In existence. It still is obviously. He is the author and editor of 60 books related primarily to the civil war, but also 19thcentury southern u. S. History. 60 books. Few, hisse just a first book was a history of the new market campaign, which i still think is a model small battle history 40 years after it was written. I think its one of the best small battle historys ever written on the civil war battle. Biography of john c breckenridge, the general history of the confederacy, a book on the end of the war in florida and other locations. When i was working at the Florida State archives i corresponded with him about the escape of some of the florida cabinet members. He is the editor of a recent series on the civil war in virginia, a separate volume for each year. He was the editor i guess its 20 years old, but the newer photographic history of the civil war, the image of war which is a great supplement to the older history. The on camera was Senior Consultant and commentator for 52 episodes of civil war journal, which many of you remember. It was on a e and History Channel for a number of years. He is involved in many other production activities for television. In 2013, he retired after 13 years as a professor of history and executive director of the Civil War Center for civil war studies at virginia tech. He is the only fourtime winner of the Jefferson Davis award, given for book length works and confederate and civil war history. There were copies of his new with book hopefully they have not been all sold out. Lorettoinventing velazquez, confederate soldier, impersonator, media celebrity and con artist which was published in 2016. Hopefully he is working on new books for us. In his talk today, grant, lee and leadership. [applause] please welcome to davis. [applause] davis good morning. It is great to be back here again. This is a wonderful venue and im delighted to see all of you here. Forngratulate ralph peters taking care of the first couple of minutes of the talk i was going to do. [laughter] because i now dont have to say my favorite branch of the u. S. Government is the National Park service, which i always do that i get a chance. They give us more bang for the buck than any other branch of government. Corp a wonderful dedicated the people working there. Years been working for 45 to have known so many of them and worked with so many of them. It is really something to be proud of. With the possible exception of england, i dont know of any other nation in the world that has anything to compare with it. It is wonderful what they do. And bringing people together like this is part of it. Thanks to ralph peters i will rewrite my talk on getting it. [laughter] he addressed so many interesting things. I will talk about grant and lee and leadership and what characterized them. But i will give you some of the background of their lives first. Informs of thing that the way people make decisions. Grant and lee as people. You find some surprises when you want something about them. U. S. Grant grew up in the wealthiest household in his county in ohio. Grant was the son of rural western privilege. His house had books in it. His house had a piano. Lee, as you have always heard, group in grew up and maybe straighter circumstances but not quite as poor as implied. His mother inherited a number of slaves at 50 a year. She inherited a lot of shares in banks and railroads. Unlike shares today, those actually paid dividends. [laughter] her income as a boyfriend year,n 2000 and 4000 a which put her in the top 10 of earners in america. They were not living in genteel poverty, but she was very careful with our money. The famous story that they would have a debate, the family, one day over what meat they would buy for the next days dinner. They could afford a lot more than just one at a time, but his mother was obsessed with she knew something about poverty. If you are married to light horse harry lee, be new about poverty and death and shame and humiliation. She was always a tension any. Willnch penny, and lee always be a pinch penny. It was a bone of contention with his wife overspending over her spending. He wanted to teach his sons about her spending. The most dangerous thing that can happen is when he finds a bargain. They usually cost twice what it would cost if she just paid the asking price. He did not grow up poor but he grew very conscious of money. Their childhoods are very different lees is quite constrained. I think ralph was on the money when he pointed out lee, from probably his earliest moments of awareness is conscious of the load that he and his brothers bare as the sons of harry lee. He will always spend virtually all his life trying to overcome that, trying to turn around the reputation of his branch of the lee family. His father. Ly knew he disappeared when lee was about seven years old. He never saw him again. I think its very significant that during the war when he was down in South Carolina he will go visit his fathers grave. His father was coming back from selfimposed exile to avoid debtors prison. He died on the way and buried near savannah, georgia. Lee went to visit his fathers great and he wrote a letter, two letters. Once in his life and one to his son describing it. It,ssentially described went to the Nathanael Greene plantation. Saw fathers grave. There was a beautiful growth of orange trees all around. He just went on. One sentence about his father. He was writing about visiting the great of a stranger. Of a stranger in a think this will follow him all his life. Grant has his own cross to bear. His father was a jackass. Bombastic, boastful, egotistical, annoying, of the wealthiest man in town and he knows it. He gives rubbing everybody elses face in it. Hes really a boob. They never really get along all that well. Grant has a different parental cross to bear. Hiset past being the son of character who spends much of his time, for some of it doing his best to tear down his sons ego, his own sense of selfworth. Jesse grant will be his sons worst critic in childhood. And will continue doing that during the war. It is so revealing that after the surrender at pittsburgh at vicksburg, one of the first letters he writes is to his father. It says essentially, dad, i took vicksburg. You can see him it is. Within the formal letter is this plea. Have i done well, daddy . Allfather would be across his life. There are tradeoffs. Grant had an almost amount of freedom as a child. Jesse may have been a jackass, but he did not scold, he did not discipline his children. They gave them an enormous freedom, a kind of freedom that those of the children would say thats no longer my concern, minor grown and gone, but would never think of today. There were no boundaries to speak of. Les could take off and travel around the county. He could take his fathers horse and ride anywhere he wanted to from the ages of seven or eight. It is a cliche about grant, but he is something of a horse whisper. He has this unusual connection with horses and could handle almost any barnyard animal, especially horses. He is allowed to hitch up his fathers horse team when hes about eight years old and go off to another country. In time his father will be sending him out to do goods deliveries or pick up purchases for the grant stores, plural, more than one gram stored. It is not a leather tannery. They sell Leather Goods intended by others that have been han btanned by others. By the time he is 15 he is traveled from ohio to kentucky, louisville, kentucky, lexington, kentucky, pittsburgh, detroit, chicago. If any of you study geography in school and remember it, he is getting further and further away from home and he is only a kid. By himself. My calculation is by the time he left for west point when he was with aad, by himself wagon and team traveled over 1500 miles. How many of you would trust any 17yearold you know to travel 1500 miles by himself with no supervision . What it did for grant was open up the world to him. He developed and never lost a fascination with travel, of seeing what is beyond the hill. Meeting new people. In that same period of his life, neverd say robert e. Lee traveled more than 100 miles from home. He stayed fixed in Northern Virginia. He did not travel, except for his father and i was to escape debt. Lee was never worldly. You know interest in the affairs of the rest of the world, or really even what went on the on the confines of virginia. That had been his world. When the war was over, grant becomes president. When he leaves the white house he will leave on a twoyear long ofard the world tour the world in which he nearly bankrupted himself. He loved every moment of it. Via photos of him in egypt, china, japan. He will be the first jimmy carter of a sort. The broker a peace between japan and china over a local dispute. There are still today just monument to u. S. Grant that was put up in the 1890s for the piece he made peace he made. It is still there today. Lee never got over that fixation on localism. They both have their prejudices, but they kind of reflect their childhoods and their experiences. Grant pretty much loves everybody. He was indifferent to slavery. There is not a word from him about the institution of slavery, for or against until towards the end of the war. He did briefly owned a slave that was a gift, when he was broke he emancipated them rather than to sell them for the money needed. He gets along with virtually everybody else because he is not just interested in the world. He is interested in people. A very open mind. Lee pretty much does not like anybody except white virginians. Much has been made up the famous later he wrote in 1858 where he castigates slavery, but he goes on to say that slavery is a bigger misfortune for white men than it is for the slaves. A white man has to take care of the slaves. His experience with his family was that they hired out the few he had and he inherited about half a dozen. They cost trouble. Caused trouble. You had to spend money that you were pinching pennies on this and some of the after them to bring them back. He did not like slavery. He is a southern whig, they dont know what to do about it. But he is no friend of the slave. He is not keen on free blacks, for indians, or mexicans. Is not keen on catholics. He is pretty openminded about jews, and will go out of his way when he is committing the army of Northern Virginia to make some allowances for jewish holidays as long as they dont conflict with actions in the field. You see two different minds in operation. Two different worldviews. Two men that are very different who share a lot of things in common. I think its important to try to emphasize that in saying some things about one you have not heard before, it does not mean higher anyone else is antilee or grant, you just need to level the Playing Field so you are looking with blinders off. And trying to give a fair approximation as we can of who they are. Let me play a game with the. I will give you a couple of scenarios. Who will speak in generals a and b. The latest cannot relate directly to grant or lee. General a expects the enemy to advance, but not just yet. He is taken by surprise when he leaves avenues of approach unguarded. He reacts to that surprise by being pushed back in fighting defensively at first, but then he consolidates his position. Then he takes the offenses and he drives the flow from the field. Foe from the field. Who does that describe . Both. That is grant at shiloh, lee at chancellorsville. Scenario two, struck at his flank, general b reasons to concentrate mass, the enemy must have weekend the other end of his line. General b counterattacks, and wins the battle. Which one is it . Both. Grant on february 15, 1862 and four donelson. Lee at spotsylvania. Last, b general divides his army and sends a major portion of it on a Wide Movement around the enemy flank and rear to strike at a size of blow. Which is it . Both. Lee at second manassas and chancellorsville. Grant at vicksburg. The myth is lee is a virtually undefeated genius only overpowered by superior numbers and resources while grant is of course a plotting butcher who on only by overwhelming power. Other skills and generalship is nearly identical. There is no question that lee had genius. His was hardly grant did have great advantages. Wara start, early in the grant had more experience. We can to forget he was already a National Hero in the north after donaldson and after shiloh lee at a time when was virtually forgotten in the south because of the campaign of western virginia that did not come out well. Only after he took active command of the army of what he termed the army of Northern Virginia in the summer of 1862 does the robert e. Lee we know emerge. Grant had more men, better equipped, and was backed by seemingly unlimited resources. But counter that with the fact fought on home ground. He had the image of interior lines. He knew the ground or had people with him who knew it, and he and his army had the fought on home. Support of the local people. Lee had another tremendous advantage and almost unique in this in the confederate army. That is he had the unwavering support of president Jefferson Davis. In fact a wonderful working relationship with him, which nobody else had with davis. Lincolnver even met until early 1864. Lincoln had been wary of grant for some time, until he was finally convinced this was the unions greatest military hero when i challenge him for the republican president ial nomination in 1864. Grant was being courted by opponents to lincoln in his own party. Lee new davis much better than grant would ever know lincoln. Grant also faced a constant peril of political infighting in his rear. First the jealousy of henry halleck, then don carlos buell, John Mcclendon is the worst of all. There is also stephen hurlbut, Nathaniel Banks and grants onetime friend william rosecrans. Almost alleir allies of them allied themselves with newspaperman. Communications and information and the creation of impressions versus the actual expression of fact. It is nothing new. As ralph told you in his talk. It is very evident there. These men constantly fed stories to her grant, by the charges of drunkenness. I will deal with that later on. Lee never has to contend with that. He has no one working against him behind his lines except possibly long street, was more interested in getting an independent command of his own that he was in undercutting lee. Directly,eport facetoface, with Jefferson Davis. Grant, through his career will report first to john c fremont, and henry halleck, briefly to georgia , and then to briefly to george mcclellan, then hallec k again. Talk about a losing hand. That is four deuces. Grant starts the war in which virtually every Division Commander in 1862 was a political general from illinois. Talk about poison. Mcclendon, prentice, wallace, lew wallace, sherman among his Division Commanders was the only professional. Later grant had a command and control the likes of banks, benjamin butler, and franz sigel. Lee had no nonprofessional or political generals and his armys Upper Echelon until the death of jeb stuart and his replacing by wade hampton and john gordon and the second core in the final days. Grant has operate entirely an enemy country. Maintaining long increasingly longer lines of communication, subject to by partisans and gorillas. Almost exclusively on home ground except for antietam and gettysburg. In short, lee has some substantially significant advantages to help offset grants security of numbers and material. That they could offset those things. It is demonstrated by what lee did to burnside and hooker, another losing hand. At any of those officers been in command in virginia during the spring of 1864, is there any reason to suppose they would have done any better against lee than they had before. Its a tantalizing what if. There are strong differences in the personal pluses and minuses. In 1864 when they first meet on the field, lee is 57. Which right now doesnt sound too old to me. Mental, emotional and Spiritual Health were in decline. He suffered from heart ailments, which he treated mostly with quinine, which in many cases just aggravated the problem but no one knew that. He is tired. He complains about having energy. He complains he cant concentrate, that he has trouble seeing the war has exhausted him. Mentally, he is older than his years. Custis, themary daughter of George Washington custis. A woman who at best was difficult. To try toys unwise put somebody who is long dead on the couch and psychoanalyze them. But Mary Custis Lee shows a lot of the behavior you see in people who are today diagnosed as being bipolar. Way down the next. Erratic behavior. She got out of bed one morning [cheers] cspan. Org and i guess sheir day cspan. Org had a bad hair day can cut all her hair off. They prepared to go to one of the social events that would take place on post. He would be dressed to the nines, immaculately in his uniform. She would show up wearing the 19th century equivalent of jeans and a tank top. She had no sense or no concept of what was appropriate for occasions. Lee and all the children will dance around mary increasingly giving your lives to keep her on an even keel. Im not saying she was insane, bipolar, or manicdepressive, but she was a difficult personality. That preyed upon lees mind. You see it in his letters in the later years. Feels he is a failure as a father. He is a failure as a husband. He feels like he is a failure as a man. In 1860 he has to go back and take over his command after those years he had to spend bailing out the arlington mansion from debt. He wrote how glad he was sitting back in the field because when he was home on a visit he felt like a stranger, like he did not belong in the house. He was just in everybodys way. He is not really a happy man. He has seemingly no enthusiasm. He will write about the depths of friends deaths of friends as a good event. One instance of the young opposite or just got married. He would write to his wife, mary, about how the young officer would in weeks of marriage gets sick and died. He said how wonderful that is. What a magnificent release. He will not have to go through all the hell interrelations that constitutes a marriage. He writes this to his wife. [laughter] he will express pleasure of a sort at the death of a child. That child can go straight to heaven and dishon