Jointly by me and dr. Caroline newhall, my colleague. Shes the postdoctoral fellow here at the center and you can type your questions into the q a box at any time now if you already have a question, but any certainly anytime during the lectures are at the end during the discussion session and i really want to let you know how much we appreciate your responses and questions that come in through the q a box, you know, sometimes people just type a little note saying i really enjoyed this talk and thats great. Of course for the speakers to hear and whatever your response or question. Were really glad to have it and of course especially over zoom if we dont get any questions or responses, it really makes us question whether theres anyone out there at all. So please do keep those. Some responses coming. We really look forward to the conversation after the lectures. So our first speaker is going to be extremely familiar to anyone whos attended Virginia Tech civil war weekend before William C Jack davis until 2013. He was executive director of the Virginia Center for civil war studies. Thats when i took over and hes the author or editor of more than 50 books. His latest is on the battle of new orleans. Hes also the recipient of many awards in our field including a record for Jefferson Davis awards from the American Civil War museum, and i know you all are going to enjoy hearing from jack. I also want to say how grateful i am that hes continued to be such a presence at the Virginia Center for civil war studies when he retired in 2013. He could have mounted up and written up into the sunset, but hes stuck around and and just been a really welcome element of continuity, especially at these civil war weekends. So, thank you so much for being with us jack and his title tonight is information how they knew what they knew. Lets give him a warm welcome. Hi paul. Thank you very much. And im enjoying looking at you on the screen because i see an awful lot of old friends behind you. I think when i left that office i left about half of those books behind and possessions are chains and i got rid of some of them and other your problem. Im afraid but you can tell im still burdened with im going to chat for about 15 minutes. About you know, how they do what they do or what they they thought they knew. The americans of that here were already an information hungry people. Who had multiple evidence by which they could they could learn what was going out in the world around them . And when the war interrupted that it created quite a disruption for a lot of people when washington was first cut off. In a relation 61 after the secession of virginia. They were six days without any incoming information. From outside imagine washington today with no information for a period of six days. April 29 1861 local newspaper decried the barbarism of tearing up Railroad Tracks destroying telegraph wires and batteries burning bridges sinking ships and capturing steamboats because it deprives us of all the opportunities of hearing from our family and friends and are knowing whats happening in our world. There was no mail no newspapers out of town. No telegrams. There were hardly even rumors. And of course whenever you have a vacuum like that an informational vacuum then or today. What first takes over our in fact rumors that that would be a whole separate topic itself. Because our ancestors just as much as we do today lived on gossip. They didnt have People Magazine and the national enquirer, but the fact remains if they were extremely interested in all sorts of things that the average american is today that he probably shouldnt be interested in. Rumors were not a good source for people to learn things. They certainly werent a good source for the military. Or for the people in washington and richmond are running this war to have to depend on but a great deal that came into the those capitals and it had to be sifted and sorted and discarded when possible though. In fact a great deal of it was never discarded and you still find it turning up in the memoirs that they wrote years after the war. They had because of an information earth. No, real means of sifting the good from the bad. I wont talk a lot about rumors, but theyre interesting. They say a lot about what people want to believe as suppose as opposed. Perhaps what they should believe. And you can actually follow rumors in the army and particular to see how they work my favorite there are two or three there will actually theres about half a dozen. Instances in which a rumor starts that a Union Soldier somewhere in the ranks gave birth to a baby. They sounded like a pretty difficult thing to have happen, but its certainly not theoretically impossible. None of the soldiers involved have ever been identified, but when the for instance in january 1863 the rumor starts. In hookers army over on the left flank of his army. And the story is that its a new jersey soldier. Who is given birth to a baby . You can follow in letters and diaries that rumor as it moves across the army from the left to focus army. To the right and well as doing it this new recruit as hes called the baby. Suddenly shift from being born to a soldier in a new jersey regiment to being born to a soldier in a wisconsin regiment. By may, its a private for vermont whos given birth to the child and before long it actually took place not in hookers army. But on ship island off the mississippi coast rumors once going like it just go on indefinitely. Well never know if theres any basis in fact to it or not, but soldiers really believe this. Male of course is a whole lot more useful a great deal more important. Its probably the single. Closest tie between the soldiers and their families at home. Youre going to hear a talk about love as an element of the war and the letters played an enormous role as transmission sources transmitters conveyances of love from soldier to home and from home back to soldier to the point that the letter writing would say again is a whole separate topic. Became so important. Now some soldiers would write letters every day when they had nothing to say and theyll say that i seat myself and take pen in hand to tell you i am fine. The letter writers usually did one or two things. They they said they were feeding good and they gave a report on the condition of their digestive system because everybodys obsessed with their digestive systems in that era and then the soldier might ask how his wife were sweetheart or parents digestive systems are working as well. Theyre i wont do a separate talk on a digestion in the civil war, theres probably something there. The letter writing becomes so compulsive. The soldiers who cant write dictate letters to friends who can so that information can be passed home or theyll have friends read letters from home that they cant read. Themselves and some of you may have even seen these famous examples of whats called crosswriting. Its a soldier was limited in paper. So hed write. One way on a piece of paper. Turn it a quarter turn right across all that trying to record it turned again and write it and do this on both sides of the paper. Its its almost impossible for historians to make anything out of this because thats also jumbled up. But they had all that information to impart. Or more to the point. I think it was that important to them to maintain that sort of psychological connection with their loved ones at home that they could feel. While they were in the act of writing. I dont know if we feel that today. We were texting our loved ones or not that perhaps we do. Newspapers are far more important. Youve all probably seen civil war newspapers. Im sure. News 51 newspaper said we are traders and news and the proprietors of newspapers have naturally and anxiety to produce a valuable article. For their customers there was an explosion of literacy after 1830 with the coming of pretty much universal free public education. North and south with the result that the hunger for newspapers was enormous in 1860 there were more than 3,000 newspapers being published north and south there are 387 daily newspapers. Just imagine the effort involved in setting type by hand day after day for all new issue, which of course they did it always do they often repeated stories in the successive issues of a newspaper. There are 387 dailies interestingly only 70 of them are the states that will form the confederacy. Theres a little less demand for news now or less. Slightly less literacy less demand for news and of course less investment in the expense of operating a press. There are dailies. Their weekly newspapers there are what they call triweekly newspapers which appeared three times a week. There are even press associations i think. United press international is long gone now. I think the Associated Press is still around. The Associated Press was around in the civil war area. In the confederacy in 1862. They founded the southern Associated Press. These are clearing hazards sort of bring article information in and then to disseminate it to the newspapers who paid to subscribe to their service same sort of thing that happens today in the world with reuters and and associated presence what not. And some of the circulations pretty impressive. The new york tribune had a circulation of 200,000 readers the 200,000 subscribers, which was more subscribers than those of all the Southern Newspapers combined. But to operate the newspaper depended upon two vital elements to get information out to people at large and also information to the people in high circles in washington enrichment who gleaned a lot of their information about the enemy from what it was unwisely published in enemy newspaper, theres and then those newspaces found way across the lines. One of the elements responsible for getting the press out of course is the railroad. Which is the dominant driving powerful engine . Of industry at that time. The other is the is the telegraph. And because relatively little is understood even today i think about the mechanics and the telegraph and what it could and were to the point what it could not do. Im going to talk a little more at length about that. In 1851 the United States had 22,000 miles of telegraph wire hung imagine 20, of course, thats nothing to us today. But imagine it in that era the time and expense and effort of stringing that much wire. And in 1851 it was claimed. That an impulse on a telegraph wire could travel 13,000 miles per second. I dont know if thats true. Its halfway around the world. But the point is an electronic impulse over a copper wire. Could travel just as fast then as it can today. The hughes printing telegraph which is introduced in 1855. It wasnt just the kind that went click click. Click. Click click it actually when it received an impulse, it would print like a typewriter the letters of what was coming in. Was introduced in 1855 and it could transmit 500 miles with good batteries. In europe by the time of the war began a message could go from vienna to zurich and back. In four hours only a few seconds or a few minutes of that. It was actually transmission the rest of it was the human component, which ill talk about in a little bit. It took batteries, of course to operate these things the batteries usually ran on about a hundred to 160 volts. They were simply. Theres Something Like jars of the appropriate chemicals. Connected that would produce a current. A telegraph battery could cost 98. Some could cost 300. This was not a this was not an inexpensive endeavor. Which meant that the cost of sending a telegram . Read about 13 cents a word. I wonder if we would be texting as much today if it costs 13 cents a word to do it. In 18464 the new transcontinental cable transatlantic cable. Im sorry. Could transmit eight words a minute. From new york to ireland at a cost of a dollar a word so thats slow by todays standards but still information is moving. Very very fast compared to the couple of weeks it could take for a ship to renews for one side of the atlantic to the other. There is an impulse no impulse could get from washington to louisville. Its over direct wires. Heres another problem people dont understand about the telegraph because the wires would break at many stops along the way because the wires would come into a town if the telegraph operator there was already using it no message could pass through until the telegraph operator was done doing what he was doing or he would have to stop and reconnect the wires into and out of town. Rather the way you switch engines off the track. So that a train can go straight through without having to stop to wait. Which meant that notifications had to pass all along the lines to operators to close their connections, so that important messages could pass. And even then telegraph communications had to sort of go all around depending on where the wires went telegram from texas went to philadelphia by a new orleans. There are 20 or 30 lines coming into philadelphia from all over the country. Its pretty much the telegraphic center. By the time the war began in the confederacy lines went from the outside washington to new orleans to memphis from richmond to bristol bristol, chattanooga, chattanooga to Atlanta Richmond to stanton. They were limited. And it meant to telegrams often had to go all over the place to get where they were headed. So theres a notion that we need to disuse ourselves of that somehow people with the telegraph could communicate instantaneously. They could not its still very fast. By 1861 theres more than a hundred main and branch lines. And theres over 50,000 miles of wire. Until on telegraph pulls at the time the war began those wires could carry four million messages a year. Thats an information explosion. Doesnt sound like much to us today. Its probably a ford every second on texting. But in that era that is an enormous body of information. Moving all around the continent they had a saying at the time that business of all kinds moved at railroad speed because the railroad was so fast. That changed to say business is moving at telegraph speed. It was the epitome the symbol of modern speed. However, widespread and Successful Use of the device was it still required a unified system of telegraph stations among which information can be transmitted. The Western Union telegraph Company Founded just before the war. Was at first only one of many such companies that were developed during the war around this new medium. But by 1861 Western Union virtually dominated that industry. And had already laid the first transcontinental telegraph line making it the First Nationwide information. Source in our history as with all other great technological innovations, not everyone saw the potential of this new form of almost instantaneous longdistance communication. In 1858 the New York Times always the harvard harbinger of reliable information. Called the telegraph superficial. Seven unsifted and too fast for the truth so if you learn things quickly. I cant be true. It may still be true today. There was a distrust of what came over the wires people knew to this electronic. Dawn really didnt quite get the connection between electricity and something coming into their home or to their town bring them information. Companies of course could only transmit what they receive. And to try to prevent false information from being disseminated. Telegraph operators came to require that there be responsible signatures by a general or someone like it to transmit military information. There is a perceived problem that operators might be putting news of their own on the telegraph wires or altering what they were given theyre changing the truth or character the dispatches. So the telegraph operator was regarded just about as important as the post office. In doing the job of getting information out to the people who needed it. In 1862 it was declared in washington newspaper that the telegraph lines are important government weapons and the government should see that they are not intentionally nor a recklessly used this of course eventually will lead to government oversight and censorship of what travels over the telegraph line both in the north and in the south during the war. Because important military and naval projects had suffered because of indiscriminate transmission of information that shouldnt have been revealed publicly. Theres a lot in this understanding then and since as to how the telegraph worked. And what it could do. It was said at the time. Which everybody got a kick out of that Henry Hallock and general mcclellan and general don carlos buell. Conversed back and forth on the telegraph for hours during the battle at fort donelson and that they in fact issued all the orders and dispositions that led to grants victory. Which of course is nonsense . And one one observer commented on the nonsense by saying i should rejoice at the news that general mcclellan had done any fighting even if it was just with a telegraph battery. Let alone a confederate battery. In that asked, how are these wires connected with grants headquarters in the field . Well, of course they werent but later in the war. Telegraph lines would run right to the Army Headquarters in the field in order to provide the fastest possible transmission of information to and from washington. Grant made a good deal of thunder and lightning of his own saved this commentator. He carries very little for the electricity of the telegraph batteries. Thats not true. He depended on the telegraph greatly. Youre all familiar. Im sure with the socalled great locomotive chase in 1862. When federal raiders tried to steal the locomotive in atlanta and bring it back to chattanooga just throwing track and bridges behind them and also destroying telegraph lines and interestingly engineer fuller the confederate who chased them down. Took along with him a telegraph operator. So he was able to get the wires back up and to get word back to atlanta constantly of what was going on as you tried to catch up to the raiders. Whenever union are confederate raiders entered enemy territory. The local telegraph operators along the way were the first to be taken prisoner and their equipment either destroyed to keep words. We getting out or else the confederates themselves made an attempt to make use of those lines by putting an experienced telegrapher up our operator on them to send false information to the north. Youve all heard of lightning ellsworth the man who rode with john morgans raiders who had cli