david blight choosing frederick douglass and james mcpherson with david farragut. the phone lines will be open in just a moment. make sure you mute your television when you call in. you can send us a tweet. twitter.com/cspan. our hash tag today if you want to jot this down is poty1862. post your choice for person of the year on facebook. facebook.com/cspan is where you go. just a quick tweet and facebook reading. ben says that his choice would be greely and second choice would be robert e. lee. on facebook a look at our facebook page, james saying that it's george mcclellan. as much as i despite him, it is not what it will become in 1863. some of the thoughts of viewers on twitter and facebook. let's go back to the library and james mcpherson who just nominated admiral david farragut as his choice for person much of the year 1862. james mcpherson, if you look at the selection, admiral farragut would be the only admiral on the list. you talked in your speech about the political implications of his victories in 1862. were they the main reason that france and britain

. >> our guest is professor james mcf mcpherson, professor emeritus at princeton university and he's one of the five historians speaking today at the library of virginia making their nominations and their cases for person of the year, 1862, as the nation recognizes the 150th anniversary of the civil war. here's bob in washington d.c. go ahead. >> caller: professor mcpherson, i want to thank you for your major contributions to american scholarship on the civil war. do i recall correctly that it was farragut who said full speed ahead or if it wasn't him or was that done at mobile bay? second question i have is after mobile bay, is -- do anything outside of the gulf switch his efforts to atlantic coast? >> you're right in your first assumption. it wasn't mobile bay when he said damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. that happened as the fleet that he commanded was in the process of passing the forts that protected the entrance to mobile bay and one of the union ships, an ironclad, a brand new ironclad, hit a torpedo which is what they called naval mines then. went to the bottom immediate

we'll also hear from james mcpherson, the historian james mcpherson. all of that on the way today here on american history tv on c-span 3. ladies and gentlemen, if you could return to your seats, we'll get restarted in just a moment. okay. let's get restarted if we could. our next speaker, i mentioned earlier, he's a detroit tigers fan. i think the reason that he particularly likes richmond is that we sent justiner have lander to the tigers. but david blight is a familiar face here in richmond. coming down from connecticut quite frequently to speak with us in the virginia historical society and the american civil war center. david has done quite a bit to help our understanding here and nationally about the civil war. david is the class of 1954 professor at yale university. excuse me, professor of american history at yale university and he's also the director of the gilder lehrman center for the study of slavery resistance in abolition. best known to civil war audiences as the author of the 2001 book "race and reunion, the civil war and american history

james mcpherson nominated a miller david farragut and you heard the nomination of george b. mcclellan. we're going to open up our phone lines for your thoughts and your comments and questions about the day and hear your comments for john mountcastle as well. a couple of ways you can participate by phone, the numbers are 202-3855. and also for the mountain and pacific it's 585-3856. we wanted to remind you in case you missed today's procedure at the library of virginia, we will reair all of this in its entirety including the phone segments this evening at 6:00 p.m. eastern and 1:00 a.m. eastern on sunday morning. that's ahead of us. also this afternoon if you don't get through on the phones if you want to make a comment at twitter.com you can do that and the handle we're using for twitter is totw1862. and also on facebook, facebook.com/cspan. before we speak to john mountcastle. a tweet from tammy price, she says her choice for person of the year 1862 would be frederick douglass although i think lincoln would be better for this year than for last year. you may recall we cover

james mcpherson is among the r÷ for the most influential person on the national stage 150 years ago. c-span's 2012 local content vehicle cities tour takes our book tv and american history tv

james mcpherson is among the historians who nominate for the most influential person on the stage 150 years ago. >> c-span's 2012 local content vehicles cities tour takes our book tv and american history tv programming on the road the first weekend of each month. this past featured little rock, arkansas with book tv at the university of arkansas. >> he was interested in the 19th century. the civil war. these are two friends, union and confederate, who knew each other prior to the civil war, who fought against each other at the battle of pea ridge. survived the war, came out alive and remained friends after the war and here they are at age 100, sitting on the porch talking about the old days. >> an american history tv looked at life 18 world war ii japanese internment camp. >> wrote a book called the art of gamon. and gamon meant surviving the unsurvivable, sort of. and she talks a lot about how the arts and the crafts were sort of how they kept their sanity and gave them something to do. and about how depression was so bad in a lot of the camps and that people -- there was a high inst

birdseye mcpherson, so u.s. invented trachea of ulysses s. grant a lot of them have to do with lee's own personality. in the way he handled problems. >> you refer in your book, in your biography, to his savage moods. what did you mean? >> lee had a huge temper. and that he was like, and his idol, george washington, washington was an incredibly controlled individual. a lot of people don't realize that washington had a horrible temper when he lost it he could -- with the best of them. lee was the same way. that's one of the reasons why he led such a tightly controlled self disciplined existence because he knew what his temper was capable of and he wanted to keep it in constant check. >> brian melton, walk us through lee's life april 1865. >> lee, by that point, had really been ready to give up as an army commander for quite some time. lee was suffering pretty seriously from various medical conditions. of course, at the time he just broke down to rheumatism but when a probably had to do with some of the heart condi

and over in the western theater, of course, they're dealing with grant, sherman, james bird eye mcpherson, and if you're second your dregs to take care of grant, and a lot have that had to do with lee's personality and the way he handled problems. >> host: you refer in your book to his savage moods. what did you mean? >> guest: lee had a huge temper. he was sort of like his idol, george washington. washington was an incredibly controlled individual, and a lot of people don't realize that washington had a horrible temper and when he lost it, he could spew profanity with the best of them. lee was the same way. and that's one of the reasons why he led a self-controlled and isens because he wanted to keep his temper in constant check. >> host: walk us through lee's wife, april, 1865. >> guest: lee by that point had really been ready to give up as an army commander for quite some time. lee was suffering pretty seriously from various medical conditions, but of course at the time he just wrote down to resume resume tim but probably had to do with heart conditions that contributed to his death. i