Director of the civil war institute. I welcome all of you to our panel on georgia gordon meade. Im going to quickly go through this morning as line up. On my far right you to your left, we have john hennessey, and historian. He is also a the author of an acclaimed book on second bull run. To his left, scott hartwig. He is a long time friend and supporters of cwi and also a historian. Retired historian from Gettysburg National park. He is also written a book on the battle of antietam. It is a two volume study and the second voelume will be out in a few years. Excellent. Good. To the left of scott is jennifer murray. Jen murray also cut her teeth as a historian right here at the Gettysburg National park. And she is a professor of history at the university of virginia at wise. And many of you met ken know. He was your adviser at auburn where she completed her dissertation. And last, we have brooks simpson who he just said who needs no introduction. You do need introduction. And everyone, on cspan audience, they know you, brooks. He is a professor of history at Arizona State and his specialty as you know is the presidency and specifically u. S. Grant. Lets turn to George Gordon meade. History has wrong footed George Gordon meade. The man who is behind one of the most important victories in American Military history is barely recognized for his role in defeating these army at gettysburg. Meade, in fact, saw this coming. D des 7th, 1863 he wrote the following to his wife. I see that the new york herald, i see that the herald is constantly harping on the assertion that gettysburg was fought by the Corp Commanders and the common soldiers and there is no generalship displayed. I suppose after a while it will be discovered that i was not at gettysburg at all. The words absolutely undeniable. But it would have been truly astonishing if he had identified in that same letter that a colonel of a maine regiment was the true savior of gettysburg. So that leads us to this. Why doesnt George Gordon meade have a bobblehead ball like joshua chamberlain. Brooks suggested that and brooks is among many things a marketing genius. He suggested that we should have bobblehead dolls of the all of the cwi historians and i dont think wed be able to keep brooks in stock. Brooks bobblehead would be the biggest. It would be the biggest. That wasnt scripted, i swear. We didnt plan that. My bobblehead would have socks on. [ laughter ] [ applause ] brooks, i am not surprised at all that you dont understand a fashion statement. This is a fashion statement. No scarf, peter. What could i say. It is 90 degrees outside. That is why. All right. We will do our best to try to turn the conversation away from us. Although obviously we like to talk about us. And we will go to actually which is avery serious question and that is why in fact does George Gordon meade, his reputation, you almost have a reputation, right. Why, in fact, is he forgotten here at gettysburg and really his entire military career . Well, one reason i actually do think that meade is forgotten is the lack of capable biographers up to this point in time that we only have a handful of dry biographical studies of meade. We heard of many in the works at this time. That i think will give him a lot of attention the same way that other people like grant himself, who has been the subject of a handful of biographies over the last couple of decades. That has readdressed the hist oral neglect on grant. And people have not found him attractive until recently. I would add that i think there are two things related to gettysburg and one thing related to the Overland Campaign. The damage to meades reputation. Greatly. And carries all the way to this day. The one is sickles testimony about meades generalship at gettysburg, both the pseudonym articles in the newspapers that were condemning of meades generalship and filled with half truths an lies and his testimony before the committee on the conduct of the war which kind of perpetrated that, but also the committee on the conduct of the war, the hearings that he held in the spring of 1864 for meade were tremendously damaging to his reputation because they initially all of the people that he called forth were enemies of meade. Al been howl. Remember him. He was a huge hero at gettysburg. Why did they call him . Admiral double day. He was he fought very well but he hated meade. So they tried to stack the deck against meade and then they surprised meade when he was in washington and had him testify. He wasnt prepared for the first time he testified. So he didnt come off very well. So the committee on the conduct of the war i think damaged him, his reputation and then in the Overland Campaign, he there was a correspondent named ed ward crap si who worked for the philadelphia inquiry and in a story he wrote about the early part of the campaign, he mentioned that after the battle of the wilderness and his article was pretty accurate. But one of the things he mentioned was that meade wanted to retreat after the battle of the wilderness and meade was a somewhat of a prickly sensitive guy. He really took offense to what he wrote and he was getting tired of a lot of lies told by correspondents so we had crepe si humiliated and they put a placard on him and mounted backwards on the horse and said libeller of the press and drummed him out of the army and all of the other correspondens got together and cut meade out of anything positive and any disaster to the army, they put meades name associated with it. So i think those things all combined to really damage his reputation for the rest of time. Up to today. I would offer maybe a bigger lens on this question. Almost every book that spans the civil war, if you note, will have 5 hup pages through the war on gettysburg and then 150 on everything else. We have as a sewite and historians have had a tremendous opportunity over the years to remedy the bad press that meade received during the war. The unjust press that he received. But we have such a fixation as kind of a public as historians too on the possibility of exiten shall moments. We like to hang on those moments when we believe that the war could turn in an instant. And of course the participants at the time believed by enlarge that the next big battle that they were about to participate in would be that moment. But after gettysburg, it became clear to everybody, or most people, certainly over time, even most importantly to abraham lincoln, that the war would not hinge on a single moment. Instead it would be a war of accumulation. And as consumers of drama, historians and the public alike, we have discounted, we dont like that as much. It is not as interesting, it is not as dramatic to focus on a war sh a grinding war of accumulation over time. Meade, when he wrote about military campaigns, he often referred to them as operations. Not battles, but operations. And over time he began to see the war much as grant, and one of the reasons i think they worked together as well as they did, is that they began to see the war as an operation. And those sorts of grinding cumulative campaigns dont enrapture us the way gettysburg and antietam do and i think it is quite simply or maybe not simply, but largely a function of our kind of warped perception of liftory and our expectations of history in moments like gettysburg that union army, if it is defeated is going to collapse like a broken camp stool. We have that expertise or that belief, that if the confederates had won at gettysburg, the world would have been different. There is nothing in the war that tells us that that in fact was the case. So i think meade is a man who waged a war of accumulation over time. And we just dont find it very interesting. Ill add to that. Meade is very much aware of his declining reputation, if you read through meades letters, hes constantly talking to his wife and very intimate correspondence about his reputation is on the decline. And there is like grant and sherman and sheridan are eclipsing him. But it wasnt always that way. Meades rise to prominence parallels a quick decline but when he gets to frederick on july 8th, on the pursuit, the people of frederick come out and greet him. They bring his flowers and wreaths and hes treated as a wrong star and he gets to Falling Water and you could see his reputation declining because it doesnt push lee. One of the things, though, i think that actually goes back to what john is talking about, because when we look at gettysburg, you go out into the town, you go to the shops and there are all of these paintings. You have to look very hard to find a meade painting. There are a couple of. They are not terribly exciting. Even meades statue out on Cemetery Ridge is just him standing there looking, trying to see if he could see the virginia monument across the way. Only of course to see that lee is on a higher pedestal than he is. And the fact is, we go back to what peter talks about, that meade complain explain explains that i wasnt at gettysburg at all and if you look at those days, you dont see him in the dramatic moments. He is an army manager. It is hancock who comes to the field to rally the troops and to the dismay of otis howard. It is other people who do dramatic things, even if they are wrong headed like dan sickles. If im asking you, give me an image of meade at gettysburg, you are hardpressed outside of the war to give that. Even meade himself misses the climax the battle at pickets charge and comes up and said, my god, is the enemy already repulsed. I havent seen this. The only other sign we have in the movements in the battlefield are getting away from the bombardment prior to the july 3rd assault is he go to round top and where the 146th new york monument is there is a sign that meade was here right after the battle contemplating what to do next and of course he chose to do nothing. We might find that to be a wise decision. But there is nothing about what meade does here that captures that imagine acation that is lo for that precisive turning point, that order that changed things. Hes a war manager. My argument by george meade is very simple. At gettysburg he proved he is not the general who would lose the war. He showed competence, which is sorely lacking in his predecessors. Also showed afterwards he was not the man who would win the war. That man was still elsewhere at this time. I would add, and i think johns point and what brooks is adding on to that is very good, is meade was a, in many respects, he developed into a modern soldier. So one of the things that gets me into the trouble at gettysburg. Is meade constantly developed alternative plans in case this happened or that happened. He wanted to have plans in place. And that was actually relatively rare amongst civil war commanders. They have a plan and if that failed they had to come up with a new plan and he had alternative plans and they used that against him. But he was a he was a businesslike warrior. So when you think about some of the great leaders that emerged from the civil war, sheridan, grant, sherman, a sherman never cultivated the press but the press loved him. Meade never cultivated the press, at all. The press didnt love him. His men didnt love him. They respected him but they didnt love him. He wasnt the sort of personality that i think illicited enthusiasm. Whether it was with politicians, whether it was with the people, whether it was the army. He illicited respect and didnt do anything to build his reputation. You look at meade before the battle of gettysburg, and youre hardpressed to find an offer with a record as good as he has. And what is musing, when they say he was a cautious fighter. Im like, really, have you seen fredericksburg, antietam and he was wush of the most aggressive officers. But in the army knew that. People outside of the army didnt know that very well. Because he didnt cultivate the press in any way. And in fact, the only thing where meade tries to cultivate interest of anyone, it didnt work very well. Is in the spring of 1863, so Joseph Hooker has taken over the army of the potomac and the lincolns visit the army of the potomac. And meade writes home to his wife and one of the things we have about civil war commanders that those who write home to their wives have reputations changed forever by the letters they write or reported to have written in some cases. In any case, meade writes back to his wife back in philadelphia that he had spent part of a lunch flirting with mary todd lincoln. Now usually this would merit a combat service badge. [ laughter ] and it is the only time apparent apparently that mary saw someone flirting with her rather than her husband. But the fact of the matter is meade did understand some of these things but even then he was clumsy as trying to advance himself and he didnt like it. It wasnt who he was. He was conscious of his reputation and conscious that that he was not very skilled at selfpromotion. He would have been awful on twitter for example. His Facebook Page would be bland, kind of like hennesseys. You were waiting and now you got it. Johns excitement comes tonight. But in any case, he doesnt have those things he has a staff that is passionately loyal to him. And has filled the pages of many an archival box with tributes to meade and how hes been unjustly overshadowed by others but meade doesnt have that skill to portray himself and in fact, would have seen this, even though he wished he it, as an artificial promotion of his image and therefore a violation of his professional norms. And his character. I think he sees himself as a sort of a quintessential 19th century philadelphia gentleman and he writes over and over in his letters about duty. So we talked yet about marcel eck and sherman and order under scores shermans life and for meade it is duty. It is a sense to be dutiful and follow orders which is not parallel to being like brookz and shameless selfpromotion. If meade had been more like brooks simpson then youd have a much more interesting biography that people would buy. With a big bobblehead. Well at least my bobblehead moves. You have a scarf around it. It didnt move. You wont be surprised that our Major Preparation for this panel was figuring out and make sure none of us have to sit in the love seat with brooks. And we succeeded. But one of the something that we tend to overlook and is a consistent pattern during the war and in life in general, youve all experienced it, ive experienced it, is that no matter when you are in a subordinate position, commenting on a on your superiors, it is very easy to be aggressive, assertive, or imagine that you would have been. But the greatest inspiration for conservatism on the earth is responsibility. And once that responsibility is yours and you see it over and over again, you see these leaders, especially of this army of the potomac, most notably hooker, but also meade. Revert to a much more cautious approach to things. The first responsibility is to avoid disaster. Now as a subordinate, meade was very vocal in his letters home about mcclennans caution and the need to be more aggressive. But when he assumed command, of course he found that wasnt always as simple as that. It is also to me notable, or worth noting that to assess meade, you have to understand the army he commanded. And his reception in that army is very much a function of their relationship with their prior commanders and their rearrangement of how they perceived the commander of the army of the potomac. By the time he took command, of course, there had been mcclennan, there had been for some of them john pope, there had been burnside, there had been hooker. And the army in one way or the other wanted to love and in fact did love a couple of them. Or at least mcclennan. But by the time gettysburg came along, the armys identity was not wrapped up in the commander, unlike the army of virginia which identified wholly will lee. And the army of the potomac came to identify with itself. It is one of the most remarkable weve seen in our nation. They had a very powerful sense of identity. And the reason, in my view, gettysburg is so important to the nation is because it was so important to the army of the potomac. It was that justification of their self perception as a remarkable army which they called themselves before the battle and then afterwards, you see a rush within a matter of months to memorialize by the army, to memorialize the service here at gettysburg. The reynolds monument. Other discussions of monuments at gettysburg. The creation of the National Cemetery here. All of these things are a reflection of how important gettysburg was to the army. And it was a reflection of the fact that the army identified so strongly with itself. It never saw grant as its identity. Although thi although they admired grant and came to admire meade as well. Mostly the great Pivotal Point for george meade and the perception of the army ironically and tellingly was a decision not to do something at mine run. Army saw that decision not to assault at mine run as careful solicitation of their well being, without risking the cause for which they fought. And they appreciated that a great deal. So has kind of low simmering placement in americas heritage, is in many ways i think function. Although, i was thinking this morning, this is probably the Largest Group of people that has gotten up early for george meade since the great review in 1865. And i think that the mine run thing is interesting. Because his own correspondent is actually upset that that assault did not take place. The governor warren would calls off at salt and at that point he is in the charge of the second corp and meades own correspo correspondence was i was ready to go. And he pulled the plug on it. And he gets credit for mine run but this is a battle in which he wanted to be aggressive. Meade didnt always have a good p. R. Sense in other ways. As a very interesting letter that he writes his wife on june 4th, 1864. In which he claims credit for being in command on the field the entire day, the preceding day. That was called harbor. Generally speaking, you would not want to take credit for what happened at cold harbor as the commander, but meade was so much into i want she would understand that im in charge of this army, and that he confines with his wife, i had command on the feel the whole day. Grant only visited me one time and to tell me to pull the plug on the assault. But meade was so proud of that accomplishment that he didnt realize that it was not a much of a accomplishment at all. But it was part of the grinding war. That john is talking b. We forget that the vast, vast majority of meades service as commander of the army of potomac is after july 3, 1863. And that he plays an essential role in