greatest importance of of reagan ultimately is in his rhetoric is for that defense of democratic values as central to the american story and. his belief that ideas could mountains and they did in the cold war and perhaps they can again so thank very much. the first time i met tim smith was 455th anniversary in the vicksburg campaign, and i went for the american battlefield trust along with chris white out to do a series of videos. and so i meet tim on champion hill on the anniversary of the battle, which, as a civil war nerd, i was totally out about. right. but it's not that it's even worse than that because i packed a whole suitcase of tim smith books for him to sign. so i'm like, tim smith, so glad to meet you. sign my books. yeah. total fanboy going on at the moment and tim was super gracious and very kind about it and since then we have grown to become friends and he is truly the epitome me of the gentleman and the scholar. but he's the southern gentleman and the scholar. so everything he says is not only kind and polite, but with a really quaint drawl, which is wonderful and he is so gracious with his time. he's been deeply, deeply invested in his series about the vicksburg campaign. if you haven't had the opportunity to read those books, they're absolutely essential reading. they will be the definitive account of vicksburg for decades. but as he's in the midst of that, i'm working on my little book about the battle of jackson, and he's so kind to take time out and look at the main script and offer suggestions. he's very constructive about it. he couldn't have been more gracious in his time, even though he was already hard at work at, you know, the umpteenth book that he's on and for that, i will always be grateful as well to help me out on my my quaint little book on mississippi. tim is the first recipient of the emerging civil war book award. his book, the fort donaldson, again, outstanding. and he's just been writing way through the western theater ever since. i suspect when he finally conquers the west, lincoln will bring him to the east. and having started writing out here, we can only hope that he will grace us with his pen on such things because his work continues to set the standard for civil war scholarship in the west. today. let me give you the official biography. timothy b smith in mississippi state university 2001, is a veteran of the national park service and currently teaches history at the university of tennessee at martin. in addition to numerous articles and essays, he is the author editor or coeditor of more than 20 books with several university and commercial presses. his books have won numerous book awards. his trilogy on the america civil war tennessee river campaign, fort henry in donelson, shiloh and corinth have won a total of nine and book awards. he's currently finishing a five volume study on the vicksburg campaign for the university press in kansas and a new study of albert sidney johnston for lsu press. he lives with his wife kelly and daughters mary kate and leah grace in adams ville, tennessee, and is my extreme pleasure to welcome him here to the ninth annual emerging civil war symposium at stevenson ranch. tim smith ladies in. wow. thank you, chris. did my mama tell you to say all that it is a pleasure to be here. i've always heard about the emerging civil war symposium and wow, i'm i'm consider me impressed. this is great. what a wonderful venue. what a wonderful group of folks seeing a lot of folks that i've known for a long time. a lot of folks that been on tours and in the past, several people here were just with me last week in a vicksburg. we did four or five days, actually, vicksburg. and there some that are going to be next week in on the grierson drive tour in through mississippi and louisiana. so a lot of folks that are back and forth on these tours, so on. so it's good to see all of you for having senior come up and say hello and and we'll reacquaint. so thank you for having me. this is this is wonderful been looking forward to it for a very long time brag on emerging civil war. just a minute. try to help out as much as i can. it's always a pleasure to help out, chris and the folks that run it helped out. you know, reading books and writing for words and so on. and it's a pleasure to be involved in anything like that, to be able to to help out just a little bit and so i applaud you what you're doing. keep up the good work. ten, what, ten more years now in nine years, i think of the symposium but keep up the good work you're doing. you're doing great. all right. let's talk about vicksburg. how many have you been to vicksburg? all right. that's good. obviously, i'm not from around here. you understand that? you you folks talk funny up here for some reason. i don't know what, but vicksburg very, extremely, very important campaigning in the civil war. we could probably get in a pretty good argument up here about which is more important, the east or the west. i don't intend to do that. ed okay. that's that's good argument closed. we're. the comparison between vicksburg and gettysburg. you throw tullahoma in there, we just heard about bragg and the importance of that. you know, that's pretty good week, july the first week of july in 80. 63 is a pretty good week for the for the union. not so good for the confederacy in erie vicksburg. i would argue to you the vicksburg is the most comp lex largest and probably the most important of the civil war. now, i'm not one of these that says you can pick out one date or one battle or one campaign and says that's it. you know, the civil war was over. that's when it was decided. in fact, i was thinking about this and i've come to the conclusion in particularly dealing with adversity, just. johnston early in the war, a lot of people say, was the war done in 1862? but i've come to the conclusion that in a baseball pennant, how many of your baseball how many of you braves fans? oh, what? i know. we'll go one or two. i know. we've got a phillies fan back there. sorry. is he was the last time i saw him. he was wearing his phillies jersey during the october of last year. i think won the world series or played in the world series. but anyway, the the idea that you can't win a pennant in april, in may of a baseball season. right. you can't win it then. but you can sure lose it in april or may, right? you can dig yourself a hole. presidential politics, you know, we're coming up on a presidential election. pretty soon you cannot win a nomination in iowa or new hampshire, but you can sure as heck lose it in iowa or new hampshire. and i was doing this to somebody and they said, you know, that's like golf. i don't play golf, but you can't win the tournament on thursday, but you can sure lose it on thursday if you don't make the cut. and so that's kind of my view. but if you if i had to say one particular campaign that was actually probably the most important for a number of different reasons. and we'll talk about that. and obviously, it has a lot to do with ulysses s grant. i would go with vicksburg. of course, i be biased. i won't. i won't argue that point. so the way i want do with vicksburg tonight, right, is to deal with ulysses s grant. and we'll talk a little about pemberton, but we'll deal with ulysses s grant and particularly look at his decision making process and the decisions he makes. eight key decisions that ulysses s grant makes in the vicksburg campaign. and, you know, we're in our day of constant news media and everything coming through a and so on. notice that the news networks, you know, whichever one you prefer and other people, you know sports sites and so on, they're going to, you know, top five takeaways from so on. so top eight, so and so that and it helps us in our fast paced world to wrap our minds around, you know, boom, boom, boom, different things. and we see this a little bit in literature and this is by no means patterned, but it's something similar to how many of you read george bush's presidential memoir. you know, every president writes a memoir in the way george w bush did. it was to take those ten key decisions that he made in his life, like, you know, stop drinking. and and i think the surge and so on. so he wrapped it around, you know, the major decision. so we're going to look at the eight major decisions that ulysses s grant makes. and these are military decisions. we're going to talk about military aspects tonight. and actually, this is a takeoff on one of the books that i did several years ago. and i've seen several for people out there. i know you some of you have it, but john was like, you all know john mars, like the the sherman biographer, halleck biographer. we edit a series with the southern illinois press on the world of ulysses s grant. the whole idea behind this was to after the 32 volumes that john was summoned, published of the grant papers, the idea was to take that knowledge that learned from the published papers and start producing monographs. so we created a new series called the world of ulysses s grant, and this is one of the books actually in that series. so it's different monographs on various aspects of ulysses s grant's life. take a peek, a look. sometimes you might find something you're you're interested in his diplomacy his worldwide tours, his treatment of native americans. and, of course, there's several several civil war volumes as well. so in that volume, actually, i dealt with a lot of different things going on. you know, great military commanders. you don't just concentrate wholly on the military aspects. it'd be nice if you could, but they you know, generals have families that they're worried about back home. grant had a wife and children part of the time. his son fred was with him in the in the campaign. but julia and some of the children were were back home. he worried about land sale selling land renting out property different financial things just personal things in terms of his family and worry about his daddy trying to make a book. you know a quick book off of of what he was doing and at the same time and we can all you know somewhat associate with this different people in his family didn't get along. in fact, julia and his father were at each other's throats and he read wrote them both the letters and calm down, get along. you know, i've got big things to do here. i need you to really get along while i'm doing this. so the personal aspects are very important. at the same time that grant's conducting this campaign, the political aspects of this, you know, grant is always he's very clausewitz in in nature. he keeps politics in mind much better than than, you know, a sherman or somebody like that. and he realizes, in fact, he says later on, you know, we were all kind of on probation there anyway. and he realizes his leash is pretty thin. are pretty short here. and if he doesn't doesn't produce something quickly politically, they're going to be calling for for his head. so he's got political things to to worry about that their economic, personal, the whole thing about the order expelling the -- in december of 1862. so a lot of different things that he has going on in addition to just the military aspects but the military aspects what we're going to concentrate on tonight. so let's look at eight key decisions that us grant will deal with in the vicksburg campaign and i assume this is what's going to turn my thing here. okay. this issue always known as actual, quote, affairs, he says, i didn't call a council of councils of war. he did. he just didn't. immediately he did. but he he would actually make most of own, own decisions. we'll look at a little bit of that as we go forward. all right. so let's start out decision number one. if you're taking note, i always get tickled at my students when, you know, i'm lecturing and going things and so on and you can tell when they kind of space a little bit, you know, but you always say. all right, number one, ever goes down. every head goes down. they start right. whatever it is, they don't know what they're writing sometimes, but they know it's important if i say, ari, number one. so all right. so number one, what's the first key decision that grant makes in the vicksburg campaign? well, that is to go capture vicksburg. okay. i know i'm underwhelming at this point. tell me something we didn't already know. right. but it is actually complicated. then than that. grant begins the vicksburg campaign outright. now, obviously there have been been things on back in the summer may, june, july of 1862. but what we're talking specifically was grant's major vicksburg campaign to outright vicksburg campaign from about october, late october 1862 to july the fourth, 1863. so you know, the fact that grant decides, alright, we're going to have to vicksburg that you know, nothing new. but here's the kicker this should have been done much earlier and so actual decision to start doing it is like a breath of fresh air that actually comes forward and says, all right we're actually going to going to do this fact. i would argue to you that the vicksburg campaign should have commenced in june of 1862. who's in command of the western theater in june of 1862, henry dubya. and nothing's going to proceed. henry halleck especially in the summer 1862, when halleck court the the last day of may, the united states navy, the brown water navy has moved southward after his victory at memphis on june the sixth, all the way to vicksburg admiral farragut flag. officer farragut has moved up the river from new orleans. the capture of new there in late april. so all the components are together in may, june 1862, and all they need is a large army palace army from court. but halleck doesn't go in this in view of consolidating what we have gaining decisive. secure supply lines. all of that by the book stuff, halleck says, no, we're going to sit tight and we're going to consolidate what we have. and plus, it's too hot anyway. you can't can't operate in that climate in the summer, in june and july, well, grant proved them wrong a year later. you can, but halleck sanogo so this should have done actually in june of 62. now he certainly should have been done in july of 1862, because when halleck is called to washington in mid-july, he leaves grant in charge of the district that he's in, in charge of west tennessee. instead of elevating up to the western commander and, one commander for pretty much the entire western, which halleck had been harping on, we need a we really need western theater commander out here. what he argued, of course, he wanted himself to be that commander. obviously. but once he goes to washington, he elevate anybody up to that position that he held. he just lets it go back to the various independent district commanders. so grant is technically still under halleck, although halleck is now many miles away and as a result, grant doesn't have the autonomy or the authority to start the operations on his own. had he been booted up to that western theater commander, i have no doubt that grant would have going right on. but he doesn't. and as a result, the vicksburg campaign doesn't start in july either. now, what's critical is that in mid-october before october 16th, i'd have to look back, but october 16th grant is promoted to that higher authority where he has autonomy to conduct his own operations. he actually takes command about ten days later, on october 25th and the very next day is branded. he issues orders. move, go to vicksburg. we're going to take vicksburg. so you know, obviously we start the process of going to vicksburg yeah everybody knows grant's going to vicksburg but it's more complicated just what it seems it should have been done much earlier. but finally, in the fall of 1862, grant start southward and he will actually do things by the book this year, meaning book will have supporting columns secure supply lines will will take significant decisive points and it results in basically to attempts to reach vicksburg. and you see that here. we got a point earlier here. yeah, it does point um you can see grant's mississippi central campaign moving southward the mississippi central railroad through holly springs, oxford, down toward waterville valley. the confederates will pull back from these rivers. the cold water, the tallahatchie, the now, uh, back behind the yellow bush river there. and basically stop. grant will look at that and. just suck it. at the same time, sherman is southward on the mississippi river again supporting columns. they're supposed to support each other. they're too far away to support. but he moves southward along the mississippi river with the intention of landing near vicksburg and taking vicksburg. now, what was the result? obviously, both are failures, as grant himself will be turned back by a couple of calvary raids. nathan bedford forrest will ride around west tennessee breaking railroad bridges on the mobile in ohio when dawn earl van dorn will move northward and hit holly springs on the morning of december the 20th. so grant's big supply base is destroyed. grant's ability to refill that supply base is destroyed. and so grant has to pull out and decide. the mississippi central campaign is done. no more no more of that. at the same time, sherman has met defeat at chickasaw bow in just north of vicksburg on june or december. the 29th suffers heavy casualties there, and as a result, that attempt is also a failure. so the first two attempts to reach vicksburg, or better yet, really to reach the outskirts of vicksburg, the on the high ground to the east of vicksburg, um, both end in failure. so grant's decision. yes, one number one. let's go to vicksburg. uh, but it doesn't really work out in the first two attempts or unsuccessful so that leads us to the second major decision before we talk about that we have to introduce this whole political thing so it would be military but there are some political aspects this and that is one former congressman named mclaurin it who arrives right in the middle of this to take command of the expedition. vicksburg. well, grant doesn't like mclaurin. he's not a west pointer. he's a, you know, egotistical. and and so on grant thinks and a result they don't get along grant says i can't leave this is important a job as they see is i can't leave to mcfarland and as a result i'm going to have to take sole command. so what had been two different prongs of the federal advance into mississippi. will now become one grant will make the decision to make this a one prong advance it's in who's going to be the commander that me grant. so in order to supersede mclernon grant makes it. a11 prong basically one one axis of advance movement now mclernon of course and you get into the vicksburg campaign operations in january mclernon had gone off to arkansas post he might have been to arkansas post so that's about what i figure nobody goes to arkansas post. we've got a couple out there that has okay not much out there right? the fort itself is gone. it is where the river is now. but it's an important political it's pretty important battle. sherman or in mclernon lose like a thousand soldiers killed wounded in missing in arkansas post pretty good a little battle but the political aspects of this are what is so important grant goes bonkers over going on what he calls a wild goose chase is going off on a wild goose chase and grant requests permission to be able to remove. maclaurin and halleck gives information. so if you want to get rid of maclaren and grant, that's fine. you go right ahead. or at least take sole command of the expedition against vicksburg and. that's exactly what grant does. so grant makes the decision to make this a one axis of advance movement. and grant in late due january, will actually move southward along the mississippi down to where he will keep his headquarters at youngs point
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