Taste of it. Tle but we are going to see a lot more of it. All kinds of things going on in your home. Communicators monday night at 8 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Journals washington live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up monday, a discussion of how the Republican Health care reform legislation might plans. Employer and a discussion of the week ahead for congress and the white house. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 a. M. Eastern monday morning. Join the discussion. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Public Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or sublet provider. And welcome back. Gettysburg with our civil war conference in pennsylvania. And while we waited for todays final speaker, a reminder, you can watch all of our Conference Coverage any time by visiting our website, www. Cspan. Org history, and there you can find schedule and view all of our programs and their entirety. Carmichael hello again. I am pete carmichael, the director of the Civil War Institute. Our final speaker is lorien foote. Lorien foote is a professor of history at texas a m university. The aggies. Where she teaches courses on Civil War History and reconstruction, 19thcentury american, and reform movements. Lorien got her start at the university of kansas where you did your undergrad and got her phd at the university of oklahoma. Her second book published in 2010, the gentleman and the roughs manhood, honor, and violence in the union army is one of my favorites on the soldier experience. Did fantastic research. She dug into the National Archives and looked at courtmartial records which had really been underutilized until lorien got a hold of them. Superb book. And david brooks, a columnist for the New York Times you got a lot of praise from david brooks in his editorial. Well worth reading. Fantastic work. Her second book the yankee Union Prisoners and the collapse of the recently published by the university of North Carolina press, and that is the subject of her talk this afternoon. Hese welcome lorien foote please welcome lorien foote. [applause] thank you sote much, pete, for inviting me. Thank you to the audience. You have had a long day. You have heard a lot of talk. I appreciate your here to hear this wonderful story. I have had several people at the conference asked me this individually. I have had several people ask me this. I will answer the group. I am not shall be foots daughter. Lets get that right out of the footesi am not shelby daughter. Lets get that right out of the way. [laughter] professor foote one local South Carolina newspaper put this this way they seemed to be everywhere. They actually cover the land like the locusts of egypt. The newspaper was referring to thousands of yankees who were sneaking into the countryside under cover of darkness. They would dig into sweet potato fields and steel three potatoes. They would nap in peoples barns. They would a cost unsuspecting white and accost us is affecting white and black southerners. One minister in North Carolina found three yankees napping underneath his father and when he found them, they woke up and attacked him. Dder. Derneath his fo these yankees were not soldiers marching with William Tecumseh shermans army. They were escaped prisoners of war, ravenous and unarmed, moving through the countryside in shocking numbers between september 1864 and february 1865. There were almost 3000 of them during that winter. So, where did all of these escaped prisoners come from and what can their story tell us about the final days the final months, i should say of the confederacy. First, i want to tell you the story of where these 3000 escaped prisoners come from and then we will talk about what it can tell us about the collapse of the confederacy. First, lets talk about the confederacy. It begins when they attempt to move the civil war population from georgia after sherman captured atlanta. They dont want sherman to liberate these captives. They decide to move them from andersonville and macon, were the officers are kept. The problem is they dont have anywhere else prepared in the region to move thousands of prisoners of war. There is no one Single Person in charge of the confederate prison system at this point in the civil war. Instead, there is divided command by two brigadier iserals, neither of whom sure what their authority is and the extent of their authority. Of confusiona lot in the confederate bureaucracy and it really shows up when they ace this crisis moment. So, Brigadier General john wender is in charge of the evacuation and he sends tousands of prisoners savannah without notifying the military commander in savanna prisoners are coming. He finds out when an aide runs up to him and says, a train just arrived with 6000 p. O. W. s, he sends a telegram to richmond and says, you must have a strange conception of the force i possess in this district. They do notify or wender does notify a Major General samuel jones, who is the commander of the department of south georgia for the confederacy. He does get advance warning that 13,000 prisoners are on their way to the city, but no one consulted him whether you have the ability to guard these prisoners, while at the same time hes trying to defend charleston from ongoing and active Union Military operations. He protests, i cannot guard these prisoners. He says if i have any trouble with them, i am going to march them out of the city and let them go. Which is pretty much, we will see what happens. 6000 enlistedlly, men show up along with officers. What jones does, he continually protests the arrival of prisoners. He does not have enough men to guard them. Charlestonicials in declare the yellow fever epidemic in the city. , in this theater of the war, there is a real breakdown in communications at various levels militarily, bureaucratically there are occurring in this region. What jones does is he decides jones needs to get rid of these prisoners. These prisoners of war, the enlisted men, out of charlson, and he does not notify prison officials he does this. So nobody in richmond knows what he has done, and none of the prison officials in the region realize what has happened until it is over and done. So, what jones does, here is a map of South Carolina and you can see the railroad line. He sends a batch of these war to prisoners of be Small Community of florence, South Carolina. These 6000 prisoners have a guardsf 125 men, and the turn these prisoners out into an. Pen field next to the railroad these guys are veterans of a summer in andersonville. They are really not that interested in being put into another confederate prison camp. Even though many of them are very, very ill and sick, there is a group that mutinies. I have the confederate records and the Union Records estimates there are between 400 and 700 men involved in the unique. In the book, i chose the conservative 400 number. I wanted to be conservative, but it could have been as many as 700 men. These men and immediately you need. They attack regard. They plunder citizens in the vicinity of this open field and they attack and try to destroy the railroad. They telegraphed back to charleston and jones has to deploy a Field Artillery unit, a cavalry unit, and an infantry unit to florence to try to suppress this mutiny. Not enough to get control of the situation. So, what they do is, they mobilize all of the people in the countryside around florence, and they ask anyone with any kind of arms to join in the hunt p. O. W. s. Escaped so local citizens join forces to track down these escaped yankees. In some cases, they hatch them after they crossed the border into North Carolina. Of this, several weeks they actually round everybody up, except 23. 23 of these prisoners permanently escape and i will get to this in a moment 21 of them report to union forces in knoxville, tennessee. So, they recapture these people. Pieces toartillery keep them in this open field, they have slaves in the workingy who had been to build the stockade. Whats again the stockade is ready, but the government mobilizes local civilians who shop on the day that the theirde is finished with arms and form a massive ring around the stockade, with their weapons, to be there to put the yankees inside the stockade of florence. That includes the prison for enlisted men. 1600 of them have arrived in trial some. What jones does with them he decides to send them out of the city, once again without notifying confederate prison authorities what he is done, and he does this in october. I cant go into it now, but hardly because these officers in the meantime have been caught up in a retaliation situation partly to cut these officers in the meantime have been caught up in a retaliation situation where they have been under union fire and the union retaliates by bringing 600 confederate p. O. W. s from the north. Thats another story. So, the officers will be in charleston longer than those enlisted men. In the beginning of october, jones will send them out of the city, with the same disastrous results that happened in florence. I will go back to the map so you can see i think i got green here. Anyway, he is going to send these officer p. O. W. s to the capital city of columbia. What happens is more than 100 of these officers escape as they are being marched from the charleston jail or the hospital where they are being held in charleston. They escape onto the streets where they end up hiding among union citizens. Some are stealing from house to house. Eventually they make it to the works where africanamerican toots take them on boats union islands. More escape by jumping off the trains when they stop to take on water at either kingsville or branch fell, and then they are going to make their way to columbia. Davis gave aon exhortingcolumbia, carolinians to give their all for confederate independence. And you know exactly what im going to say they are turned out and to an open field. Naturally, theres going to be a lot of escapes. Escapes, bute more the confederates put on a dramatic display to try to discourage what had happened at florence. One of the officers who jumps off the train is recaptured by dogs and mangled by dogs. So, confederate officials ring that dad officer bring that dead officers body and put it sofront of the prisoners, they really are intimidated by that. Because it gives them the impression they are going to be hunted by dogs if they try to escape. But even with that, hundreds of men escape from this open field in columbia, which they nicknamed camps organ, what the confederate bureaucracy goes through the incredible negotiation. Where did they go question mark who has authority over them . There is four weeks appear craddick wrangling over this. There are four weeks of bureaucratic wrangling over this. During that time, these yankees get no shelter. More leave the camp during a given time, but theres ,ltimately 373 that permanently permanently escape. Is ahat were going to see transfer from charleston to columbia. They join together in parties from two to six men and they will take one of three escape routes. Their goal is to try to get back to union lines. So, to do that theyd choose one of three routes, which i kind of have in a gray color on this map that you see. Some of them choose to try to get back to the union lines of the union forces that are , so theseharleston escaped his nurse follow the rivers and try to get escaped prisoners follow the rivers and try to get back to the coast. Route is theyar are going to travel northwest and trySouth Carolina to go to knoxville tennessee. This route will take them through softer lannett, North Carolina and east tennessee. There are prisoners who think that their best plan is to try to find shermans army, which they know is operating in georgia and they suspect might augusta. To they are trying to get to augusta, georgia where they hope to find shermans army somewhere. I think the journey of these escaped prisoners gives us incredible insight into the confederacy of the in South Carolina, North Carolina, and tennessee, because unlike the soldiers marching with sherman who are triumphant, these guys are confused, lost, and dependent on africanamericans and sympathetic white southerners for aid. So, what they talk about in their diaries and what base they to theey report back Provost Marshal about what they experienced, they saw things that other Union Soldiers did not notice, and they spent a lot of time with people we dont have other records for. The journeyollowing of these escaped prisoners is really a story, not just about whatners, but a story of they were experiencing in the final months of the confederacy. Today i want to talk about three aspects of the collapse of the confederacy that we can examine through the journey of these prisoners, because at this point, the confederacy is collapsing and the People Living inside of the confederacy are experiencing that collapse on multiple levels. Theres several i talk about in the book. Threei want to talk about aspects. Thecollapse of slavery, collapse of homefront, and the collapse of borders. There is the collapse of slavery. Collapses in the south at a different pace in different ways across space and time. Different times and different places. Slavery was already destabilized by the time these escaped yankees are pouring out of these open fields. Low country South Carolina, it was close to those union lines, close to the union gunpoint gunboats for drawing the coast and send us coming up the rivers. So you have a lot of male slaves running away. Female slaves slowing down work, andng their mistresses you have a lot of theft, organization in the low country. In the hill country, slavery was. Uch more stable it was not disrupted the same way as it was in the low country. But the massive escape of all of these prisoners of war gives slaves an opportunity in both regions to escalate their resistance and it helps to escalate the collapse of slavery. What we see throughout the civil war, slaves try to assess the military situation. They act when they think circumstances are favorable for success. ,nd slaves in South Carolina they realize something is going really wrong for the confederacy or the rignet be thousands of yankees crossing through the South Carolina countryside. They recognize that something is going on that shows the confederacy is having trouble here. What they see is when the first , slaves arepe food,ed providing shelter, and guidance. Very quickly it becomes more organized and aimed at the confederate state. So, for example, in the low country part of South Carolina, as it yankees are pouring through these counties in the low country where slavery is , theyy very destabilized are operating in these counties using bs to use these counties. In the military records, i found the governor in december has to with orders units for them to suppress the armed military companies of slaves. He also gives them orders to keep it quiet. That is the low country military companies. We can follow the transition. Hese slaves make the age of prisoners becomes very organized. Utilizing these slaves Communication Networks and utilizing the trails and routes y had already figured out but they have a geography of resistance and they already have in Place Communications networks. Now they facilitate the movement of escaped prisoners out of their state. For example, when Hannibal Johnson escaped in late november, slave guides take him throughtion to station softer lannett. Over the course of eight nights, was handed off between through South Carolina. Over the course of eight nights, he was handed off to 13 guides. , one ofits interesting the guides when they go to the arranged meeting place, they groupk, this is the next of birdies. Im not sure why this slave nicknamed his yankee cargo birdies, but that is why he what he called them. You almost had this reverse underground railroad, to actually creating organizations to protect prisoners. One of the most interesting theies i found was stick to theld roads as much as they were terrified of getting lost. A counter picket on the road below so they could intercept the escaped prisoners and guide them around the picket their masters had set. The really gets to be a level of organization. See how the presence of all of these escaped begins to affect them on an individual level. Spartanburgmap of to read what you gaze at the map and contemplate, im going to drink some water. So, hold on. If we looksee this on a farm in spartanburg, South Carolina. Is a farm owned by david and Elizabeth Harris. On their farmaves and this is what i mean by slavery collapsing in different ways. This is october, november of 1864. At slaves on their farm still worked, planted, plowed, and obeyed. But the harrises record in their diary david keeps the diary and he has to periodically go on active service in charleston and elizabeth will continue riding it. And they both talk about thievery. Thievery really they both continue writing it. And they both talk about thievery. Thievery really explodes. They say law and order has completely collapsed. We live in a lawless lands. We cannot keep our farm going. I saw that reported they all know their slaves are doing the stealing. They are slaughtering hogs, leaving them in the field. They are stealing produce and horses. There is this rampant that. It seems to really escalate in october and november. Elizabeth is alone and she is writing in her dire rate. Diary. She said everything is