Have the cspan History Channel program filming tonight. Jeff shaara will be happy to take questions at the end of the program. We have microphones so cspan can capture your questions. If you will raise your hands we will just wait, if you could, to hold off on asking your questions until you have that microphone in your hand. It is a pleasure to welcome our speaker jeff shaara to the smithsonian. Jeff was last here with us in 2013 when he presented an Outstanding Program on the battle of vicksburg. Prior to that he was here in 2012 when he presented a program on the battle of shiloh. Jeff shaaras trajectory as one of the most acclaimed writers on it the civil war, the revolutionary war, and world war ii. He holds a degree in criminology from Florida State university. At age 15 he operated a rare coin business, first out of his home and then at a retail store. In 1974 he moved to tampa, florida, and eventually became one of the most widely known precious metal dealers in florida. But in 1988, things changed. His father, writer michael shaara, wrote the classic novel the killer angels. He died and jeff made the decision to sell his business and take over management of his fathers estate. After the critical and commercial success of the film gettysburg, jeff was approached about the possibility of continuing the story and finding someone to write a prequel and sequel to the killer angels. Although jeff had no Prior Experience as a writer, he decided to take on the challenge. In 1996, his first novel, god and generals, was published to critical acclaim. In 1998, the sequel was published and received universal praise. Since that time, jeff has gone on to write 15 additional books, only one of which is the work is a work of nonfiction. In 2003, the major Motion Picture god and generals, based on jeffs first book, was released by warner bros. In 2007 jeff was named to serve on the board of trustees for the Civil War Preservation trust. Tonight we have jeffs newest book on which tonights program is based, available at Smithsonian Museum shops outside of this auditorium. This is the final installment in jeffs four book civil war series. With that said, please join me in giving a very warm welcome to jeff shaara. [applause] mr. Shaara thank you. What people watching this a few weeks from now on cspan will know is that the weather outside is about as bad as it can get. The fact that this many of you came here tonight is an extraordinary compliment. I take that very seriously. Thank you. You could be home where it is dry. This is an interesting time for me. This book just came out two days ago. It is a farewell for me, its the end of an era. That kind of makes me sound too selfimportant, but it is an end of a series. It is the end of my relationship with some characters who i have really come to love. That is the ingredient that allows me to do this, is to get into the heads of these people and feel as though i love them. At the end, you have to say farewell. Sometimes you say farewell during the story, something happens to someone, that can be pretty tough too. But the characters i want to talk about tonight are characters who do make it to the end. It has been quite a ride. It was quite a ride for them. It has been quite right for me. Ride for me. One of my problems anytime i have a book come out, is i dont know when i go on tour, this is the third stop on my tour that will take me through the month of june. I am still perky, that will change. What i do when i start a tour with a brandnew book, theres a real challenge because i have no idea what to talk about. One thing i have done in the past, and my wife has said, dont do that, is all stand up here on the stage and tell you what the book is about. That is sort of, i imagine some of you are sort of here to hear that. The problem is if i tell you too much of what the book is about, there is no reason for you to buy the book. [laughter] my publisher also sort of chimes in, dont do that. Well i cant help it. I needed to talk about these characters. If you know what i do, you know that what i dont do is write history books. It is not names, dates, places, fact and figures. Im a storyteller, not a historian. That is a very important distinction to me. A lot of people say you are a historian. A lot of historians of say, no youre not. You dont have the phd. The bona fides. They are right. I dont pretend to. My job is to tell you good stories. That is the lesson i learned from my father, sitting around the dinner table as a Kid Listening to my father as the 12yearold, 10yearold at the table listening to the old man tell his story. That made an impression on me. I realized if im going to do this, its not about the facts and figures, it is about getting you involved in the story with me. Taking you with me back to the time. Well, i had done civil war and left civil war and said goodbye to robert e. Lee and stonewall. I went and did a bunch of other things, American Revolution, mexican war, then world war i, world war ii. But, something, actually you know, one thing i said to an audience here is people asked me i get the question, what you going to do next . The answer was korea. All of those veterans are saying, hey, we are getting older, too. Yeah. The other thing is i realized i got excited. Ive got a tremendous Research Library already on korea, and im ready to go, and then the thing happens in 2011. I realize there is an opportunity here to look at some things that nobody looks at very often, not even a lot of civil war buffs. Part of it came from all those letters i got from people in tennessee and mississippi who said you know, we are awfully tired of hearing about robert e lee in virginia. There is a whole lot of stuff that happened west of the Appalachian Mountains that nobody ever talks about. So i started looking at this, and i may have said to this audience before, publishers like trilogies. Vampires, there are all kinds of trilogies. [laughter] i put them in a box i guess. We decided to do a trilogy on the war in the west. I started looking at the topics, and it actually played out really well because i wanted to do a story, one per year, and each one is around sort of the 150th anniversary of that event. The first one is very clear to me. The bloodiest battle of the war up to its time, which was shiloh. You say shiloh, you heard of shiloh. Most people really dont know what happened in shiloh changed history, changed at the rest of the war. Two reasons. One, the death of one man, Albert Sidney johnston. He was a confederate commander, a lot of people have never heard of him and thats a shame because hes a really interesting guy. He died in 1862 in the middle of his own attack. At the time of his death, he is winning the day. The south is winning the battle of shiloh. The union army is in a mess, people are running like crazy, they are hiding along the riverbank of the Tennessee River. Hundreds of soldiers have given up the fight. They are done. The south is trying to cut off the union army from the river and if they can do that the army has nowhere to go, it is over. It would be a crushing defeat for federal forces. Thats whats happening when johnston goes down. The reason that changes history, first of all. Albert Sidney Johnston was extremely close with Jefferson Davis, president of the confederacy. In the confederacy if you were friends with Jefferson Davis, you are going to do big things. If you werent friends with Jefferson Davis, it did not matter how good of a soldier you were, he was going to find a way to get rid of you. That is not a good way to run a war. We will talk about davis later. Johnston also, in the hierarchy of the confederacy, he outranked robert e. Lee. Now, in the summer of 1862 robert e. Lee is appointed command of the army of northern virginia. I suggest that had johnston not been killed at shiloh, there is a really good chance he would have gotten that appointment. He would have gone east because he wasnt so close to davis, and we never would have heard of robert e. Lee. All those people i have met who claim to be a descendent of robert e. Lee, and some of them are. Im sure some of them arent. They might now claim to be descendents of Albert Sidney johnston. [laughter] the other part of that equation is that the federal command commander at shiloh is ulysses grant. He is losing when johnston is killed. He turns around the next day and wins the battle. Had grant lost in that battle, that was the end of his career. Likely we would never have heard of ulysses s. Grant, 18th president of the United States. That is how history changed with shiloh. Also, the first battle in the east that draws all kind of attention, mull manassas, bull. 1861. That was this the first big fight. The newspapers website by the casualties, people were upset by the casualties, people were shocked. 5000 casualties. At shiloh, 18 months later, there are 40,000 casualties. But because of where shiloh is, very few people are aware just how horrible that fight is. That was obvious that that was going to be the first book of the series. The second book, if you look at what my father did with the killer angels, he focuses just on the battle of gettysburg. Gettysburg is sort of in the center which worked out very well for me, working the prequel and the sequel. At the same time that dennys is happening in pennsylvania, there is Something Else happening along the mississippi river. That is the battle of vicksburg. So it made perfect sense to me that vicksburg would be the central piece of my trilogy. Ive made arguments, ive gotten in a lot of arguments with historians. I live in gettysburg now. A lot of people dont care to hear me say that i think what happened in vicksburg was more important than what happened in gettysburg. Ulysses s. Grant received the surrender of the confederate troops, the confederacy has lost all of the mississippi river. All the way down to the gulf of mexico, it that is in union control. They could move people up and down, all the way through the gulf with impunity. The confederacy, they lose texas, arkansas, most of louisiana. Why is that important . Men, food, supply, all cut off. Those people are sort of on their own now. It divides the confederacy. That is a big deal. That was an easy second choice. The third choice was always going to be this book, fateful lightning, it was always going to be sherman marching from atlanta at the end of the war. I realized why jump from vicksburg to atlanta, i skipped a whole bunch of history. I had to go back to new york and convince random house to let me do a four book trilogy. [laughter] they said yes. So i realize, i cant just skip over a bunch of really important stuff and really important people. One of those people, all t way through this, there is a string that ties these books together, is sherman. The other string that is there for most of it is ulysses s. Grant. But grant goes east. In early 1864, Abraham Lincoln figures it out, that we note need the right guy. He finds the right guy and puts grant in charge of the entire union army. Grant when he leaves, he puts in charge behind him, sherman. Sherman is now in command of the armies of the west. That is a huge part of history there. I skipped over chickamauga and chattanooga. All of this happens in late 1863. Chickamauga was a tremendous victory for the confederates. Its a disaster, it takes place in chickamauga, there is no town of chickamauga. It is in northern georgia. The union army is in chaos. They have run scrambling, retreating from the field, back to their stronghold of chattanooga, tennessee, across the border. It is a mess. It is bad. All the confederate generals realize this is an opportunity. Think about what just happened that summer, gettysburg, vicksburg. The morale in the north is sky high, the morale in the south is in the pits. All of a sudden, at chickamauga, it turns around. We have defeated a major union army. All of the generals go to their commanders, and say, weve got them, lets go. Follow this up. Bragg doesnt believe it. He doesnt believe the army has been that successful. He is cautious. So he delays, he has people underneath him who are going crazy that he has delayed. Instead of what bragg, he kind of goes and looks, sees the union army there and chattanooga. If you know the lay of the land there, it is really interesting. You have high mountains on two sides, and the Tennessee River is right there and then chattanooga is right there. Bragg looks down at that and says, thats perfect. We will make a siege. We will get them right back. Bragg wants a siege, the problem is there are not enough confederates to close the circle. The union folks and chattanooga are in kind of dire straits for a while, starvation going on, but grant arrives over the mountain. He comes in, he breaks the siege and supplies begin coming to chattanooga. All those generals who were looking at bragg, realize we lost an opportunity here. In fact, bragg is so despised by his own generals they sign a petition to have him removed from command. That never happens in the army. That petition is sent to richmond, to Jefferson Davis. Jefferson davis likes bragg, so he goes there. He goes to the headquarters to calm everyone down, to soothe their feelings and convince them everything is going to be fine. Then he goes back to richmond. What davis has just done is handed bragg Carte Blanche to do whatever he wants. What do you think bragg does with all those people who signed that petition . He purges quite a few of them from his army. These were good commanders and he finds a good way to get rid of them. Not a really good way to win a war. As the union Army Gets Stronger in chattanooga, he finally break out. You got grant, sherman, fighting joe hooker who lost the battle of chancellorsville. He is there now fighting under grant. What they do, they succeeded masterfully in just blowing braggs troops off the mountain. It is a shining victory for the union. The one shining light in that story is the man who is a principal character in the story, and his name is patrick claiborne. There is a book written about patrick clayborn, unfortunately for the confederates, he is one man. He cant control what is happening all over the rest of the field. I love this character, you would too. The defeat for the confederates at chattanooga is absolute. Even Jefferson Davis cant hide. Nobody will serve under bragg, but now he is Jefferson Davis advisor. But what has just happened by the defeat of the confederates in chattanooga, the door is wide open to atlanta. Sherman takes control of the armies there. He knows what his job is. His job is to go to atlanta. It is enormously important. Robert e. Lees army is in virginia. The rail lines are critically important, sherman recognizes, thats where we have to go next. Assuming command after bragg is gone is joe johnson. He is one of the highestranking generals in the confederacy. There is another guy who hates Jefferson Davis, the feeling is mutual. They feud all the time. But davis realizes we need someone to take up this defeated army and put them back together again to try to stop sherman from taking atlanta. It doesnt really work because johnson is, first of all, a master of retreat. [laughter] sometimes thats really important. You can preserve your army, live to fight another day. Johnsons good at that. He really makes people feel good. It doesnt do anything for the people in richmond, and it certainly doesnt do anything for the newspapers in richmond. They began to joke around that he is so good at retreating that eventually his army will end up in bermuda. [laughter] after a while as the fights push closer and closer to atlanta, there are some very minor victories for the confederacy. For the most part, sherman has the numbers. Hes got the forces. Hes got the guns. They get closer and closer to atlanta, and Jefferson Davis has seen enough of that. He gets rid of joe johnston and brings in a fighter. Thats what we need, a fighter. He brings in John Bell Hood. John bell hood has already lost at least two limbs at that point. There is a really sort of really sick story. At the battle of chickamauga, John Bell Hood loses a leg. He is a texan. He wants the leg preserved and taken back to texas to be buried. They pick some poor lieutenant on a horse with the leg and sent him off to texas. The leg never makes it. I can only imagine that nobody knows what ever happened to this guy, or what ever happened to the leg, but think about after about three days. What that ride mustve been like, im guessing that that lieutenant said threw it in a ditch, and then went home. We dont know where the leg ended up. But John Bell Hood recognizes that he is been putting in this bind because of what joe johnston did not do. He did not fight effectively against sherman. Hood understands that all eyes are on him. Im going to fight. And he does. In three separate engagements around the city of atlanta he takes his army and throws it away into shermans guns. He marches into these valiant attacks that are just absolutely disastrous. Hes so whipped, as he retreats, he withdraws his army into alabama. Atlanta now belongs to sherman. Sherman marches into atlanta and heres where the problems begin when you are dealing with sherman and his reputation. First of all, he is not, he does not go in and butcher the city of atlanta. He tells the citizens, please go. There is no reason for you to be here. Bad stuff is going to happen. You can get out if you want. A lot of them do, a lot of them dont. He tells the mayor, the townspeople, there is no reason for you to be here. We are going to burn some things. Sherman never decides to just go burn a bunch of homes. He is burning every factory, every mill works, he tears up every railroad. Anything that can give aid to the confederacy. Unfortunately, when the wind blows and you are burning this factory next to a wooden house, it happens. John bell hood is being besiege