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Dr. Tim Smith has worked for the National Park Service and now teaches history at the University of Tennessee – Martin. He’s always been interested in the Civil War and he’s written close to 20 books on the subject. We talked about his latest book on Grant at Vicksburg.
1:24- Dr. Smith talks about how he got into history. A course on the Old South at Ole Miss got him interested in Civil War history.
2:47 – The last book on Grant at Vicksburg was Myers book in the 1960s. Dr. Smith is editing a series on Grant so he wrote this book.
4:51 – This book looks at Vicksburg from Grant’s point of view. One of his big gambles was to cross the river south of Vicksburg. Few people approved of his decision.
7:30 – Grant had a lot of soul searching during the 9 months of the Vicksburg campaign. He nearly gives up and commits to a suicidal attack but then he chooses a gamble type of move instead.
10:54 – Grant corresponded to a lot of different people and Dr. Smith had a huge amount of correspondence to go through to write this book.
13:10 – Sherman was willing to call Grant out when he doesn’t agree with him. But Grant said he never held a council of war even though he got opinions and ideas from other officers.
22:22 – Politicians and newspaper editors pressured Grant to warp up the Vicksburg campaign. People wanted him removed.
27:45 – Grant made plenty of mistakes giving orders at the Vicksburg campaign. He was good at organizing his forces but not perfect. Grant actually didn’t have a good staff and they weren’t very professional. He picked a lot of old Army friends for his staff.
31:06 – Grant was a micro-manager and probably got involved in too much of the menial issues of his army. Grant was a tender-hearted and kind person though.
38:21 – Twenty years ago you had to go to archives for research but now everything is online and at a researcher’s fingertips. One little used source is the two volume history of Grant’s post-war world tour where he discussed the war with a newspaper reporter.
42:44 – Dr. Smith grew up around Vicksburg so he has a lot of experience with the terrain there.
53:15 – His next book is on Grant’s May assaults at Vicksburg. It’ll be a major battle book with plenty of details. He is worried about the interest in the US Civil War but he hopes and thinks it might revive again as this generation gets older.
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Guests: Dr. Timothy Smith
Host: Cris Alvarez
Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, US civil war, grant, sherman, confederates, union, Halleck, Lincoln, Vicksburg, Jayhawks, cavalry, attacks, july 4th