American civil war at the university of virginia and a great friend to the Virginia Historical society. He has spoken here on several occasions and has done research here in the Rich Holdings of our civil war manuscripts. He was a member of the class in 1988. I wont tell you how old i was at that point. We were glad to have him then as today. He has also mined the collection of the Confederate Memorial Society at the museum of the confederacy for his essays. That question, that collection, as you may know, will be housed at the Virginia Historical society where it will be preserved, catalog, and digitized as part of a new Civil War Research center. This will be, through this partnership, the largest private repository of civil war archives in the world. [applause] as you might imagine, that comes with a great cost and lots of work. This is a 3 million effort to provide storage, process and catalog the collection, and in doubt this so it can be available to the largest possible audience. Were halfway there, and we welcome your help. Professor gallagher has received many awards, including the prize for the best book on the civil war, the award for contributions to civil war studies, the lincoln prize, and the award for the best Nonfiction Book on the civil war. He was the founder and first president for the foundation of preserving civil war sites. Please join me in welcoming professor gallagher. Prof. Gallagher i am going to switch microphones. I am delighted to be here. It is always fun to speak in this room. Jamie wouldnt tell you how old he was when i was a mellon fellow here. I will reveal i had brown hair. It was a long time ago in deed. It was about that time i gave a lecture in the mural gallery, which i dont think happens anymore, a lecture about the lost cause. The vibe in the room was right for that lecture. The vibe in this room is perfect because it is filled with booksellers and those of you who are friends of the library and interested in history. I will talk about the best confederate memoirs. That is Edward Porter alexander. That is not just my view, it would be unanimous of people who know what books confederate soldiers wrote. He stands by himself. These accounts are unrivaled among those published by men who fought for the confederacy. They were written over a decade beginning in the late 1890s, but appeared more than 80 years apart, in print more than 80 years apart. A critical narrative was First Published in 1907. The next was published in 1989. Alexander brought to his books acuity, a gift for describing key scenes and dramatic and memorable fashion, and the perspective of one who bitterly fought from manassas to appomattox. He served on the staff of general beauregard. Johnson, and lee, before distinguishing himself as the finest artillerys inist in the confederacy. He wrote with almost none of the lost cause special pleading that was evident in the writings of most of his former comrades. I want to convey a sense of why alexanders books are remarkable. I will start with a little biographical information before moving on to address how he wrote the books and what audience he had in mind for each of them. He had very different audiences in mind. I will close by reading passages from the books that will illustrate their great strengths. His narrative skills. I will open and close with three of his finest narrative passages. They are great, gripping, fine narratives. In almost every part of his book this is true. They convey interesting information about the army, its makeup, and its character. I will use passages that illustrate his willingness to convey the heard, the dark side, of the civil war. I will quote a couple of passages that show his sharp criticism of lost cause icons. Robert e. Lee and jackson at a time when confederates didnt do that. He is not all alone in his willingness to do that, but he doesnt have much company. I will offer other passages that illustrate how he deviated from what people generally expected to get in an account written by a former confederate. Before getting on with the substance of my talk, i will give you to personal observations. I spent four years editing fighting for the confederacy. I worked on them through the late 1980s. Of all the projects, that was the most enjoyable. The only one i was sorry to finish here use only usually are not only happy to finish but staggering to the end wondering if life is worthwhile. In fighting for the confederacy, it was not that way because i knew id would not be in Porter Alexanders company anymore. This is interesting to the audience because of the booksellers, but as a confirmed bibliophile since i was 10 years old, i have had the chance to own many copies of the memoirs of fighting for the confederate. The First Edition in 1907 that had a dust jacket on it. The person that sold that timmy is in this audience, but i had Porter Alexanders own copy with his annotations. Two very nice copies to own. Now i will stop talking about that. Just to set the scene, he was born into a prominent slave owning family in washington, georgia on may 25, 1836. He received his education at tutors at home before going to west point in 1853, graduating third in the class of 1857. He was marked from the beginning as someone that would go somewhere. And the three years following his graduation he taught at west point, participated in the last days of the mormon war, and developing the system of motion telepathy that would be the wigwag system of motion that would be used in the war. He left in february of 1861 and made his way to richmond. Upon arrival found out he had been commissioned in the confederacys fledgling army. No other officer played such a varied roles or worked closely with such prominent officers as e. P. Alexander. He joined beauregards staff as the chief signal officer in june of 1861. He also made him chief of ordinance in his army. He held both posts in johnstons army and under re lee after that. He served in both capacities through much of 1862. He did so during the peninsula campaign, second bull run, and during the Maryland Campaign of 1862. He was also frequently called upon to perform engineering tasks. He was really smart. He knew he was really smart. You could tell he probably found ways to let other people know he was really smart. He was really smart, so people valued him and asked him to do things that were not necessarily related to his official portfolio within the army. Lee was one of those. Lee and the others figured out while he was doing these things figured out where his real aptitude was , was with artillery. We have no more accomplished officer, wrote the chief of artillery and recommending alexander be promoted to command one of the battalions of artillery in james long streets first corp. He gathered the batteries into battalions in the autumn of 1862, a much more efficient way to deploy artillery. It is one of the great innovations in artillery during the war. Now he has been given a battalion. Lee thought that was where he belonged and he was promoted to a colonel in 1863. He now had a secure place in the branch where he would make his reputation. The most famous historian of the army of Northern Virginia, wrote of alexander, he was far and away the superior of all others in this arm. He was the best confederate artilleryist. Ive made that 4 times. I wont tell you again, but you can file that away. He immediately excelled in his position at he plays the guns in fredericksburg that played such a significant role during the battle of fredericksburg on december 13, 1862. He was the key person on may the third. Hazel grove, they key ground that gave the confederates one of the few opportunities during the war to obtain artillery superiority in a major battle. He was in charge of the bombardment in gettysburg on july 3, 1863. He is everywhere in lees campaign. He is in the first corp, but while half was near suffolk, alexander was with the army. He is with them all through those campaigns. He went to north georgia in september of 1863 with long streets first corp. On all of those fields he functioned as the tactical chief of artillery in james long streets first corp. Walton had that position. This was a difficult situation. It made sense in a practical way because the best person is in charge when it counts the most, but not all the time. There was a little bit of tension. That was a situation that involved frustration. That ended in 1864 when alexander was promoted to Brigadier General and became the official head of the artillery. There are only three biggest Brigadier Generals of artillery. He maintained his position through the seizure of petersburg and on his way to appomattox near it he helped to lay out part of the defensive line in richmond in the last part of the war. Lee eventually put him in charge of all the confederate artillery between the james and appomattox rivers. As the army made its way to appomattox and went on the ninth of april, federals were pressing in several directions against lees troop. Porter alexander drew the last battle line on the army in Northern Virginia and ended his memorable military career. Despite the demands of a successful postwar career, he was an educator and railroad executive i wont go into that. Despite supporting his family, he had a large family, he had the opportunity to study the campaigns of the war. He was originally going to write a history of the first corp but was too busy. He didnt push through with that. He could not find enough material as he wanted. He dropped his plan to write a history of the first corp in the late 1860s. He returned to the history of the war in the 1870s and contributed several pieces. He contributed two to the century companys landmark series. He began thinking about perhaps writing more than just essays. In all of the things that he wrote, he showed a scrupulous attention to detail and absence of special pleading that showed him to be very different from most of the men writing about the war. Most people sought to get even. Now i will get even with him. I will write this article, and it will feel so good to get even with him. He will know how good it makes me feel, and that will make him feel even worse. [laughter] life is rich. Robert underwood johnson was one of the editors of battles and leaders aptly described alexander as a man of integrity and candor. Anything he writes may be relied upon. Alexander undertook a full memoir in the late 1890s. He was sent to nicaragua to adjudicate a boundary dispute by grover cleveland. He went down in 1897 and had not been there that long when he got a letter from one of his daughters. Poplar, you have not had time to write your reminiscences, and now i want you to. I want you to start writing them for us, meaning his children. So, he decided that would probably be a good idea. He didnt have a lot of time on his hands. He had a small library. He had brief diaries that he had kept during the war. He corresponded with fellow confederate soldiers as he went along and he began to retrace the campaigns of the army of Northern Virginia. He intended to let no one but his family read this account. That is exceedingly important. He is not writing this for publication. He does not think anyone will read this except for his children, and eventually their children, and perhaps a very small circle of his closest friends. No one but his family would see the finished project, but he still wanted to get things right. As he explained to one of his sisters, i intend not to publish, but only to let my children see these. So, of course, they are very personal, he wrote to his sister. But although they were going to be personal, he said he wanted to get things right. He said, i have written with my own viewings a critical narrative of the military game which was being played. I have not hesitated to criticize our moves as i would moves in chess, no matter what general made them. Upon returning home, he said he would revise the manuscript. He wanted to finish a first draft before he left nicaragua. Take thet he would time and really polish it and let his family see it. He said i will just fill in some gaps once i get home. He thought it would take two years. He did finish a draft before he left in 1899. Octoberit was 1200 pages long, just a shade more than 1200 pages long. He has a beautiful hand. When i edited it, there was one word in 1200 pages that we couldnt figure out. Porter alexander seemed to take a different view. How about writing in a legible hand . There is an idea. He certainly did. It is 1200 pages long, and it offered innumerable insights into lee and his campaigns, as well as a bountiful supply of anecdotes about alexanders activities. Bluntly honest in a text he believed very few people would ever see, except for family and friends. He dissected campaigns with a very impartial and analytical eye. It is unlike anything else in the literature. Re lee, Stonewall Jackson, and others in the southern pantheon came in for very close analysis. He admired both of them a great deal. There is a tremendous amount of praise in his manuscript, but also very telling critiques of them. The distortions characteristic of southern accounts influenced by the myth of the lost cause have almost no place in the graytown recollections, almost none. 90 years after alexander wrote them, unc press published them. There is a long period when no one knows this existed. The only reason i found out is because stephen roe saw a passage from what became fighting for the code c, showed confederacy, showed it to bob crick who showed it to me. We discussed which would edit it. Crick because he is such a Stonewall Jackson guy, said why dont you go look in chapel hill . He would not have said that if he had known what was there of course. I think bob deeply regrets this. I went down to chapel hill, spent a week, gave myself one week to figure out what it was. The manuscript for fighting for the confederacy had been pulled apart and the chapters filed with topical chapters from other of alexanders writings, so this 1200 page manuscript literally disappeared into the mass of alexanders papers, and people who did see it believed it was a draft of campaigns. Military memoirs. I found a letter to his wife that said i am sending the gettysburg chapter. It is 115 pages with two maps. I went and found 115 pages and two maps and then began to look for other pieces. This was literally friday afternoon when i found this letter. I was on the last half of my last day. I extended my visit, and very quickly i had a manuscript that went from page 1 to 1200. The entire manuscript. It was remarkable. It was fun. Some might say, big fun. First,rate, that is the wn reminiscences are the first ones. He used the graytown as the basis out of which military memoirs group. The death of his wife in 1899 and of a daughter five months later cast alexander in a very depressed place. It took him a number of months to pull out of it. What really pulled him out of it was the decision to revise his reminiscence into another book. He decided to make it a different kind of book. He talked to some historians, leading historians it is always dangerous to talk to historians. He talked to them and they said it is interesting, but why dont you get rid of all that personal stuff . Nobody cares about all that. Why dont you make it more of the history of the army of Northern Virginia, and that is what alexander decided to do. He took out most of the really personal stuff, he left some in, but took out a lot of it and made it a more analytical, almost scholarly history, of the army of Northern Virginia. It took him six years to work through all of this. The revised text differed from graytown manuscript inn important ways. Most of the personal stuff is gone. A lot of the really blunt assessments, gone. He toned those down. He is still very critical and military memoirs, but not the kind of language he used in fighting for the confederacy. He often softened or cut his most critical passages. The original allocated 30 of the text to events before gettysburg. Military memoirs, 57 . They both gave about 13 to gettysburg. And graytown had 47 after gettysburg. Military memoirs, 28 . Youbners as i already told published in 1907, and it made an immediate impact. It gained the status very quickly of that overused word yu published in 1907, and it made it happens on monday, it is a classic . Really . Three days later . This one was perceived quickly as a classic. Theodore roosevelt informed alexander shortly that i must write to tell you that i have thoroughly enjoyed your military memoirs. The army and navy journal announced it one of the most valuable of all books on the war. Although many southerners complained of alexanders sometimes too harsh evaluations of lee, or took exception to his lack of regret over the decline confederacy, but most had a deep admiration for what alexander accomplished. Later historians echoed that an initial enthusiasm. In an introduction to a reprint of military memoirs, t. Harry williams wrote in introduction that came during the centennial years. Williams was one of the towering figures in civil war scholarship at that point. Williams observed, no book by a participant in the war has done so much to shape the historical image of that conflict. As alexander drew lessons from the battles, so a lesson can be drawn from his book. Namely, that the finest military history may be written by a soldier who is also a scholar. The principal criticism registered by modern historians, pre1989, was that alexander had not put enough of his own experiences in his book. We wish we had gotten more from him. Of course, that criticism evaporates when you put fighting for the confederacy along with military memoirs , because there you get both things together. They complement each other and are a matchless contribution to the literature on the military side of the war. Ok. Now i am just going to read you some passages from the two books to give you a sense of why i think it is so good. I am going to open with the passage from military memoirs dealing with fredericksburg. Not the battle on december 13, but the scene on december 11, 1862 as the United States Army Engineers are throwing pontoon bridges under fire across the rappahannock river. Alexander has this incredible view of what is going on. The scene at fredericksburg was never duplicated anywhere else during the war. It is this fast the article situation where you can see more men than any other place at any other time in the war. Absolutely unmatched, nothing even close, and here is how alexander talked about the Union Artillery bombarding the city. Because confederates are using the links in the city as shelter to resist the Bridge Builders on the union side. The city except its steeples mistveiled in the that settled in the valley. It showed the round, high clouds of bursting shells. Out of the mist there rose three or four columns of dense black smoke from houses set on fire by the explosion. The atmosphere was so column and still that the smoke rose vertically in great pillars for several hundred feet before spreading out in black sheets. The opposite bank of the river for two miles to the right and left was crowned at frequent intervals with blazing batteries canopied in clouds of white smoke. Beyond these, the dark blue masses of over 100,000 infantry and compact columns and numberless white wagons and massed in orderly ranks, all awaiting completion of the bridges. The earth shook with the thunder of the guns. High above it all 1000 feet in the air hung two immense balloons. The scene gave impressive ideas of the disciplined power of a great army and the vast resources of the nation that scented forth. An amazing scene of what could be seen that day. Let me give three samples of how alexander was willing to reveal the really hard, bloodthirsty, unpleasant part of the war. The first was from may 3 at chancellorsville. Just after his guns had achieved guns at unionis grove, the United States army in retreat, hooker has been stunned by around. The federals are retreating to the north. Alexander moves into position. I will pick up his writing right here. By the time we could get over, the enemy had abandoned his 25 gun pits. Plateauyed on the pla and opened on the fugitives infantry, artillery, wagons, everything swarming around the chancellor house, and down the broad road leading to the river. That is the part of Artillery Service that might be denominated, to fire on the swarming fugitives who cannot answer back, one usually has to pay for that pie before he gets it, so he has no conscience of orpunctions of conscience chivalry. We ceased firing, and ordering the guns to follow as they could limber up, i galloped forward to the house. Several wounded federal soldiers were lying here who had been quartered inside and hastily removed when it caught fire. I remember knowing a beautiful newfoundland dog that had been killed lying in the yard. After a while, general lee and his staff wrote up, and once more those two portions of his army was united. You dont get many people quite so frank on how much delight they get in killing people running away from them and not in a position to fight back. Alexander is very blunt about that. He is also very blunt when he describes the fighting at the , july,of the crater 1864. It was the first time the army in Northern Virginia ever ran into significant numbers of black troops on the federal side. He is very matteroffact in fighting for the confederacy about the impact that first confrontation had. There were comparatively very few negro prisoners taken that day. It was the first occasion on which any of the army of Northern Virginia came in contact with negro troops, and the general feeling of the men towards their employment was very bitter. The sympathy of the north where john browns memory was taken for proof of desire that our slaves should rise in servile insurrection and massacre throughout the south. The enlistment of negro troops were regarded as advertisement of that desire and encouragement of the idea to the negro. That made the fighting on this occasion exceedingly fierce and bitter on the part of our men. Not only towards the negroes themselves, but sometimes even to the white men that fought alongside them. Some of the negro prisoners that were originally allowed to surrender by some soldiers, were shot by others, and there was a great deal of unnecessary killing of them. Matter of fact, this is what happened. I will describe it and move on. Unusual passage to find in a confederate memoir. He did not dress up language. They didnt really abide by the victorian conventions, especially not in fighting for the confederacy. That last passage was from fighting for the confederacy. So is this one. He is willing to put, we know the 19th century americans have all the words that we have. Every word we have, they had. They used all the words we use. If we had wandered around the battlefield, we would have thought, my goodness fbombs , everywhere. Most would not put that down. Going to put every kind of language down, but here is Porter Alexander describing a situation at first bull run late in the phase of the battle where a bunch of civilians came out to sort of watch the big climactic battle. One of those civilians was a congressman from new york named alfred ely. He was going to be captured by the confederates who happened to be part of the unit commanded by ellerbee b. C. Cash. Porter alexander comes up while this little drama is playing out late in the battle. As he reached the rear of the eighth South Carolina infantry, which is caches regiment, i will pick up his narrative. There i saw a very fine looking Sergeant Major come out with a small man in citizen stress to and taken before the colnel. This is alfred yulee. He is a tall fellow, 35 to 40 years old, redheaded, red faced, gray eyes, strong featured. His face was angry as a storm cloud and yet drawn his revolver and was trying to shoot the little civilian who was ducking behind the Sergeant Major. The colonel was swearing with a fluency which would have been credible to a wagon master. You infernal son of a bitch, you came to see the fight, didnt you. God damn your dirty soul. Alexander tried to intervene. Their instructions were not to execute people on the battlefield. You might want to keep that in mind. Came down here to see the fun, came to see us whipped and killed. God damn you, if not for you , there would be no war. Im going to show you. Again, cash tried to shoot the little man, who was evidently i love the drollery here who was evidently scared almost into a fit. [laughter] once again, alexander said, i wont try to quote, calm down colonel. You are not supposed to be executing people on the scene. And he calmed down a little bit. Then he said turn him over to the provost marshal, then go hunt the woods for senator foster. He is hiding there somewhere. Go find him here it if you bring him in alive, i will cut your ears off. [laughter] that is not a side that we see often of confederate officers on battlefields. [laughter] he is being harsh in his language. I dont think there was a safe space [laughter] for alfred ely on that battlefield. I think he was feeling a microaggression from colonel cash. Uster examine alexander leaves an account of that little drama. He was willing to criticize even the most iconic of the confederate leaders. So lets pick two at random, ok lee and jackson. ,lets start with lee. This is Porter Alexander talking about lee at gettysburg. This is from fighting for the confederacy. On the first day we had taken the aggressive, although a casual reading of general lees report suggests the aggressive on the second day seemed forced upon him, yet this statement is very much qualified by the expression in a measure and a reference to the hopes inspired by our partial success. I think it must be frankly admitted that there was no real difficulty whatsoever and our defensive thethe other day and in maneuvering afterwards as to have finally forced meade to attack us. I think it is reasonable to estimate that 60 of our chances for a victory was lost but our by our continuing the aggressive. This is at a time when most are explaining gettysburg as it was james long streets fall. It had been jeb stuarts fault. It had been everyones fault but r. E. Lees. Here we have Porter Alexander senko no, here is what is going on. It is general lees fault. He also had harsh things to say about Stonewall Jackson in richmond. It is not hard to be critical of Stonewall Jackson at the seven days. If anyone under Stonewall Jackson had behaved the way Stonewall Jackson had behaved, he of course would have arrested them and maybe try to run out of the army, but we know that didnt happen. There is an interesting little aside that alexander did not put in the text, but wrote it on the paper that he was using, and he said there were several members re lees staff that wandered charges against Stonewall Jackson because of his action at the seven days. Lee said, what good would that accomplish at this point . He was more sophisticated than most people. Here is how he described jackson at the sevendays. Lee took himself off to the farthest flank as it too generously leave to jackson to of thehe opportunity most brilliant victory of the fail, he simply made no effort. Days. Tory embraces 2 he spent the 29th in camp and disregard of lees instructions and the second in equal idleness. Shotnfantry did not fire a on those 2 days. Alexander did not approve. He is evenhanded in terms of not following usual lost cause. Usually they would try to deprecate grant with a zero sum game. Make a grant come down, that elevates leaf. You have to pretend grant wasnt great to make lee look better. Alexander was talking about grants movement that brought him to petersburg. That Amazing Movement that involved crossing the james with the incredible pontoon bridge. This is how alexander describes this. Grant devised a piece of strategy all his own, which seems to me the most brilliant stroke in all federal campaigns of the whole war. It was by roundabout roads, but entirely out of our observation, to precipitate his whole army upon petersburg, which was held by scarcely 6000 men. And kustoff beauregard was down there. All the credit belongs to general grant. The orders and the details of such a Rapid Movement of so mighty an army with immense trains in its artillery across two rivers on its own pontoon bridges make it the most brilliant piece of logistics of the entire war. There is very little of that kind of honest admiration for anything that grant did by former confederates. He did not buy into, of course the United States one because the victory was inevitable. There is no way the confederacy could have won. Fate is often brought into the picture. One of the monuments is in uva cemetery. Thousands of confederate soldiers who died in the hospital when youve gate was a hospital. That monument says in the front fate denied the victory, but crowned them with immortality. Fate denied them victory. If fate is not on your side, what is the point . Fate will have fates way. The south could never have won the war, you know the rest. Porter alexander does not buy into that come into fate having anything to do with it. It is customary to say to win. Providence did not intend for us i dont buy into that. Providence did not care a row of pins. If it did it was an unintelligence reference not to bring the business to a close, the close it wanted in less than four years of the most terrible and bloody war. While on the subject, i will say that it was a serious incubus on us that several of our generals our president underlined underlined, and believed, our president underlined, and believed, underlined, there was , a mysterious providence hovering over the fields ready to interfere on one side or the other. It was a weakness to imagine victory would come in even the slightest degree from anything except our own exertions. He wrote. I am now going to finish with 2 more narrative examples. I sense a question in the audience are we almost finished . , [laughter] how long is this guy going to talk . Im going to bring this to an end with two more examples of what i consider alexanders wonderful narrative ability to be evocative in a way that few writers grant could match it in , some ways. The only equivalent of alexander in terms of the quality of a postwar account is grant on the union side. It is the best. Alexanders the best on the confederate side. One is a passage that better than anything else i have ever seen gets at the bond between lee and the soldiers in the army of Northern Virginia. The scene alexander chose is when longstreets first corp gets back from tennessee. Late in april 1864. Even longstreet was really glad to be back. He wanted to go, then he got a dose and thought it was not so bad in virginia after all. They are back. 2 divisions, down to 10,000 men. They had 20,000 at gettysburg, there are 10,000 here drawn up in 2 divisions for review. This review took place in mechanicsville. Not the mechanicsville in richmond, but the mechanicsville by charlottesville, the spot where longstreet would march through the wilderness on the first week of may. I can see the large square gate posts marking where a broad country road led out of it halt out of a tall oak wood upon an open field. In front and center of our long gray lines. In a well remembered figure of general lee at the head of his des between the posts and comes out upon the knoll and thunders out a salute. The general reigns his horse, bears his grey head, and we shout, cry, and raise our battle flags, and look back at him. Sudden as a wind wave of , a sentiment that can only come from large crowds in full sympathy seemed to sweep over the field. Each felt the bond that held us to lee. There was no speaking. The effect was that of a military sacrament in which we pledged anew our lives or delete our lives. That is an amazing choice of words. An amazing thing to put into the readers mind. Lee is back with us, we are back with him, this is the effect of a military sacrament. I will finish with a scene in richmond. Petersburg on april 1, the lines are crumbling at petersburg. Word comes to richmond, this cannot be maintained. We will have to get out. You know the chaotic situation that day early in april. Confederates set some fires, they spread from the capital around the basin. The huge flour mills will go up. All of the photographs of burnedout buildings in richmond, those fires are blazing. The last of the confederates are coming out of the city. You know the lithograph coming across the bridge with the fires in the background. Here is Porter Alexanders description of what that moment meant to him. After sunrise on of bright morning from the manchester high grounds we turned to take a last look at the old city for which we had fought so long and so hard. It was a sad, terrible, and solemn site. I dont know that any moment in the war impressed me so deeply with its stern realities than this. The whole riverfront seemed to be in flames, amid which occasional explosions were heard. The black smoke over the city seemed to be full of dreadful portends. I rode on with a heavy heart and a peculiar feeling of orphanage. It is an amazing passage to describe the kind of things that must have been going through the minds of veterans in an army whose principal job for three years had been to defend this place. Now, it is over. The combination of scholarship and descriptive power ensures that readers will be enlightened and entertained. They will also come away with the feeling of alexander as friend. Someone who reaches out across more than a century to help us understand some of the most important people and events of our most transformational national event. Thank you. [applause] prof. Gallagher the good news is you are under no imperative to stay if you dont want to. We have time for 2 questions. An interesting, entertaining talk about clearly a man of parts. Turning from his words to his work, you mentioned the bombardment that preceded pettigrew and pickett at gettysburg. Some have regarded that as largely an ineffective bombardment. What was alexanders take . Prof. Gallagher it was complicated. He said within 10 minutes he could not determine the effect of his fire on Cemetery Ridge. We know that it was an ineffective bombardment. The problem was that 19th century artillery was not capable of the procession that could hit a target as shallow as the target on Cemetery Ridge. You lay down a lot of fire. He laid down a lot of fire. He worried about how much ammunition he had, and finally conveyed the infantry would need to get going or it would not be able to support it with artillery. Scholarship shows a big part of the problem was with confederate fuses. They have problems with them throughout the war. From hazels grove, somewhere so somewhere battle commanders were so frustrated they stopped using explosive rounds. David detonate prematurely or not at all. At gettysburg they seemed to detonated a little bit late so the full effect of the bombardment fell on the reverse of Cemetery Ridge then on the western side where the fire was directed to go. Work has been done with the ordinance records suggesting the ordinance side was having these problems, and i think they manifested themselves at gettysburg. Ineffective bombardment. Very noisy. Alexander said the bombardment, the usual time you see from two hours, from 1 00 to 3 00, alexander said it lasted for less than an hour. I think he is someone who might have known something about how long it went. Does alexander Say Something about how lee missed the best chance to win the war by failing to take grant in the flank when grant leaves cold harbor and goes across the james . Prof. Gallagher he does not say that. He thinks the confederates lost a great chance during the seven days. He is really hard on lee at the seven days. Maybe a little too hard because it was not lees army at the seven days. He has a gaggle of Division Commands many who are heading toward mississippi as soon as possible. It is holmes and mcgruder. They are among your stalwarts. You have a weak foundation. Lee corrected that, but he is hard on him in the seven days. He is also hard on him is also hard on him he is also hard on him at gettysburg. Alexander only saw his part. He said the bombardment should have been against Cemetery Hill because we could have achieved converging fire and had that or hes from the north and batters from Seminary Ridge firing on that part of the line. On our part we are firing on a shallow target. He added the only person who knew what the whole line looked like was r. E. Lee. That is a criticism he had of lee at gettysburg. If you want, his 100 pages on gettysburg in fighting for the confederacy are one of the best analytical takes on that you will find anywhere you cannot go wrong. This has nothing to do with what i did, i just made it available to be published. The analytical quality of his work is in a category by itself, all by itself, among former confederates that wrote about the war. He is so smart, honest, blunt, careful, that it is simply all by itself. Now that ive said that three times, that is enough, too. Thank you. [applause] you are watching American History tv. All weekend every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like aton csp facebook cspan history. Universitytown ceremony to mark the renaming of 2 buildings. One for annemarie krafft who in 1820 at the age of 15 established a school for catholic black girls in georgetown. This is 40 minutes. [applause] all right, everybody
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