Too close to call, 36 day battle to decide the 2000 election which came out in 2001. The nine, inside the secret world honor Supreme Court from 2007, the oath, the obama white house, and the Supreme Court, from 2012, and your latest book, american heiress, he wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes and trials of patty hereto. Jeffrey toobin few for pending three hours on cspan. Guest what a treat. Thank you for the terrific callers and emails. Host come back anytime. Thank you very much. Cspan2, created by americas Cable Television companies and brought you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. If you would not mind silencing your cell phones and making sure there on silent. We are recording this event. We also have cspan here with us today. So not having interruptions would be great. We will have about a onehour presentation with half of the time given to our authors presentation and the other have given to your questions. We have one microphone on the side of it if you would not mind using that for your questions and you can pick it up on the recording and everyone will be able to hear you. Finally, we typically ask that you the pure chairs at the end of the event before getting in the signing line. If you can leave the chairs where they are, we have another couple of events this afternoon. Im so pleased to be welcoming Kadish Candace to discuss her new book, lincolns generals why. Women who influence the work for better or worse. This. This book is a detailed and lively account of the role of four women during the civil war. Using letters, memoirs send her subjects wartime travel report, the group biography of jesse fremont, Nelly Mcclellan, Ellie Sherman and julia grant each made to Union Army General shows how much these women influence their spouses and through them the president and the nation. This is a historian, writer and a member of the Advisory Boards for both president lincolns college here in d. C. And the leases s and julia d grant in detroit. Shes written articles for the New York Times and she also let me know before we started that she had a palm published with us in our district lines, opus publication which was a publication last year she has received her mi and the history of George Washington university and this is her first book. Please help me in welcoming our author. [applause]. A being here today brings me full circle. In late 2002 came to politics and prose, my home away from home i went to my favorite section over there, browsed it and bought the book that change my life. The book that led me here today to talk to about my book. Thank thank you all so much for coming. It has been said by recent biographers of Abraham Lincoln including Sidney Blumenthal who is europe a month ago that Abraham Lincoln would not have been Abraham Lincoln without his wife. I can tell you without eight years of research and writing the same is true of the most famous Union Civil War general and their lives. John charles. Reporter , sherman, and and Ulysses S Grant would not have been who they were without jesse benton nelly marcy ellie union and julia dense. I first came to the story ten years ago when i was in graduate school learned that Ellen Sherman sherman popper has been in january of 18 to 62 from earlier reading i knew that Jesse Ben Fremont had not been the president on her husbands behalf behalf if you months earlier. As a former congressional aide and lobbyist, i was intrigued by their lobbying efforts and by the very different results achieved. I wanted to know more about how these wives influence their husbands careers. I was confident they had because i was raised in a military family. I learned very early this strength, courage, and resilience required of military spouses. I began with jesse and ellen and after initial research decided to also tell the story of the wifes of two men whose career trajectory in the civil war roughly matched those of fremont sherman. Like fremont, George Mikell cleland was one of lincolns first appointments to Major General in may of 1861. By the end of 1862 neither of those men commanded any troops at all. Lincoln had relieved them of command. The same dane fremont and mcclellan were made general sherman was commissioned a journal. Grant received his first command is a kernel two months later in july of 1861. By 1865 sherman and grant, spoiler alert, they work at the very top of the United States army command. They rose from obscurity to national, Even International fame but just a bit of a bonus material here, its not in my book, your cyc inches i think this graphically illustrates the trajectories of their careers. This is fremont; in 1861 and mrs. Sherman and grant in 1865. You know the old adage, behind every great man there is a great woman. But how exactly does that work . What about the not so great men of history. And the woman behind them . Even now it seems to me more than mere coincidence that when i found these two matching sets of generals i found i found two sets of wives who shared important cac characteristics too. Today i will only talk about a few of the characteristics. Early on i realize that none of the wives lived in one place during the war. Some of them traveled widely, even in the south. A longtime math lever i decided to map their travels and i began with the rough distance cognitions on my talk later with mapquest and then wisely as you can see from that, hired a professional photographer. Scott sommer who would work with me on an earlier project. Scott, who is just accepted the position as senior map editor for National Geographic in washington took my map points from letters, newspapers, memoirs, unofficial military record and map the wives were time travels as others have mapped the generals. Scott believed and i do to, that the maps in this book tell a new story of the civil war. They also tell at a glance much about the relationship between these husbands and wives. Jesse benton fremont was the woman i thought i most admired as i started my research, but i soon altered my opinion. From the start i thought i knew a lot about her. She was smart, savvy, born into a political family, raised, raised by doting father who educated and groomed her to be the toast of washington society. At the age age of 15 she fell in love with lieutenant john fremont. A dashing explorer for the u. S. Army topographic core with no social standing and little financial prospect. Senator thomas hart was not about to allow his daughter to marry so far beneath her station. But marrying him, she did, secretly in 1841 when she was 17 years old. And there 20 years of marriage before the civil war jesses aggressive ambition for her husband resembled the unrelenting coaching of the stage mother. She carried on that way during the civil war. When her husband assumed command at the western military district in july 1861, jesse followed him to st. Louis and established herself in a small office in front of his office. As is on official chief of staff. In st. Louis she was referred to as a general jesse. When her husband issued an emancipation order and music missouri in late august 1861 without advising president lincoln in advance, it was general jesse who boarded a train easter to convince the president that he should not revoke her husbands order, even though Union Soldiers were laying down their arms in missouri. At that early at that early stage of the war they had not yet signed up to free slaves. Her late night encounter with lincoln in september was one of the most famous meetings in the white house during the civil war. Neither she nor he handled it well. But most of of the blame goes to jesse who threatened, who demanded lincolns confidential correspondence correspondence and even seem to threaten that her husband would challenge the president s authority. She encouraged fremont to flat the order of revocation. He did, and lincolns relieved him of command. So fremont was. So fremont was given another command in 1862 in western virginia. That also ended badly. Jesse was at his side there too. She set up an office in his office in wheeling. Fighting for him, alongside him, to the very that are and. She fought hard for her husband always. Until the election of 1864 when she secretly derailed his candidacy for president against lincoln. Prompted by a cartoon in harpers weekly magazine. George and Nelly Mcclellan are a fascinating if not infuriating couple. He was a child prodigy from an uppermiddleclass family in philadelphia who entered west point at the age of 15. Nelly who story has never fully been told before except for in this book, was a celebrated blueeyed beauty who turned down eight marriage proposals, including one from mcclellan before she accepted his second petition. On their waiting day in may, 1860 mcclellan was president of the illinois central railroad. The urine have later, the 34yearold was general in chief of the United States army in the middle of the civil war. The mcclellans are prominent on the party scene in washington d. C. In the summer, in the winter of 1862. Even as the White House Congress and the newspapers fumed at his delays in confronting the enemy. And lincolns memorables memorable phrase, mcclellan had the slows. In fact, the the general had serious mental problems. Mcclellans at dalys letter to nelly revealed that he was often deluded, always paranoid, and narcissistic in the extreme. Nelly said her husband disdain for lincoln and his cabinet in her letters mcclellan had his own problems to be sure but she had tim on against his civilian and military superiors. Nelly may have realized that she married a complex and proud young man but she could not have imagined the consequences to the nation of her unquestioning support for his warped worldview. Nelly had joined her husband at the luxurious headquarters home in washington. In late 1861 when he took command of all union forces. When mcclellan finally moved his arm in finally moved his army south in april 1862, nelly began traveling north to new york and, connecticut and new jersey. Indeed more than once she literally fled to new york city to avoid criticism of her husband. That was rampant in the nations capital. Lincoln relieved mcclellan for command soon after the battle in late 1862. Mcclellan fled to europe for a time to escape humiliation. When they return, they spent much time in the fifth avenue hotel in new york city, the wellknown onto most fervent anti lincoln democrat. He convince mcclellan to run for president against lincoln in 1864. After he lost that election they fled together again to europe. We know for certain that george love nelly, but did nelly love george . His biographers made that effect, the answer is not obvious in my opinion. I tell the tale of her useful passion and engagement to the future confederate general, ap hill which was supported by her mother. But i found even more convincing evident of her ambivalence towards mcclellan and her behavior during the war and later in life after her husband died. Unlike many civil war widows, nelly abandon responsibility for defending mcclellans reputation after his death. Nelly left her husbands legacy to the not so tender mercies of a very misguided literary executor to publish perhaps the most inaccurate and most criticized memoir of any civil war general. It included more than 200 of the wartime letters mcclellan had written to nelly. In those letters which mcclellan had always asked nelly to keep private, he had poured out his abusive lincoln, the gorilla, the baboon, stanton, and howard, the doubtful. Its almost enough to make you feel sorry for george mcclellan. Almost. If jesse fought too hard for her husband, nelly fought not at all. Unlike the other wives, she met her husband as a young child, they were neighbors in ohio where their fathers were best friends. When william father died of typhoid, ellens father walked nextdoor and offered to take in one of the 11 children left fatherless and penniless. According to family legend, shermans mother chose comp, as hes always chose called. For most of their childhood ellen was away at Catholic Boarding School and lording comp went west point. They wrote to each other then and all their lives, long, interesting long, interesting letters that transform their friendship and fostered civil sibling relationship and to love. They were married in 1850 in washington washington across from the white house at Francis Preston blairs house which her father was United States for secretary of the interior had been renting. I learned that ellen suffered from numerous illnesses heard life. She died in 1882 at the age of 64 from heart 64 from heart failure. The only one of the wives to predecease her husband. Her worst helmet struck her in her youth. A form of external tuberculosis. It was a widespread disease in those days before pasteurization which was invented in 1864. Since it was transmitted and raw milk from diseased cows. It is a terrible, disfiguring disease. Its marked by huge boils on the side of that, jaw. They in the job. They would swell and he wrapped and then temporarily subside. Ellen was plagued by this her whole life. I think it speaks volumes about shirt shermans character that the terrible disease did not prevent him from loving ellen and marrying her. But they did love each other as obvious in the letters. From the. From the earliest days of the war when ellen was in ohio and he was posted here before the first battle of bull run she wrote to him often asking if she could bring their newest baby, their sixth child with her to washington and stay with him. But sherman was opposed to having women in camps. He camped with his men across the Potomac River and later criticize mcclellans luxurious lodging and washington with his wife. Nonetheless, ellen did travel on more than one occasion to help her husband. In november 1861, she raced to louisville could, kentucky when the first reports of concern about sherman reacher. She took him to see a doctor. Sherman had been forced to take command of the department of the cumberland when general robert andersons health field. A post for three months earlier sherman had specifically asked president lincoln he not be given. Lincoln had agreed. Sherman feared his troops were badly outnumbered and began to show signs of a nervous breakdown. As he requested he was soon relieved of the command and moved to a less stressful posting, but as but as a consequence of that emotion, newspapers around the country carried the startling headline, general william t sherman, insane. And so, in january 1862 on travel 62 on travel to get on his behalf. This time to washington test the president of the United States for help in restoring her husbands reputation. Reputation. That meeting was far more productive than jesses had been, in large part because of ellens opinion of an attitude toward the president. Sherman took president lincolns advice as ellen reported it to him. Soon he was rising again in the ranks. Again and again ellen asked comp if she could visit him in the field. He consistently refused until after the great Union Victory when he wrote to her that she and her children could come to his camp on the banks of the big black river. Ever mindful of disease like malaria, yellow fever fever and typhoid that killed his father, cop assured her in the letter, i have a healthy camp. And ellen took four of their six children with her to mississippi. The shermans had been apart for most of the previous two years had a great time together until grant ordered sherman to relieve the siege of chattanooga in early october. As sherman left it became clear that their younger son willie was not well. Almost as soon as their boat arrived in memphis, the young boy died. Probably typhoid. Those last time ellen traveled to be with him during the war. She went back to lancaster, buried her son and soon her mother to welcome fought from chattanooga south. In june 1864, ellen would become pregnant while vicksburg for another son, her seventh child before sherman began his march. Cut off from communication along the way, he did not learn that baby Charles Sherman died on december 4 until he arrived in savannah at the end of december and read about it in the newspaper. The rest of the war ellen and her children divided their time between Lancaster Notre Dame where they were in school. Except for a trip to chicago to take part in the Catholic Church fundraising for soldiers medical needs. Ellen was a devout catholic or whole life. It has often been accused of putting her faith ahead of her country and her husband. Thats not true. Let me read a bit from the last chapter of ellens part of my book. The 19th century reverberated with ugly anticatholic prejudice, with charges that catholic served only their pope another country. But if there any question whether applicability america, Ellen Sherman was a the definitive answer. In her words and deeds, and private and in public, on to split a passion for the United States of america at the most every protestant might hope to match what can ever see. Ellen had instructed her sons to wave the flag for lincolns election in 1860. Even before the. Even before the civil war began she urge cant to rejoin the army and defend the union. When he wanted to hide in the wake of the charge of insanity. She rallied his spirits to keep him in the war. When sherman threatened to resign a year later, she sharply rejected that course of desertion and urged him to remain on duty and had great victories for him. In her letters to comp, she, she wrote that she wish she were a man so she could fight, she wished her sons were o