Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History 20140621

States civil war. All these pieces of legislation were passed, at least in significant measure, because senators absented themselves from the United States congress. And again, because American People voted republicans into office in 1860. Creek part of the civil war . It is an outgrowth of the civil war. It is an outgrowth of the same mechanisms and processes that that burst birthed the civil war, but also features civil war soldiers. United states soldiers on the payroll, who are mustered into the union army. Again, i wasnt being entirely glib when i said yes, i think t is. Is it as central a part of the civil war story as some of the events that others will be talking about here . No, i dont think it is. I dont want to overstate my claim. That is not the kind of historian that i am. But i do think it is a very important story and its worth telling. Thank you all again very much. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] if you could sit tight for just a few moments, we have a few announcements. First announcement, get your program and turn to page 32. If you dont have it, that is fine. We have already planned cwi 2015, as you can see. And because we are in sync for the 50th, we, of course, want to see the battlefield in richmond and petersburg. These away for us to see battlefields is for us to go down there and have and the only way for us to see these battlefields is for us to go down there and have tonight two nights. Following through appomattox, the brick around petersburg, and richmond following in the steps of abraham lincoln. Again, a range of things. But as you can imagine, the only way for us to be able to do it nights into have two the area. If you look on the schedule, we have one component ticketed to gettysburg tours. Youll get your fix there. And we have all of our speakers lined up. I think it is a very good lineup. James mcpherson, gary gallagher, joan wall, Harold Holzer all of them speaking to a range of issues elated to the war in 1865. Related to the war in 1865. Our trip to petersburg means that everyone has to go with us. , bute, you could opt out unfortunately, we have to close out the dorms. Isnow for some of you, that really frustrating, because you really do enjoy her time at gettysburg. But there is no way for us to be able to do our adventure down to richmond and petersburg without that. And keep in mind that we have a limited number for this tour, 275. 275 is where its cap. 275 people, we cannot go one person over that, right, allison . There is just no way of doing that. There is open registration online. That is ready to go. And of course, if you have any questions about 2015, i can answer them, and alison as well. I would love to see you all there. I hope you are excited about the possibility of going down and seeing another part of the war in virginia. You will still get some of the things that you are accustomed to at cwi. Gettysburg battles as well. Allison has an announcement before we go off to lunch. Thank you for your patience, everybody. A couple of quick things before you head out the door. This afternoon, you will notice we are sick switching to our concurrent session format. There are three or four choices for each session. No reservations for those. You can decide on the spot which one you want to attend. They are as enough they are big enough that they can accommodate as many people that want to go. Display handy, strategically placed signage around the campus to help you as well. And there is a campus map in your booklet, of course. Fromhen you come back lunch, try to bring as many books as you have with you. We are calling it our mega book signing. It starts at 1 15 p. M. Mingus will, scott not be able to join us. He is the only one, though. Speakers, if you are listening to make you could try to swing by here a little before 1 15 p. M. , that would be wonderful. We will get you all set up. And dr. Come in will be down here for a few minutes to sign books. Usdr. Kelman will be with for a few minutes to sign books. He will be in the corner. Thank you. Watching American History tv, 48 hours of American History every weekend here on cspan three. Our live coverage of the conference in gettysburg, pennsylvania, will continue at about 2 p. M. Eastern time after they take a lunch break. Coming up this afternoon, at 2 p. M. , Brian Craig Miller of Emporia State University will speak on John Ford John hoods tennessee campaign. And then the focus is the confederate burning of chambersburg pennsylvania, with megan cate nelson of brown university. And at 6 00 p. M. Eastern time tonight, you can watch the entire days live coverage of this conference at gettysburg. Now from our lectures and history series, the aches you into the college classroom. Series that takes you into the college classroom, george main George Mason Universitys Christopher Hamner explained how things like patriotism, money, and ideology initially factored into young mens decisions to enlist into combat. This class is about one hour, 10 minutes. Good morning. We have taken a topdown look at this middle part of the war. Today i want to change our focus, moving back to the individual soldiers. Lets start with an image we have seen here for a couple times. This is an artist rendition of one of the charges made by the army of the potomac at the 1862 battle of fredericksburg. At the top, that low stone wall, and a density of confederate soldiers because the frontage is so limited, they are stacked 6, 7, 8 deep. People in the back handing up loaded weapons. They are able to generate a volume of fire comparable to a world war i machine gun. More than 10 separate charges try to go up the hill. Remember, by the seventh or eighth charge, the Wounded Soldiers were struggling back and are begging comrades not to go. They think it is suicide. Yet, they keep going. Why do they do that . In the spring of 1864, this cadet and the entire core of the Virginia Military institute were called up to try to block a Confederate Army moving down the shenandoah valley. That corps was initially held in reserve, and at the end of the day with a federate position, the confederate position some , struggling, they were ordered to make one of those frontal assaults we saw at fredericksburg. 200 young men making their way slowly across the field under into the teeth of heavy union fire. This soldier mcdowell and more , than a dozen of his fellow cadets were killed. Why did they do that . What are we looking at here . What do you think . [inaudible] can you read it for me . It says who he is and who his father is. I am captain o. W. Holmes, son of Oliver Wendell holmes, sr. It is a note that Oliver Wendell holmes, who would go on to great pinned inas a justice , his coat. Why did he do that . Improvising dogtags. Holmes knew many men killed or wounded would not be identified. This is his attempt to make it easier for people to identify him if he was incapacitated or unable to speak. Early summer of 1864, union troops on the eve of the battle of cold harbor, virginia, used a revised dogtags and put them in used to be improvised dogtags and pinned them in their coats. The next morning summit they got the next morning, they got up and made another one of those disastrous rental assaults that s disastrous frontal assault that had become so common by the war at that point. Elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder, one of the most lopsided assaults since the battle of fredericksburg. Some historians estimate more than 7000 union troops felt in fell in the first 10 minutes or 20 minutes. You have men the night before so theirng dogtags bodies can be identified the next day. Talking about death on a scale that is amazing. You had men the night before improvising dogtags, putting them inside their coats so that when the families can identify their bodies. There was a diary entry visit cold harbor, i was killed today. What i find fascinating about this is that men who were improvising dogtags and writing their diaries nonetheless went and made the charge the next day. Why did they do that . I think that is a fascinating question for us to explore. We have already talked about some of the characteristics of the civil war, the way the battle was both more destructive and less decisive. We talked about the extreme casualties that are incurred in battle after battle. But the battles do not settle anything. We talked about some of the reasons that warfare in the civil war was both more destructive and less decisive. Some of those things were inventions in agriculture and communication, the kind of technologies that allowed both sides to have larger armies and keep them at war for longer amounts of time here it we amounts of time. We looked at some of the weapons technologies. The rifle musket, canister shot, the new hardware that enables both armies to kill each other so brutally and so efficiently. There is one thing that we left out. There is a missing piece. Why did these soldiers continue to make these assaults . To continue to go into combat over and over again in the face of so much mounting evidence that it was brutal and bloody and incredibly lethal . Remember, we have talked about these guys before. These are not rational soldiers. They are regular, Young American boys. Farmhands and shop clerks, laborers, school teachers. Theyre not professional soldiers. Theyre not young man who spent years and years preparing for battle. They are regular american boys. In between 186165, they are hurled into some of the most vicious close infantry combat that the world has ever seen. If we are going to understand why the war went on as long as it did and why it would cost three quarters of a million northern and southern men their lives, i think we need to pull apart this big question why did the soldiers continue to fight . This is a fascinating question, central question for military history during that millennia. Going back millennia. It is a fascinating question into Human Behavior. Isnt it . What would make someone throw themselves into combat to see into combat into a hail of enemy bullets, to see friends and comrades killed, to risk your life and limb . It is a fascinating puzzle, even if youre not interested in military history. For civil war soldiers, it would cost so many of them limbs, their lives. We have this slide that you have seen a number of times, corpses in antietam. Why did they keep doing this . Why did they keep throwing themselves at the battle . It is a big question, one i think is sort of an intrinsic interest. It is an urgent question to military. Yet, maybe that one big question needs to be broken down a little bit. To recognize that the things that get you to join the army in the first place may not be the things that go soldiers to that got soldiers to mass up and charge on the third day of gettysburg, for example, or to make those assaults of the hill. Assaults up the hill. We can take the big question and break it down into component pieces. First we will talk about why soldiers get into the army in the first lace. What makes them join . Why would they leave their comfortable homes and join the military echo the military . Second, why would they stay with the army . It is arduous, the food is awful, conditions are miserable, everybody is sick all the time. Then the third part, how did the soldiers bring themselves repeatedly to face battle . In the mid19th century, this is prefreud, before a sophisticated psychological understanding of what makes people behave the way they do. In the 20th century, the u. S. Military would field scores and scores of scholars. Phd in history, political science, sociology, psychology, and they sent them into battle with the g. I. s to try to understand what was making them tick, why they did the things they did. This is a photo of one of the scholars who is right at the front line interviewing some soldiers who had just come out of combat, trying to understand what it was that was making the soldiers repeatedly expose themselves to combat. In the 20th century, they have taken our three questions here and broken them into three different categories. It is to try to explain each piece of this puzzle. An initial motivations, factors that get you to join the army in the first place. Sustaining motivation, factors that hold the army together during a months or weeks long campaign. And then combat motivation, what makes soldiers get out and face enemy fire, sometimes over and over again. So they explore each of these i want to take todays lecture and explore each of these pieces as they pertain to the army in the 19th century. I have spent most of my professional career studying soldiers and their experiences under fire. It is difficult to say that one kind of combat is worse than another, because they are all amazingly terrible. The middle 19th century and the infantry combat that these civil war soldiers participated in is some of the most brutal and most horrific. When we get to the battle of 1964, places like spotsylvania. Battle of 1864, in places , you will seenia a viciousness and brutality, and there is a willingness from some of these soldiers to repeatedly expose themselves, and that is something to pull apart. What are the things that would get a regular 20something american man to join the army in the early days of the war . We could come up with tons, so lets start. You have recruiting posters that make it sound excitable. So you will have one poster that says come join me army and see the beautiful south. All right, lets focus on the documents. We have sources that might give us a window into the mentality of young men who are joining the military at this point. Certainly, a sense of adventure is a big part of it. In 1861, it is not uncommon to be conceived, born, married, work, die, and buried within 50 miles of the same spot. The idea for a young 20something man of going on some grand adventure was what many recruiting posters try to play up. It was something appealing. The only chance to get away from home and see a little bit more of the world. Adventure is one thing. Another one . I think a lot of it is the concept of patriotism. Wanting to fight and save the union. Ok, patriotism or ideology. This is one of the quintessential ideological wars. For the north, there was the desire to restore the union and take down the rebellion. In the latter years of the war, for many Union Soldiers, it becomes a war of emancipation. For the south, it is defending their southern way of life, a Southern Society built on the foundation of racial slavery. These are wars in which there are important patriotic and ideological motivations to get out and join the army. It is interesting, when i give this lecture, how quickly people bring up patriotism and ideology. Sometimes people leave it until the very end. Those are the cynical classes. You guys are not quite as cynical. Youre putting it right at the top, which i like. What are some other reasons . Same line as patriotism, but honor. Both south and north. Remember, one of the things that shows up a lot in these posters, if you closely read the text, you know, ablebodied men, free man, brave man, courageous men needed to come, and this idea of honor, particularly a kind of masculine honor. Particularly in the south, many men went in voluntarily and flooded the recruiting stations in the first week of the war. But there were a few that were a little reluctant, could see little bit into the future and imagine military service was not their cup of tea. It was not unusual for those young man to get a package from a sweetheart in the mail that had frilly ladies undergarments in there. Not as a sexual overture, but to send a message that if you are not going to join the army, you should probably get used to the idea of wearing this around. There was a lot of gender pressure being put on men. The sense of honor, the sense of this is what men do. What are some other reasons people would join . Money. Money. And a lot of the things that show up here, a months pay in advance, 100. As you would get more of the as we look at more of these posters as the war drags on, pay becomes a more important part of it. And bounties become part of it. So there is more and more emphasis on what you can get by serving. So there are financial reasons to join as well. What else . [inaudible] yes. How are they recruiting these civil war units . Get your friends and your brothers ok, can you see look for what is popping out at you. The 16th maine regiment. We have got the third delaware. It is on a local basis. Yeah, they are all recruited locally. So you would serve alongside people that you knew and probably trusted from home. But think about the kind of pressure that that might exert. If a whole town of young men are all signing up for the military, it becomes a little harder to stay behind. What are your employment prospects if you are the one young man who stays behind . Technically there should be more work to be done, yet, if youre the one ablebodied young man when everyone else is husband or son has gone off, that might get attention. What are the romantic prospect if youre the one guy that stays behind . They very deliberately recruit from localities and specific geographic regions, towns, where people know each other, where there is a sort of pressure being exerted. A sense of glory, honor, ideology, some more practical things. Money, bounties. Anything else . It is to avoid the draft. Ok, there are two reasons then. By 1862 and 1863, both sides have resorted to conscription. So many people will be in the army because they have been compelled to do so. Both north and south, conscription starts as a way to force up the last reluctant volunteers. Slightly more honorable to volunteer than to be conscripted. By 1864, you will find many soldiers in both armies who are not volunteers but who have been compelled or coerced legally. So we have got all sorts of carrots and sticks, things that are pushing people into the army and things that are driving them in less reluctantly or less enthusiastically. Other things that we could pull off . We have money here, 50 million in prizes. The poster here sends a message why do you join the army . Why do you join the navy . To get out of service in the army. A lot of it is about the equipment you will be using. They are making statements about why you would want to join a particular regimen. Some are organized around ethnicity. There are irish regiments. There are some that will talk about the fact that the colonel of the regiment is a u. S. Soldier with some experience and they will be armed with a particularly useful new kind of gun. So theyre talking up things that might lead you to join the army, even if you are a little reluctant at first. One of the things i think we can take away from looking at all of these posters together is that it is not one thing. It is not one single factor that is pulling these men out of their homes and getting them into the army. There are a number of factors that may act in different ways at different times and places, and you might have individual soldiers who joined for more than one reason. It is not as if there is one simple answer to this question of initial motivation, why they joined the army in the first place. We can also talk about specific groups within the army and the ways in which they might have been motivated to join. Our next lecture will focus on service of africanamericans in the union army. For that group, in the latter half of the war, there are other clear reasons why you might be eager to enlist, rather than have to be conscripted in. All right, that his initial motivation. That is initial motivation. What about sustaining motivation . What is keeping the armies together . Remember, they spend a lot more time not fighting than they spend fighting. The army of the potomac is fighting fairly sporadically him and in between these battles, theres spending a lot of time in army camps. The condition of a lot of these camps is pretty miserable. The food is bad. The sanitation is awful. You have a moving city of 10,000 people, many of whom are sick to , disease is rife in the camps. The Drinking Water supply is often foul. You have animals and people defecating in the same closed quarters. There is lot of drill and discipline of the soldiers find of noxious. Obnoxious. What kind of documents can we look at to get some sort of perspective on why soldiers are staying with the army. The letters . Yeah, we had this great set of documents that is really pretty new. The civil war armies are the first literate armies in world history. Theyre almost the only ones who could read and write. 100 years prior in europe, the armies were filled with illiterate people. As wellington famously said, the men are the scum of the earth. In the civil war, most of the men could read and write. They had a lot of time to sit and reflect on what was keeping them in the army and write about it. And they wrote a lot. Millions and millions of letter. Were still finding them 150 years later. So we have a window into what is making them willing to stay with the army. Probably add a caveat here, not everybody does stay with the army. Certain soldiers decide at various moments that the suffering and the misery of camp is not justified, and they make a run for it. There are even soldiers who Union Soldiers who desert. Particularly the confessor he confederacyrly the near the end of the war. Many soldiers got letters from home saying we are starving to death and you need to come home and take care of us. Maybe as high as 50 of the Confederate Army asks for leave by the evening of the war. So not everybody is staying with the army. Do we know, based on how the casualties were piling up in the latter two years of the war, that many men were staying. Lets think about some of the reasons that soldiers were willing to stay and serve when the temptation to leave might be pretty overwhelming. A lot of them are sending money back home. Absolutely. Some of these things have overlap. With the factors that might get you into the army in the first place, particularly for young men who did not have any job skills. The payment from the army and the promise of a bounty at warsend might be a really good reason to stay with the army. Some practical reasons. Some other things . Camaraderie. Camaraderie. Remember, you are serving alongside people you know. You might not want to embarrass yourself. What happens if you slink off . He could be executed. Or if they find you lets say they do not find you. We will get to the capital dimensions, the punishment. Lets say you make it home and you say, you know what, the whole fighting thing, getting shot at, not for me, folks. Im going to go home. People will not hire you. People will not hire you. You will be disgraced. There will be a letter that most likely beats you home talking about how you ran. That no good yellow billy smith ran when the rest of us stayed. It will be very difficult for you to show up in any sort of honorable way at home. So there is a way that the camaraderie exerts pressure to stay. You suggested another reason that people might stay. Desertion is a capital offense. If they catch you, the military can execute you. Here you have a photograph of a northern soldier being executed. Not every soldier they catch gets executed. Lincoln is famous for commuting a lot of these sentences. A nurse visits him at one point in the war, thousands and thousands of men were absent from the units, and he was asked why he was not hanging more soldiers. He said there is something about American Society and people will not stand seeing him boys harmed by the dozens. They will not stand for it and should not stand for it. It is unamerican to resort to this in large numbers. But they do. Generally when they execute soldiers, the union executes i think more than 100, fewer than 200. They usually do so in a very public execution. So the men will be masked up. Lets say, after breakfast. And they will be brought out and they will see soldiers that along want to the units of the deserter who are forced to watch the execution. Many right tone that this is a and many right home terrible and agonizing experience, to have to watch a fellow soldier hanging. Why would you do is a publicly like that . To make sure that Everybody Knows that it happens. Exactly, as a deterrent. In the hopes that if you see one or two men hanging, the soldier who is thinking about deserting might give it a little more consideration. And think better of it. There is the punishment element, camaraderie, money, and other reasons. You feel guilty for leaving your brothers in war, but what happens to your family if you are shunned in your city . So you have that else. That to deal with as well. Sometimes. There is a really complex psychology at work. Late in the war, union armies began penetrating very deep into the south, destroying southern farmland. Theyre requisitioning crops. More and more southern families are writing letters to soldiers in the army saying you joined to protect us. You need to come home. These union armies are ravaging the countryside. We are going to starve and cannot make it through another winter. In that case, theyre trying to invert that honor. Other things . The popularity of their commanding officers. Ok, maybe the men became many of the men became deeply attached to the people they are serving with or serving under. There is definitely a lot of evidence that people formed attachments to their fellow soldiers and the unit itself. Is there a place for patriotism, ideology in this motivation . Yeah. Absolutely. This is another thing the soldiers write about at length. They have time to sit in camp and talk to their fellows about why they are serving. Restoring the union, the importance of restoring constitutional government, protecting a southern way of life. In many units, there is a lot of talk in the north about emancipation and the desire to create a Better Society going forward. These are patriotic, ideological reasons to stay and fight. I do nothing we should dismiss i dont think we should dismiss those, particularly when so many of these letters talk in very ornate language about their willingness to lay down a life on the altar of the country. It is language that our 21stcentury sensibility does not always read at face value because it sounds overly romantic. Yet, you see so many examples from troops on both sides talking about the willingness to give their life on the altar of the country, willing to pay the dues that their forefathers had in the war of independence. Those are reasons. We can also talk about the importance of religion. There is another way in which soldiers are encouraged to stay and fight and the idea that the outcome of the war, the outcome of your own individual life is in some ways in the hands of the almighty. There are large moments of revivalism, particularly in the southern armies come about particularly in the southern armies but throughout the army on thatughout the war there are revivals, conversions, talking about the role of providence in deciding the war. This actually cuts two ways in the Confederate Army. In the first part of the work, many southerners were convinced that god was on their side. And the string of surprising victories that they win against larger union armies seemed to kind of confirm their suspicion of god is on their side. Most military generals are pretty convinced that god is on their aside on their side. By the third year of the war, there is evidence from places like gettysburg and vicksburg that perhaps they are not going to win the war. There is a state of revivalism in many of the confederate armies in which some of the preachers say perhaps this war is gods judgment. Perhaps there is something to this talk. But it is used to keep soldiers fighting. If this war is gods judgment, who are we to run away before we take the full measure of it . We have to stay and fight. There is this complex web of factors that are keeping soldiers in the army. But i do not want to overlook this critical one, that desertion is a capital offense. There are Important Reasons to stay in the army, but there are also Important Reasons not to run away. And all of these things are acting on different soldiers at different times and in different ways. One of the things we know is that it worked enough on large numbers of men that there are hundreds of thousands of troops in the field in the third and fourth years of the war. Certainly many of them have gone awol and some decided army life is not for them. But enough of them are staying and fighting him about the staying and fighting that the casualties continue to mount as the war drags on. Lets talk about this last part which is the most interesting one to me. This is a series of slides from the beginning. What makes a teenage William Mcdowell willing to go out and make one of these frontal assault . What does it take to be in the first wave of fredericksburg . What does it take to be in the 10th wave at fredericksburg . What does it take to be one of the soldiers in picketts charge on the third day of gettysburg or one of the Union Soldiers who pinned an improvised dog tag to his jacket . And he writes a diary entry saying i was killed today, yet he gets up and goes . This is fascinating. This is one of those fascinating puzzles of Human Behavior generally. One of the things that makes it so interesting is that you have rational people behaving in a way that is somewhat irrational. The willingness to expose yourself to fire over and over again, to risk your life, to give your life. It violates deeply ingrained biological impulses we have. The other thing that makes combat motivation interesting is it is much harder to study. For an initial motivation, we can look at recruiting posters and look at letters that people wrote as they were going off to war. For sustaining motivation, we can study some of the things that soldiers did in camps. Combat motivation is different. It is not honorable if youre trudging across a mile and a half at picketts charge to say, future historians, here is why i am doing this. And to write in your diary that there is a complex web of motivating factors that might drive you to make a charge like that. [inaudible] being the first wave, not really understanding about death or dismemberment. But i dont understand being in the 10th wave, you have to walk over all those dead bodies. Fredericksburg is the first battle. When you are in the first wave, you might not have a good understanding of death and civil war combat. But what about the soldiers in 1864 at cold harbor . Think about what we discussed last week, the first minnesota, where 262 hardfought soldiers who had been in the wars of the very beginning and are ordered on the second day to make an assault against a much larger confederate unit, one that results in the highest casualty that any unit suffered in the entire war. They know what theyre getting into, yet they still go. To me, that is a puzzle. At that point i think it is mostly camaraderie. Ok, camaraderie. This is certainly like the orthodox explanation. You are fighting for the soldiers next to you. I love the guy, it is a band of brothers. That is one thing we will talk about. Again, i think we cannot lean on simply one explanation. Because this behavior is complicated, it would really reduce something, located to something much too simple if we just said, well, it is affection for the guys there fighting that you are fighting with. There are a couple problems. One, keep in mind, a lot of soldiers do not fight. Every unit has got soldiers who are great soldiers in camp, great on latrine duty, great cooks or whatever, but when the bullets start flying, these guys are gone. They seem to disappear. Some call them shirkers. Some units call them smokers skulkers. Some guys call them coffee coolers because they generally make their way to the back were the coffee is. When it is done, they say, hey, we got lost. I do not know what happened. Certain soldiers try to remove themselves from combat, but there are many, many, many more who continue fighting. We want to explore a little bit about why they did that. I want to suggest that the camaraderie is important, but by itself, it cannot explain why these soldiers continue to do that. Let me give you one piece of evidence from picketts charge. There is a soldier who are who participated in the charge, and the regiment might consist of 10 companies of 100 men each. About 1000 men. The companies that smaller groups called messes. 10 to 12 guys that you cooked with. The people you knew most intimately and had the most familiarity with. There was a virginian soldier at picketts charge who goes in with his mess, dozen men he knows the best, which includes the figurative band of brothers but two or three actual brothers also, and i believe that he is the only survivor. Picketts charge took such a serious toll on these units. So he is the only one who comes back. If he were just fighting for the camaraderie that he felt for the guys he fought with, at that point he would expect that his willingness to go into battle is operate. Ate this this guy has not just lost his figurative band of brothers, but literally. Yet, this guy, like so many others, continues to fight. They put him in a Different Company and he keeps fighting. I do not doubt that camaraderie is one piece, but by itself, i do not think it is completely sufficient. It was suggested that perhaps at the beginning when you do not know exactly what youre getting into, it might be easier to go out there. But by the second and third year of the war, it should have been cleared to absolutely everybody exactly what kind of a meat grinder civil war combat was. So this could have had three years to watch the war unfold and should have known that making one of these frontal assaults against a fortified position was futile. Yet, they continued to go. At cold harbor, you have large groups of troops willing to make the kind of assault or they have that they have seen at fredericksburg and gettysburg that they know is going to be dangerous. Yet, they still go. It is interesting from a cold it is an trysting, cold harbor is after fredericksburg and one of the most lopsided civil war battles. It is the one assault that a u. S. General says in his that ulysses s. Grant says in his memoirs, the one assault he regrets launching pure nothing was gained in thousands and thousands of people were either wounded or killed. After cold harbor, there is a phenomenon in the union that is referred to as cold harbor syndrome. Theyre not willing to make those frontal assaults anymore. There is some sort of push back against officers insistence that they walk into a position. So there is a pattern of learning and being reluctant to fight. And yet, theyre still fighting in some incredibly brutal battles in the summer of 1864 when the war is generally becoming more vicious and more bloody. Let me suggest that there are other things that are helping to propel the men into battle, and some of those had to do with the tactics that soldiers used in battle. This is an artist representation, stylized version. This is not a photographic piece of evidence of what battle looks like. Yet, a gift at a couple things it gets at a couple things that i think we can unpack usefully. What are some of the things that will just pop up when you see these kind of pictures . They are very common. You can go on the internet and search civil war battles, and you will see a lot of things like this. They are organized into big blocks of soldiers. Yeah, big box of soldiers. Theyre standing elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder. There are ranks behind. There is a high density of troops. So theyre packed in. That should stand up. Stand out. They are carrying the American Flag and i do not know which flag that is this would be the regimental flag. I think it is the wisconsin. They are carrying these huge banners as conspicuously as possible. They are not trying to be stealthy in any sense. Theyre wearing brightly colored uniforms. And your minds eye image of a combat looks like is from the 21st century, you know, the Second World War when soldiers are spread out, wearing camouflage, and they go underground and try to hide, then this just seems crazy, that you would pack soldiers into these formations and that you would advertise your location. They are loud, colorful, and they are not trying to hide. For our 21stcentury sensibility, you kind of recoil. Why on earth would anybody do that . It is important to note that packing soldiers into these blocks, linear tactics involving lines, this is the way that armies have fought historically for thousands of years. Here is an artist representation of the british at bunker hill, but we can go all the way back to ancient greece. This is the exception. The records of the last 85 to 90 years is an exception. For most of human experience, soldiers go into battle and these tight formations. And you can find plenty of historians who would suggest two things. First, these tactics are meant to overcome some of the crudity of the weapons. Remember, we looked at the rifle musket which was a huge improvement over what had been used years before but still takes 15 to 20 seconds to load and you have to do it standing. There is not sort of rapid fire. The muskets were being displaced by the rifle muskets. They were not very accurate. Remember, this big lines are firing by folly. You have 100 men firing at the same time and in the same general direction, thinking somebody will hit something. A lot of historians will suggest that the tactics are to make up for some of the technological shortcomings. I suggest that it had as much to do with the psychology of fighting than with any sort of shortcomings in weaponry. One Central Point about combat in the civil war and other wars is that people generally do not want to be there. People do not like being shot at. They do not like being in loud, dangerous situations. This is one of my favorite quotes from a Union Soldier David Thompson who speak so eloquently. And writing after the war, he said, the truth is, when the bullets are whacking against tree tracks and solid shot are cracking skulls like eggshells, the consuming passion in the heart of the average man is to get out of the way. Most can sympathize with what he is talking about. These linear formations are designed not just to help accommodate some of the shortcomings in the weaponry, but i think also to help channel people who may be reluctant to expose themselves to fire and may be reluctant to go in and to keep them grouped together so that they can be pushed into battle. Lets look at some of the ways the linear tactics might do that. Suppose you are this guy. Wisconsin farmhand, join the army at 23, thought it would look like fun, stay with the army because did not want to desert, believes in restoring the union. Now it is the day of battle and you find yourself having serious second thoughts. Saying, gosh, i am an innocent wisconsin farmboy. The whole frontal assault thing does not agree with me. If you are this guy in the second rank, what are your options . You do not really have options. Why not . Well for me you are in the middle. You are in the middle, just packed in there. One soldier said it was like being in an iron box. You have people in front of you, behind you, on both sides. Even if you decide you want to get out. So packing soldiers in also reduces some of the chances that they have to try to get out of combat. You will notice in a lot of these artists portrayals, you have soldiers at the end who were not carrying muskets. What are those guys there for . Noncommissioned officers. Noncommissioned officers. Some of them are officers and some of them are sergeants. Why does he not have a weapon . What are they there for . Sometimes you will see guys with pistols. To make sure you stay there. They are there to look down the ranks and make sure that everybody who is feeling who is wavering knows that there are eyes watching them. Who else is watching them . The people next to you. Yes, the people next to you who are people you know from home. So if you start to waver, there is the knowledge about the way you behave in battle and the decisions you make under fire are going to reflect on you. You will not be able to do this in secret. I am wondering, if you lose comrades, if you have lost brothers, is there a sense that you cannot turn away because then they would have died in vain . There is. I think that speaks a little more to the sustaining motivation. One of the things of the psychologist and social scientist that went into world war ii, people asked these guys were they were doing. What they were doing and why. There was an awareness that the things that drove soldiers to join the army in the first place and stay in the army were often much different than the things that got them to go to comment. That actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it, because combat is very immediate. Your body is filled with adrenaline. It is very urgent. A civil war soldier, i was looking into some of his letters, and he said that it was all fine, well, and good in camp to be thinking about emancipation or restoring the union, but he said once you were in battle, the range of your concern is narrowed to what you can see over your gun. So the things thought about in combat are often different than the abstract notions of what might keep you in the army. But there is a sense that we cannot stop fighting now because of fear of all the friends and brothers that had gone before would have died in vain. Your reluctance to change your behavior in the near term because you are thinking about what you have already lost. That helped drive the armies in the later part. In combat, i think it was rare to think about that. It is just such an overwhelming experience to fight. It is a rare soldier who says, yes, on the morning of battle, i was primarily thinking about constitutional republicanism and the danger of setting a precedent in which there are breakaway factions. This is not the time to think about that. I was just wondering, we think it is strange that they have the brightly colored uniform. Historically, when we go back a little while, the british thought that when american soldiers would take off would pick off officers, they would use guerrilla tactics. Does that mentality kind of carryover in the civil war with american soldiers or was it more that they wear bright colored uniform so that they can identify them . Why would you wear brightly colored uniforms and have these big flags . Youre not sneaking up on anybody. You will see pictures where there are drummers and you are making a tremendous amount of noise. Youre waving flags and wearing brightly colored uniforms. Why . Friendly fire. It has to do with friendly fire. We saw this on both sides with what the armies were wearing. It is how you know what is going on. [inaudible] right, once you start firing, the battlefields are cloaked with smoke. The explosion produces a dense, thick white smoke which hangs low to the battlefield. Its very hard to see things. The concern to the early part of the 20th century is not sneaking up on your and any. On your enemy. It is making sure that your friendly troops know where they are and know that your unit has not fled in terror. Also, so you can exert some sort of control over the troops. How are you communicating if youre the regiments colonel . What does the Civil War Battlefield afford you in terms of control . You have to communicate to through your officers. How do they do that . Yelling at them. They are yelling. Theyre using a bugle call. They are using oral and visual signals. People are suffering from battle deafness, a temporary hearing loss when someone has pulled the trigger in your ear for the last 20 minutes or so. People get confused. Adrenaline is working. You need to tell soldiers were they are supposed to be, which is why the flags are crucial. You need to give soldiers the sense that the unit is still here. The worst thing that can happen is if every other soldier in the unit turns and runs, then you are the last guy left. Civil war commanding officers, the captains and colonels, do not have to make a lot of decisions in combat. The tactics are such that theyre not supposed to make decisions in combat. We talked about this a little bit last week. Officers exercising autonomy on the battlefield was quite often going to result in disaster. We saw that at gettysburg. Youre not supposed to make Big Decisions of your unit. For your unit. What are you supposed to do . Youre supposed to keep them together and keep them firing. And so use the officers on horseback who are very conspicuously present for their men. And they are modeling the kind of behavior that you are supposed to engage in as a civil war soldier. That is generally stoicism. Pretty fascinating if you go back and look at the kind of officers that the men seemed to really respect. In letters home, they will talk about such and such soldier never seems to waver under fire. If he walks through a hail of bullets, he is as calm as if it was walking through a rainstorm. We talked a little bit about its charge last week. And riding horseback during an artillery barrage, and all the men are lying down. Hoping that one of these shells does not explode over them. And calmly, the general is riding his horse up and down. It is a rare man who does not remember that. Youre supposed to be steady under fire, be stoic, and you are not supposed to show outward signs of physical fear. In these first missions, in these closepack formations everybody can see how , you are behaving. If you resist, youre looking around to see if the guy to your letter the guide to your right is looking like he is about ready to run. The officer said this is one of the greatest fears. Once youre in battle, panic spreads like a contagion. It is infectious. One guy gets it and then the two guys next to him get it and then the guy next to him. Pretty soon, the whole formation waivers and dissolves like a sugar cube in warm water. The officers are there to keep the man to gather and to keep keep themr and to working. Not to exercise autonomy. [inaudible] within officer used his sword on a man who has turned and run . That is a great question. In most cases, i think it is the threat of that. One of the takeaways and hope you get is that it is not one thing that is getting them to fight. It is a whole series of factors. It is a rare officer, we think, who makes good on the threats. The point is, you can make a credible threat. You can threaten this guy or this guy if you do something, i will see you. The town of winchester, west of where we are now, changes hands a number of times over the course of the civil war. Right before the third battle, a confederate general gives a kind of pep talk to his men, saying were going to continue to fight. He says a lot of things, saying were fighting in the defense of homes and family, fighting to justify the sacrifices that our grandfathers and great grandfathers may, fighting to protect our southern way of life, fighting to demonstrate that we are honorable men. Then he pulled out his pistol and threatens to personally blow the brains out of the first man who steps out of line. So you have kind of a nice series of things that might keep you fighting. There is a carrot and a stick. What we do not like to think about in the United States is that coercion, compelling people to fight, is a very powerful motivator. It is not used as much in american armies as in many other armies, but that does not mean it is not used. In fact, in the 19th century, that is a very common understanding. In europe, for example, a great general says that an effective soldier has to be more afraid of his own officers than he is of his own enemy. People are not going to be willing to expose themselves to combat unless they have a very good sense that there are going to be swift and immediate assurance if they waver. Punishments if they waver. Fighting in these linear tactics, it requires an active and real imagination to put yourself into how they were processing things. There are other factors. I have read thousands and thousands of letters from soldiers like this. The one reason that shows of the most frequently when soldiers struggled to explain why it was they continue to fight is something called the touch of the elbow. Because youre packed into these linear formations, because you are Standing Shoulder and shoulder and elbow to elbow, you had the physical, tangible reassurance that your comrades are there. The rest of your unit is there. Tactile creatures. And the reassurance of physical touch is incredibly important. It helps to counteract some of the real carnage that occurs in these confirmations. These kind of formations. It is one of the things when youre packed in shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow, if your buddy catches a cannonball in the stomach, his guts will be splattered all over you. The savagery is right up front and close. That makes it even more important for soldiers to aspire to have this kind of stoicism. You do not show fear in battle. Think about what a big change that is from the 20th century and the 21st century. A famous example and a memoir of in a memoir of the Second World War in the pacific, a story that some people have suggested is embellished, but it is a useful instruction. A soldier fighting in one of the pacific battle, and it is his first battle. They hit the beach. The troops are spread out. There are not comrades right with him. He is desperately clinging to the side of a sand berm. Suddenly, he hears the sergeant scream out. He was afraid he had been hit. What would we do if we lost a sergeant . He yells out, are you ok, and the sergeant yells out, i am fine. I paced myself. Issed myself. It was interesting. The guy said, all right, every time i go into battle and the first time a shell is exploded, i piss myself. And the guy looks down and says, oh, hey, i pissed myself, too. In the sergeant yells back, welcome to the war. It is absolutely impossible to imagine a commander in the civil war who enjoys a reputation for bravery and a competent soldier who soils himself every time he goes into battle. It is just unimaginable. I think that says something about how expectations changed. In part, that is because the way that the fighting is so different. In the linear formations, it is vitally important for the general to be there to reassure them. You cannot do that if you have a spreading wet stain on the front of your uniform. Soldiers tamp down how they have talk about how they have to tamp down the natural responses in an attempt to present the facade of stoicism. There are some other things going on, tactics. Firing this weapon is a process. You have to load it, ramrod, percussion cap soldiers spend a lot of time practicing loading and discharging their weapon. They drill with it. They spend a lot of time in camp, and that is one of the things that was so obnoxious about camp, they had to do these things over and over again. One of the reasons for that is to create what psychologists would describe in the 20th century as muscle memory, something that is overlearned. They do not have vocabulary for this, but they observed the phenomenon. Any of you who have played a sport probably have seen this. If you have practiced something, it almost becomes automatic. A set of physical manipulations that is in your muscle memory. Being in stressful situations actually improves your performance. A lot of the tactics which do not require the soldiers to make judgments about, should i stay here or seek cover . Youre supposed to do things in an incredibly repetitive way such that the strain of combat actually improves your behavior. What are some other things that are going on in the civil war battles . Do you feel like you have a better answer about how they do it . Let me throw one out for you then. Yes . What about taking the offensive as a way to get away from all the fire . What do you mean . If you keep attacking, you will eventually get past all the shot and shell. You will be able to force the other guy out of his trenches or whatever. Yeah, and they do that. They are willing to do that later in the war. At cold harbor, the veteran soldiers are still willing to go forward. But because of the range of the shoulder arm has increased, and because soldiers have become much better at digging in and making temporary entrenchments, it is much more difficult to close the gap between an attacking force and a defending force. That is one of the reasons that the last month of the war had a lot more siege encounters where one army, rather than making an assault, sets up and tries to smother the other army. Let me throw one out for you then. We have talked about the soldiers at the beginning of the war, the initial motivations. They think it is going to be a short, glorious war. Those initial soldiers signed 90day papers. Threemonth work. It will be a threemonth war. We will lick the enemy and then we will all go home. It becomes clear in that first summer that it is not going to be a short war. Signing men up for 90 days will not be sufficient. So by the summer of 1861, what are the enlistments that soldiers for the union army are signing onto . Three years. Three years. 1861, seems like this will be more than adequate. Do some math. 1861, three years end of 1864. Is the civil war over in 1864 . It was not. The union army has a huge problem going into the winter of 1863, 1864, that some 300,000 of the soldiers had served out their enlistments. And theyre going to be free to go in just a few months. Not only is that a lot of troops, but who are the guys who who will have served out their enlistments . The ones who have been there the longest, the most experienced troops, and the most enthusiastic volunteers. These are the guys who came out at the beginning of the war and , and now you up are losing not only your most motivated soldiers, but a large group of your most experienced soldiers, those who know how to fight, who are good at infantry combat. That is a huge problem for the union. What are you going to do . In the south, recycle them back into the draft. Out your term in the Confederate Army and you go right back into the draft. But in the union, soldiers who have served their threeyear available for not the draft. They can go home. They have done their part. For the War Department, that creates a serious dilemma. In the winter of 186364, there is a drive to reenlist the veterans whose terms are going to expire in late 1864. And they put together a package of incentives to try to get these guys to sign up again. If you are in the War Department, knowing what you know about the things that get people into the army in the first place, making them stay with the army, and some of the things that motivate them in combat, what are the kinds of incentives that you can put together in a package in order to try to encourage some large proportion of these 300,000 veteran troops to reenlist . A lump sum bonus. Lets give them some money. In fact, that is one of the incentives. They offer them a package. One of the incentives is a bounty. Reenlist and we will give you some money. That is one reason. But military promotion . Military promotions . Yes, they offer a lot of promotions, but they cannot promote everybody. They do try today and go promotions to certain people they think will be critical in the reenlistment draft. If the regiment assigned act up as a group,k they can keep their colors and everything. Talked about fighting with people but you know and respect. This is one of the shrewd things that the War Department comes up with. If three quarters of your unit agrees to reenlist, you get to keep the colors. You get to keep your unit designation, and you get rewarded with a special designation as a veteran infantry company. Twoe are flags from ohio, ohio units. And you will see the veteran vvi. Teer infantry, that is on your shoulder if you reenlist. Why is that important . I mean, who cares . Is that of battlefield prestige among the number