Everyone. Fternoon yall find seats and will get our panel going. Good morning. Welcome to the fifth annual mississippi book festival. Im Chris Goodwin with Mississippi Department of archives and history. If you havent done so, please silence your cell phone. This panel on the u. S. Civil war is sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council and Mississippi State university. One of the book festivals Board Members from Mississippi StateJohn Marszalek is on the panel. Is Francis Coleman here . Dean of the libraries . Another strong supporter. As is stewart rock off director of the Mississippi Humanities Council. I do believe hes in the room. We thank them for their support and we are in the room today courtesy of foreman watkins law firm. Our panelists are Jacquelyn Hall, shelby harriel, ben wynne and john nsmarszalek. You can purchase the books ne outdoors. And you can find the times they will be signing in your brochure. We will hear from our panelists for about 40 minutes and then we will open the floor for questions. Please go to the podium and asked the question at the microphone at that time. Help me welcome author of civil war siege of jackson mississippi. [applause] will come everyone. Glad to have you today. Id like to introduce our authors, beginning to my immediate left doctor Jacquelyn Hall who is in oklahoma dated. She has an undergraduate degree from what is now Rhodes College and memphis. A phd from Columbia University among her many accomplishments shes the founding director of the Southern Oral History Program and the abat the university of North Carolina chapel hill. Shes the author of several books including like a family the making of a southern cotton mill world and the topic of todays discussion sisters and rebels, a struggle for the soul of america. Next to her is shelby ashelby harriel mississippi native and graduate of the Southern University mississippi. Currently an instructor of mathematics which scares me to death. At Pearl River Community college and proper bill. Her Ongoing Research on the role of women soldiers in the civil war has been widely published and utilized by the National Park service and state historic sites. Earlier this year her interest in the topic resulted in her first book behind the rifle, women soldiers and civil war mississippi published by the University Press of mississippi. Next to her is doctor John Marszalek native of buffalo new york. Earned his phd from university of notre dame after serving the military. He began a distinguished teaching career and since 1973 has been on the faculty of Mississippi State university where he is now the giles distinguish professor at emeritus in history. He is the author of 15 books but perhaps most significantly for todays apdiscussion since 2008 he has served as executive director of the Ulysses S Grant associations president ial library at Mississippi State. Doctor John Marszalek is coauthor of hold on with the bulldog grid a short study of Ulysses S Grant which will be discussed today. Finally, author and historian doctor ben wynne is a native of florence mississippi. Luluafter attending Millsaps College as an undergraduate he earned an ma in history from Mississippi College and a doctorate from the university an of is to be. He currently serves as professor of history at the university of north georgia in gainesville. He is the author of four books including in tune aband the subject of todays discussion the man who punched Jefferson Davis the political life of henry stuart foot published by lsu press in 2018. Im going to start with ben. If he doesnt mind too much. And ask each of you to give a brief overview of your book and what we are talking about today. Thanks. Im ben wynne the book title the man who punched Jefferson Davis, really should have been titled the man who punched a i and fill in the blank because this man punched a lot of guys during his career. Before we get started i want t pick mississippi book festival for inviting me here today. I want to thank cspan of course and i also, im a jackson native i want to give charlotte to st. Andrews Episcopal School where i attended school from grade 1 to 12. In first grade they literally taught me to write in the most literal sense. The foundation of the Educational Foundation that we all got there was very important. I discovered henry foot when i was back in the dark ages doing my doctoral dissertation and i was doing it on the mississippi unionist before the civil war, the people who didnt want to succeed they were more moderate as far as the secession issue. Not particularly the slavery issue but the secession issue specifically. I started researching those type of people and their politics in the sky foot his name kept popping up everywhere. He was a u. S. Senator for mississippi from 1847 to 1851, which was the period where you had what some people call the first secession crisis a lot of issues that when slavery came to a head it was a lot of backandforth in washington to a very tense time that era produce something called the compromise of 1850 would postpone the civil war for about a decade. He was all wrapped up in that. Then he became governor of mississippi right after that. What was interesting about foot is he really went against the trend at the time, the political trend. Most of the politicians were starting to become pretty radical with regard to the slavery issue and already talking about secession and so on and so forth. Foot at great Political Risk was a prounion politician for mississippi during that period and he espoused that on the floor of the u. S. Senate and one of his election defeated Jefferson Davis for governor on that platform. I thought that was a pretty interesting study looking for things about sthim and then i found out, i just made a short list of what he did, as a politician this guy was wild. He was all over the place. He would go from being this very refined, he was a great writer, statesmanlike persona, to this maniac. While during his political licareer he fought in six duos innumerable fistfights while he was on the floor United States senate this is what he did there among other things. Pull the gun on Thomas Hart Benton another senator from missouri on the floor of the senate. He pulled a knife on a abgot in a fist fight with a fellow senator from arkansas on the floor of the United States senate. I got in a fight in the cloakroom with a guy named Johnson Fremont who ended d goo being the first republican candidate for president. Got in a fight with him, they are not on the floor of the senate set in the senate cloakroom. He threatened to inhang john c hale another senator from a tree. Then he got the famous fistfight with Jefferson Davis. I looked at all that and said how can i not see what scott was up to. He has this very volatile career he was born in 1806 and died in 1880 so his public career spanned a very controversial period of time. He had this great feud with Jefferson Davis probably Jefferson Davis most outspoken critic. He ended up getting elected to the Confederate Congress and some people believed he did that just so he could stand up on the comp floor of the Confederate Congress and talk about Jefferson Davis. Thats all he did. Demanding investigations of an Jefferson Davis was not talking much of what a coward he was and how he was screwing up the whole war effort. Over and over again. Again, he was a smooth article guy that led this Colorful Life to say the least and when he died all the obituaries the people either love them, they bought into what he was doing or more people hated him because he tended to burn his bridges wherever he went. One other thing he did, he was a politician, that wasnt enough he ran for office as a jacksonian democrat as a way to as a mainstream democrat as a Union Democrat as a member of the know Nothing Party as a Confederate Congressman and finally ended up joining the Republican Party after the war. So he did all of that as well. He published ended up when he died he had published four books he publishes own personal history of the confederate war effort he published that to lambaste all his enemies in the book. He also tried to broker a Peace Agreement with the Lincoln Administration in 1965 you just left the Confederate Congress and decided to go try to do that he was never able to talk to lincoln he did get as far as seward and was arrested and thrown out of the country as a result. Quite an interesting character and thats what kind of drew me to him. This book, the title, and holding it up for obvious reasons because im showing it. Theres a book hold on with the bulldog grip a short history of Ulysses S Grant. The title is important its been selected by Mississippi State university this year to serve as its 2019 maroon edition. What happens each Year University gives to all incoming freshmen and transfer students a gratis copy of some particular book which is then used in a common reading project in class events on gatherings on campus etc. The whole thing starts this coming thursday, august 22 in the Humphrey Coliseum who abthis is the 10th year this has been done. This years book was actually inspired by the us grant president ial library being housed in the Mitchell Memorial Library on campus. I should tell you that since grant came to mississippi every phone call that comes in from the media always asks the same question. How is it possible that us grant could be in the heart of mississippi . In answering the question we normally tell a lie first. We quote lincolns comment to grant during the virginia campaign, remember grant and lee fought each other in virginia. Lincoln wrote to grant and said, hold on with the bulldog grip. So we like to say that even lincoln knew. [laughter] so we have a new Mississippi State bulldog. To tell the truth, we do is we then tried to tell the truth that in addition to grants historical connection to mississippi, Mississippi State made the best offer of a lot of different institutions around the country to provide Institutional Support for this grant president ial library. Msu president mark aquino came up with the idea for this book and when you look at the copy of the cover you will notice that the book has been written by a number of people, mark aquino has had a chapter, chief justice of rhode island retired Frank Williams two grand editors. We wrote this book, which every freshman now will be getting and discussing over the years. The thing that we tried to do you can see its a thin book. Knowing what students are like we wanted something for him so they might actually read it. [laughter] but in any case, readers will read this together book and they will learn about grant the man and not just direct the myth. They will have a chance to read about grants friendship with lincoln and really most significantly, i think, the connection between the grant family and the family of the first msu president confederate general Stephen D Lee. I think they also learned something important for freshmen to learn from gregs life and we hope that this will inspire them to make more frequent visits to the grant president ial library to learn even more. Fortunately, the University Press of mississippi the publisher of the book has made the book available for purchase to the general public. And the story of grant and his fascinating connections to Abraham Lincoln and this confederate general Stephen D Lee makes grant become even more wellknown than he already is. Thank you. Shelby . [applause] jim, along with probably many of you will take comfort in the fact that my book contains no mathematics at all. [laughter] even though i have an article coming out in january, historical article, i do cite the law of science. So math and history in the article but out of the book. My book is behind the rifle, women soldiers civil war in mississippi. It is the first book dealing with women soldiers with the regional focus. Theres not a lot out there and my book is the first want to deal with the regional focus. Even though the focus is mississippi i branch out and talk about women soldiers who fought in ogettysburg, and tal about women soldiers who were confined in andersonville prison. Its not all about mississippi but of course that is my focus. Basically a chronology of mississippis involvement in the civil war as told to the stories of women who fought there. Which is still relatively new topic. Theres not a whole lot out there but i did find women who fought in every battle in mississippi except for maybe tupelo. Interestingly enough, women werent allowed to serve as soldiers in the civil war hundred 50 years ago so they had to be sneaky about it. There was one woman who claimed ignorance when she was caught she said that nobody specified that women couldnt fight. So there she was. She was discovered and, which she kind of told on herself because she was disguised as a man so obviously she had to know she couldnt be there but she tried anyway. But like this woman, women had to disguise themselves as men in order to serve in the civil war which of course makes my job much more difficult. I have to find out who they really were and their true names which a lot of them had multiple feminine names and multiple mail aliases. D they had to enlist under. But, like i had to be a detective to find out all of this. Something interesting to note is there were at least two womens whose brigades faced off against each other at champion hill, which of course is the major battle of the vicksburg campaign. In my mind that they probably shouldve let the women take care of it anyway. The war wouldve ended very quickly or still going on today. Thats basically it. Still a lot am still ndresearching and finding out n information every day. Its a lot of new information in my book. I hope you will enjoy it. [applause]. Thank you. Im thrilled to be here. Sisters and rebels follows Three Sisters who were born in the 1880s and 90s over the course of the 20th century. And uses them and their circles of lovers, colleagues and friends, to lift up the struggle of white southerners to come with the grips of the legacy of slavery secession and segregation. In short, full disclosure, its not about the civil war. It compares the reality of his live with the stories he tells his daughters. A key chapter of the book, maybe the key chapter of the book is about the late 19th century struggle of white southerners to win thehe battle for historical memories. That is to define how the country was going to remember slavery and the civil war. In the aftermath of the civil war. Struggle for what they call the lost movement. This was to commemorate the lost cause. William the father of these Three Sisters had been obscure private and actual war that he made his name as a colonel in the United States veterans. He devoted his live to this project. Most important for my story, he also inculcated his three daughters with his devotion to the cause. He trained them in what was in the mail identified as the art and deployed them around the south as girls. The veterans reunions. Needless to say, this upbringing had a profound impact on their lives. Each of the sisters grappled with the legacy of that upbringing and bringing it up in a different way. Elizabeth the oldest, was pushed at the boundaries of womanhood in her own way but she did not stray very far from her fathers teachings. But catherine and grace lived what i think were fascinating unconventional lives. Key to those lives, to that process of re self and reinvention and self liberation, was a confrontation with the question that lies at the heart of the debate we are having today over the meanings of confederate monuments in theme nature of the lo