A few Health Issues and not able to travel right now. One of the great collectors, folks connected with the Shenandoah Valley battlefields. Two people who are very important to me, sarah has made all of this work behind the scenes. She is constantly making sure that something needs to be done and it gets done. You need someone like that. Last but not least, my wife elizabeth. Elizabeth has come down from virginia to join us. What i will do is move into my part of the presentation. We are going to talk about the leadership. We focused in the past about various aspects of leadership that included areas outside the late unpleasantness, as we like to say so we do not step on any toes. One of the issues we wanted to deal with was the civil war leadership we first talked to coach about setting this up, he said i do not mind you talking about anything else but i want something on the civil war. Today, we will pretty much focus on that. We have done different figures and we will do different figures in the future, i am sure, but we will talk today about some civil war leadership. One of the things i thought as i was watching some of the College Baseball regionals that were going on and i have a friend who is a very big baseball fan sitting down here in the front and he and i always talk about baseball. I took a quote from one of the announcers who was talking about the arkansas coach and it made me think about something that has always been a question to me and always been something i have wondered about my own capabilities if i should ever go back in time when i had the responsibility of determining such things. This quote that you see about making sure that you can somehow figure out the right people are and putting them in the right place. That was what was said about the arkansas coach, that he was able to do that. I think about coach dooley and he would be able to identify where the players who the players were and where to put them. Sometimes you have to place them where they do not want to go. Those individuals might better serve that situation. When i first started my football career, which ended fairly quickly, it ended after high school i did not want to go to college. Back in the day, you did not have nice arthroscopic surgery and you had to have frankenstein stitches. I learned some great lessons and had some great experiences and it was time to retire. I started in my earliest years as a lineman and a guard and i thought that was nice but i wanted something a little more dramatic. When i went to ask the almighty for physical attributes, i said tall, and he said thats all. I am not a very tall person so i have to make it up with meanness. One of the things i did was i moved into fullback and i felt like i made a real contribution to our team in doing that and the coach assumed i must be adequate at it because he let me do it. I did, by the way, keep a quarterbacks number to be contrary. I kept the number 11 even though that is a quarterbacks number. I always loved it when i was getting ready to go hit the cornerback and sometimes i would hit him low and sometimes i would hit him high. If you ever saw him doing that, you knew you had him. I felt like one of the things i was able to do was identify where i might be long but i am not sure i could do a very good job of figuring out where everybody else should go. I have great admiration for those leaders who have to make decisions about personnel, not only what personnel to employ or to bring them onto the team but also where to put them in a way they will be most effective. I put on one side a baseball field and you can see the Coach Comment from arkansas. On the others is a military structure. Leadership at every level. One of the things we talked about doing is something on sergeant in the civil war. Leadership at so many levels, commission level, noncommissioned level, so many ways all of this gets done. Sometimes you succeed and sometimes you fail and sometimes a person does well in one circumstance but does not do well in another. I have picked two people. Horatio gates is the hero of saratoga. Someone who had proven himself on the battlefield. Saratoga is a complicated battle. It does not take place in one simple location. It is a running battle. Running it set up a number of other things that have to take place along the way. When he was sent south in the revolutionary theater of the southern part of the conflict, he did not do so well. He was defeated tremendously. He did not translate earlier success and to later success. Again, you might get the right person in the right circumstance at one point and then at another point, you have a time when even the person who has proven themselves does not do so well. I know many of us have heard stories about Joseph Johnston and his reluctance to put himself in a situation where he might fail because he had a reputation for being successful at things like hunting so i take a shot at something he might miss . Of course, other generals that you can think of from the civil war where they had moments of success and they have the pressure of repeating that success which must be a tremendous problem to have to overcome. He was a war of 1812 general and i put him up here as an illustration that at the beginning of the conflict, you fall back on that triedandtrue individual. The person supposedly has leadership capability and you put them in a situation and you find they may not rise to the occasion. Alexander apocalypse smith got his middle name because he enjoyed reading revelations. After he marched his men off to fight and marched them back to camp after he found out that war is dangerous and one is likely to be harmed. He did that again and again. The men surrounded his tent and shot into it and he hugged the ground and the bible as he contemplated his future and moved on to other spheres. I think he ended up being a congressman from virginia so you can make of that what you want. If you cannot make it in the battlefield, there is always congress. Apocalypse smith was a real character that had to play out the drama and in this case, leave his position so that someone else could come along. William henry harrison, Andrew Jackson were some of the heroes that emerged in the war of 1812. We are going to talk about a couple of individuals that i wanted to focus on what they brought to the question of leadership and the questions about them that were initially present and had to be overcome. This light is simply want to illustrate that there was a conflict between the war of states and the civil war and choices had to be made. Decisions had to be made and people had to decide where their loyalties lay. With the firing on fort sumter, the pressure continued to ratchet up and choices had to be made. One of those choices was made by a man who had already been in the service for quite some time but he was born and raised in his early years in virginia. I know terry is a native of southhampton county. It is funny that George Thomas, one of the things you get is that you go into the community and say you want to write about him and people say, why do you want to write about that traitor . He had been west point trained. We know there are other virginians who have the same kind of profile. Not only did thomas work closely with robert e lee but they served in the army together and unfortunately, one of their routines that was very common, especially out on the plains, were courtsmartial and both thomas and lee would go from post to post in texas prior to the war and they will be involved in a number of courtsmartial throughout the state of texas. A lot of movement and activity state of texas. That put them in close proximity, both virginians, both west pointers. One chooses one path and the other chooses the other. Thomas was born near a town near jerusalem. George thomas and his family are there. He is not there. Ultimately, he is buried in troy, new york at his wifes families plot. One of the questions about his choice for the south or the north would be what influences he might have and the question of how much his wife might influence him, francis thomas, apparently with a strong personality. He would always know what he should do. Whenever your wife knows you should know what you should do, you know what she wants you to do. He made the choice. He really was comfortable with that choice. He did not feel like the extremist on either side should warrant pressure to do something you did not want to do. You have a virginian who makes the choice to go with the union and when he does that, it will color the way others view him. When we talk about where you are going to play someone, what leadership will look at and expect and what your leadership will contribute or exhibit our questions about those intangibles. In this case, your birth and where you have people from the same country divided infighting amongst themselves. Civil war or a war between the states. That is George Thomas. In the case of nathan bedrock forest, it comes in different way. This is not the case of forest. I like to use the quote, i never thought of a pin where i did not think of a snake. I put a copperhead up there. He was certainly not an articulate individual. He was down to earth. He had a lot of colorful i love when forrest would ever say that he gave instructions that he meant what he said the way he said it. I want you to tell them to fetch the artillery and someone with a little different education might save ring up. If i wanted to say that, i would have said it that way. If you say fetch, they will not think about it. They will do it. His language was designed to accomplish what he wanted to do and to do it efficiently and effectively. There were a lot of questions about whether he could be a leader. He had been a success in many ways in business and in other areas in the prewar period but he was also engaged in some controversial activities, including being a substantial slave trader. You have an individual who does not have the military training, does not have a lot of education. He had about six months of formal education. He has not developed an articulate way of expressing himself or communicating. He would say what he meant and say it the way he meant it. In many ways, he was the kind of person that someone would look at and wonder how effective this person could be. He would go into the war as a private. By the time the war is over, he is a lieutenant general. He is quite successful. Initially, he goes in as a private. He does have friends in high places. Thomas, by the way, typically did not have friends in high places. Plus a reticence to advance himself. One of the things with forrest is that he has to overcome that rough and rudimentary background and overcome the social issues of being a slave trader and other things involved in that aspect of his prewar career. Thomas has questions and forrest has questions and one of the questions will be, how will they be able to overcome these questions and to what degree can they make a contribution that will put those questions to rest . I put a couple of slides here to illustrate some of the ways in which even the highest levels of individuals wanted to employ wait and see kind of attitude in terms of George Thomas, the virginian who sided with the union. He does not have political friends. He does not have friends in the right places in terms of his advancement. In terms of congress or anywhere where he would have some advocate for a person pushing for his advancement. He did have friends in the old army and he did know people. He was a roommate with william sherman. Sherman was one of the people who was hot and cold as far as thomas was concerned. One of his best advocates and friends and one of the people who might have caused him some of the most difficulty. Thomas is one of those folks that it will be sherman who says he may be slow but he is as true as steel. One of the individuals you could count on but at the same time, he did not move with alacrity and the kind of speed that someone like a sherman or Ulysses Grant might want. They did not wage war the same way. The question that this reticence or apparent slowness was because he was reluctant to wage war against southerners or he was not dedicated to the union. At least some people had that thought. He might be a good person, he is wellregarded, but is he the kind of person who would be enthusiastic . Would he be the kind of person you could put forward and expect Great Results because he had the energy and drive to make them happen . One of the key questions, especially in the early phases, and thomas shows some reluctance to advance himself during the kentucky campaign, the question is, ok, if he is reluctant, lets not push that. Maybe there are reasons for that. Let the virginian wait would reflect the spirit of lets see how things pan out before we give him too much responsibility or we start to think he is the kind of general we want in a given place at a given time. Forrest has a different problem. He has educational issues and he has got some background issues, the heritage issues and he also has got a temper. A tendency to let it fly. He was one of those folks who when he got into combat, he turned beet red and grew in size. Almost like the blood vessels pump him up. He took a fearsome look. In battle, that can be intimidating to your opponents. What do you do when you have superiors or colleagues or others you have to work with . For forrest, that was a question of character and temperament, not the least of which is Braxton Bragg, who does not think forrest will be effective. I put several individuals, joe wheeler and Earl Van Dorn that forrest will have clashes with. Earl van dorn is a situation in which they both literally draw weapons on each other and the only cooler heads have to step in and calm them both down to keep them from doing damage to each other. Near the end of the war, forrests men draw down on the troops of Benjamin Franklin cheatham during their retreat from nashville. You would think the last thing you would want to do is to settle issues of southern honor in such a circumstance. That was another indication of it reflected his own ability to assert himself, whatever that might mean. A lot of questions about these individuals that have to be resolved and at least in 1862, there are not a lot of clear answers as to where that might be going. Forrest and thomas will both have successes, though, that should have given an indication that they were capable. In the case of thomas, there will be a small action at mill springs in the central part of kentucky, middle tennessee. At any rate, in central kentucky, there will be a fight at mill springs and thomas is going to be successful. It illustrates some of his personality and personal character. I have several images of someone being shot. The someone being shot is the commander in the field. He was a newspaper editor and a fiery individual. There was a commander that he answer to up the line but he was the one on the battlefield dressed in long raincoat. He rode into union lines by accident and was killed when he had an aide who did not quietly say, general, those are the enemy. He yelled out, those are the enemy. And drew attention to it. His subordinate fired a shot that hit the Union Commander and struck his horse. The fellow that was the Union Commander was a fellow from lexington, kentucky. Lexington, kentucky, we all know it from basketball. One of the things they love our horses. He orders his men to fire. He does not survive. Thomas has to wage the rest of the battle trying to drive the confederates back because they came from a welldefended position on the Cumberland River to try to attack while thomas and his forces are moving. While they are somewhat divided there is a force that was supposed to come into joint thomas that had not reached the point of doing that. One of the famous illustrations of that moment would be shiloh. The desire to catch the forces when they are not entrenched or prepare. They are not united yet. The forces are divided. Thomas is in difficult circumstances but instead of being panicked or deciding i have to withdraw to a safer position, he continues to fight, launched a bayonet charge. And drove them back miles to this defensive position. This illustrated a characteristic that is very impressive. When he got to the confederate position, they had the rest of the day after a morning of fighting moving across rough terrain with all the casualties, all of the fact that you have to replace officers who have been struck down and troops running out of ammunition. Thomas will follow the confederates to this position and try to position his men so that he can launch what he considers to be the coup de grace. Unfortunately, the fighting has taken place all for the day and the weather has been horrendous. Thomas decides not to. During the night, the confederates with one paddlewheel steamer will take the entire force across the river one boatload at a time so by the next morning, the troops will be left everybody else is gone across the swollen Cumberland River. Thomas has been caught in a situation, not that he feels selfconscious or anything like that, at the situation has not played out the way he anticipated. He thought if he brought up his troops through the night and got everything in good position, the next day you could send in a flag of truce and get the confederates to surrender and the battle would be over. The same officer who had his horse shot out from under him was saying to general thomas, why didnt you finish them off last night . Why did you continue this fight last night . It did not dawn on him that if i dont do this today, i might not have the opportunity tomorrow. These will not be leaders who will be perfect in all of the decisions. They will always make the right call. I love sitting with folks in a Football Game or someone else when someone has to make a decision and you have those monday morning quarterbacks who always say, why did he go for it on fourth down . It might be under any circumstance. Where decisions are made. That is the moment you have to make a decision. In many ways, thomas was showing, we will carry on but i did not think of it. There is a moment where forrest has to rise to the occasion and make some decisions. It just didnt don on me that that would be the case. I did not once think of it. There is a moment where Nathan Bedford forrest has to rise to the occasion and make some decisions. I will not go through the details of it come up of it, simply because we do not have time all day for me to talk, which is a shame but that is the way life goes. One of the