and, the lost papers of confederate general john bell hood. with an undivided interest in civil war history, and past president of the board of directors of the confederate morrill hall museum in new orleans. without further do, sam. [applause] >> hello, and thank you. you mentioned my odyssey. my wife and i moved to myrtle beach, south carolina, five days ago. [laughter] and if you think it is bad when the airlines lose your luggage, anyway, we weren't able to move into the house we are buying so we are living out of boxes and crates and things. i drove up here. it sounds strange to say i drove up from south carolina. i'm used to driving down there. this is -- i have been looking forward to this for several reasons. one is when the theme of the symposium is "generals you love to hate," i don't have to worry about what people's expectations are. well, because i am a big fan of john bell hood, even though i am not as closely related as the name implies. you are probably wondering. i am a collateral descendent. i think i am a second cousin. general hood's grandfather, andrew hood, was my great times six. i come off a different branch, but i am a big fan of general hood because, like most people i am a big fan of an underdog. and i am also a huge fan of people who are not around to defend themselves, and they deserve a defense. so, for probably 20 years, i have been researching general hood. there is the old saying, we have heard it a million times, if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. but something we don't hear but should think is if something sounds too bad to be true, it is usually not. historian told me this and scott said he could not recall who he heard it from, so maybe some of you all will know. there is a saying that is the more fantastic of the accusation, then the more fantastic the evidence should be. so, with john bell hood, there are so many myths and so many totally extreme things that i'm assuming you have all heard, that i decided i've got to start looking into these things because it just doesn't make sense. and i think stephen woodworth summed it up perfectly in a book or an article a while back, and he was talking about braxton bragg and john bell hood. and he said, if you read the recent writings on these two generals, you wouldn't wonder why they were in command of armies, but why they weren't in insane asylums. [laughter] and the fact is, so much of the stuff that has been written about john bell hood, and i am sure others as well, just has no evidence at all. or, it has evidence where the writers has perhaps taken too much literary license in their paraphrasing. i like to use this as an example. we can go home this evening and we can turn on the news to see what happened in the world today. you can turn on msnbc, for example, and they are going to tell you what happened today, and chances are it will be true. and then you will turn on fox news, and they will tell you what happened today, and it will probably be pretty much true. but the two things you are hearing are going to be totally different. so you can spin things. you can accentuate things. and there are also errors of commission and there are also errors of omission, which is why in court they tell you not to just tell the truth. you have to tell the whole truth. [laughter] so, in my book, it starts out with a quote from cicero. and i am not going to read it to you but it states basically the first law of a historian is never dare utter an untruth and also never suppress something that is true. a lot of this goes on. let me also mention a couple of things about my book, which is 300 pages, or 250 pages of a solid defense of all the things that have been written and said about john bell hood. the poor guy. if there is 300 pages worth of stuff to answer, that is a lot. and i am only going to touch on, obviously, i have about one hour, i'm only get a touch on some of them. and when i get into them here, some of the ones that i touch on are intentionally, or admittedly, they are kind of silly. but, an example of a myth or something that is silly, but it permeates history and permeates the civil war history community so much is the sillier it is, the whittier it is, the cuter it is, the more it spreads, quicker. and it spreads deeper. anyway, i'm going to get into a few of these. let me mention this. i first decided i was going to write a book defending general hood in 2011 or so. and i contracted with a sadnessvis bay. ted was so hard on me, double checking, triple checking, quadruple checking and all that. i wanted to go to california to strangle him. it is funny. every time he told me to do it again, i growled, and darned if i didn't find something that needed to be fixed. so he was right and i was wrong. i had a contract to write a book and the title of the book was "history versus john bell hood." at that time -- and i had completed the manuscript and i had not discovered any new, primary-source information at all. what i did was i went to the same books, the same primary sources, the official record of the southern historical society, the same records that these recent authors had gone to, and i just found all kinds of stuff in the official records which was counter to some of the things actually provided in the book. so, i had completed an entire book with nothing more than what was available to the authors who have been writing the negative things about hood. well, i got a call one day -- it's kind of funny. i have met through the internet, met and track down and become acquaintances with you much all of john bell hood's and annabelle hood's direct descendents. but i had not spoken to all of them. i got a call one day from general ghood's great grandson, who lives in pennsylvania. he said my mother -- this gentleman is probably 70, recently retired. he said my mother passed away a few years ago and he was 96. that would have been general hood's granddaughter. and he said when we cleaned up the condo, there were a bunch of boxes, and you know the story. he says, i know you're getting ready to finish your book, and there is probably nothing in here important, but we thought before it goes to press would you like to come up here and look at this stuff? and i'm thinking, i'm from west virginia, graduated with a c average from a state school and i'm a construction contractor. but i'm also, being a southern guy, i didn't want to be rude. [laughter] so i said, ok, i will come up and look. and i was sitting there thinking, if i say no, he's going to think i am a jerk. if i say yes, i'm going to waste a day of my life, never to be recovered. to show how smart i am, i told my wife and said i'm going for an overnight. i did not even take a change of clothes. i thought i would go up there and go through these and it will be nothing. and i get up there, and it's unbelievable. it is general hood's long-lost, or thought-to-not-even-exist personal papers. for those of you very quickly, general hood hood and his wife, had in 10 years of marriage 11 children. had 3 sets of twins. had 11 children. and mrs. hood got yellow fever in august of 1879. she died. general hood got yellow fever and he died two days later. the oldest daughter who was 11 years old, she died. in the course of 72 hours, 10 orphaned children were created, or 10 children were orphaned, all under the age of 10. and if you're a friend of john and anna and there are 10 children needing three meals a day, you are not going to be too worried about john's papers. so it was always assumed that a family friends had just thrown them away or they had gotten lost. but as it turns out, they hadn't. they had been passed along. they end up in pennsylvania, and i show up and here they are. and i end up staying three days, and i wasn't finished looking at them and kind of archiving them. the family had to go out of town, so i went back later on with my wife and stayed three more days. i spent six days going through all these. so, i very quickly went through some of the papers that i sensed might be important from a scholastic standpoint and from the controversies of hood, mostly his tenure in the west, the army of tennessee. there really isn't much bad to talk about hood in the army of northern virginia. but anyway, i transcribe these but is quickly. i picked up the phone and i called ted and i said, ted you want to believe this. i sent him some of the stuff and he called me back a few days later and said, we were going to i sent him some of the stuff and he called me back a few days later and said, we were going to go to press with this next month or whatever it is but he said, , you have got to put this stuff in there. so i took another three, four, five, six months and kind of redid the book by putting the material in there that i had discovered, that was really, really important, like what happened at spring hill on november 29, 1864, and some other things like that. and i came up with -- ted and i decided to change the title from "not history versus john bell hood." we changed it to "john bell hood: the rise, fall, and resurrection of a confederate general." because ted and i both felt it largely exonerated him from the -- some of the more outrageous stuff. so that is my journey from being somebody that is just a civil war history nut to actually having a book published. and then, of course, after we published the first book with this information in it, ted and i decided that we would also just do an annotated volume of those papers, and that is the lost papers of john bell hood. the -- i want to get into some of the controversies now. this is going to be my test drive on the pointer. how about that? i don't have time to get into all of these. i am going to touch base on a few of them quickly. but sort of controversies, they a lot of them are in the book. and again, i don't know if this is mostly a eastern theatercentric group here or how familiar, you know -- i am thinking you are all total civil war western theater transmississippi and all of it. , he did not call his men cowards. he did accept responsibility for his defeat. he was not angry at franklin. he did not like just frontal assaults. you read that all the time. in fact he only ordered one. but that apparently -- apparently did not matter. he did not position any of the harsh -- toe the take the worst casualties. he did not just go to nashville and sit there and do nothing. there believe it or not, hood -- actually had a reason to send nathan bedford forrest to murfreesboro as you hear all the time. he just sent him off for no reason. and hood and beauregard did not squabble or feud. i use this just as an illustration of there are basically four books that are recognized as definitive books on would -- hood's tennessee campaign. the first one was by thomas hay in the early part of the 1920's. and then stanley horn wrote a wrote a book in the 1950's. conley, autumn of glory in the 1970's, and wiley sword confederacy's last raw, which was -- hurrah, which was in the early 1990's. if you would read these four books, which you really shouldn't -- only people like me should because i am going to write one -- it is like i was telling you about the tv channels and the networks. the same event can be told differently. and every author, it is like every 20 years somebody wrote a book on the same subject. keepsl of a sudden hood getting -- it becomes more harsh on hood. it starts out with thomas hay just basically discussing hood as any -- as an army commander who partook in a campaign and was defeated. all the way to wiley sword which was, you know, quite more than that. i have always said, why, why would anybody in these towns and in these areas actually name landmarks after a drug addicted, womanizing, backstabbing, murderous fool? -- inre is, there was virginia and in georgia, it is not surprising that they would name something after hood because of his success there. but there are landmarks also in oak hill, tennessee and brentford. those are suburbs of nashville. two of them in nashville itself, two in franklin. at least they were landmarks the last time i heard. they may have changed the name of the street by now, but that is a whole different subject. i did not know there was a hood avenue in los angeles and one in hollywood florida near fort , lauderdale. the only reason i found out about them is because they were going to change them. so but anyway, but no. why would people back in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, why would they honor somebody by naming landmarks and streets in their honor? whereas if you would read mr. sword's book in the early 1990's or any of the books after that, it would be like charles manson lane, or something. and here are a couple of the quotes. mr. sword called hood a fool with a license to kill his own men. and then ben stein, for those who recognized bueller -- for those who think he looks a million, that is who he is. he actually -- you talk about jumping the shark, taking things too far, he actually wrote the article in "the new york times" -- of alldition on things -- the faa pondering whether or not to allow people to talk on their cell phones during flights. and he somehow or another creatively drew that to john bell hood being the most destructive human being of all time. i am not kidding. you all are thinking, sam, you are up here accusing people of exaggerating and i am not doing that. i am telling you. he called him the most destructive american of all time in an article about cell phones. [laughter] stephen: i like the guy. brilliant. he is a big civil war fan, i don't know if you know that. he loves civil war history. give a couple to of examples of how an author or a historian can take primary -- take a primary source record and then by paraphrasing it can change can change the context of , it completely. well, i am reading -- this is from mr. sword's book. and i am going to talk about mr. sword quite a bit here. and i am going to be very careful. he is a nice man, and i know he is a great friend of the site. but his book is really the last book that has been written on the tennessee campaign. it was so good. from a writing standpoint, he is a incredible writer. that it was very persuasive, and it was very influential. so a lot of the smaller books , the monographs and other articles and things that have been written since then pretty much go by mr. sword's interpretation and his portrayal. you will see him in here several times. but i was reading this part of his book on page 315, and i get down to the part where he says on december 13 -- the army gained only 164 recruits since entering tennessee. hood reacted angrily and resolved to bring into the army by conscription all men liable to military duty. and then mr. sword writes, if recruits would not voluntarily flock to his standards, he intended to bring them in at the point of a bayonet. i thought, you know, that just does not sound right. i did what a lot of us don't do enough of, and that is go to footnotes. and i don't know about you all, i hate interrupting my reading. by going to the back of the book and then finding it and you thumb through, and you thumb through, and finally it tells you that it is a file from a library in polaski, tennessee. like you are going to go there and find it. but i did, quite a bit. and so actually, the footnote cited a letter that hood had written to i believe set in. -- setten. i read it. here is what hood wrote. i do not have the date of the letter, but it says -- this is all he says about recruits. "as of yet i have not had time to adapt any general system of conscription but hope soon to do so and bring into the army all men liable to military duty." [laughter] jerry: -- stephen: now how does that --ance with "would reacted "hood reacted angrily." was there any anger and that letter? he is going to march these guys and at the point of a bayonet. he just said i am going to find out if you are eligible to be drafted, you will be drafted. i know in 1971i did not enter paris island, south carolina into the marine corps boot camp at the point of a bayonet. [laughter] stephen: though i probably would have preferred it. anway, but that is just example of how you can try to spice things up a bit and really it gives the wrong perception of the reader. now this is one, this next one that i give, i know i have met a gentleman from youngstown here who has heard my civil war roundtable presentations. these things are usually only given 20 or 30 minutes. the next one i am getting ready to give. i usually skip through it because it takes too long. but you guys, you cannot escape. [laughter] stephen: you can't escape, and this takes a couple of minutes, but to me it is really incredible. now, i will set it up. again, i don't know how familiar people are in this room with the tennessee campaign. the battle of franklin, the horrible, bloody battle of franklin, that was november 30, 1864. lost -- there were six generals killed and he lost 4500 to 5500 casualties. anyway hood then moved on to then he builtnd fortifications. he basically kind of laid siege to nashville. two weeks later george thomas, one of my favorite union generals or favorite civil war generals, george thomas attacked hood's army, and over a two-day battle of nashville on december 15 and 16th of 1864, they defeat hood's army, and chase the army out of tennessee back to alabama and mississippi. so, hood, a couple of days after the battle of franklin, i actually think it was the next day, sent a dispatch to general beauregard, who was his department commander, or to richmond and said, we lost six generals at franklin, and he named them, and he said we lament the loss of 4500 men. so he reported that he had taken some very heavy casualties at franklin. he goes to nashville. he is attacked at nashville. and on the first day of the retreat or the second day of the retreat, hood sends a dispatch to beauregard saying, we have just been defeated. we are in full retreat. and once i safely cross the river -- excuse me, the tennessee river, i will get back to you with more details. so five or six days later, after hood safely crosses the tennessee river and back into northern alabama, hood sends another message saying we have completed the retreat, and we thankfully have not lost much more since the battle in front of nashville. he had told -- he had informed beauregard that they had been defeated in nashville and have lost 50 canon, so he says, and we are in full retreat. well, this is from stanley horn's book, "the army of tennessee." mr.mr. bourne wrote that -- horn wrote that on january 3, he received his first direct word telegraphed from corinth that must go down in a masterpiece of misleading understatement. "the army has recrossed the tennessee river without material loss since the battle of franklin." goes on to say, he did not say anything of the shocking losses at franklin and the disaster at nashville. well, in wiley sword's book, wiley sword writes the same thing. there is the confederacy's last hurrah. so he says it is highly misleading. so afterwards -- in other words after he crossed the river into tennessee, hood basically lied to his superiors by saying we have not last anymore since the battle of franklin, which is totally untrue because they lost 50 cannon and 4500 more casualties at nashville. well here is what happened. , if you actually go to the footnotes in the official record, here is what mr. sword cited and also stanley horn. it is to cooper, general cooper, and is from beauregard. it is from beauregard's headquarters. it said that hood reported that they recrossed the tennessee river at bainbridge without material loss since the battle of franklin. but you see the little asterisk down here? it says see dispatch as sent by hood on page 757. here is the article -- here is what hood sent. beauregard the army has crossed , without material losses from the battle of nashville. and you saw that asterisk, and it says here is what happened. , [laughter] stephen: hood sends a dispatch saying -- >> the microphone on the podium. hood i am sorry. dispatch saying we have safely crossed the river and have not lost anything since the battle of nashville. beauregard's staff screws it up. saysends to richmond hood he is back -- he has crossed the tennessee river and has not lost anything since franklin. it is a total screwup, and it has got asterisks, and in the official record they decided to give them both. so this is what hood told beauregard, but this is what beauregard told richmond. well mr. horn missed that. ,and by the way i have been on , tours of the battle of franklin and the battle of nashville, on i have actually heard some very distinguished tour guides talk about how hood lied to richmond. did not tell them anything about what happened at nashville. and but anyway the problem i , have is, you know, anybody can make a mistake. mr. horn made a mistake. but mr. sword, if he made a mistake, that means he must have missed this. this is the correct one. right? this is the correct one. well, mr. sword in two other places in his book on two totally different subjects used a primary source on page 425. 436 ofof his book and the officialrced entry and the record one inch away from the correct entry. -- i mean, i don't know. maybe they missed it. but this is -- these are the kinds of things that have not helped john bell hood's reputation that he is totally innocent of. some poor overworked staff officer in beauregard's tent, probably he just made a mistake. another thing you hear about hood is that he was callous, and cruel and cold, and that he actually complained when there was not enough blood spilled. and that he used to measure success by how many casualties. you all think i am making this up. if you pick up a few books and read them on the tennessee campaign or john bell hood or the army of tennessee and you will read this. one example -- it is in every book -- one example they give is hood is writing about the battle of jonesboro. there were four battles around atlanta. when you hear the battle of atlanta, there were actually four battles around atlanta. the battle of decatur and bald hill is called the battle of atlanta, but it was one of four. the last battle of atlanta was jonesboro. and when jonesboro fell, that was the last supply line for the army of tennessee, and that's when hood had to evacuate atlanta. the scene in "gone with the wind." everything blowing up and burning and all that. jonesboro had fallen, and the army was evacuating atlanta. in hood's official report, in january of 1865, he wrote of jonesboro, the vigor of the attack may be in some sort imagined when only 1400 were killed and wounded. the failure necessitated the evacuation of atlanta. most authors will comment on that as being cold and cruel and callous. and maybe it is. but what did hood write? at the battle of jonesboro, hood had three infantry corps -- in atlanta. when he learned of a yankee movement towards jonesboro, hood sent stephen d. lee's corp and core 20core -- hardy's or miles south of atlanta to 30 meet the union threat. hood stayed in the atlanta fortifications with frank cheetham's corps and the georgia militia. he was afraid it was going to be -- that it was merely a diversion. so he sent two thirds of his army to deal with it. and he stayed with one third of his army in case there was an attack on atlanta. hood assigned william hardey to be in command of the two corps at jonesboro. so it was hardey's core and stephen d. lee's core in command. when the battle was over and atlanta was occupied -- atlanta was lost, hardey got mad. he had been mad for a while anyway because hood got the job of commander of the army of tennessee. party was not -- hardey was not happy so hardey resigned. and he did not give hood an official report of the battle of jonesboro. he got mad and he left. the only report that hood got, he had no idea what happened there, the only report came from stephen d. lee, the other corps commander. lee wrote in his official report to hood, the attack was a feeble one and a failure with a loss to my corps of 1300 men killed and wounded. it was not made with spirit and determination and all that. lee -- hood had no idea what happened at jonesboro, so he simply took what lee wrote and paraphrased it. you read books on john bell hood and they will talk about how he was complaining because there was not enough blood spilled at jonesboro, but they never say a word about stephen lee. this one is another example of misquoting and taking things out of context. a week after john bell hood died, here is an article in the new orleans times -- the picayune. act can those days when somebody died, it was very eloquent, you know, and this is not unusual. you can kind of read it on your own, but it is very a look went thought talking about what a great guy he was a great , soldier. then in the middle it says as expressed in his own forceful language when last with us five short months sense, "they charge me with making franklin a slaughter pen, but as i understand it, war means fight and fight means kill." then they go on to say more eloquent stuff about him. well, here is an article in a san francisco newspaper. now keep in mind back in those days, -- i am not joking, but they did not have tape recorders. if you're a journalist and somebody is giving a speech or whatever it is you are , frantically taking notes. they are all probably going to be a little bit different. in the san francisco paper they are talking about the same event where hood was that was referred to in that times picayune article. it says right here, hood says, i tell you the brave forest was not far from right when he warared "when it comes to war means fighting and fighting , means killing." that is a kind of famous quote from nathan bedford forrest. hood was actually just quoting forrest. so, this comes from mr. sword's book on page 439. hood ultimately was a tragic failure, a sad, pathetic soldier whose ambitions totally outstripped his abilities. essentially he was an anachronism, a symbol of outmoded concepts any general unable to adapt to two -- adapt to new methods of technology always prone to blame , others and unable to admit his mistakes to the bitter end, hood never understood his failings. "they charged me with having made franklin a slaughter pen ." he admonished a group of aging veterans, but as i understand it war means fighting and fight means kill. he was not being admonished -- he was not admonishing them, he was speaking into the army of tennessee veterans association, and they were using his quoting of forrest or referral of forest -- forrest as part of this real eloquent praise of hood. then it comes across in a book 150 years later that hood was admonishing a group of aging veterans. he had been invited to the aging veterans meeting. so that is again more of -- more of how you have to be careful with how things are portrayed. here is another one. now and by the way, i hear these things all the time. again you all may not. , some of you may. it is also in books if you all -- maybe i will get some nodding here. supposedly at the battle of ezra church, which was the third of the four battles around atlanta, the one just before jonesboro. there is supposedly a story that goes that after the battle, and it was a -- it was a defeat for the army of tennessee, it was a bad defeat, supposedly it got dark. and one of the yankee soldiers yelled out across the trenches or over to the other fortifications, how many are there of you left? how many of them over there? and all of the books will say that some some frustrated , gallows humor type rebel soldier yelled back, well, i guess about enough for another killing. and they say -- these authors will say, this was an example of how poorly the soldiers of the army of tennessee thought of john bell hood. they knew that hood was just going to send them into the slaughter pen. they said there is about enough of us left for another slaughter, one more killing. that shows up all the time in books. well i decided to research it. -- as it turnst out, it happened on july 20, at the battle of dallas. and it was eight days before john bell hood took command of the army of tennessee. it was joe johnston was still the army commander at the time. but they say -- you will read it in books all the time that it happened at ezra church after the beloved joe johnston had been let go and replaced by hood, and they all hated hood and one of the reasons they hated him was because he did not care about their lives. they used this example. it happened under joe johnston's watch actually. all right, the other one -- i guess you all have -- most of you have heard this. again i challenge anybody to find a book on the army of tennessee, the tennessee campaign or john bell hood that does not give the cute, witty, clever little tune of the yellow rose of texas. you all heard it? supposedly the soldiers sang you can talk about your beauregard and you can talk about your general lee, but the gallant hood of texas played hell in tennessee. very witty and cute. that automatically guarantees it will make it in every book. well, you all are thinking, you must be a bored guy because there is not much to do -- [laughter] stephen: there is not much to do in west virginia if somebody will go find out -- it occurred to me. i am kind of a skeptical guy anyway. and i read stuff, and i tried to picture, who in the world would take the time to write down and record for history the words to a silly song? as it turns out, not really anybody. so here it is. i started researching, and most of the books that quote this source bell wiley's the life of johnny reb, which is sort of a bible. it is a 10 commandments kind of thing. and dr. wiley sourced -- i'm in a brain lock. he sourced the story of the confederacy. by henry. it is not footnoted. so all of the sudden it ends right there. so i start digging and digging. and thank goodness there is a cool little confederate library at marshall university called the rosanna blake collection, and it actually hides in the corner of the old library building because it has the word confederate and its name. -- in its name. keepsfound --, the guy that and i found --the guy keeps a low profile. i found this during the retreat as general hood and his staff were riding along, a couple of soldiers had to step out of the way. anti-road by, one soldier, -- as --rode by, one soldier mcmurray said he heard a soldier from a north carolina regiment step aside and say, he hell in tennessee, didn't he? w.j. mcmurray published that in the history of the 20th tennessee regiment, published in 1904. he cites one soldier saying that. if you all google or you look at "hood played hell in tennessee" you will come up with thousands of hits. there are a couple of things that were written. stanley horn wrote -- he mentions this song being song. -- sung. stanley horn wrote "the cold december rain drummed noisily down the tent. hood was sitting in the tent and it was raining. he could hear something that sounded familiar out in the distance. and it turns out it was a familiar tune. but because of the rain he could not hear the words or it would have broken his heart. since the cold december rain drummed down noisily on the tent, but not noisily enough to shut out the confused babble of an army in retreat." if the heartbroken commander had listened he would have heard them singing as they splashed barefoot along the muddy road. the tune they say was the old favorite, the yellow rose of texas. but the words they used had been improvised by some camp wit, words that would have steered -- seared the wounded heart of hood. and it was from one guy singing that. and then another one -- another book, the author and historian is still around so i will not mention it, but he actually said granberry's texas brigade talks about how they were traipsing across the pontoon bridge, traipsing across the tennessee river back into mississippi they were all in unison singing the song. the hyperbole is quite something. sally preston, who is thought to have perhaps have been margaret mitchell's inspiration for scarlet o'hara -- i would guess that most people in here are familiar with mary chestnut's diary from dixie. it is essential reading into civil war history. in mr. sword's book, sally is all throughout the book. and so many of the things hood is doing, he is doing to impress sally preston. then when the army fails he is trying to redeem his honor so as to not lose buck preston. at the defeat of franklin he is haveing oh my goodness, i got to do something or i might lose buck preston. so he went to nashville. all of these things that he is doing and not doing is being influenced by his girlfriend. again, that just does not -- i don't know about you but that does not sound right. anyway, i just decided to do research on that. this was real quick. in wiley sword's index, a 13 different pages -- obviously she is mentioned more times than once per page. but there are 13 different pages that mention sally preston and 9 that mention susan tarleton. those anybody in here -- this is a trivia question -- does anyone know who that is? i have 1, 2, 3 -- 3 out of 100. that was patrick clayborn's fiancee in mobile. so these are two fiancees, there are 22 mentions, or 22 pages in the index of two women. fiancees of soldiers. i i thought well, wondered how of the writers -- other writers handled buck preston and susan tarleton. they don't appear in thomas hay's book. they don't appear in horn's iconic army of tennessee. it is mentioned one time, on one page of thomas connolly's also iconic book, autumn of glory. you have one mention by these three guys and mr. sword cited mary chestnut's diary. and it has been around forever. anyway -- and then i thought what was also interesting was on a book on the battle of franklin and nashville, at the battle six confederate generals get killed and there are four of them right there. those are four of the six generals. there was also patrick clayborn and granberry, but these four brigadier generals are killed at the battle of franklin. in a book on the battle of franklin, that is how many times they appear in the index. that is how many times fiancees appear in the index. i assume a lot of you all have heard that robert e. lee said of john bell hood all lien, no box. or too much lien, not -- all lion, not enough fox. if you google hood, lion, fox you will get hundreds, it is just about in every book. i said that does not sound like lee. did robert e. lee say stuff like that? and if he did, would he write it? whatever, it just sounded so unlikely. so the guy from west virginia with a lot of time, and thank god for google, i started googling and i came up with hundreds of books -- civil war books that say he is all lion, no fox. something like that. none of them were before 1928. none of them. all of them were fairly recent books. the first mention of anything about foxes and lions and hoods came from stephen vincent binet's epic poem, john brown's body. what he is doing is he is talking about robert e. lee's lieutenants. talking about these wonderful marvelous, excellent group of subordinates that he had. he writes a couple of verses on longstreet and on stewart. a.p. hill maybe, and jackson. anyway this is what he writes. this is the poet, not robert e. lee. he basically says hood was shock troops. he mentions all lion, none of the fox. in a column -- poem in 1928 there was actually the author feeling lee would be praising john bell hood. and it is turned into an insult that lee supposedly said about hood. not an insult, a criticism, if you will. that is another one that if you read about hood, it is all over the literature. this one is kind of funny. and it is dated now. the atlanta cyclorama and history center. i assume or hope many of you have been there. it is not there now. it is in the process of being moved. well, like most museums or theaters or displays, you have a foyer where you go in and wait for the next show to start or the next film to begin. when it is over they rout you through a gift shop. -- when it is over, they rout you out -- route you out through a gift shop, buy a book, all of that. this is a picture that i took with my cell phone, so i pardon the quality of the picture. this was in the entry foyer at the cyclorama in atlanta. and this thing is big. it is like an entire wall. tens of thousands of people hang out by this as they are getting ready to go through the cyclorama. and again, it is not there now because they are moving it. ulysses grant, lee, they didn't have anything to do with the tennessee campaign. excuse me, sherman's atlanta campaign. there is william t sherman and joe johnston. it shows the different battles. it starts at dalton, well, he -- you can't read it very well here because of my poor -- what it says is john bell hood, is native of kentucky, called old wooden head by his men. a [laughter] >> it is there, i wish i could clear it. take my word for it, it is there. called old wooden head by his men. well, i had read probably thousands -- not complete letters -- but thousands of letters from soldiers either in full or excerpts or whatever. and not one time had i ever seen read where any soldier called john bell hood old wooden head. to show how -- maybe i should not have done this but it is too late now. [laughter] i was speaking at the cyclorama and history center, and my host, the guy who had been so nice to bring me there and make all of the arrangements is sitting in the front row and i am talking about how difficult it is to get myths changed. and how things get ingrained -- reputations, right? and i said in front of my host and the assembled multitude, i actually,an as well, i said what i just told you all. that there is no record of it at all, or if there is nobody has found that. it just is not true. i looked down to my host and said i have a proposition for you. if you will produce a single letter that actually backs up what is on your wall over there, if you will provide that because i have been looking for years i will donate $10,000 to your facility. [laughter] then i said, and if you look in search of this generous donation and if you look and cannot find it, if you will call the sign company and go out there and fix that, send me the bill and i will pay for it. that was in may of 2014 and i have not heard a word. they didn't call to collect their $10,000 and it was never fixed. so tens of thousands of people go by and they read that. that just shows how difficult it is to get things changed once a have got hold. what i am hoping is when they open the new facility, i am going to go there, and wouldn't it be nice if they didn't have the old wooden head? anybody want to bet? [laughter] stephen: i don't think anybody is actually trying to degrade or demean anybody. it's just, it is 5:00, we go home. anyway, that one is pretty indicative. these are all the cutesy things. i am done with them. i am going to use my remaining time to get a few more substance to things. not that these are not, but -- on some of the controversies of hood. is there anyone here who has read hood's memoirs? some of you? they are weird. they really are. if you read his memoirs it is like 200 pages long and it is may be 30 or 40 -- and i am not exaggerating, 30 or 40 pages -- excuse me, 170 pages answering joe johnston's criticism of him and his handling of the army of tennessee. and 30 or 40 pages of, by the way, i am from bath county, kentucky, i went to west point, all of that. it is really odd. and having memoirs published that are on does not help your reputation either. and i get that, because i always thought -- it is just weird. i read them many, many years ago. well, as it turns out -- and i knew they were published post to -- posthumously. hood was in the process of writing his memoirs when he died. and they were published posthumously a year later by a charitable organization that was formed to help the orphans that was chaired by general beauregard. and i thought well, maybe a publisher would have been like ted savis. he would have had a field day editing that. anyway when i find his papers in the house in the pennsylvania i was telling you about 45 minutes ago, i am going through all of these papers and there is a letter from john bell hood to his wife in january of 1879. that was the year he died. he died in august. there are two letters, he is in washington, d.c.. and he is meeting -- she tells his wife he ran into randall gibson. randall gibson was a brigadier general commander of a louisiana brigade and he fought pretty much the entire war in the west, if not all of it. randall gibson was a subordinate to hood. he was a brigade commander and he was from new orleans. he became a very close friend. as a matter of fact, he was the godfather of his oldest child that passed away. after the war, gibson became a congressman. hood is in washington and he writes. a letter to his wife. it's basically says, i ran into general gibson. he says, why don't you put something in there about your previous life and make it a memoir? so we didn't know until this letter that this book was not supposed to be a memoir or an autobiography. it was going to be an answer to johnston. that was all it was meant to be. it was going to be a pamphlet or a monograph in response to to johnston. then at the last minute he decided he will make a memoir out of it. he only lived six more months, six or eight more months. then it was published posthumously and people to whatever they had. that is why the book is weird. he died and did not have a chance to finish. what he was doing was converting the book. also, one of the things you will hear about hood and read about hood is he was a disloyal subordinate, that when he was sent and promoted to lieutenant general and given a command under joe johnston, he immediately said i ought to undermine joe johnston and get him fired so he could get his job. you will read about this quite a bit if you read on hood. again, i'm thinking, that doesn't really sound right. i read some of the letters that do exist that could wrote back to richmond when he was a corps commander for joe johnston. some of them sound like he was actually answering letters he had been receiving. but there was no proof of that. well, when i am sitting going through all the papers i found a few years ago, there is a letter from john bell hood to louis t. wigfall. wigfall was the commander of the texas brigade and he resigned to become a texas senator. at the beginning of this letter it is april 15 of 1864 and this is in hood's hand. it says, "your letter of the 29th of march has just been received and i hasten to answer your direct questions, which must be purely between us." so good is getting letters from richmond authorities, asking what is joe johnston doing down there? so one thing we have learned from the letters that were discovered is that at least in one case and probably in all cases, hood was receiving letters from bragg and wigfall that said hey, joe johnston will not tell us what he is doing. hood and said what is up, what is going on down there? what is he supposed to do? is he supposed to refuse to answer? if you are wondering why is a letter from wigfall in hood's papers? i found four papers to wigfall. i don't know how they got back into his personal papers. and then i find from lewis wigfall's daughter, a letter to john bell hood's adult daughter "i was, and she said going through daddy's papers, and i found these letters from your daddy to my daddy. and i thought i should send them back to the family." and it was a really sweet letter. anyway, that is how these letters got back into hood's papers. there's another controversy. i will zip through this real quick, there is another controversy, the battle of cassville. joe johnston is criticized and has been criticized by richmond because he never wanted to fight. he was retreat, retreat, retreat in georgia. and there was a time that the army was going to attack sherman. it was a great plan. i am not going to get into it. it was a great plan. johnston dug in and said now is the time to strike. the way the battle was to begin was it was to start out with a strike from the right and then a corps from the center and then from the left. it went as all the big battles went in that time. it is all timing. hood starts his move and then all of a sudden hood gets bombarded from his right and rear. and so he stops and he repositions his corp to face what he thought is an attack. johnston then calls off the battle and resumes his retreat to atlanta. when the war is over, johnston says hood lied. there was no enemy force to his right or his rear. he said he got attacked but he did not get attacked. well, hood said i did too get attacked and sustained some casualties. it became a bit of a war of words until hood died. in hood's papers, in a letter from captain paul oliver, saying i am the commander of two batteries of two artillery that started bombing you. joe johnston said he did not get attacked and here is a letter from the guy in command of those who did the attacking. hood was right and johnston was wrong. that is proven. i am getting near the end here. there is also a big debate. bragg -- foot and bragg were claiming johnston sustained big casualties during the atlantic campaign. and johnston said no i do not. well, you would usually think records should indicate what the army size was at the beginning and what it was at the end, but what happened was when johnston got fired, his chief of staff got mad and took all the papers and left. so the army of tennessee was a mess. -- they took the papers. there were no records. so hood was claiming after the war that johnston had lost 20 or 25,000 troops -- 20,000, 25,000 troops after the retreat, mostly by desertion. johnston said no, i didn't. in hood's papers is a affidavit from john smith -- easy name to remember -- who was a member of his staff saying, yes, the army was reduced by 20,000 or 25,000, i forget which one, mostly by desertion. there is another affidavit from another staff officer, eb wade, who says that the army lost 25,000. and here is another letter from one of the great names in civil war history, hypolite oladowski. [laughter] stephen: sounds like a good old southern boy, doesn't he? anyway, the colonel had a copy of a letter he wrote to braxton bragg, saying yes, we were reduced by about 25,000. and the last thing i want to talk about is the spring hill affair, and what did and did not happen. again, i cannot assume that everybody knows what happened at spring hill, so if you know what happened there, bear with me for just a second so i can explain it to the people who are not familiar. after the fall of atlanta, sherman burns what is left of atlanta and starts his march to the sea. hood and the army of the tennessee, what is left of it, around 30,000 troops, have escaped atlanta, but they are to the west and north of atlanta. sherman burns what is left of atlanta and begins his march to the sea, which is going to the southeast. so what is in the northwest, sherman is in the southeast. is in the northwest, sherman is in the southeast. richmond is trying to figure out what to do with the army of tennessee. this is in late 1864. and there is a bit of a bloody stalemate going on in this part of the country between lee and grant. what is decided to do by richmond is they cannot catch sherman because sherman has a 200 mile lead and he is destroying everything in his path. no railroads, all bridges being burnt and there is zero subsistence for a army. so sherman is slaughtering all of the cattle and burning all of the crops, he is destroying everything so a pursuing army has no supplies. even if they could figure out how to catch him with a 200 mile head start. so what richmond decides to do instead is to send the army of tennessee on a invasion of tennessee to try and liberate nashville. and by doing that, if he could succeed in defeating george thomas at nashville, there are only two sources of troops for lincoln to use in tennessee or kentucky. they would either have to have sherman turn around and come back, and he would have to do that by sea because he would have no subsistence. so what was probably going to happen was grant would have had 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 troops, that was the plan, from here to kentucky. so hood begins an invasion on the north end of tennessee and sherman and his 50,000 man army are going in opposite directions. it is a very strange event, but it makes sense if you know what is going on and you study it. george thomas is sent to organize the defense of nashville. when thomas gets to nashville, he has 8000 troops in nashville and they are mostly quartermasters. he is given only one small army. they call it the army of the ohio. it's not. but john scofield sends a small -- sherman gives thomas a 25,000 man army under scofield. scofield positions himself between hood's army and northern alabama and nashville. so hood begins his march towards nashville, and scofield then starts a retreat. so you've got 30,000 confederate troops and a 25,000 man union army. and they are both racing north to try to get to nashville. scofield wants to get to nashville because it is fortified. hood wants to get between scofield and nashville, and he wants to attack nashville and -- attack and destroy scofield and that will leave george thomas with these consolidating troops, putting together a small force in nashville. hood and scofield both meats, bothth meet, are converging in the city of columbia, tennessee. scofield got there first. and he fortifies. so hood has three corps, and he is sitting there south of columbia and he has two choices. one is to attack scofield head-on or the other is to try a flank. he decides to try a flank. so he leaves all 100 at columbia with one core of infantry, and he takes the other two corps and he takes them east and crosses in the middle of the night and does a march on november 29 to try and get on the road to cut the road between columbia and nashville and basically isolate scofield in the middle. had it turned out right, there orps toave been two c the north of scofield and all 100 cannon and lee's corps to the south of scofield. scofield learns of the flank and he takes off from columbia. hood's two corps that did the flank the night before get to the town of springhill, tennessee right before dark. he orders to frank cheatham to block the road. and cheatham does not block the road. and the next morning, hood wakes up and the entire army wakes up, and scofield is gone. scofield, who had been trapped rps, all thes co artillery in the infantry, had marched up the road, the columbia pike, and they literally mentioned -- the union soldiers said it looked like an ocean of campfires beside the road. and they marched by all night long and they were never stopped. the next morning, hood and the army wake up, schofield has escaped. they get on the road and they start chasing scofield to try to catch him before he gets to nashville. schofield gets to franklin and all the bridges are washed out. and scofield turns around and he digs in because he knows hood's army is a couple hours behind him. and that is why the battle of franklin happened. for those that do not know, there were more casualties at the battle of franklin than in the d-day beaches. in five hours, and it was all on a 1100 yard wide front. anyway, then the big debates happened. hood said he gave orders to cheatham to block the road, cheatham swore up and down he never got the orders. hood is lying. hood died in 1879 and cheatham outlived him by 11 years. i can get in an argument with anybody in this room over anything, and if i out live you by 11 years, guess who will win the argument? [laughter] stephen: that is exactly what happened. basically, historians have largely sided with cheatham. because hood was not around. so, i'm going through his papers and i come across some interesting things. here is a letter from stephen d. lee. and it says, it is august 25, 1875 -- there were actually three letters, excuse me. in 1875, lee wrote -- it is hard to read -- "i think you can now write with more profundity than at any time to this date. and possibly it is now your duty." he is trying to tell hood, you have got to tell what happened. hood was not saying anything. i misspoke, really. hood did not say anything about what happened at spring hill until he put it in his memoirs. and then it was after he died. hood was doing the robert e. lee thing, do not argue with confederates about why we lost the war. he would not say anything bad about anybody. then on april 16, lee writes, "the blunder was at spring hill. had that not occurred, all would have been well. there, the responsibility of failure in the campaign rests. a noble and gallant effort was made at franklin by the army, and it was the last chance to strike with success." later on, he writes, "i do hope your book will make clear the spring hill matter. matter," this -- listen to this -- "for it is time for the mystery to be cleared up. if you do not, i feel it is my duty to do so after your book comes out." well, what was it that he was telling hood? what was he telling hood? another letter from lee that says, "i met a.p. steward about six weeks ago and profounded, why was no battle delivered at spring hill? he replied that cheatham and claiborne determined it was not best to bring on an engagement at night. i heard were believed claiborne regretted it immediately thereafter and said no such weight should be on his mind for a similar cause again, and in that feeling, lost his life at franklin thereafter." what happened was hood only put in his memoirs, he put -- major joseph cumming and rochford said they delivered orders to cheatham, and cheatham said i am not going to attack. it is late, i will not attack. hood put that in his memoirs. and he did it because stephen lee basically give him an ultimatum. he says, if you do not tell what happened at spring hill, if you don't do it in your book, i will. then there was one other letter that hood did not include. isn't that great handwriting? and it was a letter from a member of the staff of ed johnson, who was one of the division commanders. he said -- he said that -- well, i am mixed up here. he mentioned that his colleague, e.l. martin on the staff of ed johnson, said that he had heard cheatham give the orders not to attack because it was dark and he did not want to attack. so the papers that we found basically prove that hood was right, that frank cheatham was given orders and he thought it was too dark and he thought, we will get them in the morning. but they were not there in the morning. so these are basically the controversies of hood. like i said, there is 300 pages of these things. these are only a few of them. i am just going to show you one picture here before we go to questions, of the cool stuff i found when i found the papers. i reach in the box and here is a frame, a simple frame. a handwritten letter. i squint and i read it -- what is this? that is my famous phone by the way. [laughter] stephen: this is a handwritten letter from stonewall jackson to samuel cooper, after the battle of antietam, recommending john bell hood for promotion to major general. how would you like to be sitting in a room, it is dark and they are downstairs and you are going to pick up that, you are going, whoa. we also have got diplomas and we have cool things on our walls, our cpa's. how would you like to have your recommendation for promotion by stonewall jackson hanging behind your desk? [laughter] stephen: and right beside it, recommendation for hood's permission from major general to -- promotion from major general to lieutenant general, signed by james longstreet. anyway, tons of things in there. his certificates, brigadier general, major general, lieutenant general. anyway, so, that is a whole different presentation. anyway, do we have time for a few questions? >> we will take a few questions tomorrow at the roundtable. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> a tweet across the water, asking about a question that resounds today. it is about how many people were fathered by gis, u.s. gis in vietnam? how are they treated 45 years after the u.s. departure? >> you could be featured during our next live program. join the conversation on c-span history, and on twitter. landmarkstory series cases returns next month, with a look at 12 new supreme court cases. week, historians and experts join us to discuss the constitutional issues and personal stories behind these supreme court decisions. beginning monday, february 25, live at 9:00 p.m. eastern. to help you understand each case better, we have a companion guide written by veteran supreme court journalist tony morrow. the book costs 895 -- $8.95 plus shipping and handling. to get your copy, go to www.c-span.org. synagoguer in the here in newport was built in 1763, which makes it the oldest synagogue of the only one surviving through coloni

Related Keywords

Dallas , Texas , United States , Georgia , Alabama , Washington , Spring Hill , Tennessee , Kentucky , West Point , Togo , Richmond , Virginia , Pennsylvania , Marshall University , West Virginia , Stewart Hill , Nashville , Springhill , Florida , California , New York , Jonesboro , South Carolina , Decatur , San Francisco , North Carolina , Mississippi , American , Thomas Connolly , John Scofield , Atlanta Hood , Stephen M Hood , Nathan Bedford Forrest Hood , Paul Oliver , Randall Gibson , Stanley Horn , John Bell Hood , John Brown , Stephen Lee , Andrew Hood , Bedford Forrest , Hood , Bell Wiley , Atlanta Sherman , Google Hood , Susan Tarleton , John Smith , Sally Preston , Joe Johnston , Sea Hood , Lee Hood , Bell Hood , George Thomas , John Bell , Rosanna Blake , Los Angeles , Frank Cheatham , Scofield , Robert E Lee , Ben Stein , Stonewall Jackson ,