Transcripts For CSPAN2 Engineering Victory 20170129 : vimars

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We just finished a program with another very successful book, the second edition, the earth i weeping and the book well talk about today in it First Edition. You have a chance to get build a signed First Edition library, a fine library for you and your family. Today we welcome cspan to Abraham Lincolns would shop. They have been with us before and always a joy to have them back. If youre watching this program on cspan, you probably understand brights recorded and you cannot send in questions but you can visit the web site. You can visit our web site and watch all of the archived shows. That have been on authors voice and it predecessor, virtual book signing. And in some of the cases, moor recent books, signed books may still be available. Now, my name is im going to be your host today. We are streaming live from the Abraham Lincoln book shop in chicago. Since 1938 thats become shop has been dealing in historical becomes, autographs, photographs, prints, everything pertaining to lincoln, the civil war and u. S. Presidency, and so please visit the web site for our shop if you cant visit here personally. Please visit our web site. The authors voice is striking on streaming live an your favorite devices. Well bring you other shows, shows for children, lady bird and friends for children is shown in the romance genre, coming up is midmysteries, a scifi show coming up. So its not just lincoln and the civil war, not just the presidency, its everything. Which brings us to our guest today. In the second half of todays a house divided program. Like to introduce you to thomas army. Abraham lincoln and see civil hard have fast ited thomas since the was young. He visited the president s home and the civil war battle fields on Family Vacations and decided to study history as an undergreatat at wesleyyant university, confident. Study the civil war and went interest a long career in education, including a 19year stint as a headmaster at a new england boarding school. That would be an hours worth of discussion. We could probably talk more than an hour at about. After that tom had enough of education and finished his ph. D the university of massachusetts. He was ban professor. The book were going to discuss today, engineering victory, how Technology Won the civil war. This is toms first book and congratulations. Well, thank you very much. He lives in vernon, connecticut, with his wife, virginia. Engineering victory, how Technology Won the civil war, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. We thank you them for producing that and getting tom here. 369 pages, wonderfully illustrated. The price is 49. 95. And if you wish to order a signed edition in the next hour, please do so. Tom, walk to lincoln book store. Lets start the beginning. Why engineering . What brought you to this top wick . My interest in engineering came as a result of exploring interests in Technological Advancements and innovation. All been fascinated by that. I am not a scientist. Dont know much about science. Didnt do particularly well in science in school. But certainly in the last ten to 15 years, as i watched the development of american science, and biotechnology, and nano technology, medicine, even in construction and architecture, and in everything that touches our lives, i became fascinated with the subject. Recently, for example, visited a world war ii museumer in newton, massachusetts, where i had a chance to play with an enigma machine which was made famously the german army during the second world war. A machine that looks like a typewriter but was wired as a result of some remarkable electrical engineering, so thatt could send codes every day that were entirely different, and unless you had access to how those codes were shifted you account crack the enigma machine, a famous movie was made about it. Had a chance to play with a that. Marveled its and reinforced my interest in engineering history and in history and in engineering. So, looking back on how i got started on this book, i thought, well, what was the engineering like during the civil war . And is a started to explore that, i realized that not much had been written about it. So, i decided that i would tackle this and the more i looked, the more i got interested and the more i uncovered, and off i went. Well, yeah. To some extent it was an open topic. People have not written a lot about it in the more recent generations but there had been some writing, it appears, here and there in general histories and in the past but this volume does, i think, serve as a collective. You may have used that word. Outdated motions of the north and the south in the civil war and another thing i find very fascinating about the book, before the civil war. The antebellum period that plays such an important part in engineering when the war does start. It does much. General premise was to explore the critical advantage that the union had over the confederacy in military engineering. And the skills that Union Soldiers and officers used to build bridges, tunnels, repair railroads, not only required remarkable mechanical skills but also required ingenuity and innovation, and i argue that ingenuity and innovation, that mindset, was developed during the antebellum period when the north invested in educational systems to meet this growing Industrial Society. And so not only was there Common School reform in the antebellum north but there were programs like the movement beginning in mill bury, massachusetts in late 20s. Agricultural fairs. Agricultural fairs were like todays home depot. People would go to these fairs and not only test the best apple pies and look at grains of wheat and discussions about fertilization but this wheres local farmers and mechanics would bring their latest inventions, and so if you war farmer and you designed a new hoe or you thing you came up with an alteration on the traditional shovel, you would bring it to the fair, these fairs set aside relatively significant amounts of money to give as prizes to people who would come up with these gold star inventions. And so as people walked through these fairs, farmers and mechanics got their ideas, and went home and did their own tinkering. So, that reinforced this idea of innovation and ingenuity. A characteristic of the north. Correct. The south was very different. This what i try emphasize in my book. I want to say straight up, because some people have asked me about this the book doesnt challenge the bravery or common sense knowledge of the southern soldier or the southern general. It does not do that. But what it does do is it looks at whether or not southern soldiers, Like Northern soldiers, were prepared in an Industrial Society to meet changing technological needs, and my answer is, no no, they were not. In a plantation system which dominated the south during the antebellum period, it that only dominated the economics of the south but also dominated the Political Landscape of the south. So that plantation owners were the ones that sat in the state house of representatives and the state senates, and so they not only called the shots politically but they also had control over economic development, and in the south, the plantation economy made millions of dollars for plantation owners. Theres no doubt that men who ran successful cotton plantations were some of the wealthiest men in america. Any belief or understanding that some form of industry was to encroach been that was frowned upon, and so as a result of that so was the idea of developing educational systems. And so if you look the south in prewar years, there are with the exception of the state of north north carolina, that put together a remarkable Common School reform movement, the other states did not. And most local communities and states were not interested in that, and some of the reasons are taxes, some of the reasons have to do with the belief that if you really wanted your child educated you go to a private school or be tutors. But the end result was a large segment of the yeoman farmer class or tenant farmers in the south were not particularly welleducated and werent educated to understand mechanics and machine tools, and so when the war breaks out, both sides are recruiting these men, and so when these armies form and a call goes out for engineers because there just werent enough west point trained engineers to go around, the union army looked to its resources within. It look to individual regiments. To men who were not west point graduates, who work on a railroad before the war, and that they happened to be officers in the 15th new york infan tri, and general mcclelland decided no longer are are you in the 15th new york infan tri. Youre going to be 15th new york volunteer engineers and at your head is going to be captain beers or van brocklin who have some engineering background, and the south had nothing comparable. Theres enough operational engineering in this book to go for an hire hour or two. I want to ask you one more question about education before we get into the war. There is another id solve education for the union arm and the confederate arm and that is west point. The westpoint was essentially ang findinger school, and it in your pointings did west pointers live up to the expectations to bed the leading he can engineers . I think they dade but thats a doubleedged sword. People look the mall of west point engineers, graduates, available when the war break us out. Some of the many had left the army and they were now working for private businesses. War break outs, the men enlist and the split was about three fifths to north, two 50s to the south. And two fifths to the south. They say the south must have had good west point engineers. The problem with that line of reasoning, as i discovered, was that might have been acceptable if the army stayed the size of the u. S. Army during the Mexican American war. Scott moved 15,000 men from veracruz to the state of mexico city. The biggest army in the field. Now the armys there are armies in tennessee and armies out on the mississippi, and 60 engineers going north and 40 going south are not enough. So, they have to rely on volunteers and as it turned out, although the west pointer toure question that though the west pointers take the lead and get commanding posts, the volunteer soldiers perform just as remarkably as do the west pointers. Especially in thest. Especially in the west. When its pure west pointers and i want to bring up one of the people who could almost be one of the union heroes of the Mississippi Valley campaign, who was josiah bissel and what whats idea. Thats a remarkable story. Bissel, who has some Civil Engineering brown before the war, goes to Army Recruiters in august of 61 and says i think we need an engineer rep regiment out waste and i propose to lead one. And they agree and become the engineer regiment of the west, and bissel gets attached to popes army. So, the war starts. Et cetera, et cetera, and now pope finds himself coming down the Mississippi River and he is interested in punching through at eye iland number 10 and everyone knows the story that the flotilla is going to be stopped at vicksburg. But in 62, popes army is stand at Island Number two between, and in one of the Great Stories of the civil war, bissel guess to pope and said id like to explore the possibility of cutting a canal through north of Island Number ten so see if we can get around the island and surround it. Forcing it to surrender, and so opope agreed. So bissel and a song gets in a row boat, they good down the Mississippi River, and they discover that the area is flooded. They see no possibility of doing this. So bissel tells the private who is with him, to go back and to ask the navy, the union navy, who are north of this position, if they would be willing to try to blow past Island Number 10, and in the meantime bissel is looking around. He stands on the morning 0 he is supposed to be picked up again in row boat and is stand agoen the opposite shore of the mississippi and looking across the mississippi, and he sees what he thinks is a cut between these large trees, and he decides that when the rower gets there theyll travel this cut and he discovers it was an old wagon road that is underwater. He thinks he can push through there and cut canal, and thats exactly what the does. They invent some ingenious mechanical devices, including a saw that is on a platform that looks like a trapezoid, which saws the heavy logs, trees, underneath the water. They cut them downs pull them out and sure enough, within eight days, the union army is sending supply barges and a few ships through the canal and they find themselves south of Island Number ten. The commander at Island Number ten is so the confederate commander otherwise a matessed by this, recognizes he is surrounded, mass he surrenders the island. Without a brill briggan he can nearing campaign that did not result in a bloody battle. Correct. The next stop would probably by vicksburg, but i think thats you need to read the book to find out some of the magnificent engineering that occurred in vicksburg campaign, especially grants ability the ability of grants he can nears to deal with water, get through water, over water to create new water courses. The canal didnt work. I didnt work. But i want to do is town another type of engineering; there are Engineers Army engineers trashings divisional and then top graphal engineers, sherm want was a topographical engineer. Tells what it they did. Topographical engineers were mapmakers but their role in the civil war from the out set was very critical because the United States had not mapped itself with the exception of the american coastline. There was a Coastal Survey group, and this group was responsible for mapping the coast line of the United States, especially the harbors and inlets and some top graph wall engineers work their this group. So when the war broke out they needed good maps and they especially needed the union army needed good maps in the south, and so the topographical engineers were assigned to do that. Now, it became much more complicated than sitting down at a table and drawing a map because you had to estimate differences, you might styles be working behind enemy lines. And then you had to reproduce the maps. It was one thing to have the commanding general have a reasonably accurate map of a particular area in which your army was operating. But it was another thing when you are asking core commanders or Division Commander ore regimental commanders to find farm road size think maneuver their men into pigs position so the commanding general could launch an attack. Well, the union army first stopped it had no method of reproducing the maps except by having clerks literally sit down and copy them. So by the middle of the war the army discovered that separating the topographical engineers, which was a specialty, from the engineers, wasnt really working. It was inefficient. So they combined the two. The core top graph wall engineers went able and the engineers who were part of the topographical service, some of them, continued in this process. But going back to this idea of ingenuity and innovation. By 1864 several of the topographical engineers came up with ways to reproduce maps. Whether it was taking pictures of maps and then taking the image and sketching copying the inning, and then reproducing them that way. There will several methods of doing this. By 64, then, Union Generals were able to distribute these maps. I want to introduce everybody to a remarkable photographic a that is francis millers photographic history of the civil war. A 10 volume magnificent piece of work. It was created about the time of athe civil war between early 1900s and 1911. So this is created and miller sent out research for all of these lost photographs about the civil war. There is one volume that is particularly interesting. For someone who is interested in engineering. It is volume 5. Artillery which also adid you find illustrated history, photographic histories, photographs of Engineering Projects useful in research of this book . Yes. First of all because they reinforce some of the things that i was reading. They also provided me with in some cases, an image that i had to try to imagine through text. Case in point i will give you would be herman aso he is a west pointer engineer, the youngest man to graduate from west point. He graduates from west point, he is 19 years old. Goes into the railroad business. He is a remarkable engineer. And he is brought on to be one of the chief engineers of the newly formed United States military railroad. He comes up with the id