author marc leepson discusses confederate general jubal early's summer 1864 campaign into maryland and the outskirts of washington, d.c. the offensive was part of a larger strategy by general robert e. lee to draw the union army's attention and resources away from targeting the confederate capital of richmond, virginia. the mosby heritage area association is the host of this event. >> i want to thank c-span. you know, we are celebrating our 22nd year. c-span is celebrating 40 years, this year. congratulations, c-span. [applause] they are the ones -- they cover congress from gavel-to-gavel and they do not make any spin. it's just what it is, and isn't that nice, not to have talking heads tell you how to interpret what is going on. you do a great thing for our country. thank you for being here tonight. our first speaker is mr. marc

leepson. he was a letter for the congressional quarterly, but he is now a freelance rider. he has a bachelors degree and a masters degree from george washington university. his many books include "sitting monticello," published by simon & schuster in 2001, "flag: an american biography," 2005, "desperate engagement: the story of the battle of the monopoly see" in 2007. "lafayette: idealist general," published by mcmillan in

2011. "what so proudly we hailed: francis got key, a life" published by mcmillan in 2011, and "the battle of the green beret, about 50 of the army staff sergeant barry sadler" published in 2017. next year, marc will be releasing a volume on the history of one of our beloved an important historic properties within our heritage area. today the home is called homeland. all of us look forward to be rich history and the stories associated with that wonderful property. marc's articles have appeared in many publications including the smithsonian magazine, civil war times, america's civil war, the baltimore civil war, the washington post, and the wall street journal.

his television interviews include the today show, all things considered, cnn, the history channel, bbc news, the diane reames show -- the diane rehm show, and he has been a guest speaker at georgetown university, george washington university, college of william americom mary, tulane university, and the university of notre dame. despite his busy schedule, marc has always made time for community service. he has served on the boards of many organizations including the virginia state library, the middle berry library, the lounge on the library system and the county library system

and the goose creek association. and most of these organization he served not only as a trustee or director, but as a chair, president, treasurer, or secretary. he has served as an announcer with our chairman, lanie morrison who is here. he has been a longtime leader in our special events committee and there is no question the success that we have had over the last 24 years is due to mark's steadfast efforts. marc and his lovely wife live just down the road in one of our many wonderful historical

properties. please welcome my friend marc leepson with his talk "scaring a abe lincoln like hell: an overview of jubal early's campaign." [applause] marc: thank you very much, thank you very much. childs, for that great where introduction. thank you for reading it the way i wrote it. here [laughter] [laughter] i greatly appreciate everybody being here. i'm going to do a kickoff talk.

this is about the battle and the subsequent attack on washington, d.c. i want to tell you before i start, this is my only civil war book. i have written nine books. i'm working on my 10th. i don't pretend to be an expert on the civil war. i did teach history at lord fairfax community college in warrington, virginia. i taught the survey class. butd teach the civil war, my depth of knowledge is not strong. however, i do know an awful lot about one particular part of the civil war, and i just want to ask you when it comes time for questions, if you would please keep your questions within that area of what i know most about, ok? so, i will answer any questions about the civil war as long as they are, have to do with what happened between june 13 --

sorry -- i will expand that to june 12 -- [laughter] 1864 and july 13, 1864. and in the eastern theater and the north of richmond and we are all set. so, in the limited amount of time i have -- and also i'm not going to step on anybody. this is what we will hear about tomorrow. i will not step on anybody's toes. i will give you a broad overview of what happened at fort stevens. i'm going to have to go fast. i think we will get started. july 12, 1964. where are we in the civil war in july 1864? we just came off the blaze,

bloodiest, whatever it was, two months of civil war. the three last big battles of the war, which was the battle of -- thank you, wilderness, spotsylvania courthouse, and cold harbor. and then very simply, the highlights -- what happened there. so, this was grant of austria's -- grant's grand campaign to end the war. after those three battle, he has what he wants. he has richmond, petersburg, an overwhelming majority of troops. he knows that he can choke lee out in a matter of time. the first big battle, the battle of wilderness. you know where it is. i want to talk about maps really quickly. this was my first civil war book. i had never put a map in any of my books before.

i kind of figured the audience would want it, so i put in three. i got criticized for not putting enough maps in, so in my presentation i have lots of maps. there is one of them. huge. 101,000 union troops, it was one of the biggest slaughters. you know about the battle of wilderness. i have a present-day picture of it. just a beautiful part of virginia. we have 150 thousand troops. 12,000union, confederate. and you know that grant is making his way east towards richmond. when i taught the civil war in community college, i always started out why putting one of those -- the romanticizing of the war and then i show them pictures like this, because i always wanted my students to remember.

i have been in a war. i want my students to remember what war is about. it's about death and dying and disfigurement and let's never keep that away from our thoughts. here is one last big battle. it is the cold harbor, outside of richmond. by the way, this will be on c-span, so you don't have to take notes, because when they play it, you can put it on pause and you can read from my slide. so, the map -- this is a civil war era -- no, it isn't. you can see where -- you know, i think you probably know cold harbor, there's not much of the battlefield left. there's lots of development over there. the other thing is the bigger picture of the campaign and that was the 1864 presidential election.

i believe this is the only democratic election ever held in the country during a full scale civil war and things were not going very well by 1864. lincoln, who took things, you know, -- he was an emotional guy. what is that quote? i will get to it later. anyway, so lincoln, his political position in 1864 was tenuous. his own party was divided among the pro-war republicans and the antiwar. democrats were little bit divided among themselves, but they were united against lincoln, and he did not believe he was even going to get the republican nomination and there's this great scene, which is illustrated here about he did not go to the convention.

he finds out that he gets nominated from a clerk in the telegraph office. and who does he choose for vice president? andrew johnson, a democrat, a southern democrat. he was proslavery, but he was anti-secession. there's that quote. "the heavens are hung in black." the war's going terribly. it's weighing on lincoln's soul. they did not have gallup poll's ls then, right? not only did he think he was not going to get nominated, he did not think he was going to win, and you know who they put against him, right? mcclellan. he famously wrote a letter to his cabinet members -- this was earlier in the summer of 1864 --

and which he said, do not open this until the election is over and what did he tell his cabinet members? please be sure to operate with the new administration for a smooth transition. here we are at this point in the war. lee is surrounded at richmond and petersburg. he comes up with a bold plan, four-point plan that he knows, if he stays there, grants, because of his superiority in everything is going to overwhelm him eventually. what does he decide to do? first of all, the confederates are really hurting for everything, including food. what is the breadbasket? the shenandoah valley. the union controls the railroad. he decides that he wants to drive the union forces out of the shenandoah valley. number 2 -- and this comes in a little later, he wanted to free the union prisoners at point

lookout. you all know where point lookout is, right? it is the tip of southern maryland. it's not very far as the crow flies from washington, but to get there, you have to go a circuitous way. there were about 15,000 confederate troops imprisoned at fort lookout. that would've been an entire core of troops. that was something lee desperately needed. and then i think his main objective was to try to alleviate what was going to be the end of the war for him and that was to force grant to take troops away from richmond and petersburg. and the other big part of the war was to "threaten washington, d.c.." basically the order said if the opportunity presents itself, you have my permission to attack washington.

who did he choose -- who did robert e. lee choose to go on this mission? our friend jubal early. it's always nice to have main characters and we surely have one in jubal early. he was born in rocky mount, virginia. he came from kind of a well off family. his parents sent him to west point -- not to be a military man though, to get a good education, which we know even now and then was the case. he read the law. after that she was not a great he was not a great student at west point. i think he finished third from the bottom of his class and we will talk about his character

and amount of -- his character in a minute because he was a character, and when he got out, it went to serve in the mexican war, but the shooting was over, so he did contract a bad type of -- what was it? pneumonia? no. rheumatoid arthritis. that's right. he was hunched over you can see in later pictures from that arthritis. he got that on the boat ride back. he missed the fighting in the mexican war. he was a part of virginias secession convention. he argued against secession. if you know early history from later on, or the tide turned, he voted in favor and became one of the most ardent secessionist, one of the greatest adherents of the confederate cause during the war. he had no combat experience when he joined the confederate army and he wound up fighting almost

in every major battle in the eastern theater. i like to compare him to robert e. lee. in a 180 degree comparison. lee was a gentleman. no one ever accused early of being a gentleman. he was hard drinking. he at a high-pitched voice and -- had a high-pitched voice and he was famous for cussing. he hated women because of a bad experience with a woman at west point. he was misogynist. he was racist. he did not get along well with his fellow officers. he did not get along well with the men. but they had a grudging respect for him. lee, you know, and he was a very aggressive general, which is probably why lee chose him for

this. on the other hand, there were not many other lieutenant generals available for him at this point in the war. and because of that arthritis thing that he had, lee, lee called him "my bad old man." even though he was older than early. and by the way, he did not judge terrain very well. he was not very good on tactics. certainly not on strategy. but he was really good as an aggressive general and that's to robert e. lee chose. -- who robert e lee chose to do this. there is a nice plaque down there. after the war, he was the gung ho southerner. he never took the oath. he went out to texas where he thought the war would be kept going. that did not happen. he went down to mexico. that didn't happen. he wound up in canada. in 1868, he wrote one of the first memoirs of any civil war general and then somehow he got

back here and he spent the rest of his life living in a hotel room in lynchburg and he was one of the originators and certainly one of the strongest proselytizers of the lost cause theory, which i think you know. i think he also had probably the best beard of any retired general. so, june 13, 1864. lee starts his bold plan, 3:00 in the morning. wake the troops up. they sneak out through the defenses in richmond and i think you probably know union intelligence was not great during the civil war. in this case, the union did not know that they left early and they got it all wrong.

i will get to that when we get to july 5. they overestimated the number of troops. they thought it was another general in charge. it turned out it was early. they wake him up. they march on foot. they get on rickety old trains and they arrive at lynchburg on june 18. will you all raise your hands? who knows about the battle of lynchburg. wait a minute. i've the civil war crowd. usually, people don't. not much happened. general david hunter, one of the unsharp knives in the union when he seess out he has jubal early there and he flees.

there is hardly any fighting. he goes into west virginia and take himself out of the war. objective number 1 -- keep the union troops out of the valley. -- kick the union troops out of the valley. early succeeds without hardly firing a shot. the aggressive general he was, early thought about and did go down there and thought he would go after hunter, but he at already gone over the mountain and they said, no. ok. we will go what we will call down the valley, meaning going north. got a map. so, hunter, one of the not very good things he did was he took in order from grants to live off the land and went crazy burning and confiscating and he did not very good things at lexington , including earning parts of the -- burning parts of vmi.

he's out of the picture. just like that is it today. and you know that stonewall is buried there. there's some great primary source material, memoirs of where early' is troops are marching north and they go to lexington and they walk by stonewall's grave and they honor him. so, they keep moving down the valley and who do they encounter next? another dimbulb in the union ferment and that is general franz sigel. he was german. i do not think he had any fighting experience. he was a political general. lincoln got him in there because they needed -- the north needed help with german-americans and german immigrants.

he had his low points at the battle of new market, right question mark when he lost to a force of troops and was bailed out by the cadets. this was the last union general sorry, iees when -- forgot. what was his nickname? "the flying dutchman" for his propensity to leave the battlefield. the flying dutchman flees up to harpers ferry. now we are to july 3, july 4. i could not get a picture of the maryland heights story, but it is actually where that rock is. that is harpers ferry. he's got the high ground. when early gets up there, he thought about attacking him, but he remembered what his worries

-- orders were. there were no shots fired. they cross into shepherdstown , west virginia in 1864. now the telegraph is going into washington saying we have a core of troops going your way. the initial reports were 30,000, 40,000, 45,000. early had at most 12,000 men. when they crossed the potomac -- i will get to that in a moment. here is a core of troops. they crossed the potomac. they camps right around what was the antietam battlefield. it was a very hot summer that day. one of the problems was the

confederates were very ill supplied. one third of the men did not have shoes. they were waiting on a shipment of shoes that finally came from the railroad. and also, while they were at antietam, that is when early got the order from property lee to do the -- robert e lee to do the how did he get the order? he didn't cable it. he gave it to his son, rob lee. he rode his horse from richmond up to antietam to give order the order verbally. that's where they got that order. all this is happening 50 miles from washington, d.c. you know, when you think about it, washington is, you know, across the river from virginia. it's 90 miles from richmond. there was always a worry that the confederates were going to

attack washington. early in 1861, decided they needed to build some forts and after the battle of manassas, which was a union defeat, first battle, 35 miles from washington. it took on a new urgency. by the time we are now in 1864, the defense of washington are all but complete. you will get an excellent talk tomorrow on the defenses in washington. i will go over the highlights a little bit. there were 68 forts that surrounded washington kind of like a beltway. since the union troops took over northern virginia, a bunch of them were in virginia on the other side of the potomac. alexandria was considered part of washington, d.c. back then. there is only -- they were defensive forts. they were open on the inside. we have a couple of pictures from the time.

this is fort stevens which we will talk about later. if you think of washington, d.c. as shaped like a diamond, fort stevens is at the tip of the diamond near where the old walter reed army medical center is. fort stevens is still there today. it's reconstructed. we will get to that in a minute. his is fort stevens today. the only one that still stands -- i can be corrected on this, but the only one that still stands is fort ward, which is in alexandria. it's open to the public. the other ones are all gone. you know the area of fort reno. there were lots of others. like i said, they were defensive forts. they were well fortified with guns. they were open to the inside. who was manning these forts?

we have a problem if we are the union right now in 1864. basically every able-bodied man was out there with grant trying to choke out lee down in richmond. originally we think that those forts were designed to be manned by 40,000, 50,000 troops. but because the -- all of those troops were engaged elsewhere, because the confederates had never attacked washington before, what we had was a bunch of 100 days men, you know about them. they had never fired a weapon along with a group called the veteran reserve corps. there is a picture of the veteran reserve corps. so is these were people who had been wounded in the war and they were recuperating in the washington area. washington was like one giant hospital at this time. georgetown university, government buildings and so on. the guys that recovered but weren't battle ready were given

a different colored uniform and they were in what was called the veteran reserve corps. i think you may know that they had changed their name just before this. they used to be called the inhave a lid corps. -- invalid corps. they changed their name for obvious reasons. who is defending washington at this point? invalids and 100 days men who never fired a shot in anger. here are some re-enactors with the blight blue color. so this is a little bit of a recapitulation of early's march up the valley. we have him crossing the potomac. i told you about rob lee. early was living off the land, too, so he sent mccausland and his cavalry to extort money from hagerstown and later he would

extort money from the banks of frederick. did i tell you it is great when you have a colorful character for your main character? i had two of them. e had lew wallace. he was from a prominent family in indiana. his father was a governor, etc., etc. he was a young man who did not know what he wanted to do with his life. he was a journalist for a while, a lawyer. he didn't have any military experience, but he got into the zouave thing, dressed up like -- whatever you call them. like arabian nights or whatever they were. they did close order drills. of course, you know what happened to lew wallace after the war.

he wrote the second best-selling novel of the 19th century, ben hur. he did have one of the best goatees, or van dykes. here is the zouave. antaloons. he joined the union army, no experience, raises a regiment, and he has early success in romney, west virginia and again in fort henry and donaldson near tennessee early in 1962. things are dark for the union. they are looking for heroes. the northern press played wallace up. they made him into a big hero. justly so. he did well. he was promoted to major general at age 34, one of the youngest union generals.

that was his high point. his low point came at shiloh. we don't have to get into the details, but basically lew got lost the first night of shiloh, never made it to the battlefield. grant and halleck were not very happy with him. it was a fog of war situation. i don't know how they found their way anywhere, but he idn't. basically grant and halleck were not very happy with lew wallace, and they sidelined him. he was out of the war. he went back to crawfordsville, indiana and managed to get back into the war and they gave him a not very good position. they let him be commanding general of the middle department of the union army. basically he was the military governor of baltimore.

here is a guy who wanted to fight in the war and here he was -- you know baltimore was a secessionist stronghold, but not much was going on. he would round up a few people here or there and he was itching o get back into the war. i told you that the word was coming in about this corps of troops that was on their way to washington, but grant figured out what lee was up to. he realized that lee was trying to get him to send troops away from richmond and etersburg. grant not act. you can read the letters, the memoirs, the journals of these officers, and lincoln, too. telegrams are flying between washington and richmond. lincoln was the commander-in-chief. he wasn't a micromanager, but he

was doing a little bit of, maybe it might be time to reinforce the invalids here in washington. but grant did not act. on that same information, lew wallace -- remember, he is on the outs with halleck, now the commander of the army, and grant. he decides he is going to -- and some of that intelligence is saying there is 30,000 or 40,000 troops, so he gathers up as many troops as he can, which is not that many, and decides he is going to try to stop them. he had one battery of artillery. the confederates had 12 batteries at monocacy. here is a map.

here is monocacy junction as a picture of yesterday and today, four miles south of frederick, maryland. there wasn't any fighting, but there was a crossroads of troops on both sides on the way to gettysburg, antietam. lee's famous lost order during the battle of antietam is right across the river from the center at monocacy battlefield. grant is there at city point. now they are saying that if the confederates are there, there is going to be trouble. he sends rickets and 5000 troops up away from the barricades of richmond. they wake him up at 5:00 in the morning, they got on ships at the james river, they go down

he james, they go up the chesapeake bay they go over to camden station, where the baseball stadium is, and they get on trains and arrive at monocacy junction at dawn on the ighth. lew wallace has 6500 troops facing about 12000 confederate roops. lew wallace who wrote in that florid 19th-century style. can't just say these guys got off the train and made their campfires and cooked their coffee. here is the map, which i just described. you see where the battlefield was. sure enough, they were oming. they fired up a black pot, etc.,

etc. it is fun to read. wallace's memoir was the last thing he wrote before he died. we are going to be on sunday at the monocacy battlefield. i won't read this, but it is a little bit of the order of battle to show how few union troops there were and how many confederate troops. john brown gordon was one of the commanders. gordon fought throughout the eastern theater. he was shot five times at antietam. shot off his horse, shot through the face. he never faced the camera on his left side because of his eye. he said the battle at monocacy was the sharpest fight he was n. john c. breckenridge was one of the commanders. mccausland and his cavalry.

ramseur and rodes. it started on the morning of july 9, which was extremely hot. all of the accounts, the troops mark how hot. you know how it can be in july, probably in the 90's and really humid. confederate troops were on the march since june 13, it is now july 9. it was a very sharp fight. it is a difficult battle to take in because -- today interstate 270 goes through the middle of it. it didn't back then, if i am correct. 55 does and did. you are going to get a good look at it. the battle raged all day from 9:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon.

early was not on the field of battle at first. he was extorting money from the city founders at frederick. by the way, early did not want to engage the troops. his orders were to threaten washington, d.c., so not all his troops were engaged. nevertheless, 12,000 versus 6000. there was fighting at the best farm, which we will go to on sunday, and the worthington farm. there were three bridges around monocacy, fighting over all three of them. like i said, they were outgunned with the big guns like 10 to one or something like that. of course early prevailed and when word got out that wallace was defeated at monocacy, he was relieved of his command. then -- so what did early do? he still sent his cavalry north

toward baltimore in a feint so he could keep the union thinking that he might be going after baltimore and to cut the railroad and the telegraph line, which they did. now washington is incommunicado after wallace is defeated at onocacy. early's men -- remember i was telling you how hot it was and how they had been on the march all that time. they rested on the battlefield ll that night. when word got out that wallace was defeated at monocacy, there was panic in the streets in washington. the terror of the citizens amounted almost to paralysis. the word went out, we need all the help we can get on the barricades. we had clerks from the state department, people on the gto,

people who had never fired a weapon gathered there one shotgun and went up to the barricade. the word motley was used by more than one person to describe who as in charge of the barricades when early and one corps of confederate troops were knocking on the door. consider what an attack on washington, d.c. would have meant in july of 1864. lincoln was fighting for his political life. what would the headlines have said if confederates were running amok in the street? there was a ship that was provisioned in the potomac that was designed to take lincoln out of town, should the confederates get in there. how would that have looked on cnn? they did not have cnn back then. but this war was covered in the newspapers. it was incalculable how much damage it could have done to

lincoln's reelection chances. it was at a low point. lincoln was furious when he found out the ship was provisioned. luckily he never had to use it. although supplies, the u.s. treasury could have been raided. it could have been a catastrophe. we talked about the call for volunteers. telegrams are flying back and forth to grant. he finally sends the rest of the six corps up again. they did with their compadres did earlier. they went to the docks on the james, came down the james. this time they went up the potomac. there are some diaries or letters of confederate troops on the ships going by mount vernon as they were coming up to washington. one guy said something like, what is going on here? here we are, americans fighting americans going by our founding father's house.

they get to the old docks down at 6th street in washington, d.c. the citizens are elated. they greet them with ice cream and sandwiches. we are saved, the sixth corps is here. at which time they start going to georgetown and they say, no, go that way. they march up the old 7th street pike, which is now georgia avenue. they get to fort stevens, right t the top there. they get to the barricades just about the time early and his men are within range of his glasses. this is july 11, 1864. early takes a look. by the way, early could see the capitol dome through his glass

from the top of his horse up there. one of the confederate army's most aggressive generals has the capitol dome in his sights and invalids are defending washington, d.c. early decides not to attack. one reason is he see those sixth corps troops on the parapet. the sixth corps had a distinctive patch, which he saw at monocacy in those engagements. he decides not to attack, but he has artillery and they are skirmishing and there is artillery battles. that night he has a council of war in silver spring. he takes over the home of the blair -- not the blair mansion, but the blair home in silver spring. you know that montgomery blair was lincoln's postmaster general and his father was francis preston blair, a friend of

lincoln and a founder of the republican party. the blairs decided this was a good time to go to pennsylvania, so they were not there. the confederate generals where they, including breckenridge, who had been there and knew where the wine cellar was. they had a council of war, drank the wine, and decided they would decide the next morning whether o attack or not. i think you know this, too, that the citizens of washington -- now, fort stevens is in washington, d.c., but back then it was hardly considered the city. there was fields, farms. it was where they went to escape the heat of the city. when we say the citizens of washington came out to see the battle, which they did, so did president lincoln. there is an actual picture of lincoln -- no, that is not lincoln, but that is him at fort stevens. he was standing on the parapet

hen a confederate sharpshooter at what is the old walter reed shot and wounded a union surgeon standing right next to him. there is lincoln, 6'5" in a stovepipe hat, at which point the surgeon is shot and someone urges lincoln to please get down from there, sir. you have heard it was oliver wendell holmes who said, get down, you fool. that is apocryphal, it just sounds good. it did not come out until the 1930's. holmes was there, but so were other people. someone wrote a book about just that incident. we believe this was the only time in u.s. history that a sitting u.s. president came under direct fire in a shooting war. we can argue about this later, the war of 1812, maybe president

madison -- but not like this. there was more skirmishing, more artillery rounds. the next morning when the union troops woke up, early was gone. he retraced his steps. e went back up into montgomery county and he crossed the potomac river at white's ferry. anybody been on the white's ferry? what's the name of it? the ferryboat, jubal early. now you know why that is. that was july 13, 1864. the limit of my knowledge about the civil war. [laughter] mr. leepson: let's do a little bit of what if-ing. historians hate what if's. we will go over the big questions. could early have invaded, did

monocacy save washington, d.c.? should early have invaded? the troops wanted to go in. some of them wrote later they were ready to go and were very disappointed in old jube. could he have made it? we don't know. it is conceivable they could have been trapped inside washington, d.c. and it could have been really bad. did monocacy save -- you know, if you go to monocacy, they call it the battle that saved washington, d.c., and i think you can make a case that it did. we mentioned wallace was relieved of his command when they heard he was defeated at monocacy, but when grant realized what happened, he reinstated him. grant rights in his memoirs that had lew wallace not held jubal early up for one day and the better part of the second day,

too, he, grant, could not have gotten his troops up to washington in time to save it. i think you could make the case that it did save washington, d.c.. the impact on the 1864 presidential election, it would have been devastating for lincoln. we know it is a what if and we know things changed almost 180 degrees after this, when sherman took atlanta and sheridan started rampaging in the valley. all of a sudden lincoln's poll numbers -- they did not have poll numbers -- he would wind up to win fairly handily, but it was closer -- it was not a out. the bigger question to me is did what happened at monocacy change the course of the civil war? it is a what if, but it is pretty intriguing. these are the hard numbers. june 30 before monocacy, there were 130,000 troops.

july 31 after monocacy, there were only 93,000 and by august 31, 69,000. not all of them left because of the sixth corps, but people with enlistments left and went home. that is a significant number. we do know that grant's plan work. he choked lee out of there and the war ended in march 1865. if these 70,000 troops had not left, it stands to reason that the thing could have ended sooner. how much sooner? it is a giant guess, 60 days, 100 days, who knows? it is a what if. it is intriguing and shows you that sometimes fairly little or seemingly insignificant things can have a pretty big impact on a war like this. kevin decided to call my talk

"we scared abe lincoln to hell," so i decided i had better show you the quote i wrote in a letter to kyd douglas. if you want to think of this thing in the big picture about how this had an impact on the election and war, it is that jubal early was late. thank you, everybody. [applause] mr. leepson: we have time for some questions. our friends at c-span said if you would please stand up, they are going to do a directional microphone, not in your face. tell us who you are. >> -- a number that grant actually said. he sent the sixth and 19th corps up. how many men was that?

mr. leepson: the 19th corps was n the way to richmond, but never got off the train, and he sent them directly up. the sixth corps -- all of wallace's troops amounted to 500 at monocacy. i don't have the number -- i am sure somebody here knows. it was in the thousands and thousands of troops. those two days of fighting, there were casualties in washington, d.c. i think it is the smallest national cemetery, on georgia avenue in d.c., where a bunch of union troops are buried. confederate troops, a lot of them were buried in a mass grave. they dug them up and put them at grace church on georgia avenue nder a marker.

there were 400 union casualties killed and wounded at the ighting at fort stevens. ok? thanks, everybody. i do have books over there to sign and sell. [applause] [capapapapappyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> american history tv looks back at the impeachment against president bill clinton with the december 1998 house debate on articles of impeachment. >> today republicans with a small handful of democrats will vote to impeach president clinton. why? because we believe he committed crimes resulting in cheating our legal system. we believe he lied under oath numerous times. that he tampered with evidence, that he conspired to present false testimony to a court of law. we believe he has sullied our

legal system in every way. let it be said that any president who cheats our institution shall be impeached. >> explore our nation's past. watch the clinton impeachment tonight at 8:00 eastern on american history tv. >> the house will be in order. >> for 40 years c-span has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, supreme court and public policy events from washington, d.c. and around the country. so you can make up your own mind. created by cable in 1979, c-span is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. andrew warren about her book inetar. m ld

joins discussion. the library of congress is the host of the event. you.lcome to all of the family so generous to make this program possible, marcia, barney, lee, welcome to all of you. thank you for being here and thank you to our s to our young visitors from washington area schools. welcome to the c-span audience that will be watching this in the future. who among you has never been in this library? you.uite a few of in the event you have not been in