mississippi author, shelby foote. any understand offering this nation has to be based on an noning of the civil war. the civil war deoffendded us as what we are and it opened us to what we game, good and bad. it's necessary if you're going to understand the american character of the 20th century to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the 19th 19th century. the crossroads of our being and a hell of a crossroads. i'd like to crow introduce my kole legs. on the far right is timothy smith. mike mallard, justin solonick, and tom parson and i'll pitch it to tim. >> it's beautiful to be here with you today. i think what we'll do first is tell you a little bit about ourselves and introduce ourselves. my name is tim smith. i live in tennessee. i teach at the university of tennessee at martin. and mississippian at heart, though. a native mississippian, grew up in carrollton and went to ol' mississippi misstate, got degrees from both somehow. egg bowl day i'm a winner either way. my publications in terms of the civil war basically fall into three different categories and each of those categories overlap a little bit. a lot of what i do, particularly recently, deals with battle histories, and i've written on shiloh and champion hill and current, and working on a book 0 on fort hinske fort donaldson. another area i like to get involved in is mississippi history, and obviously a lot of that will fall glow battle history as well. but i've written on senator james e. george, the mississippi secession commission and the other topics, and the final area i like to deal with is dealing with battle battle preservationw the veterans came back and looked at what it did decades before and how they wanted to preserve what they did, their memory and so on, and they do that through -- one of the big ways is to preserve the battlefields they had fought on so very interested in the hoyt of battlefield preservation as well. >> afternoon. i'm mike ballard. a professor emarry tase at libraries of mississippi state university. emeritus is one of those titles you get if you stay at a job long enough without getting run off. i was there over 30 years, got all my degrees out mississippi state. so from akerman, mississippi, where i lived during those years, the highway to starkville is like a long driveway. for me. my major interest of civil war history has been the western theater of the war, because i'm convinced, as are many others, that's where the war was decided. most recently i did a book on general grant and the siege of vicksburg. prior to that i did a general study of mississippi and the civil war, major campaigns and battles. and tim did a companion volume on the home front. so we think we got it covered. i also think the best book i've done, frankly, at least most involved and the hardest one to write, was the history of the vicksburg campaign that came out in 2004. it's the only one-volume study i know of that covers the entirety of the campaign. i'm very proud of it. so i always like to mention that one. i think al together -- i don't know when we throw this numbers out because they don't impress anybody usually except us, but i've published a 14 books, authored, co-authored, edited. spent a lot of years with the war, dating back to the time mist family and i used to go on vacation to vicksburg and i was always spellbound by the old chair in the old courthouse museum that grant supposedly used during the aftermath of the siege of vicksburg. something about the chair always wanted me to -- made me want to take it home with me. and it's still there. i don't nope what is holding it together. but the war to me is not just the fighting, the killing, the cannons, the bullets. it's the people. the soldiers, and even more so, civilians. i'm very interested in what they went through, what all of them went through. and i'm also developed an interest in recent years in the mississippi unionist because there's so much we don't know about them. and i would love to do a book on them but i don't know it would be possible because if you were a unionist in mississippi, it was not something you went around and talked about very much. and so it's kind of hard to find documents. some we know about. most we probably never will know about. so, that's basically an overview of my interest. the people aspect. i am, of course, interested in military history, but from there -- from that top layer, which we all have to be familiar with, down to the people involved, as i said, soldiers, civilians, children, people in towns that were impacted by the war. that story in mississippi is very compelling, as it is in most of the other states. so that's just a quick rundown of where i am with my research right now. >> hi. my name is dr. justin solonick and i'm aned a junk instructor of history at texas christian university and i'd like to thank you all for coming out today. it's wonderful to talk about history with all of you and really -- you guys are what makes this possible for us, and thank you, tim, for acting as moderator, and i want to say thank you to mike because i like mike. anyway, my current book is called engineering victory, a book i had a lot of fun writing and it was a good time and something i'm very proud of. my personal interest in the civil war actually goes back to when i was very young, about 12 years old. i'm initially -- don't get mad, i'm from connecticut. i'm sorry. i apologized. i'm sorry. i'm a native texan now. but going to the battlefields in the eastern theater with my father when i was young, and today as i said, i'm here to talk about engineering victory, my latest book. what i talk about in the book, it's really a wonderful story about how grant's arm, the army of the tennessee, an army that was deficient in engineers, and how that army was able to wage and carry out the most successful siege in american military history. a lot of people don't realize that happened at vicksburg. in addition to that i've written a chapter in a book called "the chattanooga campaign" about patrick clayburn and his rear guard action at ringle gap. so those familiar with the chattanooga campaign may know that event. the military history of the western theater of the conflict, so i look forward to answering your questions today, and if you want you're welcome to ask them even after the panel as well. i'll hand it over to tom now. >> i'm tom parson. is this new territory when i go to speak they hand out a bulletin that has my bioon it. i'm a retired navy chief petty officer from sylmar, california. my education, i like to say i got it at deckplate used. got interested in the to civil war while i was on active duty. the very first military park i visited was shiloh, and as luck would haved, when i retired in 1999, i got a job at shiloh national military park and have been with them for 16 years. the last 11 at the current civil war interpretive center. so i've been a mississippian for 11 years. i'm here today to talk about my book "work for giants: the campaign and battle of tupelo harrisburg." the heart of my research, my interest in the war, lies in what happened in northeast mississippi and west tennessee, and aside from the book i've written several magazine articles, regular column in "the daily corinthian" with articles about civil war in corinth, mississippi, and i'm writing on the battle of tupelo. you want to say hi to mike. i'm saying hi to tim. we used to be next-door neighbors when he was a ranger up at shiloh as well. tim. >> and i'm tim. i did a series that i called the sentinel, the series of civil war books and photographic books of the battlefield. of the three books we did one ol' gettysburg, vicksburg, and shiloh. if have written five more civil war books. and written two books on civil rights since growing up in jackson, i grew up there in that time and there's a big interest in that. and when i'm not doing books i'm photojournalist at the sun herald newspapers in biloxi. so i was a member of the news room that won the pew litter prize for our katrina coverage. and my labor of live right now is i promised myself, after seeing so much damage from katrina, i was going to do a book that showed the beauty of the coast, and that what i'm working on right now. and instead of all of us guys talking at you, we'll open it up and let you ask questions. if you have a question, head to the podium and fire away. if not i'll ask justin a quick question. explain saps to and every the approach of the -- >> which one -- no. okay. well, in the book i've written, engineering victory, a lot of technical terms and i tried to explain them and make them as clear as possible. if you have been to vicksburg there are a lot of approach trenches and a different brigade commanders. during the time those were trenches dug toward the vicksburg defenses that cut at sharp angles in order to prevent incoming fire from the confederate defenses. and the sap was a special kind of trench. it wasn't -- only unique to vicksburg, unique to most seasonals sense then 1700s but a sap utilized what was called ganions, large wicker basket that would be put on the sides of the trenches and filled in with argentina to protect the workers has aadvanced across no man's lan in front of a sap another characteristic feature is what is called a sap roller, and it was a big wicker basket, even bigger, knock on the side and rolled forward, usually with hand crowbars in order to prevent fire coming into the trench. what is different about vicksburg, however, that we see a lot of different types and permutations of sap rollers. partly because the weren't enough engineer officers to correctly instruct the soldiers how to build sap rollersment one of the stories i'm most fond of vicksburg is sherman, william t. sherman, on the commander of the 13th corps was riding to visit with one of his division commanders and comes up on a group that had been detailed to build gabions. and they're just standing around him says what are you doing? and they said, the guy hands them the letter that has orders and he says, do you know how to make one? the guy said, no. we haven't been in the army that long, never had. to so sherm yap gets off his horse, rolls up this sleeves, attacks an axe and shows them how much to build gabions. a two-star general building gabions. and other improvise it sap rollers. the most famous was called the gun boat which was -- there's many different descriptions. i have them in the book. the general consensus is that it was some kind of platform structure with wooden wheels and wooden axles and cotton bales on top that i would roll toward the enemy to protect them as the wasn't forward. unfortunately for the cotton bale and the boat, a soldier fired a piece of fuse from a smooth bore musket into it, and it burned down. well, they built another one but more traditional. that's what a sap roller is. i tried to make is at exciting as possible. let's be honest. >> tim, you had in your book about the secession convention, there was a picture, a guy from the new york tribune who talked his way into the secession convention. if you could tell us more about this guy. he fascinates me. >> albert richardson. albert richardson is an interesting character. in fact he wrote a book, i think 1865, 1866, got all of his adventures in it, and apparently he managed to somehow show up in jackson, right about the time of the secession convention, and didn't tell anybody who he was or where he was from and that he was reporter for a northern newspaper, but he did talk his way into the secession convention, and left a very vivid description of what these guys looked like, what the chamber looked like, the wall paper, and the plaster falling from the walls and everything. it was not a very flattering picture of mississippi at the time, but coming from the source that it did, you can imagine. but he -- this is one of those things you see him later on at fort henry and fort donaldson and he is almost like forrest gump. he is everywhere and does everything and you wonder, how much of this is really the truth? but he does offer really the only contemporary picture or hand drawing of the mississippi secession convention that is out there, and it corresponds very much with what the chamber descriptions say it would have looked like at the time. so, obviously he was there and had a visual view of what was going on and so on, and the things the describes, you can go back into the journals and the newspaper accounts and so on, and it matches up almost perfectly. so i have no doubts he was there. but it was a little bit of trickery to get into the mississippi secession convention they were dumbfounded when they read accounts of what he had written days later in in the new york herald or whatever the paper was. he is an interesting, which. >> mike, i'll ask you a question about ulises s. grant. i think if you told people before the war they would not have said he would be such a compelling character in the civil war. since you have written and studied so much on grant, give us a feeling about grant, the general, and the man. >> well, grant's -- i think, first, it's important to know his personality. he was very quiet man, very withdrawn, rarely cracked a joke, rarely smiled at jokes, very inward type personality. he -- his prewar years were indeed tragic in many ways. he graduated from west point, kind of of middle of the pack. nothing outstanding about him as a student. then he got married after the mexican war. did a good job in the mexican war, nothing really astonish, but did a good job. in fact crossed paths with john pemberton while he was down there. neither one of them knew how they would cross paths in later years. grant came home, married, a lady in missouri. her -- julia dent. her family was a slave--owning family, and from the questions -- one question that has still swirling around over civil war history all these year, didn't general grant own slaves? no. he was given a slave by his wife's family, and he proceeded to free that man in a very short time. he never owned any himself. his wife's family certainly did. and in fact, julia took a woman that had been a slave for her family, took that woman with her throughout much of the war, not treating her as a slave but more as a confidante, but in 1864, i believe it was, this lady left, and of course julia did nothing to try to stop her. she was very hurt that this woman would want to leave her, which is kind of a signal of that complex relationship between slaves and masters during the slave years. when grant got back home, he tried a lot of things to make a living. he had resigned from the army. after a brief time in the far west, northwest, he had tried to do some things there farming-wise, and trying to make extra money. he was very unhappy being away from his wife. they were very close throughout marriage, and it was there that he was first accused of drinking in a public way. i think that came about because of his depression, being away from his wife. so he eventually resigned from the army, and that drinking thing was just like you make one mistake and it never goes away. it will follow you all the days of your life, especially if you're a prominent person. so there are many wild stories out there about grant's drinking. only a small, very tiny percentage of them have any truth to them. when grant -- when the war started, grant was living in gay leap galina, illinois, and organized a local troop there, and then he was called to springfield, illinois, the capitol, by the governor of illinois, to help with paperwork and getting everything organized in illinois. he was, of course, had the west point background, and then he led some troops into forays into missouri, nothing spectacular happened. his battle was at belmont, missouri, just across the river from kentucky. kind of a mixed bag. he made progress at first and then he had to get his troops out of there in a hurry because the confederates counterattacked with more men. but he made it. then came fort donaldson, fort henry, shiloh, he lost his command of the army of tennessee at shiloh because henry hall lack, who commanded the whole western region, did not like grant very much and certainly did not like the way he conducted the battle at shiloh the first day. so, after the union victory at shiloh, halak took command of the army and made grant second in command, which meant he had nothing to do. and he came very close to resigning from the army, and we can only wonder what might have happened to the union cass if he had. his close friend, william t. sherman talked him out of it. sherman would later say, i saved grant when he was drunk and he saved me when i was crazy. and that there's some stories behind that comment, but sherman did indeed talk grant into toughing it out. eventually halak was called back to washington to be commander in chief of all the union armies -- abraham lincoln was commander in chief. so grant began his campaigning against vicksburg. it went through several months, several phases, certainly don't have time to get into all of those. what grant learned, he was very deeply depressed about what happened after shiloh. it was when he figured out that the people in washington -- he had a good friend, congressman, named washburn, who was always on his side in washington. and so when he figured out that every time he stubbed his toe that lincoln and halak and ed win stanton, the second of war, were not going to fire him. when he got at confidence from the support he was getting from washington, that pushed him to what he became, very fine general. he had his good -- good things as a general, some things he was not so good at. but the main thing about him as a general, which is the point i always emphasize, and i think the point that the -- the main point that makes me admire him so much is that he never gave up. it did not matter how many times he had setbacks. it didn't matter how many times things went wrong. it didn't matter how many infighting there was among his generals. he never gave up. and that what took him through to the victory of vicksburg, later chattanooga, and then into virginia in 1864 against robert e. lee. that, by the way, is going to be my next boot. i'm going with grant to virginia. i'm not abandoning the western theater. after all he came from the western theater, and i still live here. so, we're not abandoning the western theater, just going eas to show them how it's done. but i'm looking forward to that. and as i did with the book on grant at vicksburg, the general and the siege. i like to focus on him on a daily basis, what was he doing. never really read anywhere, what was he doing during the seeming of vicksburg on a daily bay is? what roles did he actually play? and i will do that in -- with him in virginia, too. so, i think to use one of the phrases we're used to these days-grant went from rags to riches and did it the hard way. he earned it. and he had to really fight and scrap, but he made it. >> a question toward tom here. involves one of mississippi's own guys, earl van dohrn, i hear he is quite the lady's man, and suspect, general? >> easterly van dohrn is a fascinating individual. he is at the heart of what i do at the civil war interpretive center because he is the army commander, army of west tennessee, his campaign is to retake all of west tennessee but he has to take the garrison at corinth first, and he has got a lot to live up to. much is thought of him at the beginning of the war. he is the second ranking jenna mississippi, only to jefferson davis. he is placed in command of the transmississippi department, and he leads an army to defeat at pea ridge. he brought across the mississippi river, shortly after the battle of shiloh. he misses a few opportunities to hurt general halak's army group during the siege of corinth. in the late summer of 1862, this army of west tennessee attacks corinth from the northwest and it's a two-day battle, and van dohrn is terribly beaten. ... >> interestingly enough, all the history books missed that. if you look at the top ten lists of the casualties, those men ofe the second texas, 42nd alabama, they get forgotten. and van dohrn, he doesn't even realize it, but at the time of the battle, he's been replaced.n john pemberton has been brought in to be d the overall commander in mississippi in the department. van dohrn hasre just reare organized the department -- reorganized the department and put himself right out of a job. but it works to his advantage. a few short months later after grant begins his campaign against vicksburg, van dohrn is called upon to be a cavalry g commander. and he's a bit of a disaster as an infantry commander. but he's finally come into his own as a cavalry commander, and he leads this incredible raid that goes around grant's armwn that's proceeding southward towards jackson and destroys grant's supply depot be at holla springs. southward towards jackson, it destroys grant supply depot at holly spring. the only time during the war cavalry changes the course of a campaign, grant is is forced to retire out of mississippi completely. his star is on the rise, he does does well as a calvary commander until, as you alluded to in the spring of 1863 at springhill, he begins to play dr. with the doctor's wife, that being doctor peters. the jealous husband he dispatches general van dorn, instead of dying with glory and the battle field he is shot by a jealous husband at the height of his military career. >> i see we have a gentleman will get his question. >> i am wondering about the home front, i don't know if you want to tackle this or not but things like i am assuming the rate of slaves running away increased at the moment the war started. because there weren't as many men around to chase them and that sort of thing, what happens to cotton production immediately that had made the south of rich and in one sense made the war start. correct me on this stuff, but with slaves gone i'm assuming and with a lot of the white men owners gone, i'm i'm assuming the cotton production couldn't do very well and i'm wondering how what ever happened on the plantation during the civil war, of course a lot of people didn't come back and certainly slaves didn't, not that they all left even during emancipation and 63 but then cotton production and any other kind of economic thing in the south seems like it took 40 years to get started again. i'm wondering about that. on that plantation during the civil war, anything, anything you could say about that. >> to questions there, the first one dealing with the slaves on the plantation. they didn't all leave at the beginning of the war because basically when slaves leave is the point when union armies get close enough to provide them protection. you don't see a mass exodus from say the plantations in northern mississippi until the spring of 1862 when federal armies get close enough that they can make that -- towards freedom safely. they can reach what their goal is to get some protection there. the farther south the union armies go in 1862 in 1863, you will see slaves on plantations are there southward start that process as well. it something similar as with the union isn't that doctor bauer talked about, a lot of mississippians and don't become unionists because until union army be shows up in their neighborhood area and it's beneficial to them to become union now because of the confederates supporters. that's sort of the same thing with this lays on the plantation. another aspect of that you mentioned there were not as many men around to catch them and go after them if they left and so on. the confederate army, and in spring of 1862 will exempt will exempt certain officials, like sheriffs, constables, other political duties and so on and they will be the main ones who will be hunting runaway slaves. there is still each of those law-enforcement officials in the counties that will go after any slaves that might have run off. the second question about cotton production, you are correct it does take a nosedive, almost immediately when the war begins. that's not so much there weren't slaves to work the plantations it's more, actually in terms of a call to the state government actually to switch cotton production to food production. in fact what everybody realizes especially in the blockade in 1861's were probably not going to get our cotton out of here anyway, we all know about jefferson davis king cotton diplomacy and withhold our cotton and force britain and france to come in on our side so they can get our cotton, of of course they start getting conned from india and brazil, and egypt and elsewhere. that's out of my realm, i don't know. but what will happen during the war itself is that the state government in order to feed the massive armies and the population, they will call on farmers to actually switch production from cotton to corn production and other foodstuffs as well. in fact i fact i saw a very interesting piece of letterhead, i was doing some research and a letter was written in february 19, 1862 and the letter had had cornstalks and it said cotton is no longer king, corn is king now. it was the effort of course to get people to switch from comp production to food production that can be used internally in the confederacy. >> , be able to expand on this better than me, during that time his troops to come into mississippi tell us about the contraband can't. >> there were a number of contraband camps that would spring up around the country and they would congregate for the protection of the army. most of the times the cans were massive a general dodge veneers commander at that time, he called for an organized camp, real houses, frame houses their main streets. >> right up to the time where the union leaves in january 1864. so it's a successful camp. but, unfortunately, when the union presence ended, general sherman needed the troops for his meridian campaign.er without the protection of the army, all of the contrabands as they were known were taken by train to memphis and put into two different camps there, and those were those nasty, squalid ones. >> we have another person at the podium. >> hello. this question, i was curious, if you could explain the first successful use of mining at vicksburgd to breach fortifications? >> not sure if many of you are aware of it or not, but the first successful detonation of a mine was at vicksburg. there were two, one on june 59 of 1863 and the other on july 3st ofde 1863. -- 1st of 1863. . oath of these occurred at the head of logan's approach. the mines in themselves, especially when speaking about the june 25 mine might be classified as being both successful and a failure at the same time. why was it a failure, most obviously because the breach was never exploited. they tried but on july 21 they just detonated the attack. on 25 june, 1863 those trips that did rush into the mine trips that did rush into the mine did try to exploit the bridge who are thwarted by mainly the same locket the chief engineer who it's encountered the particular attack and organize the assistance. the successful component of this all with that they weren't sure if they could successfully detonate a mind underneath. the individual response before detonating this was from ohio who had been a prewar civil engineer, he he had no professional training whatsoever, he enters though war and artillery battery and then eventually he was promoted to the 17th army corps. he says says in his own account that he was self-taught mainly those who were written by dennis. i hope that answers your questions about the victor mine explosions. >> i have another question. >> i have two questions, the first is what was civilian life actually like, and what misconception or perceptions need to be clarified regarding civilian life in the civil war? most people you speak to will say everyone own slaves and everyone was a plantation owner so those are just two misconceptions that i'm the wearer. the second question is with the modern development and a lot of rural communities, how or what means are there to preserve battle site and why is it important to preserve them for our children to be exposed to those historic sites? >> i'm sure the panel could help answer question. >> dealing with the preservation of civil war battlefield is extremely important, the nation that doesn't remember its heritage is doomed to fail or something like that we know from history we are bound to reap pete ourselves and repeat our mistakes, battlefields are special places, obviously obviously people have died there for that reason it's a special place. you can learn from them of course one of the reasons the original battlefields were set up in 1890, in fact was military leadership reason that officers from the united states military would come back to those battlefield and conduct what we call staff rights. they rode horses in those days but they still call them staff rights. i did numerous staff rides with military units, it was interesting to do there's staff right but they learned the lessons of history and tactics in weapon three in all that has changed over the time. the basic principles of war are timeless and never ending and just as relevant today as they were for julius caesar 2000 years ago. they don't change over time, things like surprise and mass of forces and have a clear objective unity of command. you can learn those lessons on a battlefield today. another aspects in terms of historic research and writing, so when i did the other book i made the comment that's best source i had for writing the history of shallow was the battlefield of shallow itself. i'm a firm believer that you have to understand the battlefield if you are going to understand the battle and train is just that important. i'm dealing with that right now been working on this of book with fort donaldson. fort donaldson was not preserved until the late 1920s, as a result the veterans were not there to come back and say this is where our unit was, this is where we are position, this is where certain things happen. so that gap so that gap of 30 or 40 years, uu lose a lot there and as a result it's difficult to pinpoint specific things. shallow kind of spoiled me a little bit. it's very important as well as and i will give a shout out to the civil war trust, they are doing amazing work and preserving civil war battlefields all around the nation so get in touch with them and take a look at them if you are so inclined. >> mike, you had a lot of civilians at vicksburg who sort of burrowed into the ground and were subjected from david porter's guys tell us how civilians dealt with. >> will that was the pattern throughout the state that a lot of people went to live with relatives and alabama, tennessee may be. the common rule of thumb was around among union soldiers if they found an indian house, they they tend to burn it. the people stayed behind and showed the willingness to stand up for what they believed in, stand up for their property, most times most times they would leave those houses alone. those were not written orders they're following, it it just seemed to be the pattern. at vicksburg, the life was very real and it gets so much publicity that i think people think it's so much like stories people make up, i think there are at least two caves over that that are still identified and in existence but they will not let you go in there and you shouldn't want to because they could very well cave-in on you. they are not marked, they are are not part of the park, they are just there and people that live over there along time they can tell you exactly where they are. those caves were kind of fancy places in some instances, they might dig into the side of a hill and might have three or four rooms back in there. it was an interesting dilemma for these people, sometimes the union army would stop shelling during the siege and they usually had a certain amount of time they would quit doing that, when they did the civilians understood that so they would come out of the caves, run home and see if home was still there, take care of what business they could and then get back to the caves as quickly as they could. a lot of the homes were damaged from shelling, obviously. some, more so than others. it's an interesting fact that there is not as much damage in the streets in vicksburg and in the homes as you might have expected, from weeks and weeks of union shelling. even the union soldiers were surprised there wasn't more damage done. i don't know if it says something about the marksmanship of the union gunners, or what was the cause of that. now the shells coming up from the river had to be lobbed at because they had to clear that high blood before they hit anything at vicksburg, they were easy to dodge. people were out and one of those things came up they could see where it was going to get out of the way. it was a mess to survive, most people did survive the siege of vicksburg but it was hard, hard times, hard on the confederate soldiers but even more so because there were women and children in those caves, sometime the shell might land close to the front of the cave, it might go off, it might not but they just had to re-treat as deeply into the cave as they could get hoping it wouldn't go off before they could get out of harm's way. in a general sense looking at the amount of military activity there was, where they lived, many of them wrote letters and kept diaries complaining about union soldiers and can federate soldiers taking their food away from them. they had to make do the best they could. in fact, it is true when sherman marched to meridian, he had a lot of white people along the way that followed his army back to vicksburg because they figured they might get something to eat when they got there, since the union army controlled vicksburg, they are being wiped out by people on both sides. so they just walked behind the army white people, and black people and followed the union soldiers back to vicksburg. it was not an easy life. in north mississippi, some of the first action of the war occurred there, a lot of people left, just completely left everything behind. when they did, you could be certain when they got back their homes would not be there. it varied across the state, south mississippi wasn't quite as bad because there wasn't as much military action south of vicksburg as that there was in central and northern mississippi. >> i want to add one word to what tim was saying about preservation. everything he said was absolutely correct, the the need to study the battles and the movements, staff rides applying these lessons. i would venture to say that the majority of the people in this room have an ancestor in the civil war that was involved with the civil war in one way or the other. many of these battlefields, in particular those that have been developed and are covered up with stripmall's and walmarts, the need to preserve is a far greater to me then to adding another 5 acres to gettysburg or somewhere that has already been targeted. i'm working with the historic trails commission to put up signs for different activities that occurred there during the battle. it's so important because it's hallowed ground, people are still buried there, their graves were covered over with this development and if it was important enough for them to spill their blood and die for that piece of land, it certainly is important enough for us to preserve it and remember it. >> we don't have much time left, i want to thank everybody and throw one fast question to justin. tell us about coonskin. >> well, where to begin. you're all wondering about what he just asked me why we are talking about this. it was actually the nickname of a second lieutenant in the 23rd and he was henry school coonskin foster and he wore a coonskin hat, there are different accounts of where he got it at. he was the closest thing we get to a modern sniper at vicksburg during the war. during the war, soldiers didn't receive training in marksmanship , they are either practice marksman or the most they would learn in camp if they were lucky would be the basic movement to load and fire and whatnot based on hardest tax dick and or some other equivalent. foster was one of those that came to the army to practice marksman so during the siege early on he would creep into this space of no man's land, make himself a little hide is what we call him in today's terminology. today he would then take rations with them for a few days and take shots at defenders. the goal was to take shots at people so you can move forward and protect the workers. what he was most famous war was because one day, we don't know why, it could have been a lack of something he decided to organize a small group from his company and they built a tower. a log cabin style tower in order to look into vicksburg and to provide fire to the confederates. that became known as coonskin's tower. they caught a lot of attention by a lot of the soldiers, so much so that some soldiers try to charge an admission fee to climb the tower from time to time. it attracted visitors from all over's, one of which was grant himself. one story was that they posted a guard at the tower because they were afraid soldiers would climb up it, these are young kids, they wanted something to do while the guard had wanted often grant slipped in, he is the commanding general stuff you want to climb the tower he can. he went to the top and the guard came back and started cursing at him and grant comes down and walks away, he doesn't say anything. one of the guy says did you know who that was? and he said that was grant. and then he rants runs over and apologize, grant didn't do anything he had bigger things to do the deal at that one soldier. it became a landmark of vicksburg, there's the famous picture of it, the original is in the chicago historical society and if you're curious to where was it was the tower survive the siege, the photograph was taken in the aftermath and that's how we know what it look like visually at least. >> once again i'd like to think everybody on behalf of tim, mike, justin, and tom, thank you for your participa >> you're watching booktv, television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org. >> our road to the white house coverage of the presidential candidates continues from new hampshire. monday morning at 10 eastern, live coverage from the no labels problem solver convention in manchester. speakers include eight republican and democratic presidential candidates talking on the issues of uniting the country, jobs creation, balancing the budget, securing social security and medicare and making america energy secure. on tuesday afternoon at 12:30, we are live with ohio governor john kasich as he speaks at a town hall meeting in beau, new hampshire. and on wednesday live at 7 p.m. eastern, former florida governor jeb bush will speak at a town hall meeting in concord. c-span's campaign 2016, taking you on the road to the white house on c-span, c-span radio and c-span.org. >> but it was a public school, and it was in minnesota where it gets 10 below zero, and i wore multicolored flower bell bottom pants. i was so proud of these pants, and sure enough, i was called into the principal's office who had this enormous beehive haircut. i still remember it to this day. i'm sitting there trembling in the chair, and she said you can wear your trousers and culottes and pant loons at home, but at beacon high school, you wear dresses. and i literally got a permission slip, walked home to my house, changed into a dress and came home. and i shed a few tears, i'll say that much. and so i use that example of why i wrote the book, to show how through it all, changing mores, a changing cull which are, that -- culture, that i ended up being able to wear pants, being able to be the girl who could respond to the principals of the year, but at that moment i did what she said. and the one little tangent to that story is that when the book came out, i actually got a call from someone, and he says this is the son of your principal. and i'm like, oh, no. he says, i read that, i didn't like what you said about my mom. i said, ron, it was true, she really kid kick me out of the cool, she did. and he said, you know, what you said about her hair with the bee hi, i checked on the -- beehive, i checked on the internet, i'm so sorry. and all of a sudden you hear this laughter, and this voice says al. it was al franken, my colleague, faking that he was the son of the principal. but that is how the book starts. >> you know, one of the things i took from that story is that it's a process to learn how to stand up for yourself. >> uh-huh. >> in a situation like that. and it takes some time, i think, especially for girls to figure out how to do that. >> and i think we're seeing that change. one of the reasons i wrote this, and it's not just about girls, it's trying to get people from regular backgrounds growing up in a middle class neighborhood in the suburbs thinking, you know, i can do this, at least i can get involved in the political process. ..