Robert is a reporter with the Investigative Unit of the Washington Post who is focused on privacy, national security, federal contracting. He has won multiple journalism awards. The 2013 sigma delta chi award. A regional emmy. He previously won the top prize for investigative reporters and editors for exposing fraud, waste, and abuse in Homeland Security contracting. He has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist twice. Finalisten a fourtime for business writing. He is the author of no place to hide. Michelle is a civil war and reconstruction specialist at the library of congress. History atd a ba in berkeley. Severalhe author of articles and books on topics related to the civil war. At the Library Assistant at the Historical Society of washington, d. C. , an assistant presenter. Scholarlyember of our lecture. I would like to call out to connections between this place. Quartermaster Montgomery Meigs department was responsible for caring for the war dead. Remarkable that in choosing to live here, lincoln was putting himself facetoface with the human cost of war every day. Seeing the capitol dome provided lincoln with the inspiration and a constant reminder of what was at stake. Construction of the dome was halted at the onset of the civil war. If people see the capital going on, it is a sign we intend the union to go on. Please join me in welcoming robert and michelle. [applause] michelle thank you for having us here tonight. The first question for those folks who have not picked up the book, how did you get involved with this project . How did you come across Montgomery Meigs . That is it is a story true. I was walking with my family and if any of you are locals, it is a beautiful spot and normally, we went down across the canal and applicant and up the canal. I am a robert frost fan. You have to do verge now and then. Uphill and find out where this goes. It was a path through the woods. It was a little twolane road. I highly recommend it. There was a railing part way down in the middle of the woods. Why is there a railing in the middle of the woods . There was a granite memorial down below my feet. Meigs. Ial to captain in a war . A general st some reason, this one uck. I have never once lost interest in what i found. Michelle one thing i wanted to start with because you are researching Montgomery Meigs, who notoriously had bad handwriting. [laughter] how did you overcome his handwriting . Robert the handwriting was an enormous challenge. It literally is so bad that the library of congress helpfully told us at the beginning of this paper, beware going further. You probably will not be able to read all that you encounter. It is amazing. When sherman and meigs had grown to know each other, there was a story and it is so good. An order that is written in his script and he says, these orders from general , and therefore, i approve of them but i cannot read them. [laughter] instead of dodging your question, i will try to answer it. Story is in ay haphazard event. The more you pull back the onion yer, theyers, la more contradictory it becomes. Using ast reevaluation Many Disparate sources as i could stumble across. Though clinton used to say, even a blind hog will find an acorn now and then. I felt like i was a blind hog. , i got tons of fullblown from google books and found my way there. Documents. Urce official records saved me hague, heohn transcribed his journals. Triangulated as many source documents and the gift that never stopped giving s handwriting was illegible to begin with. He was an efficiency guy. Meigs he became a devo to a of the idea devotee to the idea that he could use time more efficiently. He adopted a form of writing called pittman shorthand and he sealed the fate of his journals, 1500 2000 pages of journals and nobody could read them. Not only was it pittman himself, he taught and then he used an idiosyncratic version of the shorthand. About the anniversary of the capitol dome being completed, Congress Paid a guide who was a shorthand specialist to transcribe all of his journals. And sottee came together i got a stack of his journals transcribed and i went a step if anybodyd wants them, i have searchable all ofs from meigs for the 1850s and part of 1860. That is how i got around the letters i could not read. I am an Old Newspaper hack and you learn time waits for no one. I did the best i could with the materials i could access. Michelle what kind of man is meigs and what drove him . Found, one of the things that made me very happy because stories follow a similar pattern. Fascinated that meigs life story follows a traditional art. He was really immature. He was really an immature genius when he came to washington in 1852. He was not as disciplined as he should have been. He was scattered, super creative. One of the things about him, he was open to growing and he grew in many ways, including on his views on slavery, which were very ambivalent because his boss and his good friend geoff davis was a slave owner. He did not grasp the enormity of slavery until later. He did grow. Meigs was aframing of windows, he would stop. He would become mesmerized by the balance and the proportions and the utility of the things he saw. He was really moved by architecture. I suspect he was moved by colors. He was almost excessive about renaissance art. He only saw it in books. The patterns with the suggestions of colors and the books he bought sort of inflamed him. Impassioned about engineering did you guys know users the First Industrial of photography in the world . Ied in hisvar interests. I wanted to use a quote michelle helped me track down. His wife wrote to her mother early in the war and she uses this phrase, it is as though his soul is on fire with indignation. In general. On fire at the same time, he was highly self regarding. He was irritable, cranky, demanding. He could be a bore. So so south of zest self obsessed. He was also incredibly loyal. He was very engaging. They had something called a saturday club, top scientists, engineers, painters and they would get together and drink and do a show and tell of stuff. Apparently, he had a lot of faithful friends. The combination of someone who harkens back to the past for his architecture but is so interested in technology, and he is an engineer but he is an artist and he is inducted into the National Academy of sciences, too. He is a renaissance man in so many ways. Aspect. There is another he was devoted to innovation. I think he stands as one of the Great Technology innovators in the 19th century. Taking other peoples very good ideas, which stand on their own, and realizing there are other ways of using them so you create something new. He did that over and over again. It is a remarkable synthetic ability. Michelle we are here in washington and her audience will appreciate our audience will appreciate this. Can you describe the impacts that meigs had on the environment in washington dc in washington, d. C. . Living a career as a journeyman engineer in the army and heading probably toward being more forgotten to a career that would have integrity. It would not have been memorable. He was summoned to washington because the water was really bad and there was not enough of it and the capital had almost burned down when the library of congress caught fire. Our American History went up in flames some of it. He came to washington and they said, find a source of water. He did a three month survey and his report was so concise and brilliant and both practical and sweeping. Look it up because it is a cool document. Washington will become one of the great the center of one of the great empires in World History. He also predicted the other great world empire was going to be russia. He felt washington needed a water system that would allow ,he city to live healthy lives allow people to realize their james. It was so well done that the incoming secretary at war who became his very close to friend , theain political patron political knife fighter who protected meigs gave him the job to expand the capital building. Manifest destiny was bringing in lawmakers. That guy gave meigs the two greatest construction plums in america at the time. He had his fingerprints on the capitol dome. He helped design and. He helped design it. He built the water system. There is water all the way up the macarthur boulevard and the canals. Brick water houses as well as one of the great monuments in this area, formerly known as union bridge. It is a stunning i do not know what you would call it. A protomodernist piece of art. He insisted that it be kept spare. No extra embellishments. It was the longest masonry bridge and World History until then. Davis who was geoff went on to become the president of the confederacy. Michelle we know he was very influenced by davis. Or how that relationship did his feelings about davis and robert e. Lee, how did those things change . Robert meigs came out of west point. West point was the Main Engineering School in the country. His first assignment in the army corps of engineers was with robert e. Lee and they went to the mississippi and they were trying to find ways to improve navigation. It is an interesting thing because he did admire lee. Lee was stiffnecked and a very proper guy. He is a guys guy. Women love him and men love them. Love him. They socialized and they were fond of one another and he was much closer to davis and his wife. When the war came, meigs was pretty clear about what he wanted. He never reconciled with them. He felt his patriotism, i think was on in order that was very different than what we might be able to experience now. It was a face and in the democracy and a democracy that was fledgling. Meigs had the insight, the great possibility of creating freedom for people and the idea that there were people turning back on it instead of resolving the problems offended him in a passionate way. Michelle his soul was on fire with indignation. Most people know meigs as the quartermaster general. Maybe you can what kind of job was that . What was the quartermaster responsible for . Talk when i talked earlier about him growing, after i got three years into the project, i realized meigs could not have done what he did during the war if he had not done what he did in the 1850s. He had to follow the money and he did down to the penny. He had to organize labor. He had millions and millions of bricks and he tracked them and he tracked how much it cost to lay each brick. The detail he brought to bear. While he was doing that, by the way, he is decorating the capital and he is hiring artists. And fending off american artists. Back then, they were talking about making America Great again. He would go through the capital and see their work. He would without a park at knife and show pocket knife and show how show the artist how it. Anted millions,s spending he was a captain, right . This,he is doing all of adopting photography and doing politics and covering his tush , that guyical attacks artistme to watch an paint the first fresco in the united states. He would go there day after day to watch this guy work in real time. There are some art historians who make the case, and i believe sey are correct, that meigs isrnal of the artist working the first document in real time of a fresco being made in World History. This is the kind of guy he was. He grew into himself. War, in the spring and summer of 1861, it baffles me that we survive. ,he army went from lets say 16,000 of a Standing Army and a small Quartermaster Department and to an army into an army with a quarter of a million men. Uncounted wagons had to be procured. The men did not have clothing or underwear. There were soldiers out in patrol in their longjohns because there were no uniforms. Todelegated a lot of work his very experienced underlings and began to work with these industries to mobilize them and to arrange for supplies. When he did not get the supplies he needed, he ordered supplies from france. Clothing, blankets, and he got reamed out for that. Ever he had to until he could get this machine up and running. He lucked out because you may recall that the treasury ran out of money in early 1862. The president was very glum and down about the prospects. To meigssered over Office Downtown and he walked in and sits in front of the fire and says, what am i going to do . Heroes, one of the not of American History, mcclellan that was gentle, right . That is washington doublespeak. Mcclellan is ill and would not see the president. Ged it at first. Not justlans, he was putting out fires. He began planning what became the brown water navy. He started doing drawings of these ships, these riverboats, and they had to technology was changing and they were rifled and they could obliterate wood. Meigs started designing iron covered riverboats that ultimately damn the torpedoes farragut used to turn the tide. The boats were not ready until later, actually. In any case, they made a big difference. Michelle does he ever see the battlefields . So much of his activities were legit to goal. Did he get a chance were logistical. Rolet meigs relished his and he welcomed it. I get the sense he knew this was a match he was feted for. The 1840s andin 1850s, he is air again and boorish arrogant and boorish, he came to realize that he was genius. A logistical he had the support of the supportt and he had the of another cranky man, the secretary of war stanton. Eigs never served in battle he had gone out to bull run and saw the shooting and never led men in battle and he always felt bad about it. In a way, that is a good thing. If you are a military guy, you need to want to confront the enemy. Dispatched to tennessee when there was an emergency in chattanooga. They had to get men from washington in Northern Virginia down there to save the day and he helped in that process. To go toaid im e. G. Chattanooga because it turns out, stanton said, i need you to go to chattanooga because it turns out, they are surrounded. There and he was in the midst of it and he reveled being there when it was all unfolding. It still was not enough, though. He did not want to go back. He liked being with the guys in the field. He went back and he asked for a commission in the field and stanton said no, we need you here. In 1864, he had his chance. When takece what you can, we need supplies. They got a bunch of horses and they tried to do a hail mary and attack from the north in washington, d. C. When they saw that his army was moving through, they thought it was trickery and they downplayed it and they realized it was for real. Meigs bagged to be given command department. Ermaster initially, he was told no. He went and asked another commander and got approval and rallied these men and went to totten is notort far from here, right . s mainappens that meigs force he was leading was that fort stevens. When the southerners came from the north, meigs got to be in charge of the battle. He was joined in that battle for two days by the president and the president was he wanted to see this. They all came up in their carriages, the illuminati of washington. Day, haven this key you guys been to fort stevens . It is fantastic. You can almost see how it would unfold. Lincoln is standing there and literally, we have accounts of bullets buzzing into the dirt. A soldier got hit nearby. Kernel soldier, maybe a yelling at lincoln, get down you fool. That was all of her window homes homes. Er wendall in the newspaper business, we call that too good to check. [laughter] i could not verify that this is true. , i think it is hard, reading between the lines, he was very happy that he finally had that monkey off his back. He was so happy and so high flea highly suffer guarded and so memo tocal, he wrote a his soldiers recounting their bravery and the dateline was Something Like, meigs headquarters. Now it is in the official record. Exultationrom that to finally getting to command troops in the field to the death of his son, can you tell us what happened and how that impacted him . I think i will do this in reverse. 1864, after the Wilderness Campaign and the Overland Campaign and the siege in richmond, the bodies were being brought up to washington for the hospitals and the cemeteries and the cemeteries were built and the bodies were stacking up and like all, it was physical presence and it was so nasty and it underscored the urgency of solving the problem. Land of his now hated adversary and created arlington cemetery. It is a compelling story for me wasuse by this time, meigs embittered by the losses everybody was suffering. He did not want the lees ever coming back. That land was, i think, pretty clearly taken illegally by the north. They did not allow the family to pay their taxes. You cannot pay your taxes so we will take it from you. In any case, meigs did not want them coming back so he ordered their bodies be buried around the rose garden. You have to be pretty angry to do Something Like that. He became angrier still because of something that happened to his son. His son john was very much like his dad, brilliant engineer, went to west point, top of his class. Assigned toand was the Shenandoah Valley and he was a mapmaker and apparently very good coming back with a couple of guys. The story is unclear. It might always be unclear. The outcome is it appears john guysht these three or four were union guys. They may have been undercover, they may have been wearing raincoats. In any case, they were southerners. Meigs was shot dead. Montgomery thought it was murder. When he heard about it, he was in new york. He declared it was murder and it was a plot because john was his son. It turns out, and i thought this was interesting, johns gun had been fired and unlike meigss version of the story, john had engaged in a firefight. In any case, he died and meigs might have gotten over it, but i think he lived without loss for the rest of his life. Michelle maybe you can describe what johns sarcophagus looks like at arlington. Robert it is really interesting. Of john meigs in the position he was in when they found him. Kind