Transcripts For CSPAN2 Imperfect Union 20170102

National correspondent, our guest today is correspondent for the st. Louis postdispatch and the author of emperor union the aftermath of the battle of gettysburg. We welcome our guest and Live Audience today as well as cspan tv. In his new book, chuck explores one of gettysburgs most famous stories, that of a father, a journalist searching for his older son in the haze of battle. We will also touch on the journalism practices of the day, Battlefield Medicine and the overarching cost of the ultimate sacrifice for the full measure. The famous documentarian and press called mentor ken burns set of imperfect union, chuck raasch has written an important important book, one that contains an aerial view of the greatest battle ever fought in north america. Chuck was one of the five original longform writers at usa today when it began in 1982, served as a correspondent forget thatnews nervous and a graduate of south Dakota University legally completed as journalism at stanford is a proud member of the National Press club. We will let chuck tell us about his book and switch to questions for a while. Chuck book is the imperfect union, tell us about it thanks for having me tonight, i see on off a lot of familiar faces out here and i anticipate questions coming down the road so i will say that i hope youll withhold judgment on this afterwards because asdonald trump taught us last night, you shouldnt make judgments. Give me the whole hour, okay . I might scott, because i know at least one of my friends is left to watch that. We will get out of here as soon as we can but i want to have fun tonight and i want to answer questions fairly. People ask me why i this book and its sort of two anecdotes that illustrate it. One of which is an episode that i think you will remember in contemporaneous situations, the pat tillman situation with the nfl player that went to war and was called out as a hero, sort of a Great American hero for going to afghanistan and getting killed and it turned out the mythology built up around him was not necessarily the correct thing that happened. In fact, he most likely in later investigations was killed by his own men. So it got me thinking in that sphere of kind of this whole issue of the idea of having to make mythology and apologize people and more and why we have to do that so thinking about that for a number of years, in 2013 when i was working for usa today and actually considering whether or not to take a buyout in one of the sad commentaries of the newspaper industry of our time , i was sent to gettysburg to cover the 150th anniversary of the battle and i thought this is kind of a boring assignment frankly because who has not read about and written about gettysburg . Everything you could possibly think, every general who fought there wrote a memoir about the battle so i went up there, not all that fired up about the assignment and a colleague and i were up there for two days and we spent two days reporting, talking to people, talking to public officials, talking to the head of the Gettysburg National Military Park up there and we were on the second day and about ready to go home in the afternoon of the second day and we decided to make one last at the very famous Little Round Top which frankly has nothing to do with my book but Little Round Top, it was filled with tourists. A lot of people would come in and there were kids. You could look down in the valley and see the famous kids playing in the rocks and there were these groups that were sort of raucously taking pictures and not being very quiet even though this is reverent ground. And i noticed often the corner or the corner of my eye, there were two elderly couples and the middleaged, it turns out to be their son. And they were the quarks from vermont and they had come to the battlefield with a diary of a private mining clerk who had been killed on the third day of the ballot gettysburg, he was an ancestor there, he was the great whatever it is, three or four generations removed and they had his diary and they had traced his final days and hours to the third day of the battle and they were just very quiet, very reverent, very studious about it and they were almost , i dont want to say over emotional but they stood out in the emotion that they had as opposed to the other tourists coming for the memory of the moment. I talked to them and found out the family had held this diary in esteem throughout the generations of the family. And they had often speculated back and forth between the two coasts of the country between the generations of the country and they often speculated because this kid that had been killed there was by all accounts a very promising young man. Universally liked, a lot of people thought he was going to go a long way in the Public Service area of that era, it was just starting to be the chicago area and verily was a very good speaker, very wellliked in the company and it was the third day of the battle and so it struck me there that history in particular history of these greater things that we write about and read about in American History, its not about some remote event 150 years ago. History, the aftermath of war is never ending. It never leaves. It never leaves the family so with that sort of in mind, with those two events in mind, i felt like there hadto have been a bigger story here. This story that was central to my book is about wilkinson, they were a very famous story. If you go to gettysburg now, theres a very prominent display about how wilkinson who was a 19yearold lieutenant of the army, the youngest artillery officer in the union army was a hero of day one in gettysburg. His unit had been sent to an untenable position by a very controversial still sedated tactical decision that was put forth by a very controversial general and this story, the myth around him is that he was this kid that was 19 years old that had held the line just long enough for reinforcements of the union army told Cemetery Ridge and from that position the union army was able to repel the next two day books of assault from general lees army and basically held the union army together and by implication, held the union together. Its my belief after researching this book and there are 909 footnote in this book. Youll apologize if i look a little i weary but after researching this book, is my contention that what happened with this kid on the first day in the 2200 men that were near him on the battlefield was every bit as important as what happened at picketts charge two days later. Because if they hadnt acted and gone into the breach, the whole union army would have been rolled up and probably pushed back into either harrisburg or baltimore or washington. So from that point, it became evident to me that putting the two events together, some of the mythmaking that had come up contemporaneously around that one episode with pat tillman, how we are so quick to make a hero. The story was that he heroically led discounter charge in afghanistan and no doubt he did but when you started peeling down the real story, it was not the myth that had been built up around him. So consequently, i felt like this was the best story to tell because the story of these two people, the father who was a wartime correspondent and his son had been so mythologized. Alfred wilde, a very Famous Artist at the time had made this very heroic etching of him and if you look at history books and if you go to art museums you can see renditions of this, a depiction of this young man 19 years old holding a sword, ending up on marlowes knoll while hes surrounded on all sides and all these people coming in. I thought there would be a great back story to look and see how the myth matched reality. And i concluded two things. Number one, the story thats told about how he was wounded and died which is a particularly gruesome story that its held up as part of the mythology of his heroism, he is said if you go up in gettysburg and look at the wall, hes shot through the leg in this thing, a cannonball went through his horse, killed his horse instantly. Shot his leg and he self amputated his leg and stayed on the battlefield. And still directed his men for 10 minutes before hes hauled off to the county courthouse and thats what you read when you go up there. You can see the knife which he is alleged to have cut his own leg off. I believe in my research that that didnt happen that way. I think it happened in a different way and so while it debunks the mythology that surrounds him and may cause a little bit of heartache at the National Military parks, i believe the reality of the story, of how he arrived on the battlefield, how he fought on the battlefield and more so, how he spent the final 10 hours of his life frankly is more selfsacrificing, more heroic and more endearing to the permanent story than any myth that we could ever throw around. Its not a particularly good story. Its not a comforting story but it is i think a real story about what happens to people in war. The other thing that i thought was a good hook for the story was salmon wilkinson was a very famous New York Times correspondent at the time and he was not only hooked into journalism, he was hooked into a number of other areas of public life and was a staunch abolitionist. He had run for Public Office and self, as an abolitionist. He was married to the sister of the suffragette, Elizabeth Katie stanton area katie was somewhat intentional in the movement and he was a very public figure and he had been very, very outspoken about the need to win the war. He was what they call a bitter end her. He felt like there was no sacrifice that wasnt worth paying including the life of one of his nephews who he had to, whose body he had to retrieve a year before gettysburg at the battle of seven pines after he had been killed there so he was on record in very decisive ways of saying no matter what the sacrifice is, we need to win this war. Suddenly he rides into the battlefield on the first day of gettysburg and is informed by his, by several Senior Officers of the time that his son has been badly wounded. Basically taken to the poor house on the other side of the confederate line so the book is his search for his boy in the aftermath of the battle and tens of thousands of people that came from all over the country who have these as the army was pulling out, this army came in and a whole phalanx of heroes heretofore unknown step forward in that moment including africanamericans who had been hunted, even freed africanamericans stepping forward to help in the caring for 20,000 wounded men on the battlefield. When the two armies pulled out they left 230 of those 20,000 men so you can imagine the kinds of challenges that were there and so the story is about his search for his son but also kind of in that area. But i also felt like because it was such aprominent journalist at the time that he would have been a good hook. So the book is also about the rise of the work works. Really the second war after the crimean war where you had reporters embedded with armies in the battlefield. About 45 of the correspondence with both armies that gettysburg. So the story is kind of how they were having to reinvent this profession and embed the profession of the workhorse during a Communications Revolution telegraph, which to me is every bit as impact in on that era of American History as the internet has been in our era. The correspondence called it the lightning. It took three weeks to get the news that the end of the battle of 1812 fo and sam wilson was filing instantly from the battlefieldso via telegraph. So the book goes into the characters and they were characters. Ranging from very smugch intellectuals to excons that were out working for newspapers and gathering the news, and they literally had to walk through valleys of death. One was killed at get gettysburg. One correspondent with the union nave where who was that 15 times temperature the war. Ri so the book explores that area as well. On that note ive marked five short passages over to book that in particular you folks in the room that are in the business, but even if youre not, will kind of relate to, and it shows how relatable history can be to the modern construct of our lives. I promise i wont read too long. The first one is a excerpt from this guy named Charlie Kaufman, a very colorful, shall we say, reporter for the boston journal. He was fearless, known for taking risks and the correspondents would chide him about how reckless he was in covering battles. After the battle of re writes he writes but how a war correspondent went bat about his work. There war only a handful of women that were in the whole balance of correspondents covering the war. Heres Charlie Kaufman describing how the went about their business and for a journalist, when everybody act job is over, how our works again. Quote when the soldiers are seeking rest the work of the mayor correspondents begins. All through the day eyes and heres have been mope. The notebook is scrawled with characters but meaningless a few hours later. Rter in he must grope his way along the lines in the darkness. Isis hospitals, the narratives f all, eliminate error, get at the probable truth, keeping ever in mind that each general thinks husband brigade, each colonel things his ridge gent, every captain decide most of the fighting. End quote. I pick that out because of the term probable truth and circles because to pat tillman and the whole idea of writing the first draft of out and tommy and i talk about what lesson is learned, one lesson is that no story is ever finished. You need to keep coming back to the story. I think anybody who has covered war or covered conflict would understand this in that context. So that the first. The second one actually is probably my favorite quote of the book, and its my favorite quote of all the research i did, and it has to do with, i think, something everybody every journalist in to room can relate to this. Expense accounts. Even if youre not a journalist you relate to it. Horace grillly was the boss of sam wickeson, the was the most famous man in america other than abraham lincoln. And he also was running an enter surprise, newspapers enterprise, newspapers losing money. From the book early in the greely raised a ruckus. When growly bucket bach balked at paying, the correspondent got the news they paid for. He said, early news is expensive fuss. I have water mel beyond and wisconsiny ready, i guess the news without asking questions. Im going to use the watermelon and whiskey quote. The third pass wantingage my ed jurors editors all over, saying my world couldnt s and i exist and still cant without editorsful we need them i read this is about another character are character that was working for horace greely. A very excellent editor and later on he and greely had a falling out over the war. This an an interesting episode at the bin of the war. At the tribune, wilkes the editor, who would eventually run into disagreement with greely over the course of the work was skeptical. He suffered no fool. Early in war a green correspondent began atle gravel ditch some o of a battle, qu, this is the truth, to thine all mighting the cause of the righteous have triumphed. End quote. Charles dana shot become a response hereafter, dana quote, insending your report, please specify the number of the hymns and save telegraph expenses. So, who would want to work with people like that, right . Lets see. Where are we good have a couple left. This is my favorite reporternc story, and i will anytime we get into a reporter editor argument who is more value to the process, which i think is probably an argument that will never be resolved but in fun to have sam wick wilk both got dysentery and maybe were suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, and sam was so sick that one foo night he decided he didnt want to die in his tent because he didnt want to bother his mate. So he without of the tent and fall interests a mud puddle and almost drowns. S. A union army surgeon come along and basically brings him back to life. Heres what happened after this episode. So, during the Peninsula Campaign and ensuing battles in 1862, gun and wickson shared tents or slept side by side. Thenses typified their situation. Gun procured a about of whiskey he shared with officers who had granted him interview, but the horrific Living Conditions took a coal. Her would also twice beou prescribed ohmum by union doctors treating serious stomach pains and diarrhea. One nye night gun and willerson shared a bed as temporary headquarters for a brigadier general. Wick sewn spend most of the evening interviews officers. Not so much in the next day, the mattress they shared was so bad. That in spite of my fatigue i thumbed and tossed considerably as welkson told me in morning. After seven times john became ill that i was wickson recorded him back in new york. The arrived by a train in un5, 1862. Looking anywhere a skeleton. My ware has long. My hat and old felt without a band in which i had often fed my fuel, and all stained them the rain, the earth and the guns against which i had lent. My waistcoat was almost button less. So we go on. To make matters worse, his editors immediately ban lambasting him about the access to rival heard was getting into by implications the stories the tribune was not getting. During a dinner with several editors one told gun, who had almost died covering the far for his paper, he admired the tact that the herald had in champ ponding mcclellan, procuring facilities for this comer. Enough z in other words your were getting beaten. So even pushing yourself to the threshold of deaths door to get the doctor was not enough to please editors in this competitive new world of the war correspondent. One last one. And then we can go to questions. There was after the if i can fine it here people asked how could, in that aspect of life, and in that era of the world, how could you send someone off to war . How could a mother send a son off to war or these men march pell mell into almost certain death in certain circumstances. T and the aforementioned Charlie Kaufman, who had spent a week after gettysburg, record reporting on the battle, was leaving on a train when he ran into one of the many mothers who cad from far away is in onene from new york to look for her wounded son. For the north be battle was so costly there seemed to be no way to describe. Expectations put upon the men who fought there were immense. Not long after leading gettysburg, the boston journals kaufman, ran into a Mother Nature whose sonned that been captured the year before andha then wounded in gettysburg. Her boy has fought the 15 battles. She was relieved to fine he would survive. But she was more proud than relieved in what she heard from her boys captain about how hard her soldier boy had fought. Quarterback told them when he went away i would rather hear hw was dead than he had disgraced him. Kaufman told the mere mow he was perplexed. He toll the mother he thought the buy had done his part. 15 battles and wounded and she believed itself was time for him to come home. No, the mother responded, her son reenlisted and she was happy about that. Quote, i rather want him to help give the crushing blow, endnd quote, she told kaufman. Kaufman wrote there were thousands of such mothers in the land, end quote. So thats reading, that kind of where i came from in writing this book. They where i hope you can start and maybe fill in, in your own reading i dont want to give it all away but it was an important book to write in the don text of what was going on in our own era and how we treat war and things like ptsd. A number of characters who clearly were suffering from it, and it was not recognized or wasnt afforded by their superiors and war. Anyway, thats where we are. Host thank you very much. [applause] a lot to dive into here. Audience questions and start with my own to start with. Im always fascinated to see the reaction to books. Obviously you have had several good reviews but what descent of the family. Guest i got an email on t tuesday from a greatgreat,great grand nephew of sam bulkson who was a history professor spade liked the booked. And he also apologized to me for his familys propensity to nameo all the people in the family either john or sam because when you read the book, its very there are john juniors and samorss and that was a cough thing. Tougher to do, and he note his sons name was sam. And also what was a could coincidence the young man i wrote about in the book, his birthday is my birthday. Host not at the same birth year. Im intrigue talk about journalism side of this but talk to me about journalism in the 1800s and now. The telegraph and as a vent of matthew braid and war photographers and now the iphone. Guest the same horror and reacts to what was going on in the middle of the civil war to the dane dawn of there was graphic after photos in the book, and it sort of changed the conversation. It depends allow people to distance themselves as much as what whats gone in the war so there was this debate about what impact that would have on future wars and so that is kind of the same thing we have been having about the internet, the impact on journalism and what is journalism. So that aspect was going on. There was sort of only aspect and that was the technology of it and the technology of it and the the book i go into a chapter about the all of the Amazing Things that people would do to get their storiess out and get them out ahead of time and try to get think accurately but get them out. Th one comer just commandeered seven miles of telegraph lines to file out of the gettysburg. A so there is want awful lot of focus on technology and what was going on in the business at that time and how it was going to and would change journalism but the basic is the same, getting the a story as accurately thera probable truth, because after all we depend on what people tell us, their vision of the truth, and if were not eye witnesses to it. I will say that a number of these people were eye witnesses to events and so they didnt have to depend upon other people. They were there sam wilkson and a half dozen other correspondents for northern newspapers were on Cemetery Ridge at the charge. They chief been killed there fact one of them almost was killed in a cannon shot before the battle. Host youre an journalist. How did researching this or writing this inform your journau jim and change any way how you report on things. Guest i referred to one earlier as the fact i think it taught me that the story never ends. The story is kin e continuing and to always circle back. Ething is it made my ben again appreciate the idea that the more you can authenticate things and go back to original sources the better you can be. That most ore a danger in world than anything. When we start repeating spin and half truth and lie, and sort of amalgamates into fact on the internet. I found a number of cites in other publications and other works that when we went week in original cite, little different twist and take on it. So, i think that is probably how the mythology built about how thissing you man died. Host when reading this, reminded me of the poem die for ones country, and we do replying i mythologize. Anyone who serves is a hero. How does that work . Always been like that . Has it changed . Guest well, the in the introduction of the book i talk bat guy that came back to battle field two years later and wrote about what was going on there, and he sort of speculated that we needed it because of the enormity of the loss and needed something to attach meaning to because otherwise the would have been gross carnage. So we have to do that. There also is another aspect of this that we sort of stand in awe of people that would go into that fire and sacrifice their lives for us no matter who they were. I got to tell you issue got a new and different view of heros in those moments on this in research of this book. I believe in are more women characters in the book than men, and in tech there is a woman who was i believe a resident of the poor house, who really did heroic things in the aftermath of gettysburg, and she risked her life doing it, and to me that is not to me the mythology should include that. The story should be our average people step into the absolutely all the biggest human catastrophe, still us, we have ever had on this continent. 20,000 wounded men and i think anywhere from 20 to 30,000 people coming in from all over the country, some of them who wondered the battle field for days and never found the lovedwt ones. Host wickson found his son but he was filing stories from the battlefield while searching for his son . Thats what i attracted me. He was able to do that. The dispatch is considered the best of the war, and i think its probably the best ive ever read. The fact he was able to do that or maybe because he was prompted to do thaws he sat next to this body of his oldest son, to me makes it even more compelling. The fact he was able to push through in that moment and write a very concise, very descriptive element, and he got in the fact that he felt that the commanding general this was the belief at the time had sacrificed his son and his sons battery and units, basically by very bad tactical decision. Its still debated among students 0 of the battle. If hey more questions. Specking of dispatches you notice that president lincolns famous gettysburg address marry mirrored the dispatches. Guest the language of theis gettysburg address i was not able to prove i only was able to come up with one meeting of sam wilkson and john haye one of lincolns two top aides after this. Sam wickson went home and basically just slept for three months after the battle. He was people were worried about him. Peek thought he was never going to be able to make it back. When he came back the fall he ran interest one of lincolns people. There was a speech that lincoln gave two blocks away from here, two nite nights after the battle of gettysburg and vicesburg and lincoln gave a speech that schad some phraseology that that was in salk wilksons dispatch about the second freedom, show up in the gettysburg address four months later. Lincoln rad that dispatch, was thinking along the same line and even talk about not four score but in that time span, that period. So they were also talking about the place in the history of america and how important but also about this immense sacrifice that had just been rendered up in gettysburg. Host lets have a discussion. We have a microphone so raise your hand. We have a person over here. How are you doing . I have a technical question. If you were a reporter then, how was a story actually filed . Because youre in on a battlefield. D . Theres a lot of gunfire, everything is like happening. So, is there a telegraph line there or how that accomplished. Guest a very good question. There were or what you would do is hire runners that would ride fast horses to the next junction. The Confederate Army cut a lot of telegraph lines so the union army had to string them in. This was a problem because correspondents depended on the union army forstringing those and corporals dr. Ed they were censor and there was a lot of censorship of spites and two congressional investigationses hugh the union arming was at any rating correspondents. They would go to the nearest Railroad Junction or the telegraph junction, but need had the mead that therians to the battlefield so my guess is they filed from the battle field. Theres not any clear pattern through all of this. The story of one man who was shut off from having any accesst from his colleagues0 or his competitors access to the battle. So the got a fast train to baltimore and hired a guy to start transmitting his stuff back to his newspaper. And as he is transmitting his story, he is realizing there are more people coming to the battle field that he needs to interview but he has two colleagues waiting in line behind him to get their dispatches out. And so he decides he wants to be the head competitor on this and he handpick out a pock version of the old testament, hand it to the telegraph operator and once you have the telegraph, you keep and it pay for it. He had telegraph operator start typing from the bible and we would go out and interview more people, come back, filed more, go out, come back, file more. I cant imagine being on the other end of the file. But i want to see guest i want to see the form. Host it was not inexpensive to file thats. Newspapers were laying out a lot of money to do that. Frankly probably a lot of prescribes to keep the lines open but its a very good question. Theyd called it the like inning because it totally changed communication. I dont know if this is the appropriate time but ap style because you had to get facts there in case the telegraph line. Guest i dont know is thats true. The ap was formed 13 years before the war so it was expanding the stories. The other thing is that the sam winkson was the most widely read dispatch of the war. They made a special familiaral threat and it was sold that way pamphlet and it was sold that the. The per capita use was higher then than any other time in the country. There were 1300 newspapers in 1850 and 3500 in 18 60. To toot the bureau after census copy couple on the role t newspapers played in literacy and deck democratizing. Chucking, with all those different numbers covering the war, what was in the New York Times editorial stance on the war and compare to other new york paper . Very good questioning. One by a ganymede henry raymondd who what very conservative. A very conservative newspaper. More pro ling lynn than the tribune which is pretty lynn pressure pro lincoln and one reason sam win there he was bitterender, somebody who saidt we need to win the bar win the war and its about abolition there was a great story in the herald was the antiwar panel, the cop heard paper. They captain pushing for accommodation and peace treaties with the south, and so they were not welcomed in a lot of union camps. So what they did was the herald, they flooded the zone. They just hired three times as many reporters as any other newspaper, feeling the got enough of them out there theyd get the necessary. But good question. Probably the most conservative wellknown newspaper at the time, the New York Times. Hi. Im intrigued by watermelons and whiskey. If i could sort of relate it to a much more modern circumstance. There were a lot of falter recall about the imbeds in the first gulf war, the first time modern american journalists were imbuildded and that relationship was not always an easy one, not always a friendly one. Despites the bribes what, was at the relationship . Resent. Of that roarers for tale telling the truth and resents. Of the people carrying pens and panses. Host the commander of the union army, about two weeks before the battle of gettysburg, sent an email email telegraph host that would be news. Guest dont believe every you liver on read on theter] internet. No, the sent a telegraph to the head of the war effort and said, these guys are reporting on my whereabouts, reporting on what dying, quoting boom anonymously and saying nasty things. Ening i throw them houston . Hall lex says you can throw them out if you want but its going to be hard to keep them out. And he haleck sent a note back saying i honestly believe that lee is getting a Million Dollars worth of intelligencey out of reading newspapers. Basically telling them about this. So you have to remember, lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the war. A numb after nuisance editors, including one at the philadelphia bulletin or who was thrown in jail for printing the movements of hookers army. Hooker was removed with gets toe gettysburg because of different factors, but there were episodes of tarring and feathering of reporters. Made a year after gettysburg, took a was really upset at a reporter for another philadelphia newspaper and basically courtmartiales him in front of his brigade and sent him tied up backwards on a mule. So, they tried to humiliate him, and so there was this constant tension, and in turk, if one of these guys had been particularly sam wickson had been cack capturedded he probably would have been executed because a lot of southern soldiers blamed greely for the expansion of the war. Host trump is not the first person to hate the media. Guest no. Fact sherman hated the media. Theres story in the book about the origins of why sherman hated the media it and i bass because a newspaper reporter had written story about him that basically called him insane my do protagonist in the story had a roll in that. Back to audience. Chuck you talk about unpeeling the real story versus thing my. The myth. Did you have an ahha moment and talk to the the people involved about the keeper of thing my. Guest an archivist knows the book it out but i got real where lucky. This is a very good point to your question. People at that age were even average everyday people, even if theyve couldnt spell they were much more expressive and much more observant than we are today. Mo the average everyday writings of the 19yearold or the 15yearold girl watching a parade of union takes your breath away when you read it today. Realize in that moment that r the we are losing that in our own current culture by pointing videos and tweeting 140 word asks throw them away. Words were part of who you were and great care was taken in writing letters. So i got really lucky because this familiar lay proprolific letter writing family. Letters involving all different kind of people but mainly the letters between family members that tell the story. Its original stuff. Host talk about that. We send and receive a lot of i emails, but i dont keep a diary personally. I rarely write hand written letter but diaries and letters where you know some of this information. Guest absolutely. And thats like i said there was a diary that got me this myron clark is not in the book except the forward but the fact he kept a diary dican the family published this online and it talked about july 1st when his unit is coming on to the battle field and he was throwing off a shirt and how hot it was men were falling right and left from heat exhaustion, and you can get into the moment with nat now. Whereas today, just so fleeting, and like i said i think we have a ten den si more today to tendency more today to treat words a throwaway objects. About about. And that was a relatively new tomorrow, posttraumatic stress disorder, but been around a long time. World war i and world war ii, shell shocked but it existed back then. Was treated or recognized al all . Guest here ever the however officer who was most responsible, that leads to can bes temperature young mans death was a fran which is barlow, a very good officer, very good union army officer but had been shot and am died at gettysburg at eight months before and was shot and left to die on the field in gettysburg. In both case his wife came and nurse it him back to health, and she became wellknown within the union army as this great nurse, and in the milled middle of of 1864 after just weeks after the bar low what grant would say later the biggest slaughter hour of the war and biggest regret of sending troops into a frontal assault where he really didnt need, and barlow led that and lost 80 of his regiments. And his wife today of typhus she had gotten from soldiers. And she barlow lost it. And they had hule im out of his tent in i adopt now i a straitjacket but saw said you cant do this anymore expend him to europe for three months to clear his head and he comes back at the end of the war, runs for Public Office in new york, becomes the attorney general off new york, and is probably most upon for breaking tamine hall. So they soldiered an but talk to breaks. Host talk to us about the battle field medicine. Ne or lack therefor. No sanitation hard to saw off a limb. Guest the Ambulance Service and the glance system we have now, triage, began at the battle of antitum and its was perfected in practiced more at gettysburg, and in practicality, the dewere lying years hate of the way we killed people than we were able to deal with them, and battle field injuries that today would be fairly fairly would be be barely lethal would routinely kill people. So thats why theres an episode in book about after this young man is wounded that one of his superior officers sees him and realize what is at riecks at risk and he knows its probably over for him, even though today he probably would have been saved. Their gap was here rein douse and the suffer was indescribable. Host right now i think we have a question. The percentage of people who are serve in the military right now is one percent or less. Back then that was a high are number. More families affected by guest yeah. The population of the country was 30 million. There were probably about on both sides, more than 3 million whod . Two combined armies so you figure 30 honor ho of minimum dd30 or 40 of adult men served in army and casualty list hit one out out ten families. Just directly and then you know people that did it. So, by the end of the war everybody was invested in the war, and a very personal way. Chuck, different you find any other mythness the story of guess gettysburg . Guest thats a good question. Got into a debate who was responsible for hold thing high ground on the first on Cemetery Ridge and there was actually got embroiled in the 18 of 4 election. And there are two generals, one was howard, for whom Howard University was name, the liter of the 1st and 11th corps and hancock, who in my mind basically came and made the decisions, said were going to stay herenot going leave. And they argued for years, and congress weighed in in early 1864, which led into the diet are debate of the election of 1864 by awarding a medal thank you howard but not hancock. I think hancock was more responsible, but im not alone in that, but it does certainly gives me a different view of that particular moment. A very key moment of the battle because they were outnumbered two to one and didnt know when all the other the union corps were spread over 60 miles of maryland and barr and pennsylvania, and took them of them to whole day to get to the battle. Want to talk about a couple things before we wrap up. Ive been to gettysburg and read hundreds of books. This one is an interesting take on the idea of focusing on the loss the families face and the possible stories they have, as the personal stores they after the and the impact on generations after that. Guest that struck me about it when i ran into the clark family. This is 150 years later and theyre speculating be the possible loss of this young man of you multiply that through throw years and that who is the story goes on, raises me questions than it answers and i dont want to make this an exposition of the futility of war. We hey been defined by conflicts since the beginning of civilization but it certainly gave me a sense of meaning that even if your note directly connected to mail tear of, what this aftermath is enduring, never over. Host and a measure of full devotion, is there such a thing as a noble death never youre lying on a battlefield knowing your going to die, doesnt feel so noble. Wi well there was a concept in 1863 that has been dubbed by better scholars than i, the good death. We tend to but the civil war into isolation of in the context of death. All this carnage, but this is an era in which people didnt expect to live until theyre 80s or 90sment look everybody family lost one at 2001 or two or three. So they were more intimate with death, and this concept of the good death, and it was this idea that i started out with by saying it was better to live nobly and die heroicry at age 19 tom to live aimless his for 90 years so that was in part going back know mother saying, the most important thing to me was he fought. Dont care if he died as much as if he fought well. So that led to it. You realize one reason why this was is there is a mass death. Mass burials on along island from cholera. With peoples built in mass trenches in new orleans because of dysentery and cholera. So the trench offered the civil war were not exactly new. They part of society and what was going on with mortality in general, because of those wicked diseases was pretty well northern by then. And it extrapolated and got worse as the armies gathered together and more people died from disease than battle in the civil war. It. Watmore noble to die for aa die cause than cholera. Guest exactliment even if you lived to 90. Would like to present before i ask the last pre, the National Press club mug. Thank you. [applause] i just like to remained the audience the book and author fair is friday, november 18. Mark it on your calendars andr well have mr. Chuck raasch. Signing banged. Chuck, give me the take away. Dont give away everything but a i want people to read at theon book. I wrote down read all this over a week or two. What die learn, what die get . Guest i think you get a new sent of the supreme selfsack mikhail in a selfsacrifice that people had. S we could have split into two country there and was something more than blind devotion. Not just quest for heroism. There was belief a conflicted belief union folded southerns thought they were fighting for the union, some thought they were fighting to free she slaves or both there was a con current belief inning among the con fed report stories was different but there was supreme selflessness for a cause greater than themselves that struck me in almost all of the research i did. Host the book is imperfect union by club raasc. Thank you for being here. Thank you, chuck. Thank you. Plus applause