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changed the course of history. standing on the brink of war, no one in the american south could have known what lay ahead. the scale of war, the demands of waging it, the level, level of mobilization it would require, the dominion of death it ushered in. all this was unimaginable in december 1860. still, southerners knight ws kn dangerous, reckless undertaking. now as we engage the centennial of the civil war, i think there is one question above all that we ought to ask and answer. why did they risk it? it's not enough to stop at abstract questions about the constitutionality of sece...

it's a fairly new theory. and i wanted you to comment on it. and that is that the friendly fire that wounded jackson at chancellorsville may not have been the localized event we think of it as today and that it was something more like a sympathetic reactionary rolling tide that started actually maybe miles away. as it moved along a line of fire, it ended up wounding him and killing some of his staff and that same reactionary sympathetic fire also wounded a.b. hill. could you comment on that? >> well, i have written an extensive chapter with lots of footnotes, so you can read the foot...

drainage ditch, then the attacking ranks had to cross more open ground to confront a sunken road which formed a perfect four-foot trench for confederate infantry. behind the sunken road, marie's height rose precipitously studded with artillery and more infantry. the assault disintegrated into murder. lee saw the enemy founder and saw his own men leap from their cover and chase their fleeing foes. it is well that war is so terrible he said we should grow too fond of it. again and again the federals charged and each time they died and recoiled. general, lee said to longstreet, who was ...

by being such a good general and prolonging the war. i'm a descendant from slaves. so he -- i mean, it really is comparable to nominating mandela in israel. he can't be man of the year because we still have history. we are not at 2011. i think lee's body should be mixed with road tar. >> isn't that a little harsh, jennifer? >> it's a little harsh, i think. the assumption is anybody associated with slavery, anyone remotely associated with that and who favors it in any way should be disinterred and mixed with ashes. would that apply to people living in the united states at the time of ...

yes, sir. there's one more. >> will you comment on what jackson thought about the jefferson davis during 1862 and possibly vice versa? >> what thomas jackson thought of jefferson davis in 1862. jackson had a low opinion of davis. there are a number of episodes that make that abundantly clear. jackson's world view was that things were supposed to run according to the manual, and davis not only had accepted way out of channels complaints about jackson during the romney campaign that not only did not go through jackson, which is the way the book's supposed to be, he might have forgiven ...