 Good afternoon. Welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives. I'm Trevor Plant, the chief of the Archives One reference services branch and that's just a fancy way of saying that I run a lot of public spaces on the other side of the building. Archivist United States David Ferriero was scheduled to provide the welcoming remarks today. He sends his regrets that he could not be here but his presence was needed at another one of our facilities. Since I'm filling in for him I'll gladly steal his signature line and say welcome to my house. I'm pleased you could join us whether you're here in this room or participating through Facebook or YouTube. Also welcome to those of you who are joining us on C-SPAN. Today we're here to listen to Christian B. Keller discuss his most recent book, The Great Partnership, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and the fate of the Confederacy. Dr. Keller is the Dwight D. Eisenhower chair of the National Security and Strategy of the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. This year Dr. Keller became the director of the military history program. In addition to many articles Dr. Keller is the author, co-author or editor of several previous books on the American Civil War including Chancellorsville and the Germans' nativism, ethnicity and civil war memory. In the introduction to his book Dr. Keller lays out clearly and concisely several things including the value of this book, his four historical theses, what you'll find in his notes versus in the text itself. As an archivist I greatly appreciated him confronting head-on the interpretive value and reliability of source material particularly Confederate related wartime sources versus post-war sources written by former Confederates. This military history takes you through a chronological telling of the relationship between Lee and Jackson. It also includes a chapter on the Gettysburg campaign following the death of Jackson after the battle of Chancellorsville. Dr. Keller also provided what I'll describe as a bonus chapter by including an appendix that provides insights on leadership gleaned from the partnership between Lee and Jackson. You can tell where he teaches for he's also reaching out to senior leaders be it today's political, military or business leaders. Before we hear from Dr. Keller about his new book on Lee and Jackson I'd like to let you know about another program coming up later this week. On Thursday August 8th at noon Douglas Waller will present a lecture on Lincoln's spies, their secret war to save a nation in which he would describe the exploits of four what he describes as union agents Alan Pinkerton, George Sharp, Elizabeth VanLew and Lafayette Baker. Please visit our website at archives.gov for more information about other upcoming National Archives programs and activities. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Dr. Christian Keller to the stage. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you very much Trevor for that fine introduction and I would like to thank also Tom Nastic, Doug Swanson and the staff who are running the audiovisual component of today's presentation. You have all been very helpful and I couldn't have done it without you quite literally. I'd also like to thank back at the Army War College one of our departmental texts, Tamika Johnson, without whom I could not have put this presentation together. So a shout out to Tamika back home and all the staff in the Department of National Security and Strategy. It is an honor to be here everybody. I have spent many hours working in the National Archives previously for my earlier books on ethnicity in the Civil War and to come back in this particular way is quite gratifying. So I'm very happy to be here. As a heads up to how I'll proceed, I'm going to read for a while and provide some background to the book and to my theses that Trevor mentioned and then we're going to break into the slideshow. So you'll get two different presentation styles which mimic in many ways the two different presentation styles that I utilize up at the Army War College in Carlisle. Finally, I'd just like to say that my words are my own and do not necessarily represent the thoughts or the official policy of the Department of Defense US Army or the US Army War College. The late afternoon sun of May 10th, 1863 was warm and pleasant, filtering through the young trees of the Virginia wilderness and creating a patchwork quilt of bright and dark spots on the forest floor. Here the light focused on a young fern struggling to unfold itself into life. There it landed on a burned corpse or newly dug grave. Spring had come to central Virginia, but so had the war. Shattered rifles, shell fragments, broken canteens and even the jagged remains of a drum littered the sides of the Richmond stage road down which a small group of men were galloping full speed towards Fredericksburg. Those men had just been at the home of Thomas Coleman Chandler who lived in a small hamlet on the Richmond Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad called Guinea Station. All that Sunday they waited outside a small frame house on his estate and prayed for the man lying on the bed inside offering supplications to the Almighty that he may be spared and return to duty. At 315 they found out that their prayers and those of thousands more in the Army of Northern Virginia had not been answered. General Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson was dead. Just the day before the ailing leader dispatched his friend and core chaplain the Reverend Beverly Tucker Lacey from his bedside to Army headquarters near Fredericksburg. His mission was to conduct Sunday morning worship for the troops as usual. Lacey preferred to stay but Jackson insisted the spiritual welfare of the men was paramount regardless of what happened to him. The chaplain dutifully complied leading the service on the 10th to a flock of 1800 soldiers and their Army commander Robert E. Lee. The great victory at Chancellorsville had been achieved primarily by Jackson's smashing flank attack on May 2nd and now at the height of his military success Lee faced the possibility that his most trusted lieutenant and advisor might soon leave his side. Hearing of Jackson's worsening condition Lee asked Lacey to express quote my affectionate regards and say to him he has lost his left arm but I my right arm. That was three days ago when Jackson his amputated arm healing nicely had first displayed the troubling signs of a secondary infection pneumonia. Now despite fervent prayer and the best medical care in the Confederacy Lacey had to admit to his commanding general that the end was near. The normally stoic Lee was surprised and visibly shaken at the turn of events. Surely General Jackson must recover. He told Lacey before the church service God will not take him from us now that we need him so much. His faith in his subordinates recovery seemingly strengthened by the chaplain's sermon. Lee approached Lacey afterward and said quote I trust you will find him better. When a suitable occasion offers tell him that I prayed for him last night as I never prayed before. These were brave words spoken by a brave man and a devoted Christian but Lacey saw through them. Lee could say no more in sight of the troops and quickly quote turned away and overpowering emotion. The riders their horses fatigued at the long hard run from Guinea station rained in at Lee's headquarters about five o'clock and hats in hand approached the commanding general's tent. How exactly they conveyed their disturbing news and what immediate reaction Lee may have exhibited is unknown. But the response from the soldiers in the ranks was immediate as the word spread quote the sounds of merriment died away as if the angel of death himself had flapped his muffled wings over the troops a silence profound mournful stifling and oppressive as a funeral Paul descended over the camps grizzled veterans of the seven days and teetam in Fredericksburg some of whom had even fought with Jackson in the valley cried like babies. The shock to the living body of the army was palpable according to this eyewitness and another remembered that evening the news went abroad and a great sob swept over the army of northern Virginia. It was the heartbreak of the Confederacy. Indeed it was. Lee managed to restrain his own immense sadness and a simple message to Richmond. It becomes my melancholy duty to announce to you the death of general Jackson it began. He continued for a few brief sentences that described the transport of the body to the capital and then abruptly ended the wire. The next day he issued general orders number 61 to the army in an attempt to assuage the grief hanging over it. But the messages tone left no doubt that Lee himself was still in shock quote the daring skill and energy of this great and good soldier by decree of an all wise Providence are now lost to us. But while we mourn his death we feel that his spirit still lives and will inspire the whole army with his indomitable courage and unbroken confidence in God as our hope and our strength. Let officers and soldiers emulate his invincible determination to do everything in the defense of our beloved country. Having duly erected this bold public front for the benefit of others privately the army commander could not check his emotions when he attempted to speak about Jackson to general William N. Pendleton that same day. Lee broke down in tears and had to excuse himself. The strong religious faith that helped cement the bond between Lee and Jackson doubtless comforted Lee now in his moment of greatest despair and he wished the entire army to know its palliative effects. Yet his prayers those of countless others had not saved Jackson and his death left a great void one with strategic consequences for the cause Lee defended. Privately he confided to his son Custis quote. It is a terrible loss. I do not know how to replace him. On May 11th President Jefferson Davis probably reinforced Lee's dread with a simple telegram from Richmond quote. A national calamity has befallen us. Faith would help Lee move forward personally. But the death of Jackson was a professionally mortal blow from which the Confederate chieftain and the Confederacy would never recover. At the heart of this book are four historical theses. First that the Lee Jackson command team was professionally successful because it was rooted in personal friendship underpinned by trust and shared religious faith. Initially the personal relationship was weak long distance and tentative and was strained by Jackson's poor showing during the seven days battles around Richmond in June 1862. But by the end of the winter of 1863 it had grown into a powerful bond that cemented the already strong professional relationship even enhancing it. Second that it was within this unique relationship that the most successful elements of Confederate strategy in the eastern theater first germinated were operationally implemented and with Jackson's death permanently stymied. Jackson in essence became Lee's chief strategic advisor as well as his preferred operational lieutenant. Lee in turn was Jefferson Davis's primary source of strategic advice a fact well substantiated in secondary literature. Third Jackson was himself a strategic level leader. A general who thought early in the war about how to win it for the Confederacy offering numerous suggestions to Lee the president and others at ranks higher than his own and even dabbled in policy making through his relationships with congressmen. And fourth with Stonewall Jackson's death following the Chancellorsville campaign in May 1863 the Confederacy suffered a strategic inflection point a contingency that held momentous implications for the future of the young nation. Spanning all four historical arguments is a larger observation that has significance for political military and business leaders today and in the future. The command relationship between chief leader and chief advisor is supremely important especially at the highest levels of responsibility because it is within the boundaries of that association that the best strategic ideas the ones that win wars and save failing corporations for instance are created. Every senior leader needs a trustworthy advisor or a group of trusted advocates. When that relationship is founded on personal friendship or even religious faith it is strengthened. When it is absent or broken the implications can be grave. In war whether it be modern or historical there are theoretically several levels of command and leadership each of which affects the others. Occasionally events occur that witness a conflation of the levels of war what is called a nexus point whereby tactical actions for instance may determine operational outcomes which in turn might strongly affect theater strategy or national strategy and for those who may be confused at this point I'll show you some slides that will clarify very shortly. The history of the Civil War demonstrates all these levels of war were at play just as they are today and although its participants may not have used the same nomenclature as modern practitioners they implicitly understood the different layers of command and control and had at least a common sense understanding of how they interacted. As in modern war however the confederacy senior leaders made mistakes sometimes fusing the levels together accidentally or erroneously applying ideas and concepts workable at one level to another. This was due in part to the weak theoretical education they received at West Point in the antebellum years and to the state of military theory at the time which was in substantial flux with important works such as Carl von Klausowitz's on war not yet translated into English. We should not fault them for their foibles and errors however the leaders of both the Union and the confederacy made the decisions they thought best based on what they knew at the time combined with their personal experiences personalities and command structures much as we still do today. By the winter of 1862 to 63 the Eastern theater of operations i.e. the states of the confederacy east of the Appalachian mountains had become the most strategically critical theater for confederate hopes for national independence. If the war was to be won it needed to occur in that theater and that meant the Union's principal field army the army of the Potomac would have to be decisively defeated. Robert E. Lee had tried with Jackson's assistance throughout the spring summer and fall of 1862 to affect that very result but several good opportunities eluded him. Civil war armies were notoriously difficult to destroy in the field a reality that Lee and his command team ultimately consisting of Jackson James Longstreet and James Yule Brown Jeb Stewart painfully came to understand time and again during the seven days before and after Second Manassas and at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville they had realized the challenges inherent in transforming tactical slash operational victories into strategic ones. In each of these successful campaigns Lee Jackson discussions both private and in consultation with the other leaders molded Confederate theater strategy attempting to remedy this significant problem. Jackson's early strategic thoughts in late 1861 into the spring of 1862 about raiding the north and bringing a quote hard war to the enemy were not only wise counsel for Lee then ensconced in Richmond as Davis's military advisor and de facto general-in-chief but also reflected the strategic realities contextually facing the Confederacy the loss of much of Tennessee the Mississippi River Valley and northern Arkansas by mid-1862 meant that recovery in the western and trans-Mississippi theaters was unlikely. There the Confederacy could only hope to delay the inevitable but in the east the war could feasibly still be brought to a successful conclusion. Northern, southern and European public opinion focused on the east and could be more strongly influenced by events on the battlefield there then in the west. Union civilian morale could be directly affected by damaging raids and thus in danger Abraham Lincoln's political base in future elections and vital mining transportation and manufacturing centers in Pennsylvania could be disrupted thereby undermining federal logistical power. Jackson's correspondence with Lee before he left the Shenandoah Valley in the to join what became known as the peninsula campaign or the seven days in June 1862 revealed a strategically forward-thinking mind one that quickly made its mark on the future commander of the army of northern Virginia and would continue to influence Lee's own strategic and operational thought for the remainder of the war but Lee's personal preferences combined with the exigencies of the strategic political arena he had to operate in managing at once Davis's expectations and leading the Confederacy's primary eastern army meant that he could not immediately and unconditionally accept Jackson's strategic thoughts obviously the Union army also dictated many of his actions. Deferential loyal and frank Jackson first endeared himself to Lee as a military professional who could effortlessly follow his intent and achieve operational objectives sometimes late but never failing the valley general earned Lee's respect through his performance in the cedar run second manassas and sharpsburg campaigns ensuring his lackluster performance in the seven days was viewed as an anomaly even then however he began to confer regularly with Lee and started the process of building personal trust that trust in turn was buoyed by a shared devotion to evangelical Protestantism although approaching their Christianity from different denominational perspectives Jackson's unswerving adherence to God's laws and spreading of the gospel among his troops made a strong impression upon the deeply religious Lee who by the winter of 1862 to 1863 was attending worship services with Jackson the Reverend Beverly Tucker Lacey an old friend of Jackson's brought in by the general to serve as his core chaplain and the spiritual reforms they wrought together were instrumental to the development of this religious bond between Lee and his subordinate this connection in turn strengthened what had become a strong personal friendship during the winter encampment outside of Fredericksburg by the time of the chancellorsville campaign Jackson had superseded James Longstreet as Lee's primary lieutenant and along with Stewart was integral in helping the commanding general achieve victory over the Federals against long odds yet fickle chance intervened in the woods on the night of May 2nd 1863 as it had so many times both for and against Lee in previous campaigns shot accidentally by his own men stonewall was dropped twice from the litter carrying him to the rear and surviving the amputation of his left arm succumbed to pneumonia 10 days later it was a personally crushing blow for Lee who lost not only a man who had become a close friend but also his chief strategic advisor and battlefield operator the damage done to the confederate war effort was perceived by nearly all in the confederacy from Jefferson Davis all the way down to common citizens in Texas and even little children regardless of post-war confederates who attempted to use his death as a lost cause excuse for rebel defeat Jackson's sudden demise was a strategic turning point in the war and was recognized as such at the time this reality became startlingly clear in the ensuing Pennsylvania campaign when it was apparent that Jackson's absence left a gaping hole in Lee's command team and badly impaired its efficacy tragic cascade of secondary and third order effects impacted the results of the operation and ensured the failure of Lee's new theater strategy for the east that in turn hastened the final defeat of the confederacy so at this time i will turn to some slides and i hopefully will answer some questions that you may have in your head after hearing this introduction and i'm also going to give you a brief primer on classical military theory which is infused throughout the book and which serves as a fundamental basis for much of my analysis of the Lee Jackson relationship up at the top there you see Carl von Klausowitz whom i mentioned and his principal fundamental theory war is merely the continuation of policy by other means really directs in many ways the actions of both Lee and Jackson and their attempts to win the war for the confederacy in the eastern theater both Lee and Jackson understood that war is a political act and it in turn influences policy and politicians and political decisions and hence my argument that Lee was constantly trying to win decisive victories that could make the northern morale suffer to the point that the northern people would doubt the ability of the union to persevere in the context and Jackson very much agreed with him in this regard and also was a bit more aggressive and wanted to bring a hard war into the north as i mentioned which would punish the people of the north for attempting to subdue the rebellion that block there with the red stool in it illustrates one of the fundamental strategic theories we teach at the army war college the idea of ends ways and means ends representing objectives in strategy ways the concepts or the methods employed to reach those ends and means are the resources that are employed in the ways to reach the ends in many ways the ways themselves can be considered strategies that connect the resources in a workable way to achieve the ends of a given strategic operation below that you see the elements of national power sometimes called the instruments of national power the diplomatic informational military and economic at the army war college we go with this acronym the dime national defense university and other senior service colleges might use other acronyms and may extend the dime into other instruments and that's fine we think that pretty much everything is encapsulated underneath those four major instruments of national power that in the civil war as today were exercised and utilized by national governments in their attempt to win a war so the war is not just about winning militarily it's also about the diplomatic aspect the economic power that supports the military operations and then the the informational impact which often influences political decision-making particularly in democracies and then we see the levels of war and i promised in the talk that i would explain this there are three fundamental levels of war the strategically operational and the tactical and you can see there very clearly how we align those notice that there are areas where they intersect and i argue what many in the do d are arguing now and that is that even the tactical level can reach upward and intersect with the strategic so that there are these nexus points where something at the tactical ie the battlefield level can have profound strategic level effects below the war winning level of strategy what one might call perhaps national military strategy is theater strategy and i speak a lot about that in the book and mentioned it also in my prelude there the this refers to the strategies that are particularly designed for the theaters of war in the americans of war the eastern the western or the trans mississippi ideally they would be orchestrated to work together towards the political object that either side had in mind often in reality they did not and robert e lee quickly came to understand that only in the east could the confederacy achieve those political objectives ie winning independence and there you see a little triangle that kind of gives you an idea of how the levels of leadership roughly correspond to the levels of war strategic level leadership at the strategic level but it extends down to the operational level which was also where robert e lee found himself operating and stonewall jackson both when he was an independent army commander in the valley and then direct leadership generally applies at the tactical level and organizational is almost exclusively at the operational so let's talk briefly here about what the ends of both of the sides were in the civil war i do this exercise so everybody can understand the context in which lee and jackson and this great partnership operated because they did have a fundamental grasp of these theoretical concepts even if they didn't call them by the same nomenclature as we do today obviously the national policy objective of the confederacy represented there by jefferson davis and robert e lee on the left is independence they wanted to achieve independence from the union for the union or the federals represented by abraham lincoln and initially winfield scott who will later be replaced as general in chief by henry w. hallick the primary fundamental national policy objective was preserve the union later as you know it was joined by emancipation as a national war policy or end let's turn to ways at the national and the theater levels for the confederacy their overall national military strategy for all three major theaters of war was primarily defensive and the idea was they would exhaust the northern will to fight and the northern people being in a democratic republic would eventually say enough is all enough already we've lost too many boys it's not worth it anymore and then they would force republicans under abraham lincoln out of power an initial national military strategy inaugurated by jefferson davis in 1861 through early 1862 called the perimeter defense was a complete failure it attempted to defend all of the frontiers of the confederacy and was proven to be unviable due to limited confederate means it was replaced by what was known as the defensive offensive a rough national military strategy as i explained in the book not always taken into consideration by all the theater commanders but that's what it resembled and it had more success robert e lee in the east particularly embarked upon this method in his particular theater and the idea was exhaust the northern will through repeated and frequent defeats of united states armies and if you could get a strategic level defeat i e destroy the army of the potomac in particular that would be the best possible scenario and lee and jackson are constantly trying to get to that theater military end but they never quite get it for the north their national military strategy can be characterized as offensive i e defeat the south by force of arms and utilize attrition as necessary this particularly became prominent in the last two years of the war there was also an anaconda plan that general winfield scott came up with and was roughly adopted by his successors with a naval blockade and you can see scott's great snake representing that idea and the idea that you're going to squeeze the confederacy from without while you're striking down from the north inwardly in the east there were several campaigns designed to take the confederate cap capital richmond we call those the on the richmond campaigns they all failed until 1865 and in the west the major objective in that theater was control the mississippi river with a drive concurrently through tennessee ultimately those were very successful robert e lee realized this as early as mid 1862 and knew then the pressure was on him to perform the miracle in the eastern theater it had to happen there if it was going to happen at all because the west and the trans mississippi on the other side of the great river were almost hopeless causes in his opinion and that comes from his original statements in the records in 1863 abraham lincoln came up with the identification of a confederate center of gravity that's a claus witsian term they wouldn't have known it but they understood what it was implicitly the major fulcrum of power which if broken will debilitate an enemy in war and this center of gravity that lincoln identified and then made his generals understand was that the confederate armies themselves needed to be destroyed and after 1863 this will be his primary message to his field commanders destroy the field armies do whatever is necessary to bring them down as a corollary to this we see the idea of hard war against the south later under william tecumseh sherman if you hit the home front you're also going to be hitting concomitantly the armies which are supplied by the home front when we turn to national strategic means these next two slides give you an idea of the disparity between the north and the south in the civil war and this is at the beginning as the war progresses it just gets worse for the confederacy indicating to robert e lee that the clock is ticking and he must act quickly and decisively because the longer the war goes the worst it's going to be as far as means are for the south he did realize if they could somehow prevent lincoln's reelection in 1864 then the means wouldn't matter as much but until that time he had to find a way to win victories and depress northern morale because the disparity in the means was so blatantly obvious and you can see these for yourselves really the only place on this chart the south leads is in value of slaves railroad's something that is often mentioned a lot by authors in the civil war very clearly a huge disparity uh three to one disparity in favor of the union uh the naval power the mercantile power of the union with its shipping uh and again what does the south have on this chart in its favor really just the fact that it has a lot of cotton one of its diplomatic strategies was called king cotton diplomacy and it was the idea that the uh value of cotton to great britain and france and the european great powers would ultimately bring uh them in on the side of the confederacy somehow that did not happen of course so what was the national strategic situation by late april 1863 it was the second full year of the war and with jackson's help robert e lee had won the battles of second manassas he had scored a stalemate at antedom though forced to retreat and had won very lopsidedly at frederick's bird it's important to realize that part of the antedom campaign though technically a strategic defeat for the south uh did include an operational victory of high magnitude which was the capture of harpers fairy and that was all jackson's doing as i mentioned in the book it was the capture of harpers fairy that probably solidified the lee jackson uh trust the professional level of trust uh because lee then realized this man actually can do it i can rely on him he had tried him out in previous campaigns uh didn't do well in the seven days around richman in his debut with lee then did very well at second manassas there was a period of time in between where they tried to capture a union army in between the rapahannock and rapid dan rivers not because of jackson that did not work out and uh now at the fall of of harpers fairy jackson has proven to robert e lee that he can be relied upon indefinitely to achieve lee's theater ends in the east therefore the confederacy is slightly winning the war but in the west vicksburg is threatened tenancy has been taken almost two-thirds by union armies and the united states the federals are winning clearly in the western theater only small sections of the mississippi river run gray at this time most of the mississippi is under control of the union navy the union is also winning the d representing the diplomatic instrument of power very handily in europe by this point as well as the informational instrument which is connected strongly with the d particularly in overseas diplomacy and also within the union itself there is some resistance in the north but most of the union people are still resolved even after these catastrophic defeats in the east that are very strongly reported in northern papers that they will hold on and they will continue to support the northern war effort so by may 1863 the beginning of that month things are looking good for the south in the east but not very good in the other two theaters and overall the outlook outlook is somewhat bleak and it is in this context that the newest of lincoln's generals in command of the army the patomic joseph hooker will seize the operational initiative and outflank robert e lee at fredericksburg uh... after the winter encampments have concluded lee is now outflanked and he is outnumbered and what will be known as the chancellorsville campaign will commence i show this slide to remind us all folks that at the strategic level it's easy to lose sight of the cost of war at the human level uh... these represent actual pictures taken on the antedom battlefield some of them are very familiar to you i'm sure the bottom one is a great iconic photo by alexander gardener of the dunker church and confederate dead in front of it the cost of war was becoming very apparent to the people of the union and the confederacy and they realized that it could not go on forever uh... lee is also aware of the cost of war and in his letter's home to his wife mary and to his daughters he indicates this jackson was perhaps a little more uh... immune to the terrors and horrors of war than lee was in the sense that at least the historical record doesn't indicate he was as affected by it uh... but uh... both men were aware of the human cost that their victories had created these are the union generals that had been defeated up to the chancellorsville campaign now joseph hooker will not yet be defeated on may 1st 1863 but he will eventually go down and oliver odis howard i spend some time on in the book uh... it was his core the eleventh core that will be outflanked by stonewall jackson's great march at chancellorsville all of these gentlemen george mccullin fits john porter who was a core commander under mccullin john pope in the second manassas campaign ambrose burnside at fredericksburg and then hooker and howard at chancellorsville all of them will fall to the lee jackson command team making link in despair could he ever find somebody who could defeat these two confederate chieftains up at the top we see uh... an 1866 print depicting prayer and jackson's camp as i indicated in my opening statement there one of the fundamental glues that brought lee and jackson together was their undying belief in evangelical protestantism as it was understood at the time uh... they both believed in divine providence the idea that uh... the lord uh... had everything under control and if he didn't predestined events he certainly uh... controlled how events ultimately unfolded uh... lee believed there was some human agency uh... that was allowed within this understanding and people could choose to do right or wrong if they did wrong then they got spanked and that could extend the whole way up to the national level and uh... he feared therefore that the confederate people were not devoted enough to the lord and they were setting up idols of men instead of idols instead of altars to the lord uh... jackson was especially concerned of the latter issue uh... he did not believe as much in in the idea of human agency uh... but uh... believed that the lord controlled more than lee did the differences didn't make much of a difference in how the two generals interacted and how they jointly understood the role of uh... religion in their lives and in their decision making uh... jackson's often portrayed as being a little too far on the extreme in fact he was on uh... the one side if you will of the spectrum that most nineteenth century americans were on at the time but he wasn't as extreme as previous authors have made him out to be uh... where he's portrayed as kind of nuts not at all uh... robert e lee was more conservative than jackson uh... but uh... they were both on the same spectrum and on the same side of it the picture on the bottom is a modern-day picture uh... of the moss neck manner and that was where jackson had his winter headquarters between the battles of fredericksburg and chancellorsville and he spent a lot of time in an office on the grounds there i have a whole chapter that describes this time it was during this period that the lee jackson relationship was flourishing and was at its apogee and where their friendship was married with their professional respect for each other as they began to plan what would become the pennsylvania campaign yes i'll repeat that they planned together what would become the pennsylvania campaign during this time the winter months in the early spring of eighteen sixty three the sad thing for robert e lee and for the confederacy if you will go so far as that is that uh... jackson is cut down before lee can even get into pennsylvania which is a huge handicap for him because he's planned the the campaign with jackson and that's part of the reason that we're going to see the confederacy have problems in uh... what will become the gettysburg campaign there were three main areas of consideration that were at play nationally in the confederacy right at the advent of the chancellors bill campaign uh... after which jackson will die uh... you have obviously the virginia or the eastern theater represented by number three the tennessee theater represented by number two and the mississippi uh... theater represented by number one particularly the threat at vicksburg robert e lee and jackson will determine well before the battle of chancellors bill that number three needs to be the emphasis for the spring and they had tried to get prepared to move north before joseph hooker in the army of the petomic did but lee fell ill and it delayed their ability to get the jump on the federals and instead hooker outflank them and hence we have the chancellors bill campaign after jackson's death robert e lee will go to richmond in a series of conferences and will convince the national command authority there that uh... number three is where the emphasis needs to be they need to take the war into pennsylvania if there's any chance for independence uh... davis had to be convinced of that what was the lee jackson relationship therefore on the eve of the fateful chancellors bill campaign the great contingency point i argue in the book because it leads ultimately to jackson's death and the shattering of the lee jackson team jackson is lee's chief operator because long street is absent he's on detached duty on south at southside virginia near petersburg jackson is lee's chief strategic operational and tactical advisor both wish to bring the war into the north jackson is one of lee's few personal friends the relationship is built on a foundation of professional trust undergirded by christian faith and jackson is stored the cavalry leader are also quite close which created a solid level of second-tier leadership at chancellors bill and potentially beyond and the store jackson relationship is fascinating and if you read the book you will see uh... how close those two men were what was jackson jackson's significance to the confederacy in the spring of 1863 he had a public reputation as a winning general and was paired in the public's eye with lee i.e. the two together were understood by the confederate public as the winning team for the south at that time his moral character was tied in the public's eye also to the righteousness of the overall confederate cause because he was such a stalwart christian and this was very well known everybody believed that jackson represented the goodness biblically of the confederate cause the public also understood his value to lee personally and particularly professionally as his chief lieutenant he was viewed as the protector especially of the valley of virginia and he had a very strong and rising reputation in the government particularly in congress but also with jefferson davis uh... they had a little feud at the beginning and then by this time it had ironed out but unfortunately as i indicated fate will intervene jackson will be shot accidentally by his own men on the night of may 2nd 1863 and ultimately will be brought to that house up there on the chandler plantation uh... where he will die on may 10th depriving lee of all these things that i have mentioned and the confederacy uh... as a means of kind of a hard piece of evidence indicating what that collaboration had done up to that point the bottom picture shows a map of the northern counties of maryland and the southern counties of pennsylvania which was drawn at jackson's behest by his topographer jettadiah hotchkiss who had traveled in pennsylvania before the war knew the area and jackson wanted to have an accurate map for what would be the spring invasion uh... that map will be used by the rest of the confederate command team but this time without jackson when they do finally get into pennsylvania in june of 1863 i have a chapter that describes the reactions to jackson's death which really proves the argument just how bad this was seen in the south that it was understood as a contingency point lee lee himself said who can fill his place i do not know but yet tried to comfort himself and others with the idea that lease that jackson's spirit may be diffused across the army officers and enlisted men in the army of northern virginia said it was a national calamity like their chief executive there were tears some said gods will be done and some of them had words such as one enlisted men who said all hopes of peace and independence are vanished forever that was actually a statement in a wartime letter and there were others like it government officials in richman such as jefferson davis said it was a national calamity and secretary of war james said and said his loss is irreparable three pages long said and had a eulogy to jackson in his report to congress in 1863 in virginia particularly in richman and in the valley there was utter despair he has fallen and a nation weep said one editorial in the carolinas in the deep south the despair was mirrored and sometimes exaggerated even more the most serious loss we have yet sustained said one newspaper editor a national calamity was reiterated by another he was absolutely invaluable to the cause said yet another and in one paper they said there is universal gloom across our community and this was several weeks after jackson's death it was persisting it went on for weeks and in england in england the newspapers picked this up as well and one of the major papers i think it was the time said assuredly the most fatal shot of the war to the confederates and yet two in the north after his death general lee could not replace him that was oliver otis howard who said that interesting so my final conclusion here is very visually uh conveyed this is what the army of northern virginia looked like at the advent of the gettysburg campaign jackson of course is dead by then and will be replaced by two other core commanders richard yule and ap hill that's just a soldier who's serving as a placeholder notice the reorganization indicated by the chart below that reorganization i argue in my final chapter was what created the cascade of tragic events that resulted in confederate defeat at gettysburg it wasn't the jackson was not at gettysburg and i want to make that clear i do not state that uh a lot of fanciful writers would make the argument that if jackson had lived uh he would have taken cemetery or culps hills i make the argument in the book instead that his death prior to the campaign's beginning makes the character of the campaign so profoundly different if for nothing else than just the reorganization of the confederate army that the entire character of this of the uh the pennsylvania campaign will be utterly different and then you have two new core commanders who had about two weeks to get used to their new position of authority before the movement north and anybody who has served understands that when you're put into a new position of higher authority it takes time to become seasoned these two men did not have that time nor did lee have time to counsel them and they both had served under jackson who had a different command style from his boss so in the end what's the so what of the death of stonewall jackson it was seen as a great contingency point strategically at the time by the confederate people and the confederate leadership and it also directly impacted what i think was probably the most significant campaign if not one of the perhaps the top three most significant campaigns in the civil war which would be the pennsylvania campaign of the summer of 1863 as lee moves north he will not have jackson and that folks makes all the difference thank you very much i'd be very happy to take any questions and would remind the audience to go to the microphones positioned here on the sides thank you very much for the talk a couple questions about musical chairs with generals on both sides that occurred and i'm just curious from the perspective of always the legacy when someone dies early they they show up on money and other aspects of people believing in them what do you think would possibly be if he did survive or lived in or was not shot the cracks of perspective of where lee might have said these are the things i think you're not doing well and as the pressure built we need to replace you jackson for religious reasons or health reasons that he had that might have been escalated as the war in 64 and 65 continued on great question and that takes into consideration one of the major points that we emphasize at the war college when we study history which is causation as well as contingency certainly the union army would have continued now i do make the point in the book several times that there were opportunities throughout the civil war in the east where lee had the chance to crush the army of the Potomac literally crushing and these nexus points eluded him for one reason or another and in the seven days it was primarily jackson's fault that that did not occur would jackson of underpour underperformed in the pennsylvania campaign he might have and would lee then have censured him or done something i wonder i tend to think because the relationship personally was so strong he would have tempered his remarks which is what he did after the seven days and it would have depended how bad the cascade effect would have been from jackson's weaker theoretical performance in a pennsylvania campaign that included him i think that would have been a very contingent kind of situation i think that if jackson had really made a mistake i think lee the professional would have eventually done something now what that is i don't know i think we well one thing we know from the historical record is lee believed that the bifurcated command team of jackson controlling half of the army and uh and long street controlling half of the army with stork running the cavalry lee said and he came down on record to jefferson davis after jackson's death i had wanted to create a third corps for some time which indicates to me that he was probably thinking about that before uh jackson's demise so i think he would have probably done a third corps and i mentioned this in the final chapter i think if a one-arm stone wall had made it into the north he would have would have not had probably control of half of the army would have had a third so there would have been another who would have been raised and then that changes the entire possible time stream thereafter uh who would have done what and when my main point is that the absence of jackson at least in that chapter creates a lot of things that happen in gettysburg that we know actually happened uh and that the antecedent of all this is the loss of jackson not all of it but a great deal the union army had something to do with as george pickett admitted thank you very much so i'm here because i have in my living room the only portrait of stonewall jackson in his union uniform which was given to my family by jackson's widow because they shared a pew in the church uh in lexington virginia and i recently having returned home from being abroad for a number of years found a photo of robert e lee that's inscribed by lee to this um relative of mine so your talk was very appropriate but and interesting and um but i'm my question is about the religion but you know you talk about jackson and lee both being so religious you know how were they able to justify their stance um in support of slavery um given you know this religious background i mean what was the thinking of the religion at the time and this was a presbyterian church just um that they were that they met at so really interested in that aspect of it thanks that's an excellent question ma'am uh well at the time the great denominations the great protestant denominations were split between the north and the south so the northern episcopalians uh obviously sided with the north and tended to be anti-slavery and the southern episcopalians tended to be pro-slavery and and and you could do this for the Presbyterians the Lutherans and all the other major denominations um so it depended where you were geographically and you could find in the bible justification either pro or against slavery as many of you probably know uh for lee and jackson personally at the time in their context they did not see anything antithetical or inherently contradictory to the ownership of human beings uh with their strong religious scruples now we know that that jackson did actually for a brief time operate a Sunday school uh for slave children in lexington you may be aware of that uh and lee inherited most of his slaves from his wife and was in the process of emancipation when the war broke out and couldn't complete it uh we know basically from what other authors have said and i steer clear of this in the book it's a military history and there's a reason for that um we know that both of them did not see slavery as inherently antithetical to their to their religious scruples uh i think that there definitely was though and and i'll just state this as a general historian having studied them for years i think they both knew that it was it was wrong in in some way but for them loyalty to state to virginia trumped everything it trumped everything it trumped loyalty to the union uh it trumped any contradiction that might exist about slavery and their religious beliefs uh and of course we must understand them in the context of the time uh anybody who lives south of the mason dixon line most southerners i should say white southerners didn't see the problem as we would today with 2020 hindsight ma'am in one of your slides this south strategy was to exhaust um the north and at the end of grant's memoirs grant said that if the south had followed joe johnston's advice and made the north continue to come at them not win any decisive battles but just keep the north coming that the war would become so unpopular up north that the civil war would be theirs the south what do you say to that well uh a couple things um one thing grant neglected to mention is if joe johnston had stayed in command in the seven days campaign uh and had not been wounded at seven pines for instance i think richmond would have been given up to george mclullet which would have made moot everything and and grant would have probably not had a very starring role in the rest of the war because it would have ended then uh so i'll say that first of all we also can look at joe johnston's record in the atlantic campaign where he continually retreated and gave up ground to the point where it couldn't be given up anymore and and this exhausted the political will of the richmond government ultimately resulting in his sacking and replacement by john bell hood uh an egregious error on the part of jefferson davis as as many of you might know uh for what he did afterwards exhaustion of public will and exhaustion of armies are two different things which is another point i would make and lee's lee has come under criticism by many modern authors and and even some at the time uh george bruce and and grant also uh said lee attacked too much he lost too many men the south couldn't afford it uh but that was what the confederate public wanted and needed at the time they needed to have victories and lee also on top of that understood and jackson particularly understood this that if you do not win offensive victories you won't be able to crack the northern will and exhaust the northern will so it was almost as if they were between a rock in a hard place uh lee's theater strategy in 1864 against grant is definitely one of exhaustion but it's because he had no choice his means at his disposal at that time were such that he could not uh do offensive uh lightning attacks as he had done in the previous two years and one reason he couldn't do it is because his chief operators were gone uh and uh that combined with the means sets up ultimately the war of attrition which was what grant wanted thank you great question question final question sir uh i've just finished shelby foots uh first volume and um was surprised to read in there that he considers the term stonewall applied to jackson as a critique of somebody who is too inert and uh not uh dynamic enough um what is your opinion well we know the moniker was applied at the first battle manassas by a bernard b uh south carolina general who supposedly said something like there stands jackson like a stone wall rally around the virginians uh controversy surrounds what b actually meant and that's the derivation of shelby foots quip uh if it was meant in in in some cynical jest at the time it very quickly transformed into something else and the irony that i find is that jackson rarely stood anywhere and rarely stood as a stone wall he's always attacking uh and always flanking and marching and moving he was an incredible maneuver so in fun it's really kind of ironic to me uh having studied him for years that he's has the moniker stone wall when in fact he should be called a lightning man or something like that because he was always moving quickly uh which was exactly what lee needed a follow-up what is the source of his affinity for sucking lemons uh as he's uh fighting uh okay that that comes that uh has not been proven in the historical record that he from multiple sources that has not been proven there's one source a general named taylor wrote about this who had briefly served under jackson it has not been corroborated by many other sources at least that i'm aware of so it's kind of become a legend that he was sucking lemons a lot it's not been proven that that was actually something he preferred to do now there are other funny habits that he had like sticking his hand up in the air possibly for blood circulation possibly also to praise god uh at moments when he felt the the urge that has been documented by multiple wartime sources but the lemon thing comes from one source only as far as i know okay so i wouldn't give it a huge amount of credence though it's fun it i love it thank you thank you everybody