Stedman in 1865 where a general wants to launch an assault by having one of the pickets fire a warning shot. In doing so the century pauses and yells out before firing the shot, hey, yank were just out gathering some corn and then fires a shot because he wants to clear his conscious because they have inthis informal truce that no one will fire on either side. There are newspaper boys from richmond who go through the lines to sell papers. There are sketches in newspapers that even record it. Its not undmoncommon during the civil war in petersburg. It is interesting that the initial act was translated into english in 1859. One last question here. Im from michigan. I have a question about the desertion rate during the siege. Could you estimate the percentage . You know, i cant. I have no facts or figures as to a percentage of. However, it becomes such a concern for both armies that the confederates will do just about everything in their power because of the amount of desertion desertion, especially after sherman crosses over and gives savannah to president lincoln as a Christmas Gift in 1864 and then starts heading up through the carolinas. Now all of a sudden all of these men from north carolina, south dakota, and gaeorgia are getting letters about how bad it is. It is very hard for these young men in these trenches that are enduring these horrid conditions to steadfast there rather than going back to take care of their families. It is compounded by the union army actually using propaganda to promote men to that being said, while the army does get smaller and smaller constantly, it is not a vast number because lee begins this campaign with 60000 men and then of course will surrender almost 30000 at the appomattox courthouse. The french leave, which is desertion of going through a common area to return to the army eventually. All of that factors in but i dont have an exact percentage. My bad. I appreciate it. Thank you all very much for being here for the leadoff. [ applause ] thanks. Great questions. Youve been watching American History tv in primetime. Wednesday night, more from the seminar on the closing of the civil war in 1865. Coming up at 8 00 p. M. The battles of Sailors Creek followed by the battles of appomattox. Join American History tv later this week for live coverage of the ceremonies marking the anniversary of surrender of appomattox. Well be live from Appomattox National courthouse park in virginia april 9th and 12th. Reflect on the battles. Well bring you reenactments from some of the key moments from 150 years ago and well open the phone lines to take your questions. Here on cspan 3. Each night this week at 9 00 p. M. Eastern conversations with a few new members of congress. When you raised your hand and took the oath of office, what were your mom and dad thinking . I knew my mom would be crying and my dad was proud. My dad is 82 years old and he showed up to the capital. He usually walks with a cane and he showed up and he didnt have his cane. And i said dad do i need to send someone to your hotel to get your cane . He said, im in the capital. I dont need a cane today. He walked without his cane for the entire day, and so i know they were super proud. Five newest members of Congress Talk about their careers and personal lives and share insight about how things work on capitol hill. Join us for all their conversations each night at 9 00 eastern on cspan. American history tv recently visited Longwood University in farmville, virginia, for a seminar on the closing of the civil war in 1865. The prom was cohosted by the university and appomattox courthouse National Historic park. Up next, Michael Gorman who talks about richmond in 1865 and what historians can learn from period photographs. His talk is just under an hour. All right. Thank you, patrick. Our next speaker is Michael Gorman. Michael was here four or five years ago, did a great presentation with some amazing photographs. Youll see some more of those here today. Michael grew up in richmond attended vcu and vmi. Has been a permanent ranger and historian at Richmond National battle park since 2003. If you have not seen his website, you really need to go and look at that website. I tell my students theres so much junk online and garbage online in terms of scholarly sources. This is about one of the best websites related to the civil war ive ever seen. I did an article on civil war hospitals in richmond a number of years ago and got a lot of good stuff from mikes website, so go see that. Mike served aztecs technical adviser for the movie free state of jones, jones, which is going to be coming out next year with matthew mcconaughey. He has recently in addition to the article in sentinel magazine, their new issue is completely an article by michael on lincolns visit to richmond after the civil war. I skimmed through it yesterday. I want to read through it more closely. Mikes talk this evening is on photo forensics so please welcome him. Thanks a lot. All right. I am micced up here. Can everybody hear me okay . I hate podiums. I would like to collect all the podiums around the world and pitch them over a cliff. Was anybody thats here today were you here for the last time i spoke in 2010 or Something Like that . Okay. Wow, we have some newbies and some veterans. This is great. I was sort of thinking about what did i talk about, what did i show you in 2010, and i dont remember, so this is a completely new sort of taking what i love to do, which is picking apart these photographs, and finding the stories within them, sort of the best of. There are over 500 images i could show you. Im showing you about 60 tonight. If you want more, well hang out sometime and do that. So, photo forensics, you might also call this or as i often do a love letter to the library of congress and the reason is because back in, oh, 2003 or so the library of congress digitized all of their original negatives from the civil war and put them up online for you and me and everyone else to see with stupid resolution. That this has revolutionized what we do as historians. How did you first approach the civil war . Probably just like me. The golden book, remember that . The golden book of the civil war and all those photos and maps. I must have spent hours looking at those and every single one of them would have this view of ruins of richmond. Where . Its a big town. What are we looking at . And so i asas i got older it was easy to morph that childish curiosity into an historyians ianhistorians position, but you might call this professional geekery. To kick this off, id like to really show you this monument to my lack of a life, which is this map that ive made that shows all the shooting locations for the two big firmed that visited richmond, matthew, brady, and alexander gardner. Remember all the photographers on the east coast were flocking to richmond when it fell. The shot of the century the greatest photograph there never was, because every photograph in the east had made their way to richmond and was there when lee surrendered to grant, so sorry appomattox folks. We win. How did you make these things . Gosh, its bright in here. Can we bring down the lights a little bit . How do we make these images . There we go. Back then almost all photographs that were made during the civil war were made in 3d. The process you have all seen them. Theyre called stereo views. Theyre on cards. Theyre about this big. Do you remember those . Your geeks do. First you have to expose the plate, obviously, and when you do you start developing a scene and thats what it looks like. Thats what the actual negative is going to look like. You have two images well just slight variances. Just like your left eye versus your right eye. Same time thing. You can see theres a little bit more over here. A little bit more over here. These are slightly different images. Theyre going to take that, develop that print it and mount it on the stereo card, which is how it would be sold. It is an important thing to know that this width right here is about three inches. Your three fingers. Its about that big. Thats how you would have seen them in 1865. Small, tiny. Almost ridiculously small. Not a lot of detail on there but you would see it in 3d which is really really cool. Tonight were going to do it a bit differently. Were going the use these as documents themselves. Were going to jump inside and play this way. By blowing them up and seeing what the photographers saw at the time. This is as close as well ever get to a time machine. Yes, this is a staged photograph. You dont believe me . Look at these guys. You think they were hanging around just like that. These kids just stopped where they were. Look at these soldiers. Look at this. Oh, geez. Theres something going on over there thats very important. A lot of them are doing their napoleon. This is what they wanted you to see. The things that i love and were going to play with this over and over and over again tonight are the things that dont go well like this. It is this kid with a dog. The kid is desperately trying to keep him still, but he wont. The dog is blurry. You have these guys looking back at us from castle thunder prison in 1865. They have captured richard edd richard edd richmond. This is that window in time. Why dont we start where i often work. This is the Main Visitors Center for the Richmond National battlefield park. This is where you can probably find me. This is the most reproduced view of the iron works. It kind of annoys me, but it is worth talking about and the reason is because you see an awful lot thats important. Jefferson davis getting that famous telegram in st. Pauls church and having to get everybody out. It got out of control. When i refer to the evacuation fire, thats what im talking about. The fire that occurred in the Early Morning hours of april 3rd, 1865. When it raced through town you can see some of the ruins over here, but the iron works remained intact. Over here on the left of the image go back, go back. Come on. Okay. Just imagine that that incredible shot right there this is the Laboratory Building the laboratory island. It had all these wooden structures on it. Thats where theyre making everything explosive. Powder, percussion caps. Everything was coming off of there and it completely escaped evacuation fire. In 1863, it did blow up. A little girl caused an explosion that killed almost 69 of her colleagues. But the day it should have exploded it didnt. Whats cool about this especially from todays standpoint, is you have got all the important sites that you can see like the gun foundry which is now the American Civil War museum. And over here with the unfinished roof, well, thats where i work. Its always neat to see places you are intimately familiar with in an 1865 photograph. That photograph is now chock full of exhibits and displays helping you understand richmonds history during the civil war. I prefer this one which is up on the richmond and petersburg embankment. This thing here is a burned out gate onto a bridge that is burned out as well. Youre overlooking the ruins of the federal arsenal or armory. This is essentially the war making heart of the confederacy. Without what youre looking at in this image, theres no war. Its just that simple. Now youre overlooking these ruins after the fire but of course i like blowing things up. That sounded wrong didnt it . You know what i meant. So here we can actually see the Laboratory Buildings on Browns Island completely intact chock full of powder. I wonder if thats their privy overhanging the canal there. Well never know but you get a sense of orderliness. These negatives, theyre about this big. And the lens is about this big, so theyre getting this deep focus without necessarily intending to. That little box, when you blow it up you can see about a mile away James Monroes tomb in Hollywood Cemetery. See it . I mean you cannot do this today. You can get your cell phone camera out. Youre not going to get anywhere close to that level of detail. Thats what enables us to reach inside these images, look deeper, and find the story. All right. Nearby the photographers would have crossed the river. Took this amazingly artistic shot, which i absolutely love. It is just brilliant. You know what im going to zoom in on. Look at this right here. Look at these people. Think about the week that theyve had. Of course, these are africanamericans. They are probably former slaves on these rocks. Again, do you think they were sitting there and having a picnic when the photograph rolled up . Begin this is completely put together. They are trying to show you something, but it is their art. They made this happen. They constructed this shot and they dont see any problem be that, so weve got to take them on their teamrms. Whats here in the background . You have the ruined bridge. You have the tredegar iron works. Hes definitely got a message here. What do you think it is . Reminding you this is the current issue. In many ways art also very political art. Prop propaganda you might say. Does that surprise you . Im okay with it. What we might consider neutral journalism didnt exist back then. Moving on nearby to bell isle. Im sure some of you in their studies and readings have encountered bell isle before. It is the main prison camp for union enlisted men. That and salisbury were the two big confederate prisons. I cant resist putting this in my show even though it is not 1865. Its 1863. The photographer climbed up this hill and got theis amazing view of the bell isle prison camp. Look off in the background. This is the downtown. This is downtown richmond. Its going to burn in 1865 and its just that hazy bit in the background. Why . Because his negatives dont survive. Theyre not in the National Archives. Theyre not in the library of congress. Theres the gigantic two buildings. It is acting as the confederate capital when this image is made. You can see Browns Island and the laboratory from here. In 1865, another photographer got up there and im sure he didnt know he was mimicking the shot, but took almost the exact same view. This is two years later. You can see the gun overlooking the camp now empty. Theres all the downtown that we just described. Over here over right there, thats all thats left of those mammoth flour mills. Over there theres the intact laboratory that we saw. Where did that bridge go . Its just gone. Photographers found bell isle particularly attractive because what greater message could you send than taking this image . To climb this hill, to get this view of that, the symbolic confederate capital overlooking bell isle. Oh this is propaganda at its height with the cannon there. You know what theyre going to say. Youre going to say we didnt know about the terrors and the starvation that was going on at bell isle. The message in this photograph is you knew. That is the message. And youll see it done again. You think he just happened to plop down his camera where the capital was between two trees . Do you think that was an accident in do you think he happened to come upon somebody weeping over a grave there in the cemetery . Of course not. This is the bell isle cemetery. Again, theres the capital presiding over the city. This is hitting you hard, isnt it . Its grabbing that heart and twisting it but of course ill appreciate that message and i understand the art but what intrigues me is you might be able to see is we have some legible tombstones and you can read them. These are actual men who died. They are now removed to the Richmond National cemetery. Thats what these indicate right down there. I love that hoffman and wolf are still next to each other. They kept them in the same order they were originally buried. Always intrigues me, but this one makes me angry. The reason it makes me angry is there is not one, not one, photograph of the forts that surrounded richmond during the war. This cameraman went up a hill about 100 feet up a hill, and stood with his back to one of those forts. Turn around. Drives me crazy. He took this relatively mundane shot overlooking bell isle from the south side. Thats it right over there. If you dont believe me, theres the gun we were just behind. See it up there . But determined to make lemonade out of lemons, i see theres a nice skyline in here. As we walk through this youll see heres tredegar and right there is my visitors center. In fact, my desk is right in there. Scrolling through, youve got the foundry building. Right next store you can see the big smokestack there. The armory mill which made a lot of the plates. Move up the hill, you have the second presbyterian church. But my favorite building of all time is in this shot pratts castle. I love insane architecture. This guy made his bones as a photographer before the civil war and built this actual castle up there on a very mad architecture. Secret rooms and all kinds of stuff. Lets just go talk about pratts castle. Look at this guy. Dont you want one . I do. Can you imagine this in the wintertime . Talk about ostentatious. Apparently, he designed it himself, so we cant blame anybody else for that. Photographers knew of this guy and almost every one of them came here to shoot, not just because it was a prominent hill, but because they knew who he was. At this time, pratt was gone but at least one photographer saw the possibilities of the turret. Alexander gardner got up in that turret on april 6th. Think about whats going on while this is being made. April 6th Sailors Creek, and made a five plate panorama. Thanks to the magic of powerpoint, im going to run this as if you were standing in the turret of pratts castle casting your eyes from left to right in 1865. If this doesnt do it for your folks, i cant really help you. There weve got the capital. I love that you can see the spots wood hotel. Look at everything else. Just gone. Heres the big canal basin. Were going to see a lot of that later. Theres whats left of the mills. Were coming up on the petersburg embankment. Up here on the right, this is the armory. I think its seen better days dont you . And then theres the laboratory, again, on Browns Island. If he had taken one more stinking plate over there to the right would be the tredegar iron works. What had to happen, this camera is up there on that turret. Hes going to have to expose the plate. Youre talking like all day to make this