 And so superficially at least, it seems that the Civil War was changing. Now this is a much larger argument that historians love having, was the Civil War a modern conflict. that's often lost in this is, what about the men? What about those who had to endure horrific conditions? How did they survive? And so the question I wanted to know, wanted the answer to was, how did the men endure? Whether or not the Civil War was modern or not, it started to become something different by the end. The open field engagements, pick it's charge, it's what you think of. Men walking in orderly lines across the battlefield eventually become the so-called empty battlefield, where covering the order of the day. How did the men react to that? How did they survive this? That is the question that I sought to answer. But more than that, I also found it somewhat dissatisfying, there's this sense of inevitability after Gettysburg, the idea that, well the war is over, they didn't realize it yet. 1864 as we'll see is the bloodiest year of the war. It wasn't over for these men. How did they do that? They didn't know where Appomattox lay ahead. They didn't know how long it was going to last. How did they survive as the bloodshed didn't decrease, but increased? And so to answer this question, I asked myself how did they endure the changing combat conditions, but also how did they survive the war and achieve victory? To find the answer, I spent years pouring over the letters and diaries of over 170 Union soldiers who served in the primary combat force in the Eastern Theater at the Army of the Potomac. This is the army of Fredericksburg and Tiedem, Gettysburg, and by spring of 1864 it was the army of Ulysses S. Grant. And that army found themselves thrust against Robert E. Lee's army of Northern Virginia repeatedly throughout 1864, before coming to arrest in a series of trenches surrounding Petersburg, Virginia. I wanted to understand their reaction to the battlefield. I wanted to understand the methods that they utilized to survive. And the evidence reveals not only how these Union men achieved victory over Robert E. Lee's forces. That ultimately led to Appomattox. But it also offers compelling details of how young men, not too different from the students who attend this institution, dealt with some of the most horrific combat in American military history and how they overcame it and endured it. So we begin in the Eastern Theater. We begin in the spring of 1864 with the Overland Campaign. The Overland Campaign is an interesting excursion here. This is Grant. Ulysses S. Grant becomes commander of the Army of the Potomac. He actually becomes general in chief of all Union forces in the spring of 1864. But this is his focus. This is where he puts his keen eye here. He wants to destroy Lee's army. You destroy Lee's army, you get to Richmond, war's over. To do that, he launches a series of offensives in the already embattled Washington, D.C. Richmond Corridor, 80, 90 miles that had already seen the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. My goal here is not to outline the actual details and tactics of the campaign. I just want to give you some familiarity with it so we can move forward and understand how the men dealt with it. The Overland Campaign was a six week long campaign where the primary Union force starts with such wonderful confidence. It's amazing. This is the army that had been destroyed almost at Fredericksburg. And yet they begin April with such confidence like, oh yep, this is the year. I know it's the fifth time we're going to try this, but this is the one. They're so confident. And it's hard not to see it. Grant's army begins with 120,000 men, actually in two different armies, up against Lee's 60 to 65,000. The men just think they're going to roll over him. That does not happen. Instead, we see the bloodiest fighting of the entire war. In six weeks from May 5th, June 15th, 1864, 40 days, 100 miles are traveled, four big battles are fought, two dozen skirmishes, 54,926 men killed, wounded, and missing in the Army of the Potomac. Six weeks. Lee loses somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 35,000. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 85 to 90,000 Americans killed, wounded, and six weeks. You don't see this kind of bloodshed at many other times during the war. One historian has described this constant grinding, all destroying warfare. And the soldiers agreed. The one thing the men described of this campaign was that it was unfamiliar. They used the superlative, the worst, the bloodiest, the ugliest, the loudest, even. And most of this involved the Army of the Potomac on the attack being launched in mass numbers against enemy entrenchments. It begins with the wilderness where Lee very cleverly strikes in a heavily wooded area so as to negate some of Grant's advantages in artillery and infantry. The wilderness is chaotic. 17,000 Union soldiers killed and wounded in two days. It's a battle that one Union soldier, Private Robert E. McBride of the 11th Pennsylvania described as a tragedy, grandly, awfully sublime. Well, Private John Haley of the 17th Maine called it a dreadfully mixed up mess. But it's not done yet. It's just beginning. After the wilderness is Spotsylvania, soldiers move forward as Grant tries to sweep around and envelop Lee. Lee's men are faster. They get there first. And in a two week period, the battle of Spotsylvania is fought. Grant throws core after core of men at Lee's entrenchments, trying to break through, trying to break Lee's lines. And the result is 19,000 more casualties for the Union Army. 9,000 alone, 9,000 casualties alone are on May 12th Battle of the Mule Shoe, a 22 hour long battle from about five in the morning on one day to three in the morning the next day in the pouring rain and mud. As Union soldiers take a redoubt, Confederate soldiers take it back, Union soldiers take it back and forth, back and forth. And the soldiers describe it in horrific terms. Lieutenant George Bowen of the 12th New Jersey now commenced the most stubborn fight of my experience. It was almost hand to hand fight. The enemy made charge after charge right up to the muzzle of our guns only to be repulsed again and again. This continued without interruption all day long until three o'clock in the morning before there was a lull in the fighting. The attacks were impetuous, the resistance stubborn. It has been the worst day I have yet seen. Private John Haley of the 17th Maine agreed. The salient was a seething, bubbling, roaring hell of hate and murder. Private Wilbur Fisk of the Second Vermont, he's from Montpelier. Private Wilbur Fisk. It was the most singular and obstinate fighting that I have seen during the war or have ever heard of or dreamed of in my life. Spousalvania, that attack on May 12th in my opinion is the bloodiest day, the ugliest battle of the American Civil War, but it's not done yet. Instead they keep advancing. They advance to the North Anna River where Lee manages to hold off the Union advance briefly, a relatively small battle of only about 7,000 casualties is fought at North Anna before Lee once again retreats, which brings us to Cold Harbor. Cold Harbor if you know anything about the Civil War has become somewhat synonymous with devastation, with futility, with men being thrown at enemy cannons only to be slaughtered. Honestly the soldiers didn't say that much about it. After Spousalvania they had run out of adjectives. Cold Harbor was just another ugly, bloody battle. On June 3rd Grant launches a massive attack that loses another 7,000 men in a morning. The soldiers just know it was a bad battle as one Massachusetts soldier notes amid such an iron hail of great canister and bullets I cannot conceive of how anyone escaped. Cold Harbor is really the caper on this so-called overland campaign. It's at that point that Grant perhaps belatedly begins to realize we can't just keep throwing our men at these entrenchments. So he gets creative. I'll back up here a little bit. He decides he's going to move south, south of the James River here. South of the James River sweep down to Petersburg, Virginia, sees that city hit Richmond from the rear. And it's a magnificent movement that he launches. Sweeps down there, gets 70, 80,000 men south of the James River on a pontoon bridge half a mile long, sweeps in, gets to Petersburg on June 15th and is stopped cold. Once again his men do not break through. We'll move on to Petersburg here in a second. But before we do I just want to take a minute to talk about the impact that these first six weeks had on the men because it's devastating. Here are the numbers. When you look at it in six weeks 7,621 soldiers are killed. Another 38,000 wounded and Civil War wounds aren't pretty. Well over half those men ain't coming back. Another 8,000, 9,000 probably captured or just disappeared. They're done. 55,000 men, that's 40% of Grant's army is gone in six weeks. Now granted he's inflicting those same losses on the Confederates but for the Union all they know is that a lot of their friends are gone. A lot of people are dying. One Union officer Stephen Weld notes on May 25th I shall be lucky to get through without being killed. Everyone is being killed that I know. Private John Haley of the 17th Maine states on the same day there's a 10 to 1 chance that I will expire before my term does. Fatalism begins to creep in and it's hard to escape that fatalism when the bodies keep piling up. But the campaign was about more than just losses. They don't get a break anymore. After Gettysburg nothing really happened for weeks. Both armies were so bloody they just kind of stopped. Lee retreated back to Virginia but there wasn't much going on. That's over by 64. Now they are constantly engaged. Continuous campaigning as one historian has called it. There's no escape, no break. And that puts a severe toll on the men. During the overlaying campaign Colonel George Bernard of the 18th Massachusetts describes the march to Spotsylvania as such. At 7 o'clock last night pitch dark, raining like fury and the mud knee deep we had to march about 10 miles. The suffering of the men is almost indescribable. This lasted till morning. The men falling over at every step as our road took us by woods filled with uncared for wounded. Howling for help as they heard us groping along. I saw men in the ranks so utterly wretched that they threw themselves in the middle of the road wallowing in the mud under the horses feet howling and crying like mad men. I never knew such a horrible night. All mud, rain, darkness and misery. But at the end of the day it was the cost. Knowing that 40% of the people who started this campaign weren't there anymore. And that begins to take its toll. The physical exhaustion and the casualties begin to wear down the spirit of the men. As first main heavy artillery private John Steward noted, I am sick of the war. This butchery of human beings is too much. One story that I found so compelling about during this time was the story of Private Austin Kendall of the 117th New York who in mid June talks, describes the burial of a complete stranger. A man was shot in the thigh and did not have proper care and he bled to death. We could not find out what his name was nor what regiment or anything about him and some boys from our regiment went and brought him to where our regiment was and dug a grave and laid him in it. I think that was the hardest thing I ever saw. The men are being tasked. They're being tested. They need a break and they're not going to get it. Enter Petersburg. What happens at Petersburg is Grant trying to get creative. Grant trying to acknowledge the fact that he can't out-fight Lee's army so he will try to wear it down or at the very least pin it down. If you look at Petersburg, Virginia, you can kind of see why it's so important. One, two, three, four rail lines converge in Petersburg feed up into Richmond. You take Petersburg, you effectively cut off Richmond the capital from the rest of the Confederacy. Lee knows it's important, he knows he's got to hold it. Grant knows, Lee knows he's got to hold it and so the two of them are going to duke it out for control. There's early fighting in mid-June that accomplishes nothing but establish a series of siege lines. Although it's been repeatedly pointed out to me by various prominent historians, Petersburg is not technically a siege because they never fully seal off the city. Instead what Grant does is he tries to hold down Lee's army. Lee's trying to keep Grant away. You can see the siege lines there. The result though is that both armies are so drained, so wasted, that all they can do is really much sit and glare at each other, glare at each other over what will increasingly become a war in no man's land. There are major assaults. There are still attacks. Grant tries to work his way around Lee's flanks at Weldon Railroad, at Reem Station, Hatcher's Run. There's the crater. Let's just dig a hole, fill it with a bunch of gunpowder, blow it up and charge through. Not as easy as it may be sounds if that sounds easy, but they don't accomplish anything. Whether it's through the strength of the Confederates, the incompetence of the Union, or just the fact that they're both just so drained, they don't accomplish much. As Lieutenant Thomas Galway of the 8th Ohio notes, our lines have advanced at all fronts, but the enemy contests every inch of ground with desperate resistance. So our loss has been very heavy. By the end of July, most active operations around Petersburg are ended. Both sides start waiting it out. And they're already six weeks into what becomes known as the Petersburg Campaign, the Petersburg Siege. 292 days of the two armies glaring at each other. Glaring at each other across earthworks that start to take on a scientific extravagance as the engineers, those old West Point engineers in both armies begin to test their trade and dig and dig . The problem, though, is that people are still dying. The Petersburg Campaign goes on for nine and a half months. And to throw up some more numbers at you, we don't have all the best numbers for the Campaign. They are very irregular. What happens is there are quote-unquote battles that are fought. Like I said, the Crater, the Weldon Railroad, Deep Bottom. But after a while, the important number I think is one of the most important ones is the French's, June 20th, October 30th. That's just daily life. Every day you have a chance of being hit by a sniper, being captured by a raiding party from the enemy, being killed by an enemy artillery fire. And as you can see, over several months, 788 killed, 3,888 wounded, 2,800 missing. What's interesting is after October 30th, they stop keeping track. They only focus on the French's. After October 30th, men are still dying at the rate of about 60 men are being killed, wounded, or missing a day in the trenches. So really, that number of 53,724 should be well over 60. So the numbers are almost identical to the Overland Campaign, but they're stretched out over a greater period of time. And what's going on during that time? French Warfare. It is French Warfare. It's not World War I yet. We're not there yet. The machine guns, not so much. The artillery is nowhere near what it will be in 1914. No gas. No barbed wire yet. Hasn't been invented. But they still get creative. They still create sophisticated defenses that are designed to kill as many people as possible. The goal was not necessarily to kill, but to impede advancing forces in no man's land where firepower can destroy them. That is what they're designed to do, and they do so very well. Life in the trenches was not good. It's tedium punctuated by violence, isn't that war? Mud, disease, the prospect of immediate death. Soldiers go from intermittent battles like Chancellorsville to nearly continuous low-intensity conflict. Going back to Lord Fran in Anatomy of Courage, he thinks the First World War was different. He thinks the First World War was revolutionary in the sense that it changed the tempo of combat operations. As he says, the real difference between the war of 1914 and the wars of history lay in the absence of a closed period when men safe for the moment could rest and build up a reserve. He says what makes the First World War different is that it was continuous. He's wrong. The Civil War, by its last year, was continuous, at least in the Eastern Theater. And the men noticed. Captain Samuel Rodman Smith, a future Medal of Honor winner, I might add, of the Fourth Delaware writes at the end of June, today is the eighth day we have laid here in these ditches and trenches. Three of us occupy a hole six feet by ten feet. In the highest objection, a man cannot stretch himself out until nightfall. And about noon the sun blazes down furiously. We lay in our water and provisions overnight and keep pretty close during the day, especially when the bullets fly low. Private Wesley Gould of the 45th Pennsylvania writes to his friend also in June, well, Marv, we've not got to Petersburg yet, nor Richmond, yet we're still pecking away. Every night we get a little closer to the rebel works and rifle pits. Some places the lines are but a few yards apart. And if a man from either side shows his head, he is pretty sure to lose it. One soldier compared the existence of the trenches to the punishment of criminals. Another declared never was there such a beastly life as this. So how did the soldiers respond to trench warfare? After coming off the whores and the trenches of the overland campaign well admittedly at first they did not respond well. And thus in the summer and fall of 1864 we see a crisis of morale emerge in the Army of the Potomac. It is a crisis that is in many ways caused by the casualties, by the unrelenting warfare. One historian has described serious signs of organizational dysfunction in the Army of the Potomac during this time. And the soldiers at the time noted too Colonel George Bernard. Men who have been through everything in the war here too far are now beginning to cave. And a lot of it had to do with the losses in particular the loss of officers. The command style in the American Civil War lead from the front mentality. Colonel's majors, captains they're dead. They're dead and wounded. The people who you would follow into hell are now gone. Who are you going to follow now? The loss of officers plays a big role as a member of grant staff who was actually tasked with analyzing the morale of the Army at the overland campaign. Lieutenant Colonel Horace Porter noted the men had seen their veteran comrades fall by every side and their places filled with experienced recruits and many of the officers in whom they had unshaken confidence had been killed or wounded. But beyond that their friends were gone too. Most units dated back to 61. They were volunteers. The vast majority of soldiers on both sides were volunteers. They were there together. They had been through everything together. After Spotsylvania Captain Mason Tyler of the 37th Massachusetts takes a roll call among the survivors of that battle and he writes in his diary I have the deep sense of depression as if I were being deserted and left alone. A Massachusetts soldier three days later says something similar all of us see the frail threads that our lives live upon more vividly day by day as our little band windles away. And so not only do the men talk about a sense of depression emerging in that summer. We also see something that's more dangerous for the Army of Atomic and more dangerous for the Union cause and that is in subordination. Violence within the ranks. One of the first examples of this is I don't want to say mutiny I don't think that's the right word but what would be a kindly term combat refusals. Once the soldiers get to Petersburg there are increasing examples of men being ordered to attack and the men going no. Dozens of examples. I'll just read you one Robert E. McBride of the 11th Pennsylvania writes about an attack against Petersburg on June 24th. It's a bit of a lengthy one but the column was led by Colonel Carl through the open ground less than 1,800 yards from the rebel batteries. These, of course, opened upon us with shell causing considerable loss. The men, without waiting for orders but without disorder moved obliquely to the right to reach the protection of lower ground. This called forth such violent protests and condemnation from Colonel Carl that the result was a serious mutiny. Both officers and men felt that it was a blunder and an outrage and when Colonel Carl cursed us as cowards the men resented it. The officers almost to a man refused to obey orders or do anything until the insults should be retracted. The men were becoming dangerous. Carl laid his hand on his pistol and instantly a score of rifles were leveled upon him. He withdrew his hand apologized to both officers and men and we moved on to the rifle pits without further trouble. Apart from the wise decision by Colonel Carl to not push the issue we see this over and over again. The men going, we're done. We, our lives have been wasted. A lot of them blame Grant. A lot of them blame officers at all levels. But they know one thing. We're not going to make these attacks anymore. And there's more specific instances of insubordination. Violence directed towards other men. Violence directed towards their officers. There is a spike in courts marshals. Courts Marshall, got to get that right. Following the end of the overland campaign. As they settle into Petersburg all of a sudden there is fighting. There is stealing. There is murder in the ranks at greater levels than before. I'll just give you one example. As I poured through these court Marshall records I see over and over again men, usually due to alcohol perpetrating acts of violence. One is Private George Black of the 63rd New York who found himself one day in July in a condition described as saucy and impudent. While working on his unit's trench lines he was ordered to return to work. He refused and tried to strike his commanding officer with a shovel. He had to be restrained by three men before he could be arrested. At his trial several witnesses noted that alcohol had been a factor in the case. But it was also noted that he had had no infractions. That this was, he was a three year veteran who had never committed this but that he had been severely affected by recent battles. Now you can look at these cases of insubordination you can look at the violence and things like that in the ranks but a lot of that's anecdotal. But we do see numbers that indicate that maybe morale in the Union Army was beginning to crack and it's desertions. Desertions begin to increase. If you look at the numbers here you see that these, now these are deceptive numbers admittedly. Unfortunately we don't have specific numbers for the Army of Potomac but we know from the Union as a whole these are the number of new desertions reported by Union forces from May 1864 to 1865 and you can see it starts going up in May, June, July, it peaks by September, October and November. Desertion was increasing in the Union Army to a war time peak of 10,692 reports of desertions in October alone. So why did they do it? Hard to say. There's plenty of courts-martial that talk about desertion but a lot of guys just left. It's a different war. 20th century war sees American military forces stationed overseas. Civil war, you're in Virginia. If you're from Pennsylvania you can walk and thousands did. But why? Well, one soldier, Private Joseph Reed of 48th Pennsylvania was charged with at the wilderness quote in the most shameful manner abandoning his arms and equipment and deserting his company and regiment. He claimed that he had been helping wounded off the field and gotten lost but he had no witnesses. He would ultimately be convicted and sentenced to hard labor for 90 days keep in mind he'd originally been sentenced to death but his division commander reduced the sentence to hard labor for 90 days. Very rarely are soldiers going to come out and say yep, I deserted. Sorry. Because they can be executed for that. But every once in a while you see it. One soldier, Private George Siebert of the 48th Pennsylvania same unit pled guilty for twice deserting his unit in July and August. His claim I just wanted to see my family. It is discovered in the course of his court marshal that he's only 15 years old and that he had forged his parental permission to enlist in the Army. It's that that probably saves him from the gallows since the court cites his quote evident youth and weak mental faculties as mitigating circumstances. The point here is that the men were under tremendous duress. It didn't end after the overland campaign. It was going on and on and on. Yet by and large they don't run away. By and large they stay. The Army gets bigger. The Army stares down the Confederates and ultimately prevails. How did they do that? And that's where I found I think some of the more fascinating stories here. Because yes, of course there is comradery. There is patriotism. Although by 1864 and after the overland campaign very few people are talking about patriotism. There is religion, faith in God which interestingly enough is not shaken for most soldiers by this fight. But instead they look closer. They can't rely upon their friends because so many of their friends are gone. So they have to find cold comfort in all places whole in the ground. The men like soldiers in every war adapt. And they adapt by gaining control over the environment around them. I mean as we see here the battlefield is a tortured landscape. It has been dug up and redug up. And the men increasingly use this to adapt. As Major Abner Small the 16th Maine would note it took us several months but we are now enjoying some lapses into life. And it was the power of trenches that did it. How had men fought in this war to this point? They had fought open field engagements marching in brightly colored uniforms across open ground and becoming targets as a result. And they realize in many cases before their officers do that's not a good way to fight. They look at the trenches and they go wait a minute we should have been doing this the whole time. Specifically there's the realization that you now control your destiny. You are not being ordered like some atom-a-tom across a battlefield. Dig a hole. The deeper you dig your hole the more likely you will survive. They have agency restored. They have control over their landscape and they take so much pride in their work they do. It's hard. They don't have machines. Somebody asked me the other day are they using horses? No, this is manpower. This is guys with shovels doing all of this. It's hard work but they know what it's doing and they take pride in it. As Lieutenant Theodore Veil the second Connecticut heavy artillery noted modern warfare is largely made up of entrenching and fortifying. Entrenchments are a match for a thousand in front. Captain George Washington Whitman who had an older brother by the name of Walt Whitman of the 51st New York was at Petersburg and he noted we have a very strong position here and are having pretty good easy times. If generally thinks he can drive us away I wish he would pitch in as we are all prepared for him and I would as soon fight it out on this line as any other enemy they will attack us here it will suit us first rate. Major Elijah Hunt Rhodes of the second Rhode Island stated it very simply great is the shovel and spade I would as soon dig the rebels out as fight them. What this does is it restores the spirit of these men. These men are citizen soldiers which means they come into the ranks with a certain level of independence yes I am willingly sacrificing my independence temporarily to serve my country but never forget that I am a citizen you're a citizen and we're equal. Army discipline and three years of war had blasted that away but here they are being given the opportunity to once again reassert control over their lives and they relish it. But we can't forget that there's more to it than this there are other cases they are not alone in their war against terror if you will to use a parlance of Lord Moran. They get help from of all places the officer corps. I told you about that spike in courts martial more and more men are being arrested for violations yes that is true but I also know that more and more men are getting their sentences commuted and reduced the officers seem to recognize the men have been through hell and maybe we should cut them a break I'll go back to Private George Black of the 63rd New York saucy and impudent swinging at his officer with a shovel he's convicted of all of his charges being drunk on duty and attempting to strike superior officer he is sentenced to four foot all pay be dishonorably discharged and to submit to hard labor in the portugues this hell hole off the Florida coast for the duration of his enlistment it's only reviewed by his division commander general Nelson Miles and in the margin of it of his corps martial Miles commutes everything except the four for sure of pay and he writes to the court in view of the interests of the service which requires the service of every man in the ranks Private Black's sentence is commuted these men were being given a break now you can look at this from two ways the officers realize these guys we need to cut them a little bit slack or Nelson Miles comments suggest we need men we can't throw these guys in jail we need men dozens of cases particularly desertion and AWOLs commuted sentences they lose money on their chest saying I'm a deserter basically they get humiliated they have to carry weights but they're still in the trenches they're still there and this helps keep the men going but we can't overlook something I mean a lot of historians like to look at when it comes to the Civil War and the American and the union soldier at least says oh well the union had more men more stuff they were gonna win don't get too carried away with that during the overland campaign the men starving because the supplies can't keep up with them they're moving so fast they're in such close quarters with the enemy by Petersburg though they are fixed stationary and so the union largesse can get right to the front lines city point Virginia about 10 miles away from the Petersburg lines becomes one of the largest ports on the eastern seaboard as it becomes the base of operations for grants army supplying over 100,000 men as one general who as one Union quartermaster general Rufus Ingalls would call city point the most convenient commodious economical and perfect one ever provided for the supply of armies 10,000 hospital 10,000 hospital beds a port big enough for dozens of sailing vessels they even construct a railroad that takes supplies and ammunition to the trenches only a couple of hundred yards in the rear it's a terrible railroad they don't do a very good job laying it out at frequently disrails but the point is it was there and the men love it they love watching it go up and down up and down up and occasionally fall over they love it because they know it's there to provide for their welfare 16th Pennsylvania notes finally we are living fat for the very first time since being at home the men get everything they need food, clothing luxuries even beyond that mail high literacy rates of Union soldiers mean that they're finally getting letters as Major Alajant Rhodes notes a soldier can do without hard bread but not without his letters from home mail servers have been suspended during the Overland campaign Grant just didn't want to waste the wagons on paper now at Pierceburg you could send a letter to somebody in New York three or four days transit that's modern very efficient connection to the homestead but something else that was part of this is this is just the official largesse directed against being directed for the soldiers the front lines Americans believe it or not have a tendency to be pretty good people and the Union mobilizes a volunteer apparatus to support their troops in the field not a Red Cross yet nothing like that but the United States Sanitary Commission and the United States Christian Commission are northern civilian volunteers who raise money to provide extras for the men in the field the Sanitary Commission their job was basically they would be there with coffee and food at the end of a battle but they also realized their big thing was scurvy what's a soldier's diet? salt, pork and hardtack what's missing? the good stuff I like hardtack but at the same time the vegetables started to lead to debilitation they realized this was a problem so they would bring the things that men needed in fact this is exactly what one soldier says as Private Julius Ramsdell of the 39th Massachusetts noted the arrival of apples and potatoes from the Sanitary Commission these are things that we crave and need every soldier has reason to bless the Sanitary Commission the United States Christian Commission focused on a different the spiritual welfare they would send people to bring Bibles deliver sermons to the troops more than that though they brought stationary they would write letters for wounded soldiers the official wartime history the Christian Commission said that their members preached 58,000 sermons 77,000 prayer meetings and wrote 92,000 letters for sick and wounded soldiers you're not alone we're there with you and once again they're stationary in one spot they can direct this towards their welfare but there's more the soldiers weren't there all the time they weren't in the trenches every single day the Confederates they're running out of men they can't afford to send guys away the Union can't they called it a furlough two weeks go home see your family typically did this over the winter months when they knew there probably wasn't going to be much likelihood of an attack two weeks three days up three days back that gives you more than a week at home and they come up with all sorts typically officers got this because of course but the officers had the money to pay for the railroad tickets but they came up with competitions for instance the Union Army at one point says the cleanest soldier in every regiment in the army will get a two week furlough helps restore discipline helps restore morale that gives them something to shoot for and many soldiers did not just the officers, Private McBride 11th Pennsylvania I had looked so long on the forbidding bloody front of war that it was a most pleasing revelation to discover that back here was the warm loving hearth of peace and something else they begin to discover as they're sitting around in the trenches something they truly begin to figure out that fall the re-election right starts to drop wait a minute I think we're winning September, October, November big victories for the Union Army Mobile Bay, Cedar Creeks the Shenandoah Valley in general a lot of soldiers see the re-election of Abraham Lincoln in November as a huge victory and they begin to look at this and go I can make it a few more months almost there as Private Wilbur Fisk Vermont notes in December of 1864 better than paydays, paymasters, or greenbacks is the glorious news that continually comes in from armies all around the war news from all points is good victory, complete, decisive and glorious victory greets our armies everywhere the rebellion is toppling you know they didn't need to read newspapers to see that they were winning they could just sit in their trenches as time goes on the Confederate Army begins to collapse the Confederate Army does not endure these conditions as well as the the Army did and the argument I make is it's not just all about food there's a lot more to it than that but part of the evidence for that is desertion and when Union soldiers desert they walk home when Confederate soldiers desert they surrender and certainly beginning that winter more and more Confederate soldiers begin coming in and surrendering and even before they surrender there are soldiers out there on Sentry they call them Pickets and they can actually see the Confederates and sometimes they chat with them there are hundreds of examples in the Petersburg siege Union and Confederate soldiers going how you doing? I won't shoot you, you don't shoot me, let's talk unofficial truces now those are interesting themselves but the soldiers the Union soldiers begin to notice something those Confederates don't look too good Private Frederick Pleuer of the 187th Pennsylvania meets some of those Confederates and notes they say that they are short of rations and they look it they say they cannot stand it later on some Confederates begin surrendering by whole companies dozens of men and what that means is they walk across the lines and surrender and who gets to see them who gets to talk to them? The Union soldiers Corporal Daniel Chisholm of the 116th Pennsylvania they are a miserable looking set with scarcely enough clothes to cover their nakedness I don't think they will hold out much longer and they didn't the Union soldiers throughout Petersburg rehabilitate themselves and they emerge triumphant the Petersburg campaign ends in April 1865 on March 25th 1865 the Confederates try to break out very interesting yet unsuccessful attack at Fort Steadman on April 1st Grant begins to order a series of attacks on the Confederate positions around Petersburg and it's too much Petersburg is surrendered by April 2nd these are Union soldiers standing triumphantly on one of the forts they had glared across no man's land at for months on April 2nd 1865 April 2nd Petersburg falls one week later Appomattox and victory Captain Rodman Smith of the 4th Delaware on April 11th two days after Appomattox would write his mother everybody was wild with delight officers shook hands as if they had not seen each other for years and between all hats flying in the air bands playing Yankee Doodle Dandy the men were indulging in all sorts of extravagances and the deep feeling of thankfulness and gratitude which I felt that my life had been spared while many better had fallen it will be a day long remembered this day came about because these men survived and they found ways to survive in this hellish landscape the ability of the men of the Army of the Potomac to keep themselves together and mend the wounds of the Overland Campaign while simultaneously enduring the horrific proto-modern conditions of trench warfare during the Civil War helped to facilitate their ultimate victory at Appomattox in 1865 and such a victory was made possible thanks to these men facing up to the challenges posed by the warfare in the east field fortifications trench warfare continuous campaigning had tested their ability to survive but a variety of methods whether it was finding that cold comfort in a hole in the ground whether it was focusing on that ugly railroad that was helping to keep you alive whether it was dreaming of that weak escape from the trenches or whether it was focusing on the fact that the Confederates don't look as good as we do these methods kept these men together and allowed them to achieve victory ultimately the men of the Army of the Potomac did not shirk from the increasingly foreign battlefield that greeted them day after day they achieved victory at Petersburg ultimately Appomattox in 1865 by silencing the demons over the overlaying campaign and putting aside the terrors of trench life at least until the war was over and they were safe at home then the nightmares would return as they so often do thank you very much thank you Steve well done Steve thank you so at this time for those of you that have questions if you could please come to the microphones and I think I'd just like to start out while people are moving down to the microphones a question for you an author last name of Grossman wrote a book called On Killing in the 1990s and he was discussing why do soldiers fight and one of the central premises of the book is they don't fight for ideology they essentially fight for the brotherhood but listening to what you said the brotherhood was disbanded because they began to lose everyone so the question is why did these soldiers stay together and continue to fight what would be your take on that that is a lot of the traditional thinking and certainly I'm not trying to undercut that thinking because I think it is valid when it comes to Civil War research done there's been great books like For Cause and Comrades by the Pulitzer Prize winning James McPherson you can get what he's saying from the title of the book For Cause and Comrades that's what they were fighting for the problem I have with some of this is I don't think it explains the entire war I don't think one mechanism like Unicohesion focusing on your comrades is enough to explain all of this when so many losses occur and I think this is useful really for understanding 20th century wars like the First World War and the Second World War they had to find it elsewhere what do you do when everybody you know is being killed and they find that comfort internally they focus on the tangible and the intangible they focus on well if they want to try to attack us in our entrenchments bring it on absolutely they focus on the fact that well ok it's apples and some stale bread but it's a hell of a lot better than hard tack and salt pork they focus on a comparative that were better than they are they focus on those newspaper articles about Sherman rampaging through Georgia so these are all factors that I think not one of them it's a collection that comes together to rebuild them at least until maybe they can rebuild those units at least until they can find their comrades once again and reestablish the ties that hold them together audience questions we can hear you I can hear you Dave good question in April 64 but right before the campaign begins everybody is saying this guy is going to do it the hero of vicksburg and the number of times I saw people refer to him as the hero of vicksburg with vicksburg spelled with an X very interesting by the way early on in my book I have this note about how bad the spelling and handwriting of civil war soldiers was I had to become an expert on that in order to get through but they loved him he's the hero he was undefeated he could point to the scoreboard and say we have I won here, I won there I won here, I won there of course we won him there by July not so much by July everybody is cursing his name one soldier says Grant has no strategy just hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer a few people get it a few soldiers begin to say well okay I see what he's doing I don't like it but I see the big picture he's trying to hold Lee here so that Sherman can do his thing and that's true that's true now Grant did not want to lose 55,000 men in six weeks he's trying to find a way to defeat Lee but he's having to learn as he goes and the men are suffering as a result but most of them don't get it and they don't like it understandably so so it's really hard to create Lee's cult of personality survives the Overland and Pierceburg campaigns because it was already so firmly established Grant in this army in the east doesn't have that yet and so no I don't think it's it's very existent until the end when he is clearly the man who brought victory that's a question please thank you artillery that made a difference and then the second question would be I always thought that the Civil War really brought us total warfare the idea of destroying your enemy's capacity to make war does that as a kind of parallel it seems like it's a very different approach than a trench warfare big questions that historians like to like to engage with to answer your first question about how much did technology affect this honestly trench warfare is not new you can find examples of trench warfare dating back hundreds of years it just makes sense once there are missile weapons the best way to protect yourself from those missile weapons is to dig is to throw up earth these are field fortifications so if anything technology can make their sophistication by the Civil War but if you look ten years earlier there's this thing in Europe called the Crimean War the British and the French versus the Russians and the Siege of Sebastopol looks a lot like this and they are using a lot of the same technology so no I don't think technology is playing a huge role here not like it will in the First World War when you do have concrete reinforced bunkers when you do have barbed wire what they're doing a lot of the obstructions you see in some of these pictures they're they're basically logs with spikes in it they look very medieval and that's the sophistication that they have and those were 200 years old by that point but to answer your second question about Total War not so much Total War it depends on how you define it and believe me I make my students go through what is Total War but in this case the idea of applying blending pressure, of hitting the enemy with everything you got I don't think that's the case the closer you'd see it to Total War would be Sherman of course which at the time was called more Hard War and there's a great book by Mark Grimsley on this but in this case Grant doesn't want to fight like this Grant wants to get Lee out of his entrenchments and bludgeon him until he won't get back up again it's just he can't get his army to move fast enough and he can't get his men to respond well enough to do that to be fair Lee has some of the same problems with his subordinates and Lee's vision doesn't always come through so what we see here is perhaps Total these casualties, these horrendous events are almost unintended consequences and not by design was this just the most evident example of trench warfare because I always think about Lookout Ridge, Missionary Ridge and during the Bow Chattanooga and all the pictures I usually see it seems pretty much to resemble this but no one ever talks about it as much as Petersburg when it was just as important in some respects in the western theater yeah, no, that's a good question and once again, trenches aren't new and they're not new in the Civil War by this time either they're digging in at Bull Run they're digging in at Shiloh but they're only there for a day by this is a nine month operation so they stay in the same position and they just improve and improve and that's literally they've got nothing but time on their hands so officers hate to give their men spare time idle hands of the devil's workplace so what do they do? there's always something to do cut down logs to reinforce our trenches dig an extra pathway to the line, something like that there's always, so they just improve improve, improve, improve so that earlier in the war you see trenches at places, you can find them a little round top at Gettysburg but given the limited occupancy of that position, they don't really have the time to develop the sophisticated network that they create such as at Petersburg the best example prior to Petersburg is going to be Vicksburg but even Vicksburg is only a couple months and then it's a surrender but you can still go to Vicksburg and see some magnificent preserved trenches and by the way, a lot of these you can still find at the Petersburg battlefield, the Pamplin Historical Park there's lots of places you can go to in Virginia and these are still there sometimes on private land although they don't go on private land without permission I can't endorse that, thank you thank you very much, next question please so in terms of the Petersburg campaign we start to see things like the barrier between the officer corps and the enlisted men kind of becomes a little bit more transparent we start to see things like a better logistics system grant using the ports to his advantage to improve his logistics system, get supplies to his men faster and that overall improves morale the applications of the U.S. Christian Commission and the Sanitary Commission helping to overall improve the men's morale could we say that the Petersburg campaign is almost like the point where the army started to modernize itself which carried over into what we see of the armies of World War I and World War II in the early 20th century excellent question and thank you for being so observant you nailed a lot of the big points from my presentation there's that word again modern because 1914 isn't modern to us now so the question we really have to ask we have to be careful is what does modern mean so how about this asking ourselves maybe modern isn't an either or maybe it's a process and are they further along that process by the end of the war absolutely but the question we have to ask and if you put the Civil War in a bigger picture is do they retain that after the war is over and no they really don't go over they go back to fighting Native Americans out in the west and you don't need a massive port you don't need iron clads to fight the Sue and so a lot of that is lost in the interim and unfortunately the Europeans don't really take note of the American Civil War although you have Americans you have Phil Sheridan going over and observing the Franco-Prussian War and telling Bismarck hey you should really burn Paris down to the ground because that's how you're going to win and the Europeans just kind of look at the American Civil War and go that's nice those Americans don't know how to fight a war that sort of thing so unfortunately a lot of this the technological advances a lot of this is retained the institutional memory is there but it's not like when the army downsizes from 2 million to 20,000 in a few years a lot of this is not going to be retained no next please so my question pertains to alcohol within the Union troops so you said it was starting to come an issue like a lot of more drunkards and whatnot what was the policy on alcohol in and of itself coming from the higher ups and did we start to see a use of alcohol to motivate troops I know in World War 1 there were shots of rum and whatever else kind of liquor they had are we starting to see the use of alcohol in giving it to your troops to boost morale or anything like that? actually yeah I see that because these guys it was called fatigue duty when they're digging trenches and stuff like that and your reward for 6 hours of fatigue duty would be a thimble full of watered down whiskey but it's something now they did do that I've seen court marshals where soldiers get in subordinate because they don't get enough or they don't think they get enough or they're denied it because they didn't do X, Y or their uniform was dirty all sorts of things so they take a swing at their officer the problem wasn't necessarily that they were using that to encourage the men the problem was private contracts they called them subtlers and these were guys who'd roll up in a wagon filled with all sorts of fun stuff and especially on payday and say I'm here to help and although it was army policy not to let them sell booze and alcohol well you never know was at the bottom of that wagon and so usually they're selling you know food or books and newspapers or an extra cup or this or that and I don't know what's in this bottle but for a dollar you can find out so yes it was there so access to it was abundant although interesting story in my conclusion I talk about how in the spring of 1865 in on March 17th the army celebrate St. Patrick's Day and the Irish Brigade leads the way and the Irish Brigade has horse races and they have all sorts of like you know strength contest and stuff like that but as a member of grant staff notes the supplies for St. Patrick's Day were supposed to arrive on a boat and unfortunately that boat was late and didn't make it in time and the suggestion was that we just you know maybe the boat that was supposed to come with the party stuff we don't need that although major roads notes that you know the the contest gets so out of hand that a couple people actually tie so maybe there was alcohol but no it was readily accessible in the ranks and it was issued in small qualities by the officer corps Colonel Wolf. Good evening first of all congratulations. Thank you. Receiving the award also thank you very much for the presentation this evening. Thank you. As we look at the Battle of Petersburg we could probably assume or say that both the Army of Potomac and the Confederates had reached a culminating point to use Clauswitz's terms early in that battle what would you say to the argument that it is the material superiority of the north their ability to bring in food the ability to continue to build railroads the ability to put soldiers out on furlough that made the outcome inevitable. That's an excellent question the short answer is it's inescapable the north had superiority of resources absolutely but it's not enough to explain this just because the men are well fed doesn't mean they're going to sit in those trenches and obey their men especially after being led in their perception and a couple of soldiers do use this expression like lambs to the slaughter in the overland campaigns so I don't think it's a satisfactory explanation for the ultimate triumph it's one that's often bandied about it also assumes that the north was always going to win and I think if you look at the record of the Civil War that's not true now the Confederacy didn't have a lot of these but that also but you know and there's a book that's actually been written on the Confederate Army Lees Miserables by J. Tracy Power Lees Miserables Lees Miserables took me way too long to figure that out when I read that book it's a great book that basically does what I do for the Confederates but interestingly enough the way he depicts it is the Confederates do surprisingly well despite the fact they don't have as much food despite the fact they don't have ammunition they keep it together rather well until the end of the siege and that suggests that maybe it wasn't all about supplies maybe it was about this more intangible notion of morale that they had faith in their commander they had faith in their cause and they weren't going to give that up because of an empty stomach and so I think if you apply that same reasoning to the Union Army you can strip away the food and the comfort and the furloughs and things and you still got to find some explanation as to why they're there and that's part of what it looked like but you're right I mean it's inescapable the north had material resources and that did make it easier but ultimately we need more thank you so the last question of the evening we have two minutes so go ahead please alright good evening thank you for the presentation that was quite incredible thank you so my question is that if we look back at World War I we saw that in early World War I the Germans when advancing on France and western Europe the main problem that resulted getting us trench warfare was the fact that they couldn't outflank each other they essentially created this line of trenches and barbed wire all across the west are there any similarities between that and what we saw with the Petersburg campaign was it a point where they couldn't outflank each other where they just were stuck in this stalemate and the only way to get across was to push forward and keep hammering like what General Grant was doing yes and actually you bring up an interesting point about 1914 because in many ways 1914 is almost a parallel to the story I tell here I didn't think about this until the book was already done but if you look at 1914 the bloodiest battle of World War I is the battle of the Marne in 1914 the first one and that's a war of movement that is a war of maneuver that's open field warfare it's only after that that the two sides settle in for a trench and that both armies are so drained and so wasted they can't really do anything for six to nine months that's exactly what happens here and what they do is they dig and dig and dig and try to flank each other now Grant's thinking that too but he's got a couple problems one is the terrain and the topography he's got a river bisecting I'm sorry I was taught how to use the laser pointer but I've now since forgotten but he's got where city point is he's got a river the Appomattox and the James River so if you see his line is actually broken up that's not good he's got more men than Lee so he will try to move around the right flank up by Fair Oaks but mostly he'll try to keep pushing out this way, this way, this way and so you can see where all the battles the crater, the Weldon Railroad Ream Station, Hatchers Run he's trying to do that but it's not something he can just detach his entire force and go mobile with and so as a result the movements tend to be slow they're distracted, they take months and he will eventually do that he'll eventually throw enough forces out at Five Forks that Lee has no choice he can't hold his lines anymore but that takes months let's give Professor Soderman another round of applause well done so all of us in this room all of us in this room we wish you continued success with your book we'd like to thank the Pritzker Military Museum and Library for continued support President Schneider, Provost Afanido, Dean Kohn thank you for your support and for any of you that are connected with the Military Writers Symposium Lindsay Cahill-Lord who is in the back the successes of the symposium are due to her, let's give a round of applause just let me add my praise Travis and Lindsay have just done Herculean Efforts this week putting together the Colby Symposium and Lindsay deserves another round of applause as does Travis Morris, please and to all of you, you've been a great audience you had some great questions this evening and we wish you a safe evening and Norse forever, thank you Norse forever