To maintain tight control and lipity explains defined foraging parties and centralized distribution systems, chaos could ensue, and the army could really descend into a sort of armed mob engaging in pillage and so forth. So whats interesting is that you would have expected lipity to use shermans march as his examples as hes making this complicated case. He doesnt. He actually goes back to napoleons russian campaign. In fact, though, he doesnt ignore the march when hes talking about how an army can descend into chaos. Thats where he uses napoleon. He actually defends shermans march and he claims at first that when seizing Household Goods the men carefully discriminated between and this is actually the language from shermans orders, discriminated between the rich who were generally hostile to us meaning the union, and the poor and industrious who were usually friendly or at least neutral, and he describes sherman as having this very organized system with rules and receipts, and he explai
Mike and some of the staff are oh, my goodness, we even recruited craig into distributing handouts. I should get a picture of this. I have a historian friend who once had trace adkins as a sound man at an event. I have a Naval Academy professor as a map handerouter. Thats kind of like bob creek as an easel in the western theater. Bob brian, i do thank you for the introduction. As brian noted, my day job is staff historian at chickamauga military park. Even though im here today, just as a selfinterested historian and citizen, and learner, because ive enjoyed making a few notes about things already yet again from richard and now craig. And look forward to hearing steves talk in a few minutes. And im not here today as a National Military park employee, but because i think the place that i work is an important Historic Site in the shaping of our nation, i couldnt miss an opportunity of hawking my day job. Chickamauga and chattanooga military park. I know a lot of you have discovered out in
Can take petersburg, cut the supply line to the army in Northern Virginia, and finally defeat lee. The union plan works like clock work. Sheridan heads off on his raid. It will end disastrously at the battle of torrian station, but it serves its purpose for the time. And on the morning of the 13th of june, lee and his men look across and discover that the union earth works are empty. Grant once again has managed to pull his army away without lee figuring out what had happened. The union army swings south, down to the james river. Grant intends to cross. But lee does not understand what grant means to do. Lee thinks that what grant might be preparing to do is to swing back toward Richmond North of the james river. So lee stays here at cold harbor, sends some of his soldiers to the south, but doesnt do a major shift, because, again, hes uncertain as to what grant will do. Well, as you civil war historians know, by june 15th, union forces are attacking at petersburg. Lee is now alerted to
Land. Our success in this Campaign Must ensure the integrity of the United States by the final overthrow of the rebellion. Success will give a new life to our country, and a new faith to the stability of free government to the world. It will also determine the next presidency as certainly as if the votes were counted. But if we fail in this campaign, that failure will be the greatest disaster in modern history. Upon general grant there now concentrates the deepest interest with which the world ever watched the actions of a single soldier. He is the foremost man in the greatest contest of the age. When the nation and the world wanted to know how the civil war was going, they looked to virginia. That spring, robert e. Lee and his army shone clearly as the confederacys greatest hope. Ulysses s. Grant had come east to manage the armies in virginia, but ulysses s. Grant had never met robert e. Lee in battle. At Charlottesville A charlottesville newspaper editor wrote in april, the conflict
And had the federal authorities not arrested him, put him in a cell at fort monroe, clamped him in irons and made a martyr out of him, he would have been denounced through much of southern history. But they turned him into the man who was persecuted for the white south but made him a hero. Even so, postwar confederates did not like to air their dirty linen in public and most of them did not do so. Johnston was also praised in the writings of his federal opponents. William t. Sherman had good things to say about johnston in his memoirs published in 1875. U. S. Grant had good things to say about johnston. I mean, after all, grant said i worried more when joe johnston was in command in front of my army than when robert e. Lee was. I dont know if grant actually said that or not, but if he did, that alone should take his reputation down many notches. Because among other things, johnston almost never commanded troops in front of grants army. Only for a few weeks in january and february 1864