[indistinct conversation] if you could take your seats. All right, imp carmichael, a member of the History Department at the gettysburg college. It is my pleasure to welcome t. J. Stiles to cwi. He is an awardwinning author based out of berkeley, california. He is a native out of minnesota, a graduate of Carleton College who went on to do his graduate work in european history at columbia. He spent some time at Oxford University press. He worked with gabor. Many volumes that gabor put together, those features were delivered just speeches were delivered right here. Tj have a little bit of time yesterday to talk about his work and talk about the craft of writing, and the conversation reminded me of the fact that there is professional academic writing and there is positive writing. I think the day has come that we can move away from that, and t. J. Stiles has worked to testify to the fact that you can write engaging biography with ideas, with argument, with analysis, and above all else, original research. Tj likes the archives. There are a lot of academic historians who do a lot of their work, i hate to say, on the internet. They do not like to get dirty with the manuscripts and tj does that. He has produced three very important books. James thes jesse last rebel of the civil war, and the epic life of cornelius vanderbilt. And the National Book award in 2009. Most recently has biography of george custer, the 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner. Would call it quits two Pulitzer Prizes, and National Book award, this is an incredible record that you have received in a very short time. We are very pleased to have you here. T. J. Stiles will be speaking to us about george custer. [applause] t. J. thank you very much. We are on cspan live so i will keep my cursing to a minimum. Youru could please mute cell phones i would really appreciate it. I am here to talk about somebody nobody has ever heard of, George Armstrong custer. I decided to write about him because obviously i hate myself. He has been so written about, some people have estimated that he may be the second most written about figure in American History after Abraham Lincoln. I did not write my book because all of that work was terrible. Lots of it is very good. Rather, i want to understand custer in a new way, not entirely new but this is been touched on before, but to really drill down on something about the man. People who are academics, when they write biographies they like to look at representative figures, those who tell us something about the times. The rest of us like to read books about consequential people who make a difference and shift the direction of history, and i think custer is a great case of someone who is both. He is not the most important person of his times. He is not the most representative in some ways. He is an exaggerated figure but he tells us a lot about america and had an impact on the times. For most people, their knowledge of custer begins with, lets see if i can do this without messing it up, their knowledge of custer begins with a moment in time when he led a charge of an outnumbered group of cavalry notedt a much larger foe, warriors who overwhelmed him and surrounded his men. For most americans that is little bighorn but for our very knowledgeable audience here, that is gettysburg. Im going to lead up to the moment at gettysburg and laid out of it to try and understand how custer became lead out of it to try and understand how custer became famous. This was his defining moment. We want to understand how that moment defined him in the eyes of americans at the time, what it tells us about his effectiveness and consequential nature, but also we find in that moment and the moments leading up to it, the seeds of the disasters and near disasters that would follow him especially in his life after the civil war. Hisant to bring together civil war career and post civil war career and see how there are in fact an organic unified part of when life. The way i look at custer is i see him as a figure on a frontier in time. Loosely, the idea of modernization in american society, in American History. Going into the civil war, america has many traits of an earlier, more traditional society. It is more personal in nature, not so organizational or technical, it is romantic and sentimental in culture. Coming out of the civil war you began to see more and more and organizational society, one that is technical, in which who you are does not matter so much as your qualifications, a world in which realism begins to supplant the romanticism and sentimentality that all the recruits in 1861 went to war with. Desktoping thing in custer, living in this frontier in time is that it is a transitional time just as the civil war is a transitional war. In some ways he grasps that moment very well and in some ways he disastrously fails to deal with the times he is helping to make. At west point, that is a good example. He graduated in the second class of 1861. They moved up the graduation date and ended the fiveyear system that came in undersecretary jefferson davis. Under secretary jefferson davis. It in context of other Training Institutions around the world, west point was at the forefront. He received a thorough Technical Education at west point. This was in an era where most americans did not go to college. 1 of White American men went to college before the civil war. He went to not only a college, but in engineering and technical military education institution, however he himself was a romantic, sentimental figure. He was constantly playing pranks. It is famous he graduated last in his class but first in demerits. [laughter] when you go to west point and look at that demerit book, here is something one of his a classes actually ahead of him, there is a half a page for four years. For custer, it is four pages. The words are boyish, trifling. Boy that is constantly getting into trouble and is courtmartialed after graduation because he did not yet have an assignment to regiment, so he was captain of the guard at the summer encampment, and two cadet started fighting. Instead of arresting them both he told everyone to stand back and let them have a fair fight. Back then, you got courtmartialed by that sort of thing but lucky for him the civil war was breaking out so he received no worst punishment than a letter of reprimand. The civil war, this is a Mass Mobilization war, a peoples war , and that professional core of the regular army, 16,000 men, suddenly is supplemented by the u. S. Volunteers. These organizations raised by the states, kernels are appointed by governors. This is america under arms and it brings in this transitional moment when you have the actual professional, systematic u. S. Army. I think by the 1820s mark wilson said there were at least two dozen standardized forms. This is a very modern professional organization. It is the template for the Corporate America that will calm into being, and also a war being fought by a popular popular organizations, regiments that regular represent americans under arms. It is personal politics as well as party politics. At bull run, manasses to you confederates in the audience, this is an untrained volunteer mass that takes time to become professional. So custer comes into that war is a professional and begins to build his career as a junior officer in the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. This is a massive professional undertaking, that the United States military moved an army that was the size if it had been a city, the army of the potomac wouldve been the ninth largest city in the United States and it moves it to the peninsula, and it is moving thousands of horses, enormous amounts of supplies. This Artillery Park gives you a hint of the scale. Custer goes off and is assigned to the topographical engineers, a Technical Branch of the wereary because the maps so terrible they had to draw new maps. What did he do in that role . Drafting atg there a table behind the lines . No, he was scouting the head of the lines, and this involved not only scouting on foot but also going up in an observation booth. Again, a technological innovation. This is a new wave of technology that is coming into being. He is one of the first aerial military observers in Human History and he becomes quite good at it and takes two would quite well. I could go on. In the book i give some stories about how he figures out how to estimate Confederate Forces through the tree cover in the warm spring when they are not lighting fires at night, like he would expect them to. What happens is that custer, again as a topographical engineer, is spouting spending a lot of time scouting. Raid in part in a newbridge on the chickahominy river. It is a very daring raid. They inflict a large number of casualties for a small force. Mcclellan exaggerates it up to 50 confederate dead. Custer plays a very gearing role and you see the hand of what will conference him, the dashing, romantic, heroic character that he sees himself as being. Mcclellan appoint him to his staff, and this was a key moment because on one hand, here is this young man who has a professional education, is a technical, well educated officer, what we might call in a very unprofessional way part of the wave of the future, but he also rises through merit but also through patronage. A combination of nature it knowledge along with patronage, that combination plays a key role in custers life and his rise during the civil war. The battle ofin the Peninsula Campaign as right hand to mcclellan, and this begins to involve him in another side of the civil war which, it does not spell mcclellans doom but plays a part in the troubles he faces, and that is the question of the politics, the meaning of the civil war. We see that visually after fair times, pretty much everyone these days, when he meets an old friend now on the confederate side, lieutenant james washington. Washington has been taken prisoner and so the two were chatting and a photographer comes up. , tookk it is james gibson this photo, and gibson thought something was missing so he brought in a young contraband, and escaped slave, and put him beneath the knees of washington. This photo circulated under the title both sides and the cause. Gibson went around putting this poor boy between the knees of other people as well, as you will see in the lower right. Again, this actually is a very interesting moment because the army of the potomac follows the lead of mcclellan. It is very conservative on the issue of emancipation and custer is from a democratic family, basically a border state fellow. He is from close to the ohio river, his father is from maryland and he is part of that border state culture zone in which the southern counties of the old northwest were settled by people from kentucky and tennessee and virginia and maryland. Has close cultural and political affinities in the south even though he is firmly unionist. So he very much absorbs and agrees with mcclellans disagreement with the advance toward emancipation. He personally encounters contraband again and again, he gets information from them, he writes letters home in which he voices this deep prejudice against them, and yet he is seeing them aid the union cause. Course we knowf the conservative war that mcclellan wanted comes to an end after telling link it to his face that he wants a war without emancipation. Lincoln reluctantly allows him to continue because he has no Better Options in the Antietam Campaign. And again, his failure to take aggressive action is what brings him down. The aftermath of the Antietam Campaign brings down mcclellan, and that leaves custer without a patron. He is floating free and his own future is in doubt because again, of that personal politics of patronage and supplicant. Again, pardon me, here is antietam. Custer comes back from his own exile, long leave in which he met a lady in Monroe Michigan bacon. Ivy libbie he comes back and manages to find a second patron. This is key in his life because again, he has got a lot of merit and he is also somebody who has really put himself out there, playing that dashing, daring role, being able to roam the battlefield as mcclellans righthand man. He spends a lot of his time scouting and reporting back to mcclellan with the cavalry. So he ends up becoming close to Alfred Pleasanton and he comes back and pleasanton brings him onto his staff just as he becomes the commander of the cavalry corps of the army of the potomac. Again, luck, timing, something that custer himself called custer luck came to his aid. He has got merit that key to his rise is who he knows and who likes him. When he is with pleasanton, he misses out on the chancellorsville campaign, but he does take part in the fighting that leads up to and invasion of the north in 1863. He takes part in the fighting at all the in which pleasant teas order to break through the pleasantonsn order to go through the calvary screen and find out what he is up to. Combatgage in this close which typifies most of the calvary on calvary fighting in the civil war. Again, when they are mounted they are able to close quickly, they engage in close range contact, and this brings up Something Else about custer. He is himself a fighter and very talented one. At a time when of course longrange must longrange rivals, muskets, we are not seeing one style of warfare yet but it is bringing to the forefront firepower and riding the Horse Soldiers to fight more on foot. Firepower is dominating the battlefield, but when they are fighting against other horsemen they often close up quickly and personal skill matters. That custer fought with a saber and he fought with a revolver, and his personal skill mattered, and he found himself cut off and behind the confederate lines, and he had to cut his way out. How custern of himself is brave and daring and skilled with the saber. Lucky for him, it turns out that lee was invading the north. It was a lucky break for custer because what happened was hooker, who was getting fed up with pleasanton, replaced him. He went to meet and got them with to replace his own handpicked men, including custer. Custer tried to get michigan was his adopted home state he tried to get an appointment as a calvaryof a michigan regiment but unfortunately being a democrat and having been associated so closely with mcclellan stopped him from getting that appointment. Again, the role of politics plays an important part in his career. He gets named brigade commander. Instead of getting one regimen he asked for another michigan regiment. What happens, he shows up at hanover and this is really important, because again, this is not actually a sketch of hanover but it shows the troops deployed and the skirmish foreign formation. His very first day in command he is in combat. The second thing is that contrary to that image of the moment we are about to get to, of the dashing leader leading a calvary charge, he in fact deploys his men on foot in his very first role as a brigade somender, to make use as of his troops have the new spencer rifle. A man whoates this, is staring himself, loves to sword fight, loves the charge, he realizes and rights, this is the most effective firearm our troops can be provided and he makes use of it. An excellent artillery commander, pennington, and he makes excellent use of firepower. We see custer, the professional in this transitional war, understanding the rising role of firepower and making use of it. That is his first moment as a brigade commander, not leading a charge but making use of the new firepower and technology of the civil war. The third day comes around and he actually supports general tog in defining in order join his Division Commander kilpatrick from the other end of the union line because they get word that a large confederate calvary force is approaching, and he agrees it is important to stay so he actually defies in order, stays at what is now the east calvary field, and again, day with most of that his troops deployed on foot in skirmish formation, making use of their magazine loaded repeating rifles. He does take part in two key charges, and again, because he is a new commander and subordinate to his temporary superior on the field, he goes to his troops at key moments to lead a charge and find out the order to charge had already been given, its basically tells us that his judgment had been sound , he was not out on a limb and found out he was in agreement with his commander. He leads charges that are basically counter country. Once the concentric confederates launch an attack, he countercharges. The largest attack attempting to break through and custer takes his last reserve force, leads a force, cuts his way through the confederate formation famously shouting to his men, hold the reins. And again, custer fighting in the forefront with a saber. It is important to remember that some of the aspects of custer which robin commented upon reflect his flamboyant, youthful personality. Here we see his uniform that is black velveteen with all that gold braid winding up from his cuff to his elbow. His blue taelor shirt sailor shirt and the red tie which troops begin to imitate, this is a very dramatic and visible costume more than a uniform. One staff officer sees him in battle and says, he looks like a circus rider gone mad. Again, in that civil war battlefield, longrange firepower is beginning to hold sway but you still have fairly dense formations in which command and control is being exerted by sight and sound. They are listening for bugles, listening for the band, looking for the flags for following direction and rallying, and looking for their commanders on the field. This is both a statement of his desire to be looked at, but also it has a practical effect. His troops see him in combat. , and inspiring organizational device with a can see where he is going and follow him, and a statement of his own courage because the confederates can see him also and will target him, and if he was going to lead retreats, they would notice that a