For civil war history. Its just under 40 minutes. See if there is something from the audience first, and if there was not, we will pick it up from up here. If anyone has questions, just raise your hand. Here come the mike bearers. My question is really for anyone who feels compelled to answer it. Used theus sherman. Abor code and confiscation act im curious if sheridan did the same. Did he use any sort of legal justifications, or was it simply a soldier obeying orders from grant . And im curious if residents of chambersburg and western maryland have a sort of popular collective memory about their sort of tragedy. Ill talk about that part later. After my colleagues and the first question. One of the interesting things i think the significance of the lieber code is more postcivil war. Theres no reference in anything grant wrote or in any of the papers of ulysses s. Grant to the lieber code. Nothing. And i assure you, sherman did not care about it at all either. I think there was a kind of full knowledge. Folk knowledge. He found very little complaining in the confederacy about Union Destruction of military value. That was the reason why going through the doors and going through words clothing Womens Clothing seemed like a violation that only a gender norms but between personal and professional. Towhat value could this be Union Soldiers . Sheridan, too, comes up with a lot of rationales for why he did these things. During the war, they have things to do, and grant says destroy it. Make it a barren waste, so clearan had pretty instructions what to do. Compared to hunter, and when to remember we need to remember it is only weeks apart. Sounds like a long period of time, but its really not. Its much more focused on destroying the food that would become military elements not going to leaves army. I think that is the distinction. You need to keep in mind that during the vicksburg campaign, grant sent sherman into jackson to destroy anything of military value, and then grant and sherman had come up with this rating concept that sherman experimented with in the Meridian Campaign in january 1864. The intention, if you regrets orders to sherman, is to break up johnstons army and penetrate through the confederacy wrecking anything of military value, and i think that the way those guys perceived their duties. The chambersburg writing is kind of off the grid the chambersburg burning is kind of off the grid. People from chambersburg have sent all the money out of town. Theres nothing to give, and theres union forces not far away. We know they are not far away and they are going to be here any minute now, and they stall. Says you may be stalling and waiting for the union army to come, so we are going to burn the city. If you visit today, theres a wasmonument about how much destroyed, counting of the number of houses and how much it was worth, but this also a starstudded to the square of before he went to gettysburg, and they have as theyar a memorial had a reenactment with lasers and all this of the burning of the city and kind of a pageant when they are doing it, and its not clear. The good guys and bad guys are a little blurrier than you might think. It was a huge deal at the time. Harpers weekly, i think, is filled with pictures of burn chambersburg. It specifically tied to the kind of thing that happened in chambersburg to what had happened earlier in lexington. There is nothing new were doing here. This is simply something the yanks have been doing a long time and now we are giving them a dose of their own medicine. Most confederates were very happy to hear that chambersburg had had this experience. I will add that frederick, who does one of the towns that pays the ransom in the month or so after appomattox when these parolees are coming home, frederick is one of the communities that establishes vigilante committees, unionists, to prevent some of those maryland confederates katie talked about earlier from coming into their confederacy. This is one way in which they say you are not coming back here. Its not the only county in maryland that does it, but they are very selfconsciously tying it to the request threat for ransom. Relative to joes, before about this happening earlier, historians have argued a lot that does the war become more over time . Im trying to thread the needle as im describing all of this. Are they more bloodthirsty at the end than they were at the beginning . I dont know that they were. That this isidea likely to descend into some sort of armageddon. All the elements are there from buried in knew the beginning anyway. The Union Artillery shelled. Redericksburg the confederacy using towns as shelters, so they shelled the city of fredericksburg, and a significant number of civilians, black and white, became refugees, but there are things going on in 1864, and this is one of them. Every day, there is contact punctuated by various battles. After gettysburg, its 10 months before there is another battle. After the eastern wilderness, its two days, so it really is different in that regard, too, and we are now ready for another question. You already have the mic. Im sorry, we will have to take that away from you. Thank you all very much. Wonderful talks. I was really curious about the fluid nature of the the events you describe after april 9. In the beginning, you talked about the exchange of letters about what extent grants orders really apply to everyone else, so it got me thinking about to what extent the Lincoln Administration and union high command is engaged in some sort of planning before these events ake place to anticipate hopeful mass surrender and try to create a legal and practical framework to execute that. The short answer is that they do not think out these things the conversations lincoln has had with grant and sherman and others in late march. What grant is doing is trying to get the surrender of lees army. ,m not faulting him for this but thats not on his mind or his agenda on april 9, but as he that there aret these thousands of men and i will add that there are men coming back to the line. It is apparent Something Else has to be done, just like terms offer the morning of the 10th when grant says we will allow your men to take u. S. Railways when necessary to get home. These are constantly evolving and constantly responding to events that take place. I would be remiss if i did not give a special thanks to patrick schroeder, who is here from appomattox courthouse, who has been absolutely instrumental in helping me with this research. Just wanted to give him a nod, too. On information i have read, as far as when lee finished up just going home and some of his subordinates wanted to keep fighting and he says no, but i see johnson still out there. He was the head of the entire Confederate Army at that point. Say wehave the right to are done . Toit is not grants decision say sherman tried a version of. Hat johnson was reeled in quickly and joe can talk about that. That is not within lees purview. When the war is over is a political decision, not the decision the general makes. I was thinking about the previous question, and the confederates want to meet, and from receives instructions the Lincoln Administration that he can negotiate only matters that are relevant to his own army and the armys opposing him , and, of course, lincoln never would have imagined that he held be assassinated, but may have made a mistake at that point, and it might have and wiser for him to have thought through these matters, but here is one of those classic situations where people are in washington and really do not understand what is going on out in the field and that if you can get all these people surrendered and paroled on the terms that grant, which by the way, he just sat down at the desk and appomattox and wrote out the original copy is at west point. You even see where he wrote in the comment where lee was saying many of the offices have horses that they own, so grant sketches that in. This is composed right on the scene. They have not devoted sufficient time to prepare for the end of the war. But it unfolds really rapidly. Yes, it does. No one could have imagined the army of Northern Virginia had become the great bugaboo in the united states, and the notion that it really disintegrates in one week i think would have come as a surprise to people. 60,000 at least forces combined and maybe a little higher than that, and in one week, they are gone . I think no one was really prepared for that. The bugaboo with sherman is that grant has been told by leahy he can only negotiate the surrender of the army. This is what gets sherman in so much trouble. Its about surrendering the army. Theres no peace negotiation going on at appomattox. This is lee surrendering his army and his army alone. Remember, the union is arguing these are our people. You do not surrender your own eople, you know what i mean . They have to give up arms. Theres no negotiation here. This is not a foreign country. Thats the basis for the union. Do you remember the classic line where lincoln is disgusted, i cant by generals realize that . Why our territory generals realize that it is all our territory . You mentioned out of the four confederates who held up the train, only two of them were captured. You briefly mentioned the other two work paroled. Why were they not brought up on these charges later or executed . Theres actually no trial. Theres no courtmartial. Nothing happens. The men that are captured are taken back across the mountain and executed that evening. In fact, they called for a chaplain of the chaplain does not even get there in time. The father, george summers, arrived that evening to claim his suns body. The other two managed to escape. They had gotten word they literally managed to escape with their homes and had gotten word the Union Cavalry was on its way and made for the hills. Did the local community the local community helped protect them, as was often the case, and it is months, months later when they are actually pardoned. They managed to escape and are protected, which is the key part, that the local Community Rallies around them. Anyone else . Right in the front. It was not very long ago when we were hearing a lot of japanese slogans off some island of the pacific. How many confederate soldiers just walked away and went home . I dont know the exact numbers, but many of them years 1890sn the 1880s or will proudly boast in memoirs, letters, and otherwise that they were never paroled. On one hand, you have certificates from appomattox that are proof of men who stayed , as proof of their devotion to the confederacy, and on the other hand, you have these men who say their devotion was even more so because they never surrendered and are very proud of that fact. Im hiding behind that tree over there. Right. [laughter] there was one point in terms of escalations in the valley they did reach the point of retaliatory hanging in the valley between custer and mosby, but the question about restraint comes in because they didnt hold back from that on both sides. Mosby, as i mentioned in passing that mosby is the one exception. Its mosby himself, not his men that are the exception. Mosby is the exception, but very quickly then, and theres the correspondence that goes back and forth, multiple correspondence, multiple letters in a single day among the union high command about how should we deal with mosby. At one point, troops are being sent to go hunt him down. This is april 10, april 11. Long story short, there are two occasions in which he meets with Union Officials to talk about surrendering his command. Ultimately, he decides not to your it unable 21st at salem, now marshall, virginia, he will disband his rangers. That same day, about 200 of them arrived in winchester to turn themselves in, so they go immediately. Some of them had gone before. He had told them about the surrender terms, and if you had come in on april 19, april 18. Mosby when lot site his parole until june, i believe it is. And then he becomes republican. Then he becomes republican. This is a little local color. , i house where mosby lives knew because i am a history geek did,knew and nobody else and they created a subdivision called Mosby Mountain, and it oldnow engulfed mosbys house. I just imagine the ghost of John Singleton mosby wandering Mosby Mountain subdivision. No sheridan lane probably. I think this auguste institution ought to celebrate sheridans birthday each year. Had he obeyed his orders, this institution would probably be down in lynchburg or Something Like that. When i was reading micheners book on mexico, one of the chapters talks about all the confederate soldiers that went to mexico and had their families, would pay for their children to go to university, and they also got involved with the oil, and as years went on in the 30s, they were after our government to be more accommodating to the oil that was being drilled by the confederate families, and i have never heard any historian refer to the confederates that ended up in mexico. Large numbers ended up in brazil and create their own town were even today, they have ceremonies celebrating the confederacy and there is english spoken. National geographic did a big story with pictures. This a small literature on that. They are called confederate confederados. Someone to egypt. Theres a diaspora of former confederates. Some go to new york. Some do go to new york, and is a really wretched movie about some of the ones that went to mexico with rock hudson and john wayne in it well, it is wretched. Well, it really is. Its called the undefeated, and rock hudson has one of the really mind numbingly awful generic southern accents. Back. Ay in the it may have been too shorter earlys pusht was did it have any ramifications or impact on African Americans . My own sense is they were moving so fast, and by this ime, slavery had been dont know thats the calculation you had to make. Heres the army, one side or the other, and even the Confederate Army provides the opportunity that you could or something. Cook or something. But they are gone. The pace of all of this and the turnover is so great, it was greatly increasing your odds, but by this time, mainly enslaved people have fled to washington, d. C. By tenson had increased of thousands. This happened earlier in the valley in 1862 when the confederates when stonewall captured barbaras ferry, he also captured several hundred black refugees who had made their way to the safety of union lines. A number of womens diaries in the valley comment on this. They are very happy about this, that these contrabands, as they were called in, had been. Ecaptured they made their way to Harpers Ferry and were returned to slavery when Harpers Ferry fell to Stonewall Jackson. The bigger impact came the year before during the invasion of pennsylvania by lees army. One of the first things they did was roundup africanamerican people and ship them off and so manyrichmond, and accounts of spending a lot of to kidnap and Energy People into slavery. Images of chasing them through wheatfields and that sort of thing. But the scale their different. The percentage of the population that was enslaved was so much lower than it was during the march to the see, for example. The war had been going on for a long time and it was easy to get to union lines from virginia. Quotation at actually a letter from a confederate soldier who have been talking to henry a watts, governor of virginia. He told him slavery is a dead issue in virginia, and his rationale was even if the confederacy won, so many of the slaves had already run off, and a bufferoing to be state for the institution of slavery because the union is not. Oing to return runaway slaves realistically, you will not be able to keep slaves in most of virginia. 3 million, however, have not been reached by the federal army. Virginia is unusual in that regard. Appomattox, say by it has been remarkably undisturbed by the war by the time it arrives. These kind of micro geographies in different parts of the valley where we have seen slavery really destroyed, but other parts, it was not easy to get to the valley. If you were in hand in amherst or even augustine valley. Article in the paper this is all the work is now being done by white people, so getting a clear sense of exactly how devastated slavery was west of the blue ridge and south of appomattox, i guess, you dont really have a clear picture of that. But not devastated in one of the heaviest slaveholding counties in virginia, and its not that far from the valley, not that far from richmond, and yet, here it is basically untouched. Of 3 million is still true in 1865, not just in it and 64. It is still pretty much true in may 1855. Which is why it is so important to understand military history, understand africanAmerican History. People just imagine that it dissolved, but there is still a lot of work to be done. We give, every collective answer is very long, as you figured out. Does anyone else want to venture a question . I didnt mean that to have a chilling effect. [laughter] presentedmap that you of various parole offices, i noticed there were none in southwest virginia at all, and i was curious as to why that was. That matt is based on research ive done at the National Archives where i found the parole records that map. Its not complete at this point, but i think the closest parole station, at least the closest im aware of, was in west virginia, charleston canola charleston cannot charleston kanawha. I have not found any in southwest virginia in particular. This is where, for the most part, in many instances, the u. S. Cavalry is being sent to or places that they know men have congregated, so around the norfolk area and king george county, there are reports coming in the say there are a lot of an paroled confederates in this area, maybe we should send the Provost Marshal to this place. Thank you. Can someone clarify after sheridan arrives in the valley in the late summer, it is still about a month before the actual fighting begins. Can you clarify on why they waited so long. Im sure early was expecting an attack. The reason was that grant was under the delusion that earlys army was much larger than it was, and when early sent part of the troops back to lee, at that point, grant felt that sheridan had a much better opportunity of achieving