International feast. Book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 comes from these companies. We are there for our customers. Now more than ever it starts with great internet. Wow along with these Television Company sports c span 2 as a public service. One of our great partners who is going to talk about the failure from the top down and this disaster in tennessee and that could be the narrative for the western theater of the american civil war. Failure from the top down. This is james k, jim k as we know him. He is the former president and board member of the battle of national trust. They are great and they have been a civil war and easiest and one of the foremost of release in nashville. While an attorney in nashville, dont hold that against him james pursues his passion for history well contributing to and providing research for a number of historical films. We are excited to have them out there. We would like to reinforce what brandon showed you about the mapping here in the national area. Now we will come up and learn more about the military maneuvers led by John Bell Hood and his Confederate Army of tennessee. Thank you for being here. Welcome. We are going to blow through a lot of history in a short time. I hope it will be entertainment. We are getting film by cspan so hello america and im sure this will be one of my many speeches that will ever prevent me from being a federal judge under any administration ever. You cant help how we were born. Im a great grandson of the confederacy. Its just my dma. We have people here from all over. You are the guts in the back bone of the army. You are important. Your article. This Great Organization could not do what it does about you. Thank you for coming, enjoy some tennessee hospitality. I hope you enjoy the speech. I could have named a number of things and i chose this because it came to mind. This could also be a lesson on the great peter principle obviously continue as americans do and ive done it. Do it beautifully with their government. How to promote someone to the highest level of incompetency. Well, this is 1864 and it happened. We are not going to go through everything that happened outside of atlanta but it was bloody and tough and joe johnson was a very popular person. And we start at the top. Jefferson davis. He didnt like johnston. Hood was a John Bell Hood was a gallant commander on the division rival and davis decided to replace him outside of atlanta. Against the objection of beauregard and Braxton Bragg was hoods biggest proponent and Braxton Bragg may have been the worst confederate general ever and of worse lincoln went through those disasters with his appointments as well. He was still around and befuddled the mind and he was still around and davis made the ointment. Robert e lee is near and dear to me. I dont know how much he had to do with the appointment but he was aware of what was going on. We dont know whether he made any attempts to stop it. He has served valiantly under him, hood did on a number of battles over the years and other confederate commanders. Hood had been in the tough battles up. All the big engagements. And as we know at gettysburg he had a shattered left arm which became useless. For whatever reason davis made the appointment of hood. Hood had been schmoozing davis avenue for his wound in 1863 hood was big in the social circles in richmond. Hood was a smoother and he was going after disappointment and he made it. Bruce catton once said this was the biggest mistake of the war. And davis probably realized that 90 days later. A good picture of hood. We know a lot about them born in 1831. He was known as sam. The United States military graduate 1953, graduated 44 that of 52. He was a good guy and a party guy and had 196 out of 200 possible to merits his senior year and almost didnt graduate. After fighting seven days at gettysburg all the engagements the catastrophic chickamauga really took a toll on him. At age 33 he was the youngest to be promoted in command. Probably a great commander on the division level. We find out quickly that he was not a great commander of an army. So what happens . Johnson gives up atlanta, hood comes in, hood will try to draw out of atlanta and cut his supply line. Sherman said we can live off the land and he did it. And he takes off to savannah georgia. Overgaard whose watching over him, is not running regularly to beauregard. Doesnt tell him the strategy for devices with davis a plan. He was just going to go north. And he went from abama to decaturand blew six ys here uses three weeks in november 1860 fourbefore he can get going to nashville. So he takes off. Bad things start happening immediately. The arm is proud to come into tennessee. Its 42 to 18 in the Fourth Quarter and got to do something cause. Things are not going well. Lee was in it is 4218 and the 4th quarter and you have to do something becausthings are not going we. Becausthings are not they devised a plan and who knows,is it take nashville and go to cincinnati and in up with lee . We will never know. But the plan was going to tennessee and bad things started happening immediately and you know about the debacle at spring hill and hoods fault and maybe cheathams fault and they have schofield surrounded and he gets away in the middle of the night. A disaster. And what does hood do next . The next day he comes up to franklin against the advice of his commanders and makes an open charge artillery support and they were 2 miles of open fields and it is one of the biggest disasters of the civil war and it was right down the street. Stanley horn said it best. This has come to be a synonym for unflinching courage. And when the confederates woke up, they had been fighting a defensive battle all the way down to atlanta from good earthworks and they were promised that by hood that they would continue. But hood had a napoleonic syndrome and that is mass your forces and break them in half. When the guys down the street woke up, the morning after the battle of franklin, they were sick to their stomachs. Their spirit was gone and it was crushed and demoralized and seeing their friends stacked up six, eight, 12 high in the trenches and with blood 6 to 8 inches deep and the wounded, nobody in town to help. It was game over. Hood, though, really didnt know what was going on. And napoleon said the spirit of the court is a direct reflection of their belief in the mirror of their leaders but hood was, although young at 33 and think about that a 33year old army general, all of these guys were kids by our standards and look around and young people. Hood kept going. And they start passing the Beautiful Homes surrounding nashville and that is where he made his headquarters with a lot of food and a lot of fun and a lot of parties anything u need. And you go by the compton house on hillsboro road and you go by glenn levin on franklin road or steven li makes his headquarters. And they go by the compton house which was torn down by the developer in 1985 to get another one quarter acre lot and they go by the bradford house which is the scene of a terrible battle on the second day and they go back and they look out from the trenches and they see at alicia acklins home, the wealthiest lady in tennessee probably in the south and she inherited it from her husband and she has stocks and bonds and land and 750 slaves and married three times and died on a shopping trip in new york in 1887 and belmont was for summer home and had a zoo and gardens and it was part of the outer line that Brandon Hewlett talked about and it was thomas woods headquarters. Some of the roads to nashville were good, but lo and behold, pat thomass in nashville. Thomas had his problems with grant when he was shermans most trusted subordinate and sherman sent him to nashville to get nashville ready for the fight and as brandon told you in the previous speech, nashville was the third most fortified city in the United States behind dc and richmond. I say 10 or 11 miles of trenches around nashville were impregnable to assault and hood knew this from spies. Hearing it and seeing it, are two Different Things and we all have that in life. You can be told something and told something and not believe it. When you do see it you know and the confederates after the disaster in franklin immediately marked nashville, and they are on the high ground south of nashville and they realize that we dont have enough people and they are cold and starving and 3500 dot have shoes and nothing to eat and they are in rags and filthy. The morale of the team is at rock bottom. So what do these guys see . They see all of these forts around nashville. Look at this. This is the old city of nashville and look at these lines going from river to river with over 20 batteries and forts on these lines and in these trenches and the outer line on these trenches so all of the high ground taken and the confederates see this. Every bridge is fortified and look at this this is part of the fort and these guys can see it with the naked eye from their enenchments. And they have guns and the range is a mile and a half or 2 miles. And they can see with their binoculars or the naked eye the capital and they think oh my gosh, we have cannon at the capital as well. And the capital was the focus point of nashville at the time and you can see it right here in this picture. And the feds here you can see the rebels and they could see the fort and they are looking at big guns and unobstructed view of nashville looking south from the federal forts. And the confederates could see the railroads coming in and they could see in this old picture that he showed you previously a staggering size fort and nashville was a slime town in the United States soldiers had come in and commandeered everything they wanted and you had to pick your side. If you picked the wrong side, things were tough on you and with this came in drinking and gambling and prostitution and it was one of the houses of prostitution which, ironically, now is nextdoor to a law office where i have been for 35 years. And another picture here, this is the u. S. Entrenchment during the battle and we have some pictures during that battle and this is an interesting one. You can notice that every tree, virtually has been cut down within three or 4 miles of nashville and these are scarred earthworks and no trees but mud and it is trouble. And another picturyou notice here as well with no trees anywhere anyou can see all of the stumps through here that by the United States trenches and every tree has been cut down. Well, geral hood, he digs in and decides his frontline isnt good enough. I dont know whatever he didnt like about it, but they spend ght days digging in with his frontline and then they abruptly move it on december 10, because they needed firewood and that was his first of many disasters here. On december 9, the storm hits and december 11, some people say it was 10 below zero and grant was fuming and had ready fired thomas, who was living in the st. Cloud hotel, which is one of the great things about nashville. I think it may be the only battle where the head commander is staying at a hotel at night and goes out with his staff the next day to the battlefield. Grant was sick of thomas not attacking and he had issued orders via cable that got held up in some on purpose and some not and grant is about to get on a train to come down to nashville and fire thomas. Hood is still building forts on the morning of the battle and his entire left flank consists of five readouts and most of them had four guns in them and one readout had two and he would lose all of those guns on the next day and this is a painting by rick reeves on december 4 december 15, 1864 entitled the darkest of all decembers. The confederates find out there is a maybe too they have to find and they did pretty well the baby until they started lobbing shells 2 miles on top of the calvary on the left line and they are looking at the four and that is fort negley today looking downtown and look again with no trees anywhere on the line there. And i am going the wrong way. And the confederates also can see the steamers coming in with supplies on the river and this is every bad possible thing you can see if you were in those earthworks and cold and miserable, distraught, no food or clothes and you hate your general for what he has done to you two weeks before and he got all of your buddies killed and then they come in. This is daily. You cant see this and this is from mark zimmermans book but to let you know about the cargo, one steamer transport is about 530 tons of cargo and that is the equivalent of 125 Railroad Cars or the equivalent of 250 wagons pulled side by side. The amount of cargo munitions is coming in is staggering. The confederates are ordered not to shoot a single bullet unless they have to to preserve ammunition. The soldiers from the confederacy see the railroads coming in too and then if you have been down in nashville this is that gulch area from 1864. The supply depots stretch for blocks and blocks in nashville. Remember, everything from the south for sherman in the Atlanta Campaign had a come through nashville, material and troops. The battle of nashville is interesting because a lot of civilians watched it and some get photographed at the scene and here is one here and you can see some of thpeople have military uniforms on and ey were probably on the line and looking out at the dian watching the battle. So what happens in the le itself . And looking at all of ese u. S. Lines and the interior and outer line, hood is so worried about isover here and of course another fatal error is that he did or 14 days before hand, he sent forced murphys berg and he gets whipped down there and he sent his best officer and this is why your number one quarterback in the nfl, if you ndhim on a paid vacation the week before the super bowl. Itisabsolute stupidity. But he did it. The u. S. Army comes out of nashville and this will be on the right and actually goes from west to east and the coederates have five exposed readouts and all of these guns are captured with the entire left flank breaking and haveto go back three quarters of a mile to reeh for the next day of fighting. Over on the right, hood has a better day and they slaughtered somber grades from the federal side and two of those brigades had not been trained properly in the time in combat they had o competent commanders who failed to ascertain the confederate defenses and took their men disaster. And it gets worse on the second right into a complete trap and got shot to pieces. But all in all the first stage day and on the morning of december 16, hood issues and ordered all of his commands that starts with should disaster strike today, and he of the battle was a confederate knows. The guys know. They had bad minds before and they woke up in the morning and they had bad lines again. They reform and here is the first day of fighting and they reform and this is due west and around the crest of a hill going just south and as the day progresses, in the u. S. Artilly pulls up and knocks the confederate guns to pieces and the u. S. Calvary under james wilson, a 27yearold and brash but he is one of the heroes of the battle of nashville. They get all the way around the Confederate Army into the high hills south of nashville. The guys were at what is called shies hill now and they realize, we are in big trouble. And they describe it as being in the toe of a sock. He is correct. You are surrounded on three sides by the opposing army. These guys, all day, prayed that darkness would come and they would not be attacked. But the attacker did come. And aj smith, abt 4 00 p. M. And carson were sitting on a log and he saw how bad the confederate side was and he decided that he is going to make an attack and the confederate line and the engineers blew it and they marked the trenches at the military crest of the hill but at the crest of the hill it is so steep that you cant see anybody coming up the hill until they are 20 yards away and then i wake up the next morning and realize there were some bad lines before and there is an angle and almost a 90 degrees angle which you never have under good battlefield tactics. Mcarthur saw that and didnt order an attack. I do believe today that mcarthur, had he not order that attack the the Confederate Army wouldve been captured thnext day. But he didnt. He said he sent the minnesotans and the others forward and the confederates are surrounded by one or two sides and the calvary all the way overhere and out of 0 people 50 or 60, 70 or 80. D the panic in the confederate lines spreads do east and the United States troops began begin marching down the line and catch the confederates on the flank but over here in the far right, steven li and his group of people fall gallantly and as the line was breaking d you had soldiers coming in from the north and west and they could see them coming and lee grbed the flag with his battle group and jumped those walls on franklin road anwent right in and for god sakes this is the place for brave men to die and it was an electric effect and e whole brigade anthey form a hollow square and this is about to hit the fan they say when yogo here you are in trouble but it was lee that kept the right flank alive. I am having a medical issue too, but we will get through it. And here is the same as charge of the minnesota brigade that is in the capital in minnesota and what is now called in the background and here it is from 1870 and this has become one of the most notable landmarks in nashville, the battle of nashville has trust homes and preserves and parts of it were really crowded. Tom smith was the commander of that hill and captured and struck over the head by colonel mcmillan a few times and his brain was oozing out and he said i am a prisoner of war and they didnt care. He lived until the 1920s and died in an insane asylum here in nashville and out lived virtually everybody of his time and what is interesting and what did he do postwar when he was having all of his issues from his brain damage . He ran for congress. What else do you do . He did not get elected though. Every child is beautiful, arent they . This one, bill shy, gave his life on that hill and it bears his name that day and an interesting thing happened is that he was buried in franklin and in 1977, the owners of the house where he was buried called the Sheriffs Department and found the body halfway in his grave in the Franklin Police department came out and determined it was a murder and they brought doctor bil