape, and you can hide huge numbers of troops, but once you are moving against somebody, there are not a lot of places that theres no fortifications built in antietam, either. Nobody digs in. It is one of the best fields in the civil war for artillery. One of the recurring themes i find from soldier accounts that im reading is how effective artillery both union and confederate, but particularly Union Artillery if you were on the northern end of the battlefield in a confederate unit, it was horrific. The losses they took from artillery fire and the types of losses they take are just appalling when you read about them. Arms and legs flying, and heads flying off and people having shells go right through their bodies. Its just appalling. Antietam is a field in which artillery can play a major role in the battle. It is a field in which once troops emerge into the open, there is not a great deal of cover for them. Thats one of the reasons why you always think of the cornfield, which is a poem by david miller. He had the cornfield which is a farm owned by david miller. He had the cornfield, a 30acre cornfield in which there was very heavy fighting. Thats the only cornfield people talk about. But otto had a cornfield that was very important. The reason these cornfields became important is because they provided some level of concealment for soldiers trying to move the attack. A lot of these attacks are completely exposed, and then troops are exposed to small arms fire and canister and shrapnel. They just get shredded really quickly. Theres also the case of some very poor tactics that are used in the battle, particularly on the union side. Edwin sumner, his tactics are just atrocious that he uses. William french at sunken lane. The tactics are we are just going to pile men in and try to overwhelm you with force of numbers. When you do that, your losses are going to really be high. Peter would you agree with the assessment that most of war combat usually took place around 50 yards or less maybe a bit more, but certainly under 100 yards . That is, as he would acknowledge, a sweeping generalization it also strikes , me that that is what often happened in antietam. Even though there are open, wide fields, the undulating nature of the ground, for opposing lines to come into line of sight, it almost had to sometimes be on top of each other. When you stand almost anywhere along that lane, for the federals, when they become absolutely visible, it is almost as if they are on top of the confederacy. Would you agree a lot of fighting occurs at close range . Scott i would not agree with it in general. Hold on, ive got somebody banging on my door right now. What he writes is true at sunken lane because you could not see the confederate position until you were about 75 yards away. Let me tell you one other thing about sunken lane. Sunken lane was a terrible defensive position. The only reason i think dh hill placed his troops in the sunken lane is they could not be seen by federal artillery. Otherwise, you would have placed your troops at the military crest which was north of the lane, but he could not do that because the federal artillery would have just smashed them. He puts them in sunken lane. A lot of confederate soldiers write about how once the federal s got on the ridge in front of you, you could not get out of the way. You were trapped in the lane, and theres a number of accounts from Union Soldiers that at one point in the battle, they saw these white handkerchiefs along part of the lane where gb andersens brigade was, and i think some of the confederate soldiers were trying to surrender. Some of the Union Soldiers thought it was a ruse, so they kept firing. The confederates realized they would not accept their surrender. The fighting went on. It was unbelievably horrific. I can find you numerous instances where engagement takes place at distances of up to 400 yards. Part of the brigade is engaging at over 400 yards. That explains one of the reasons why there were a lot of soldiers in the 27th indiana and third wisconsin who mentioned getting hit, but the buckshot they ball andng buck and the ball did not penetrate their skin. It bruised them. I think the range for those weapons was so great, but theres lots of instances i can point to where troops are engaging at long distances. One of the most famous andunters is six wisconsin, lucas dawes writes a great piece about when they come out of the cornfield. Across the field in front of you, thats well over 100 yards, almost 200 yards away. The losses in that engagement were really high. No, i dont think all the engagements took place under 100 yards. At antietam in particular month there are a lot at 400 yards. Peter thats really kind of important findings. You do not need me to tell you what to do. I would love to see after you get done with this book a focus ed article as antietam as a case study. I have great admiration. We all know when were on the battlefield, people want to understand the nature of fighting, of combat and with , good reason. Scott excellent book. Peter its a very tough issue to generalize. John we have a question here from my good friend. Whats one thing you dont feel even academics fully understand about the Antietam Campaign . Scott academics understand everything. John throw the question out, james. I will block you if i have to. Scott thats actually a good question. John there you go, pete. Scott im not sure. Other than some of the things that i was talking about earlier, particularly with mcclellan ive had academics and nonacademics that just pile on mcclellan because hes easy to pile on against. He is his own worst enemy. They just berate him. You know, he should have done this, he should have done that. He was slow. He was lethargic. He did not want to fight. He did fight. His battle plan at antietam was not well communicated. It was not necessarily a bad battle plan. I do not think he executed the battle well at all. But the next day, september 18, is another example where people just pile on against mcclellan that he does not attack lee on the 18th. He overestimates lees numbers. I point out that he is not the only one. Its hard to find a Union Officer who did not think the Confederate Army was as strong as they were or may be because the confederates had fought so aggressively on they had september 17. Effectively masked how weak they were. Even though the army of the potomac did receive reinforcements humphreys division had done nothing but march. They had no training whatsoever. They were not going to spearhead any attack. He had the six core. He had part of the fifth corps that he could have used. It would have called for a repositioning of some of the troops in his army which would have taken a considerable amount of time for mcclellan. I think that you can criticize some of his failure to act on september 18. I certainly think ulysses s. Grant would have acted, but at the same time, it was not as it mcclellan was an outlier in the army. There was essentially an agreement within the army that attacking on september 18 was not a good idea. The army was not in any condition to do it, and i think eeey would have felt that if l had been on the 19th that they should have attacked. Thats one example. The campaign, like i said earlier the Antietam Campaign does not have nearly the number of controversial moments or myths attached to it that the Gettysburg Campaign does. For whatever reason, gettysburg just has a lot more than antietam does. Peter do we have any more here . John we have a couple seconds more here. Tom wants to know if the new book includes the battle at shepherdstown. Scott yes. There is a very good book i just forgot the authors name, im sorry theres a good book that came out a couple of years ago that gets into a tremendous amount of detail on the battle. I would highly recommend that. There was a pretty good article in the gallagher antietam essay as well. Scott yes, there is. Peter we will not say anything more about that article. Scott thank you so much for , taking your saturday morning to spend some time with us. And for all you have done. Scott knows this and i have said it to him. When i took the job in gettysburg one of the things i , was so looking forward to was having scott as a colleague which i got to enjoy just a few , years. He told me when i was deliberating about whether to come that he was thinking about retiring in a few years. I told my wife that, and she said, do you still want the job . Got to think about this. I knew that this position, if it was going to work if the , institute was going to become something that i wanted it to become, to build upon the good work, i needed to have a colleague and ally in scott, and i got that. For folks this afternoon in our battlefield tour, a lot of what i will be saying will be scott hartwig. I hope i dont screw it up. The problem does not reside with me. I am the ground troops. It resides with the general. A do youto give want to give a show of the book one more time . There we go. Get your copy. Scott thank you again for taking , time out of your day. Scott thanks for having me. John i am not used to the early morning. I got to get used to this. Scott well, im up early. Its fine. You are watching American Historytv, covering cspan style with eyewitness accounts, archival films, lectures in College Classrooms and visits to museums and historic places. All weekend, every weekend on cspan3. To mark the 400 anniversary of the pilgrims arrival in massachusetts, American History tv features several programs looking back. We talked to the director of the virtual may follower mayflower project, which uses Virtual Reality to recreate the ship. Here is a preview. It has been a big labor of love for me. To bring a trying for of england back to life people who lived there. Sort of the mammoth journey across the atlantic. Saw was the last thing they before they made their way out although centuries ago . You can take a leaky little boat and you are able to look around. You can see the view of the last unit the pilgrims would have seen. It will pick you up onto the ship itself. We have various crew directly in front of you in the demo itself. That is bad news because the ship has not even left harbor yet. Inis not going to fare well the coming 66 days. Learn more about the virtual mayflower project sunday at 5 00 p. M. Eastern, 2 00 p. M. Pacific here on American History tv. On september 12, 1918, the American Expeditionary force under the command of general john j. Pershing launched their First Independent operation of world war i. On american artifacts, we travel to northeastern france with historian Mitchell Yockelson to visit a few locations and learn about the battle of saintmihiel. A tous