Transcripts For CSPAN3 Escaped Union Prisoners Of War 20170819

I am pete carmichael, the member of the History Department here at Gettysburg College and the director of the civil war institute. Our final speaker for this afternoon is lorien foote. Lorien foote is a professor of history at texas a m university. The aggies. Where she teaches courses on Civil War History and reconstruction, 19thcentury america, and reform movements. Lorien got her start at the university of kansas where you did your undergrad and then went on to get her phd at the university of oklahoma. Her second book published in 2010, the gentleman and the roughs manhood, honor, and violence in the union army is one of my favorites on the soldier experience. Lorien did fantastic research. She dug into the National Archives and looked at courtmartial records which had really been underutilized until lorien got a hold of them. Again superb book. , and david brooks, a columnist for the New York Times you got a lot of praise from david brooks in his editorial. It is well worth reading. Fantastic book. Her second book the yankee plague escaped Union Prisoners and the collapse of the confederacy, recently published by the university of North Carolina press and it of course is the subject of her talk this afternoon. Please welcome lorien foote. [applause] professor foote thank you so much. Good afternoon. Thank you so much, pete, for inviting me. Thank you to the audience. You have had a long day. You have listened to a lot of talks. I appreciate that you are here to listen to this wonderful story. I have had several people at the conference asked me this question individually, so i will address it to the entire group. Tes not shelby foo daughter. Lets get that out of the way. [laughter] professor foote one local South Carolina newspaper put this this put it this way. They seemed to be everywhere. They actually cover the land like the locusts of egypt. This newspaper was referring to thousands of yankees who were sneaking through the South Carolina countryside under the cover of darkness. These yankees would dig into sweet potato fields and steel sweet potatoes. They would nap in peoples barns. They would a cost unsuspecting white and black southerners. One minister in North Carolina found three yankees napping underneath his fodder and when he found them, they woke up and attacked him. There was a brutal fistfight between them. These thousands of yankees were not soldiers marching with William Tecumseh shermans army. They were escaped prisoners of war, ravenous and unarmed, moving through the countryside in shocking numbers between september of 1864 and february of 1865. There were almost 3000 of them during that winter. So, where did all of these escaped prisoners come from and what can their story tell us about the final days the final months, i should say of the confederacy . First, i want to tell you the story of where these 3000 escaped prisoners come from and then we are going to talk about what it can tell us about the collapse of the confederacy. First, lets talk about the escape. The story begins when desperate confederate officials attempt to remove their prisoner of war population from georgia after sherman captured atlanta. 1864. Ber 2, night they dont want sherman to liberate these captives. So they decide to move them from where theville prisoners are kept, and macon, where the officers are kept. The problem is they dont have anywhere in the region to move thousands of prisoners of war. The other problem is there is inanded divided control the union in the prison system. There is no one Single Person in charge of the confederate prison system at this point in the civil war. Instead, there is divided command between two Brigadier Generals, neither of whom is sure whatntirely prisons they are responsible for and what their authority is and the extent of their authority. So, there is a lot of confusion in the confederate bureaucracy at this point in the war, and it facey shows up when they this crisis moment in the war. So, Brigadier General john wender is in charge of the evacuation and he sends thousands of prisoners to savannah without notifying the military commander in savannah prisoners are coming. He finds out when an aide runs up to him and says, a train just arrived with 6000 p. O. W. s, he and he sends a telegram to richmond and says, you must have a strange conception of the i possess in this district. Force that i possess in this district. [laughter] foote they do notify or wender does notify a Major General samuel jones, who is the commander of the department of South Carolina, georgia for the confederacy. South carolina, georgia, and florida for the confederacy. He does get advance warning that 13,000 prisoners are on their way to the city, but no one consulted him whether you have the ability to guard these prisoners, while at the same time hes trying to defend charleston from ongoing and active Union Military operations. And he protests and he says i , cannot guard these prisoners. And they say, you have to take them. I dont have anywhere else to send them. He says, if i have any trouble with them, i am going to march them out of the city and let them go. Which, we will see is pretty much what happens. He gets initially, 6000 enlisted men show up along with officers. And so what jones does, he continually protests the arrival of these prisoners. He does not have enough men to guard them. And right as these prisoners arrived, september 5 and six, medical officials in charleston declare the yellow fever epidemic in the city. Does and what i think this shows in this leader of the war, there is a real breakdown in communication that i saw at numerous levels militarily, bureaucratically that are occurring in this region what jones does is he decides he needs to get rid of these prisoners. He sends 6000 of these prisoners of war, the enlisted men, out of charleston and he does not , notify prison officials he does this. So nobody in richmond knows what he has done, and none of the prison officials in the region realize what has happened until it is over and done. So, what jones does, here is a map of South Carolina and you can see the Railroad Line. So he sends a batch of these federal prisoners of war to be of the railroad to a to the Small Community of florence, South Carolina. These 6000 prisoners have a guard of 125 men, and the guards turn these prisoners out into an open field next to the railroad. These guys are veterans of a summer in andersonville. They are really not that interested in being put into another confederate prison camp. So even though many of them are very, very ill and sick, there is a group that mutinies. The witnesses that i have both the confederate records and the Union Records estimates there are between 400 and 700 men involved in the mutiny. In the book, i chose the conservative 400 number. Manyt could have been as as 700 men. They leave this open field. They attack the guard. They plunder citizens in the vicinity of this open field and they attack and try to destroy the railroad. So he telegraphs back to charleston that this situation is happening, and jones has to deploy a Field Artillery unit, a cavalry unit, and an infantry unit to florence to try to suppress this mutiny. But that is actually not enough to get control of the situation. So, what they do is, they mobilize all of the people in the countryside around florence, and they asked everyone who has any kind of arms to join in the hunt for these escaped p. O. W. s. And so local citizens join with these forces to track down these escaped yankees. In some cases, they hatch them they recapture them after they crossed the border into North Carolina. But after several weeks of this, they actually round everybody up, except 23. 23 of these prisoners permanently escape and i will get to this in a moment 21 of them report to union forces in knoxville, tennessee. So, they recapture these people. They have got more guards now and they have got artillery pieces to keep them in this open field, they have slaves in the community who had been conscripted on this spot to build the stockade to put these prisoners in had been working to build the stockade. Quickly the stockade is ready, but again the government mobilizes local civilians who show up on the day that the stockade is finished with their arms and form a massive ring around the stockade, with their weapons, to be there to put the yankees inside the stockade of florence. That creates a prison for enlisted men. But jones still has the federal officers on his hands. 1500 of them have arrived in charleston. What jones does with them he decides to send them out of the city, once again without notifying confederate prison authorities what he is done, and he does this in october. I cant go into it now, but partly because these officers in the meantime have been caught up in a retaliation situation these officers are put under union fire, and the union retaliates i bringing 600 confederate pows from the north. But thats another story. So, the officers will be in charleston longer than those enlisted men. In the beginning of october, jones will send them out of the city, with the same disastrous results that happened in florence. I am going to go back to the map so you can see i think i got green here. It is not working. Anyway, he is going to send these officer p. O. W. s to the from charleston up the Railroad Line to the capital city of columbia. What happens is more than 100 of these officers escape as they are being marched from either the charleston jail or the hospital where they are being held in charleston. They escape on the streets where they end up hiding among Union Citizens in florence. Some of them are funneled from house to house. Eventually they make it to the wards where africanamerican pilots take them on boats to union islands. Some escape to the city and more escape by jumping off the trains when they stop to take on water at either kingsville or branch ville. And then they are going to make their way to columbia. Yankees are marched to the city day after Jefferson Davis gave a speech in columbia, exhorting carolinians to give their all for confederate independence. Their march to the city, about two miles outside of the city, and you know exactly what im going to say they are turned out into an open field. Naturally, theres going to be a lot of escapes. There would be more escapes, but the confederates put on a dramatic display to try to discourage what had happened at florence. One of the officers who jumps off the train is recaptured by dogs and mangled by dogs. And so, confederate officials bring that dead officers body that has been mangled by dogs and put it in front of the prisoners, so they really are intimidated by that. Because it gives them the impression they are going to be chased and hunted by dogs if they try to escape. But even with that, hundreds of men escape from this open field in columbia, which they sorgan, while the confederate bureaucracy goes through the incredible negotiation. Where did they go . Who has authority over them . There are four weeks of bureaucratic wrangling over this. During that time, these yankees get no adequate shelter or food. 373he end, more than prisoners escape. More than that leave the camp during a given time, but theres ultimately 373 that permanently, permanently escape. So, what were going to see is a is the prisoners who escaped during the october transfer from charleston to columbia, these escapees will join together in parties from two to six men and they will take one of three escape routes. Their goal is to try to get back to union lines. And so, to do that theyd choose one of three routes, which i kind of have in a gray color on this map that you see. Some of them choose to try to get back to the union lines of the union forces that are the cj charleston. The headquarters are on hilton head island. So these escaped prisoners follow the rivers and try to get back to the coast. It is a shorter route, but there are forces between them and the union army. The most popular route is they are going to travel northwest through South Carolina and try to go to knoxville, tennessee which is occupied by the union army. This route will take them through South Carolina, North Carolina, and tennessee. There are prisoners who think that their best plan is to try to find shermans army, which they know is operating in georgia and they suspect might be headed to augusta. These escaped prisoners are going to travel a very short route trying to get to augusta, georgia where they hope to find shermans army somewhere. So i think the journey of these , escaped prisoners gives us incredible insight into the final months of the confederacy in South Carolina, North Carolina, and tennessee, because these escaped yankees, unlike soldiers marching with sherman who are triumphant, these guys are confused, lost, and they are dependent on africanamericans and sympathetic white southerners for aid. And so, what they talk about in their diaries and what base they what they say when when they report back to the union lines and give reports to the Provost Marshal about what they experienced, they saw things that other Union Soldiers did not notice, and they spent a lot of time with people we dont have other records for. So i think following the journey of these escaped prisoners is really a story, not just about these prisoners, but a story of what the people in this region of the south were experiencing in the final months of the confederacy. What i want to do today, i want to talk about three aspects of the collapse of the confederacy that we can examine through the journey of these prisoners, because at this point, the confederacy is collapsing and the People Living inside of the confederacy are experiencing that collapse on multiple levels. And so, there are several i talk about in the book. But here today i want to talk , about three aspects. The collapse of slavery, the collapse of homefront, and the collapse of borders. Those are going to be the three we will talk about. First i want to focus on the collapse of slavery. So, slavery collapses in the south at a different pace in different ways across space and time. It collapses in different times and different places. We see this in the state of South Carolina. I am going to go back to the map quickly. In the low country of South Carolina, slavery was already destabilized by the time these escaped yankees are pouring out of these open fields. Low country South Carolina, it was close to those union lines, on hilton head, it was close to patrollingunboats the coast that were going up the rivers in South Carolina. So you have a lot of male slaves who had run away. You had female slaves slowing down work, defying their mistresses, and you have a lot of theft, a lot of disorganization of slavery in the low country. In the up comfort country in , the hill country, slavery was much more stable. It was not disrupted the same way as it was in the low country. But the mass escape of all of these prisoners of war gives slaves an opportunity in both regions to escalate their resistance and these mass escapes help to escalate the collapse of slavery. What we see throughout the civil war, slaves try to assess the military situation. And they act when they think circumstances are favorable for success. And slaves in South Carolina, realize something is going really wrong for the confederacy hbehere would not he thousands of yankees crossing through the South Carolina countryside. They recognize that something is going on that shows the confederacy is having trouble here. What they see is when the First Federal escape, slaves are providing food, shelter, and guidance. But very quickly, this aid becomes more organized and directly aimed at the confederate state. So, for example, in the low country part of South Carolina, as yankees are pouring through some of these counties in the low country where slavery is already very destabilized, they we see slaves forming military companies that are operating in these counties and also using military organizations to protect the yankees making their way through these countries counties. State archives, in the military records, i found the governor in december has to send some militia units to counties in South Carolina with orders for them to suppress the armed military companies of slaves. He also gives them orders to keep it quiet. So that people dont know things have reached that level of desperation. Andup country route let me get to the outline that is the low country military companies. Along the up country route we , can follow the transition the slaves make from october through december as the number of escaped prisoners moving across the landscape increases. The aid of prisoners becomes very organized. Utilizing these slaves Communication Networks and using the trails and routes they to moveady figured out around their neighborhood to avoid the notice of their masters and the slave patrols. They already have in place a geography of resistance and they already have in Place Communications networks. Now, they are going to use these facilitate the movement of two escaped prisoners out of their state. So for example, when Hannibal Johnson of maine escaped in late november, slave guides take him from station to station through South Carolina. Over the course of eight nights, was handed off between 13 different guides who took him through prearranged stops and hit him in slave cabins. One of the guys when they go to the arranged meeting place, they say, ok, this is the next group of birdies. Im not sure why this slave nicknamed his yankee cargo birdies, but that is what he apparently called them. You almost had this reverse underground railroad, to actually creating organizations to protect these escaped prisoners. One of the most interesting stories i found was the around South Carolina, some whites had formed a picket on the road. They knew these yankees were moving at night, so they tried to intercept them. The prisoners did try to stick to the roads as much as they could because they were terrified of getting lost. Slaves formed a counter picket on the road below so they could intercept the escaped prisoners and guide them around the picket that their masters had set. There really gets to be a level of organization. But we can also see how the presence of all of these escaped prisoners begins to destabilize and affect the relationship between masters and slaves on an individual level. We see this in the case of spartanburg. I will put it on my map so you can picture. While you gaze at the map and contemplate, im going to drink some water. So, hold on. So, we can see this if we look on a farm in spartanburg, South Carolina. It was a farm that was owned by david and Elizabeth Harris. They had 10 slaves on their farm and this is what i mean by slavery collapsing in different ways. So this is october, november of 1864. Slaves on their farm still worked, planted, plowed, and obeyed. But the harrises record in their diary david keeps the diary and when he has to periodically go on active service in charleston, elizabeth will continue writing it. And they both talk about thievery. The very really increases in spartanburg so they both say law and order has collapsed. We live in a lawless lands. Harris says that thieves are bothering them as much as the war. We cannot keep our farm going. With this level of theft. I saw that reported by a lot of people in South Carolina at this point of the war. They all know their slaves are doing the stealing. This escalation. They are slaughtering hogs, leaving them in the field. They are stealing produce and stealing horses. There is this rampant theft. It seems to really escalate in october and november. This point isat alone and she is writing in her diary. She said everything is getting stolen. Then she figures out why there has been an escalation and escalation of theft. She discovers that her slaves have been hiding escaped Union Prisoners in their gin house. She alerts their neighbors. They set up patrols and tickets pickets, butand the yankees sneak away. She finds evidence that the yankees have been inhabiting her gin house and have been helped by her slaves for several weeks. She wants someone to whip her slaves. She cant find anyone to do that for her. She writes in her diary, it seems everyone is getting afraid of the negroes. After i think when we look at the experience of the harris family, after she finds this and tries to get people to with her to whip her slaves and no one will, a week later, two of the slaves leave the farm without permission. They start taking longer breaks than they are allowed. They start coming and going. From that point on, the harris slaves no longer behaved with obedience and they no longer do what they were supposed to do. When Elizabeth Harris goes out to that gin house and sees the evidence, she knows her slaves have declared war against terror against her and it was never going to be the same again. And it never was. I think this journey of escaped prisoners sheds a lot of light on the collapse of slavery going on in South Carolina. The other thing that i think that this story tells us, it tells us a lot about the collapse of the home front. There is a lot about the aspects there is a lot of aspects on the collapse of the home front that i see happening in this region. There are many different facets to that. I want to focus on one. What the journey of the escaped prisoners reveal is that throughout counties in South Carolina and North Carolina, we see entire households that are mobilized to fight within their community. And i am going to show this. What i mean by entire households is the children. These escaped prisoners are moving through counties when where people are mobilized to resist the confederacy, either because they are unionists or because they are protecting confederate deserters, deserters from the confederate army. They have mobilized their entire family to either attack people within their community or to defend themselves from the confederate state. So i think the experience of j. Madison drake, who is a lieutenant in the 9th new jersey, he is a firefighter, his dream is to be a journalist. He is a shameless self promoter. When he dies, his obituary which is in numerous newspapers, they call him a famous civil war veteran. He was famous because he was such a great self promoter. He jumped off that train between in South Carolina. He jumped off the train at kingsville. They worked their way through South Carolina, they enter into North Carolina and they get to Caldwell County. So Caldwell County is not on , this particular map. County up see wilkes toward the top Caldwell County , is near there. They reached Caldwell County. They are walking through a ravine and they see a couple of women and a 13yearold boy cutting sorgin grass. They have the story that theyre going to tell if they run into white people, they will say that they are deserters from kentucky trying to make their way back. One of them thinks he can take a southern accent. That is why they think they can pull this off. Anyway, they go up they want to , get some food and the little boy runs off and he comes back with his mother, a woman named mary estes. She is a very large and powerful woman, she says what do you want . They start to try to tell the story about we are in the confederate army, we are deserters from kentucky trying to get home, and she cuts them off and says i dont believe you. I think you are yankees. She says i hate the confederacy and i am not afraid of you whether you are confederate or whether you are union. Because if i raise my hand, there are a dozen true rifles that are trained on you at this moment. And if i give the command by raising my hand, they will open fire. So tell me again, who are you . So drake says we have to be honest and he pulls out the diary that he had kept while he was in prison and his commission that he carried with him as an officer in the u. S. Army. So when she sees that, she takes a white handkerchief out of her pocket and she waves it around her head three times. As soon as she does this, 20 men in confederate uniforms come out of the hills and woods around the ravine and come up. This is her husband bill estes and his band of deserters. They are engaged in a war with their neighbors and their community and with the North Carolina home guard that is determined to capture them. So from this point in their journey, drake and his companion were hidden and eventually made it to knoxville by a network of families who fought against the Confederate States and its supporters in their community. Some of them engaged in guerrilla warfare, all of them protected with violence the men who were deserters or draftdodgers from the confederate army. These families ultimately used their knowledge and their resources and their violence to protect and aid hundreds of u. S. Soldiers seeking to return with to union lines with the expressed purpose of rejoining their regimen. Escaped prisoner Charles Maddox who was from maine, he was a very aristocratic, snobby officer. I actually really admire him, but he is a snob. He is hidden by a family in North Carolina. This family and its extended can they rated , raided their rebel neighbors for beef. They armed every boy in the family over 12 years old. They posted pickets on the road 24 hours a day. Women took the day shift, men took the night shift. When rebel neighbors or state troops attacked their house, they had drilled holes in the wall of their home, they would turn their home into a fortress where women would load the guns and hand it to the men who would stick them through the walls and fire. After one skirmish that occurred before maddox and his party arrived in the neighborhood there were seven dead rebel , neighbors lying in the yard. Women and Children Play a Critical Role in this violence. They are the supply line for the guerrillas who are fighting rebels. They provide food, clothing and they carry messages for deserters about troop movements and raids. And what i found really interesting is that families did not hesitate to employ Young Children in this warfare and also, Young Children to help these escaped yankee prisoners. So one family in South Carolina , sent a nineyearold boy by himself with an escaped party of six escaped prisoners, and they sent this nineyearold boy alone to guide these yankees over the mountain where confederate deserters rendezvoused. The family thought these deserters would help his prisoners. One of my favorite incidents of all the stories i encountered is in east tennessee, a 16yearold girl, on horseback, guided a party of 70 men through her neighborhood. Her family sent her by herself. She guided this party of 76 men through a land where there were a lot of confederate guerrillas. And this girl knew what houses contained families that supported confederate guerrillas. She knew where they usually posted pickets. She guided these escaped prisoners around the houses of confederates she guided them , past the places where there were usually pickets and when the party reached a river in east tennessee, she left these men and rode alone to see if there were guerrilla pickets on the other side of the river. She comes back, she tells them the coast is clear, and she rides home. These yankees did not know her name at the time. They nicknamed her the nameless heroine. Her name was actually malvina stevens. That is a sketch of her. And that is an illustration from a book published after the war that gives an illustration of her exploits. What i think is interesting also, because you have these entire families mobilized, we are going to see the complete collapse of law and order where security in these counties where this is happening. What is really interesting to me is that when i found when i looked at State Government records about this, the North Carolina General Assembly is going to recognize the battle like conditions in many places in North Carolina. They will pass a law that basically authorizes people to form paramilitary companies. They pass a law that says any time 10 persons or more, here is a quote from the law, associate themselves as a military company, they can operate on behalf of the state, just without pay or equipment. That is a really fascinating law, isnt it . They are basically sanctioning People Associated themselves into the organizations, only very loosely associated with the state. They are sanctioned to employ any violence that may be necessary to suppress unionists and deserters in their communities. The other thing that i think shows the complete collapse of local security is the fact that while these escaped yankees are moving through South Carolina, they are joining forces with confederate deserters. They are joining forces with slaves who are escalating their resistance. The slaves in South Carolina have to call up there militia to join the Confederate Forces that will try to resist sherman. In late november, early december, South Carolina calls the governor of South Carolina calls of the state militia. He demands that every man report. They do a huge effort, and this nets 1300 men. Carolinas of south militia forces. Only 20 of the men responded to the call of their state to come defend the state from sherman. Why did they not respond . I think i know why. It is because they are running around their own neighborhood, trying to capture escaped yankee prisoners, and handle the slaves who were now forming military companies. At the same time, the government is saying where are all of these men . I am reading local newspapers that say, the citizens brought in 100 yankees and put them in jail. Im reading in diaries and reports that escaped prisoners say weost marshals and were hiding in the woods and we started to be chased by citizens or some of the men in their diaries who were recaptured, they report they were hiding in the woods. A couple people show up and find and come back, with 10 more of their neighbors. Then other people support these yankees and put them in the local jail. Hundreds of citizens are recapturing and arresting these yankees and from what i can tell in my research, these are all citizens that were supposed to have responded to the militia call. But they made the assessment that there is a danger on their front door and they have to deal with that first. Finally, the third thing i want to talk about is that the escaped prisoner problem i think reveals the collapse of borders. So of course, any nation must protect its borders to have security. And the confederacy tried to protect its borders not only from military force from external enemies but the confederacy also wanted to control the movement of internal enemies. So people within the confederacy , who were disaffected or disloyal to the confederacy, the confederacy wanted to control their movement. There is a passport system that is instituted if you are going to move outside of the confederacy. You have to apply and get permission. The secretary of war says that the goal of the passport system and this is a quote is to preclude the passage of dangerous and disaffected persons. So the permit system is supposed , to guard against spies, smugglers, subversives and men who sought to evade subscription. The dont want them leaving consent the confederacy. By the fall of 1864, in addition to the union armies will already who have already invaded the borders and are moving through the borders what is interesting , to me is that the borders of the confederacy are wide open. Wide open to thousands of people moving across the borders of the confederacy, leaving the in aderacy, doing so in company with thousands of escaped yankee prisoners. Then these people who are moving out of the confederacy, thousands of them are joining union army units in east tennessee that are then returning into the carolinas on constant raids that are going on between november of 1864 and in the end of the war at 1865. So what i found is that it is very typical, by the time these escaped prisoners get to North Carolina and eastern tennessee, they are generally traveling with anywhere from 70 to 100 confederate deserters who have decided to join them on their journey to knoxville. We see this in the case of captain Isaiah Connelly who was a pennsylvania captain. And his escape party gets to northwest South Carolina, they run into an African American named henry martin who is a free man. He has contacts with a group of confederate deserters that are hiding out. He puts connelly in his party and his party in contact with these deserters. They agree to guide the yankees to knoxville. They travel all the way to knoxville together. What is interesting is that often these deserters turn into recruits for the union army. That happens to j. Madison drake. The new jersey firemen and self promoter who met mary estes. After he meets mary, he ends up going to knoxville in company with her husband bill and 14 deserters. When they get to proud orchard, tennessee, they meet a group of 63 if my math is right here. They will end up being 76. Whatever ends up at 76. They meet a group of 63 people from North Carolina and South Carolina and north georgia who are all traveling together to knoxville. So they all join together, they , are a party of 76 and they by chance run into a lieutenant James Hartley from the third North Carolina, a Union Regiment that operates out of east tennessee. He is on a recruiting expedition. This is very common. I came across this constantly. These parties run into Union Officers who are moving into North Carolina and into South Carolina on a recruiting expedition. He is like, thats great, i dont have to travel any further. Will you join the union army . They said yes we will. The whole party travels to knoxville in company with hartley who now has 63 recruits for the union army. What i have found is when i put all this together and i look at the union army records, when i and the reports of these escaped prisoners there are , literally thousands of people on the move in the appalachians in the last winter of the war. People that the confederacy wants to keep contained because they are deserters that are moving out of the confederacy and returning as raiders. What was interesting to me is that there is many reasons the confederacy cannot contain this movement effectively at the end of the war. But one of the most Important Reasons is that the confederacy has absolutely confused military jurisdiction in this region of the south. So, i am about to put a slide up and say some things very rapidly that are going to lead you to be incredibly confused. But i think that it is important that i do that because by the time i am done and you are confused, you will be in the same mental state as the confederate secretary of war seden, which i will prove to you in a moment. These yankees and deserters are traveling through the Confederate Military district of western North Carolina. But the question is, who is in charge of that district . Who is in charge of it . For months, nobody in the Confederate War Department had been clear on whether the district of western North Carolina was part of the department of North Carolina for or the department of east tennessee and west virginia. The problem was that at this time beauregard was in charge of , the military division of the west which encompassed all of tennessee, except he didnt seemed to have authority over the department of east tennessee and west virginia. And then there was also the department of Northern Virginia because lee is also issuing orders to his subordinates in all these departments. And the people in these various military departments, it was very clear to me. I read their correspondents. They dont know who is in charge of them. There are many times that they hear about a raid and they send messages to the commanders of all of these departments and when they get responses back, they debate amongst themselves about which orders they are supposed to obey. Robert e. Lee is very unclear about what troops are in the department, what they are doing and one of my favorite moments in doing research for this book there is a moment where there is , an exchange in the war department, and it is absolutely clear that the confederate secretary of war has no idea who the commander of western North Carolina is. Because he gives an order to tell the district commander to do this and it turns out that he wasnt the commander. So the war apartment doesnt , even know who is in charge. With such confused military jurisdiction, with things being so chaotic for the confederacy in this region they are never , able to form a response to the thousands of people moving across the borders. So as the confederacy collapsed, it is going to unleash one more wave of yankee prisoners. Which i am not going to talk about here because you have to have a lot of things to read in the book. [laughter] professor foote but in february of 1865, when sherman is not all scale in the invasion of South Carolina, the confederacy will try to move those columbia prisoners once again. And when they do, more than 1700 will escape and the teaser that i will give you is that these escapes actually will ultimately interfere with shermans military operations to some extent. So there is this other way of escape. I think the story at the end of the civil war is not just about climactic battles and the surrenders. It is about the movement of prisoners of war and how the confederacy lost control of the yankees that it held captive. I think the end of the war is about the people of the carolinas and the first months when the yankees came. Not the armies, but the escaped prisoners. They made backyards and barnyard the sites of war and heralded the last days of the confederacy. So i am now happy to answer any , questions that you may have. [applause] professor foote i hear i have time for two questions. [laughter] oh good, i got here first. These routes that they were taking, or the using underground railroad routes . If not, was it because there were none in the area or was it because it was too dangerous to use them because we want to be slaves to escape as well. Professor foote i dont think they were using antebellum railroads because those ran south instead of north. Thank you. You have so many Great Stories in the book, im curious which one was your favorite . One that made it into the book or one you had to leave out terry at professor foote oh, thank you for that question. I would say i have one that is one of my favorite moments, even though it is not exactly a story. One of the things that was really compelling to me is the yankees spend a lot of time inside slave cabins having long conversations with slaves. And they have a lot of intimate moments where they are talking about things. And one of the things that comes out very strongly, they take have a prayer meeting over these escaped prisoners before they take them on. And several of these prisoners record the contents of the prayers, which is very interesting. One of the things that comes out very strongly is that these slaves firmly believe that god is acting in this moment of history and bringing about the jubilee and they are seeing god moving and one of the most amazing moments that reflects that, there are these two escaped prisoners and they are sneaking up at night behind these two africanamerican men who are walking down the road. And they can hear what these guys are saying as they walk. One of them says this is moving, this is it god is moving. , another one says yes he is. Do we need to put blood on our doors . Do we need to put blood on our doors . Isnt that incredible . Of course we know that africanamericans are steeped in that sense of the biblical stories of israel and being rescued out of egypt. But they are taking this so firmly believing that god is , moving that they are seriously asking if we need to put blood on our doors. I just think that is an incredible moment that shows us what slaves are thinking and feeling as all these epic events are happening at the end of the war. Thank you very much. [applause] coming up this weekend on American History tv on cspan3, tonight at 10 00 p. M. Eastern on railamerica, the 1943 office why we fight. To vaccine must not forget. Land. Is history, china is china is people. On sunday at 11 30 a. M. Eastern, a political economy professor on Alexander Hamiltons views of the national debt. Hamilton advise the creation of an efficient government. That one thing was to attack americans lives, liberty, and property from enemies, foreign and domestic. Then, new jersey residents and activists discuss the newark rebellion. There were reports of sniper fire. Zero snipers were ever found. No evidence of any snipers. No gun shells other than the police done shells. No footprints, no fingerprints, nothing was found, and yet 26 people were killed. One police man, one fireman, the rest were citizens. Tv, allcan history weekends, every weekend, only on cspan3. Each week, American History artifacts visits locations. Up next, the architect of an asylum. Known as the Government Hospital for the insane when it opened in 1852, it was built on a 185 acre arm with a view of washington, d. C. Saint elizabeths had almost 8000 patients and covered 300 acres. Open today. We look at what architecture can reveal about how the mentally ill work airport. I think it is an important moment to be talking about the role of federal government in providing public health, providing health care for the mentally ill and what that role has been overtime. This is an interesting time to talk about that. In saint elizabeths, it is a time when they are looking to develop the land, and have the federal government on top of that. Also, development is starting on the east campus, which is in washington, d. C. It is an interesting time to talk about that. Story going to start our in the 1850s, by looking at what is happening in Mental Health care at that time, and some people who are trying to change what is happening by building these asylums. Come on in. Welcome to our exposition exhibition. With the center building, built in 1855. We will learn more about that building. It was one of about 80 hospitals built in that style for Mental Health patients in the 18th century. We start the exhibition in here by looking at those fragments i mentioned. There is also patient art. One of the things in this done byon were art patients either as therapy or recreationally. Wall in thethe center building. We talked about how our definition of Mental Health has changed over time. Looking at diagnoses of patients, and we are looking at how the people think that the mentally ill should be cared or. What should happen to them. Should they be cared for at home, which certainly happens a lot, or if they should be cared for at a hospital. Certainly before the mid 19th century, there were a lot of places where you would find the mentally ill. Some were in jail, who did not have anywhere else to go. A reformer at the time, dorothea visited several of these places around the country. She traveled the world and saw the terrible, wretched conditions of people who were beingg treated well treated well. She was a sunday school teacher. She really believed that empathy in empathy instead of hardship was the way to treat people. She also firmly believed it was the role of government, special specifically the government and not private organizations, to treat people. She devoted her life to changing the situation for the mentally ill, and one of the places she wanted to make a difference in terms of how the mentally ill were treated was in washington, d. C. Of worked with the secretary the interior, she talked to the president of the united states, and she worked with a doctor, a physician who worked with the mentally ill who had specific ideas about what type of architecture could cure the patients. She identified the land. If you come over here, you can see this is the land she found, and this is a photo here of the original farm that was at this site. Dix convicts convinced the farm owner to sell the land to the federal government, which they did in 1852, and that is where they sited the hospital. Originally called the Government Hospital for the insane. I think it is important for people to understand those two threads of history i talked about. Have and should care for the mentally ill and think about what the role of the government should be in building the infrastructure for the mentally ill, whether now we talk about it in community Mental Health centers. That look like architecturally, in the landscape, and how do we fund care for these people . There was something all a long and othersy dix thought about custodial health care. I think it is important we think about that and having that understanding of what happened in history can help us think about what will happen next. Also, i think for d. C. Residents, it is interesting and certainly for all our residents as well come a to come andnd learn about land use who makes those decisions. This is land that has been walled off for a century and a half, and who makes the decisions about what happens there. In is am interested having Community Participation in all decisions wherever you live. There is always something happening. Developers are building something, tearing something down, and i think it is important to understand and be part of that conversation. And the mission like this can help people to get about what is happening in their own countries communities. Them tomportant for know that history, what has happened there before, so they can understand what should happen to their land now. Historyn lectures in visiting professor at hillsville college looks at how civilian and military leaders conduct themselves through wartime. Todays class focuses on Franklin Roosevelt and how american and british leaders learned to Work Together to defeat nazi germany. This program is about one hour and 45 minutes. Ok, um, weanson will continue with this notion commanders starting with caesar alexander. Going into the civil. Now we are at world war ii. Alliedwe start with the commanders, masters i should roosevelt