Availableforsale outside today and they will all be signinggn copies of their work. You can find the schedule for when they will be available to sign in your program. I encourage you to visit with them. Thank you for doing this. This is wonderful and we are excited about it. Our moderator for the panel today is jerry is the author of Theodore Roosevelt in the assessment. Assassination. Thank you chris. Thank you all for choosing to come to the mississippi History Panel this afternoon. We are fortunate that we have authors for interesting books that cover the entire range of mississippi history from the earliest historical up to the late 20th century. We couldnt ask for a better panel of authors that a wider range of mississippi history tot talk about today. I would like to introduce the authors. To my far left is jim barnett. Retired director of Historic Properties division of the Mississippi Department of archives and history. Author of two books published by the University Press of mississippi. The first is mississippis america indians the second iso the natchez indians which is what he will be discussing t today. S thir his third book beyond control the new channel to the gulf of mexico will be published by the University Press next year. Jim lives in natchez. Next to jim is jim woodrick who lives in richmond. Si he has worked for the Mississippi Department off archives and history. Current director of the Historic Preservation division before that he was in the civil war heights division and as a lifelong student of civil war he is also a member of the Jackson Civil war roundtable and historians of the westernok, whc theater. His book published by his repressed is called the civil war siege of jackson mississippi next to gimenez anne webster, she retired two years ago from mda h. Th you can see theres a pattern here. She had assisted researchers for 35 years. Iv her first book for the University Press of mississippi with co author kathleen is tracing your mississippi tracing your mississippi ancestors today, and and will be discussing her second book for the University Press which is mississippi in the great war, selected letters. Finally to my left is we and us. His longtime professor of history at Montgomery College he is author of the biography,phy howard baker conciliator in the age of crisis. Was senator william first, coauthor of tennessee senators 1911 2001. His book is big jim eastland which was published last month. I have a few questions for panelist to get started. D. I hope the audience will have questions. So, if you have a question please stand at the lectern at the center of the room. That that will be a signal that you have a question. If someone is there we will break away at the earlieston possible opportunity and you can ask your question. N for th my first question for the panel and i thought we could go in chronological order, not by authors age but by the period covered by the. Of history in the books is that would you please briefly describe your book and tell us how you came to write a book and what drew you to the subject of the book. Starting with jim please. I think my age qualifies me as chronologically the oldest anyway so im in the right spot. My book, the history of the natchez indians covers the m history of what i think is one of the most important American Indian groups in north america. If you look at the history from the beginning of the lasalle expedition in the late 16 hundreds until 1735, it is only about 50 years how long of a history is a history is that . But in that fiftyyear time. We had some major events that take place that really shaped the Lower Mississippi valley and mississippi louisiana untilur today and into the future. We had the establishment of french louisiana, the french french colony based on the gulf coast. There is the rise and fall of the indian slave trade. Something that many people arew. Very familiar with. I cover them in my book and there are other books that covem it in much more detail. Comin the third thing is the companyi of the indians which brought thousands of people over here from france to settle in the Lower Mississippi valley. Finally, the french establishment of fort rosalie in natchez in august 171, 6300 years ago this month. In. In natchez we just had a big celebration to commemorate that. These were huge events in just a fiftyyear time. The natchez indians were right in the middle of it. They were key players mainly because of their location on the mississippi river. There had been a number of articles written about the natchez, mainly concerned with their ceremonial culture, things about them that today reallyhemi make them distinguish them from other American Indian groups in this area. But, the only only history that had been written before i did my book was written in 1911. It was written by an excellent historian, john swanton. That was a long time long time ago and a lot of things changed since swanton wrote his history, especially ideas about how we look at the American Indian societies that were here when europeans came to colonize. Those ideas have changed and matured quite a bit. I hope that what i the way i w said in my book is an uptodate and modern look at this very important indian group. You ask how i came to write this book, i have been interested in the natchez indians for a long time. I was fortunate enough to have my office at the grim village of the the natchez indians for 33 years. So i had a chance to study the natchez culture. Just by chance i wrote an article for the journal of the mississippi history on the african slave trade, the domestic slave trade in north america. That is not something i am an expert in by any means. But i wrote the article and craig from the University Press called me and asked if i would want to write a book about the slave trade. So that i said well i would rather write a book about indians and i know a little bit about so thats how that came about. Thats my interest in history, i credit that to dinosaurs and david crockett. [laughter] when i was a kid i found out through those sources and walt disney what a wonderful place the past is and how you get to it through books and the way you get to visit that place. So i am am proud to be participating in this. Thank you jim. Jim woodruff would you please tell us about your book. I be happy to. First of all i would like to echo what chris said. Its an its an honor to be here. This beautiful place and im so glad all of you are here participating in the book festival. It is wonderful event. I will start out with how the book came about. Mine is somewhat locational as well. I have have worked in downtown jackson for 30 years and i have the privilege of working next door to our old capital museum. I have been a student of the civil war, particularly in in mississippi for most of my life. As all of you are well acquainted with the vicksburg campaign. I had realized that part of that story that had not been told and that is what occurred directly after the siege of pittsburgh which ended on july four, 1863. That is the Jackson Campaign. And the siege of jackson. As i looked around i remember i was reading a diary entry there was a Union Soldier who was writing his wife. He was sitting on the south stoop of the State Capitol building at that time. Et it was not the old capital yet. He said he could not go inside to tour because they had guards posted and i thought well that is a shame. But then i thought well im looking out the window as i am reading this at the spot where that soldier sat. So i decided at that point that i needed to do something about that. Dear friend had approach me years before about redoing an earlier book on the battle and siege of jackson. He had the the audacity to die before we got that project done. But the idea stayed with me and the result is the siege of jackson book. The seeds siege of jackson took place in the second week of jul. Grant sends his most trusted lieutenant, William Sherman back towards jackson to deal with an army under the command of general joseph johnston. Johnson has been around in Madison County throughout may and june with about 33000 men under an army called the army of relief. Re the object of that army was to relieve vicksburg. But he never made an attempt to do that. But he was a skillful commander and grant could not leave that army in his rear and abandoned vicksburg back to the confederates. So the siege took place for a weeks time in jackson. I will not give you too many many details. I want you to buy the book. But i will say that for a week there was 70000 men, blue and gray, right here in downtown jackson. In fact the spot where we are now was at the time the state penitentiary. There is no connection between the state penitentiary in the state capital. But the fighting took place around us. Be i hope from this book people will be able to appreciate that history took place right here amongst us. And and can you please tell us about your book. I am not a historian. I am a research librarian. I was in that capacity at the state archives for a very longhr time and i assisted researchers from all over the world to come and do research in our facility. We used to have a Collection Development meetings and we would come up with we have gaps in the collection and i remember world war i, the great depression, other gaps that we had. Nd so i started plunging in the collection and i happened upon, this is years ago, Works Progress administration papers, the wpa in mississippi compiled county histories. One of the topics was more for each county. Usually the only were discussed was the civil war. But every now and then world war i was included in that chapter. So i just talked that away for eons actually. Until a professor came along and wanted to have his class do a world war i project. And so that made me think about what else did we have on world war i, which was not a lot. We did have some collections that i had never explored because nobody had ever asked me about world war i. So i started looking at what collections we had and then i also started pulling those wpa war chapters and what i found was they were typescript of letters that appeared in newspapers. So that meant there was a lot more out there or to my way of thinking. So i started in addition to looking at the private collections on world war i at the archives, reading, county newspapers from all around the state. I did want to try to cover all areas of the state. And i succeeded to some degree but actually not as much as i had like to because some towns where i thought there would be letters to the editor, publications from the boys boysv overseas there were not any. I was very surprise. It could be that the addition of the paper that we happen to have on microfilm, that was not the addition that had the letters. I know different editions usedi to be but i dont know if early on in 1917 in in 1918 theres two or three editions of the paper. I did the best i could. I found some wonderful letters. I tried to have men who served. I found a lot of women who went over as red cross nurses or just army nurses they resign their cert church positions and theyn went to work for the ymca and i thought that was in an interesting slant and i had a wired array of individuals to include in the book. I think the reason i continued as i was compiling information and finding more and more and thinking this really might be a book and why, i said because no one is really when i have been at the archives the main topics of research are the civil war and civil rights. As i said, im sorry its time to tell a little bit more of the history of the state because in the thousands of boxes, gray hollinger boxes at the archives there is an untold story that people are not delving into. They are using the internet, i love the internet, however there are so many fast collections that are untouched and out there for researchers to discover and im still plugging for the archives. You need to to come down and see whats there because it is very Incredible Holdings that are waiting for you to discover them. Thank you and. Lee would you tell us about your book. I was working on a book from senator baker about 2006 and i o was thinking what it was as i drove across mississippi i think it about who would be my next project. There are number of southern senators of whom were in the 1950s and 60s, and 70s really powerful souls who had not yet had a good biography written. Let me suggest you there is not a full biography of john stennis or john mcclellan, or or john sparkman. I would encourage anybody who is out there to take a try at it. This this needs doing. But there also is jim eastland. I was not sure there is a story to tell here but as i read more about the political history in 2006 and 2007 i started seeingda tales about jim eastland being a conservative senators like jesse helms and warren hatch and then i was really surprised when i saw people like ted kennedy and joe biden and Gaylord Nelson and forgotten senator who is the father of earth day would alsoso went to jim eastland for advice. This is a story that i felt like i should tell. If i got the chance. Chance. I got the chance i pursued it. And again this is a story i got to know mississippi, great people, great food, great music, its worth coming down here. If you do not get a chance and i have not had a dull moment since i started this project. Thank you panel us. I will ask my followup question now and then if you like we will open the floor to questions from the audience. The question is, as both a reader reader and an author of history books, one it the things i try to think about is the relevance to the subject. Whatat what does this book even though it is said in the past, what does it have to say about today, why should it be of interest to an audience today. What do i expect the reader, todays reader to take away from the subject thats going to be meaningful . So my question to you to the panelist is in your particular subject, what is it that you would like the reader to take away from your book that would speak directly to todays world . There are number of things td take away from any book on history. With the natchez indians, especially there is a story of of a group of people, and ethnic group that happened to be where they were when colonization came to the Lower Mississippi valley. After 1735 the natchez people had to leave their homeland, archaeologically we can say that there are there for about 1000 years before that time. They left their homeland in 1735 and went toward the east because they had just been fighting a war with the french which made them allies of the english and the english were in carolina. That was in 1735. In the 1930s, the first time that anthropologist were in the world to harass native peoplevel and again gathering information about lots of cultures, there were natchez people in oklahoma who still spoke the natcheztill language. That is 200 years after there is any need for there to be a natchez language. But there were people speaking the natchez language in eastern oklahoma in the 1930s. Those speakers have passed on. There are no active speakers of the natchez language although the natchez people they call themselves. Theyre trying toc bring it back to life. Their sound recordings at Michigan State university and lots of information about what the natchez language was like. So the language there trying to bring it back as a living language. But their language is just one aspect of their total society. These people are still here, theyre not recognized by the federal government. But they are still here and in my career with the department of archives and history i have been fortunate enough to get to know some of these people. The take away is that societies that we think maybe are gone, they have a way of staying alive. I think a couple of things i have alluded to the first one already and that is that the siege of jackson took place right here even though there are no evident signs that any military action took place here. Jackson does not look like the Vicksburg National military park. But if you know what youre looking for and i have tried to paint a picture in the book about what was here at the time and what little remains, i think we need to remember what took place there, markets in someway, may be a take away will be that there will be some sort of interpretive effort down the road and i think also for any civil war book that i read i always look for the human stories and i tried to focus on the stories of the individualsir who served in this campaign from the private to the major general. I think what i have reallyk helped folks we get from that is that they were not cartoon figures. These are very complicated individuals with the same fears and desires that we have today. I think that we tend sometimes to make history to blackandwhite, too simple, they were for this, they were for that. This is the way that. This is the way they ate. It is not always that easy. One good example of that is the commander of the union expedition, William T Sherman who everyone seems to have an opinion on sherman whether good or bad. And here he exhibited both good and bad traits. Oday. That is just like what we are today. I guess my take away would be that these are just people. How many of you remember studying world war i in your u. S. History course . Will that is more than i thought. My course we never got to worldd war i because we spent so much time on the american revolutione and the civil war. I know that i got to world war i when i was at the w because i still have my textbooks and i pulled it for this book and read and i underline thing so i got there for that. But people i talk to consider world war i to be the forgottenn war. We just just do not talk about it. Ab we dont study it. And the world changed with world war i. Worl we became a recognized world leader after world war i. And even those these individuals with indi