What a great story. what a great woman. how lucky those men were to have her!

Very interesting.

Marvelous !

I was at little round top to day looking over the battlefield if sickles would have stayed and had his 10000 men with him defending those hills they would have destroyed the rebs Warren had What 2500 hundred the 20th main had 250 and they held and counter attacked and won. At the end of the day sickles was an idiot to come down from those heights.

Ok but this is exactly the appraisal of GBM that became mainstream later on. Whether it‘s completely accurate is a different question. It‘s certainly not true that McCellan didn‘t know how to win battles.

There are such people that were and are in the world. So much better than me. I'm grateful. And ashamed.

Beautiful tribute to a wonderful and saintly lady nurse. I am a retired nurse and retired Navy Nurse. I can think of no more praise than this one reflects. Thank you sir for these memorials. May she rest in peace

If the Confederacy did not have the right to secede from the Union, the Colonies did not have the right to be disloyal to their King! His Majesty, George

This personalization of civil war history is amongst the best of KZfaq and the internet. 2 of my relatives were in Pennsylvania units that stopped Pickett and his men, changing history and preserving our country. We in these times would do well to listen to the lessons of history.

Could he have been a conscientious objector at heart?

The portrait makes GBM look....older than I picture.

These youtubers lose monitization from me. Some of the ads are offensively deceitful. I skip over them asap.

More soldiers died from diseases than enemy bullets under McCleiian. He could raise a big army but didn't know how to use it.

My question is that she gave ice lemonade to the author! How were they able to make ice in those days? I didn't know that they were able to make ice in those days!

This was a great story! She basically gave up her life and died young in order to save others!

To keep this short: The South' set out to fight a war it knew could not be won by force of arms but by a long war the North would concede. Yes, there was pretense to a short war, but it was quickly clear the war would be anything but short. Thus it became a war of attrition, and a pointless act of butchery almost akin to World War I after August 1914. Yet war in service to a vile and odious instituion of slavery is somehow redeemed by calling Grant names - even names like butcher out of the mouth's of his oppnents - is absolutely ludicrous. Every soldier, general and politician was a bloody butcher by this measure. The only good cause lay in defeating the undemocratic processes involved in sustaining slavery and it's ilk. Grant dramatically and demonstrably out-Generaled Lee and forced him to flee where Grant wanted him to go. By contrast, much of Lee's vaunted rep depended on his "luck" in fighting half-witted opponents vanely struggling for a spear-point singular battle as if they were fighting some romantic feat of arms akin to a medieval "knights errant" tale. Bullets and scale had long since changed the measure of death involved. Further, Lee was always at advantage on home turf but generally came up short in managing logistics and strategy to take the fight to his opponent. Strategically, the North had the initiative and took longer to work its advantages into a coherent master plan. But it did. Grant effected a strategic advance across the entire front of VIrginia just as he did across the South and eventually towards Atlanta and sent Sherman to the Sea. previously. But the attempts to diminish Grant by calling him a butcher are simply an effort to claim relative virtue that won't wash. Can anyone really say the slaughter of Picket's Charge somehow wasn't butchery? How is that only when the blood of Southern aristocratic enslavers is shed that it's somehow butchery, but dying Northern troops is not? Methinks the attempt to claim the moral highground in this sort of slandering of Grant fails to account for his virtues - clearly outlined in his autobiography and confirmed. Grant was a thoroughly modern man in all respects. Even more modern in his values than many men and women are today. In recognition of this, Grant dies with 1.5 million attending in NYC and many more in other cities. He had two Confederate commanders as his pallbearers. Again, by contrast, Lee's own funeral was very unheralded. Of the two, I think we know where the moral high ground actually lies. All that said, war is ugly and by definition inglorious period because it waste's the value and beauty of human potential to turn it towards destruction and vanity in war is too often simply blind brutality. There is a point where ending the brutality as quickly as possible is more humane than a drip-drip-drip of continued death. In the end, there is no relatively "better way" to fight a war, but only doing whatever it takes to bring it swiftly to an end. Ultimately, Grant ended the war. I'd challenge anyone to assess the additional loss of life had Grant not prosecuted the war as he did and it'd run longer. 'Nuff said.

You know I have always questioned his courage He never went up to the front lines. During the Seven days he left his army at one point and sequestered himself in a gunboat on the James River. At Antietam he stayed at his HQ east of the creek while Hooker pleaded with him to come over and rally the troops to make one more push to break Lee's line.

The crazy part of whole thing is very few of the Confederate soldiers doing the heavy fighting through out the war ever owned a slave. They were fighting for homeland.

I have heard this discription before I can understand this type of person even in ww2 the us had entire platoons of misfits so to speak but when it came time to get to buisness courage,grit and loyalty to there last breath these men went on to acomplished great things most men dont dare.

She would have done better to spend her time lobbying Lincoln to end his unjust and unconstitutional war of invasion and conquest.

Superb narrative, thanks.

Dan was not that bad a general for a political one. He was brave and aggressive but utterly unqualified for corp command.

Thanks for this video. I have made a collection of documents about New Kent County, VA in the Civil War. I have Rusling's letters, but didn't notice the part you read about Miss Gilson. I will add that to my collection. ------------------------------------------------------ He wrote: "I met her first at the White House, Virginia, on the Peninsula, in June, 1862, where she was serving on a hospital boat, nursing our sick and wounded, after the battle of Fair Oaks, or Seven Pines" This shows the difference between a regimental history and a narrative written many years after the event. In a regimental history, the exact date would have been given. ----------------------------------------------------------- He wrote again: "There was no hotel there-the White House was merely an army depot; and I was given quarters on her boat for the night, with some other like officers. After supper we gathered on deck and chatted for a long time, on that mild June evening, rehearsing our various experiences -Miss Gilson among us. She spun her "yarns" with the rest of us ; but all so modestly and intelligently, that everybody was delighted with her. We parted reluctantly, all expressing a hope we might some time meet again." This is rich! A letter, diary or regimental history would never be talking about a hotel after a bloody battle. Look at a photograph of any Field Hospital. On a hospital transport right after a battle, do you think there is any room on the boat to entertain officers, let alone let them sleep on the boat? While the battlefield is still strewn with corpses and wounded waiting for the next ambulance and next train? And with the wounded dumped off the train at the Landing onto the ground without enough tents, to be left in the open air until the transports come back from Yorktown, Fort Monroe or Washington? Do you think there are so many doctors and nurses on a hospital boat immediately after a battle, that they could spare a nurse to sit around and chat with a quartermaster? I don't think so! ---------------------------------------------------------------- James Fowler Rusling's book is online: "Men and Things I Saw in Civil War Days." It contains the passages read about Miss Gilson, beginning on page 190. There are many pictures of White House Landing on the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs collection for the Civil War Period. Also the Sanitary Commission. --------------- Also, see this book online for a description of medical activities at White House in New Kent County, VA after the Battle of Seven Pines and Fair Oaks: Hospital Transports: A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862. By the Sanitary Commission. Pages 96-98. On that Sabbath day, after the departure of the Elm City, the wounded of the battle of Fair Oaks began to arrive in large numbers by rail-road... Page 102. "Three hundred wounded to come on board!" I wish you could see the three hundred white beds, with a clean shirt and drawers laid ready for each man They began to bring them in about noon... We went directly at work washing them, doing what we could, too, at dressing wounds which had been hastily bandaged on the battle-field thirty-six hours before. --------------- See also online: The Cruel Side of War: With the Army of the Potomac. Letters from the Headquarters of the United States Sanitary Commission During the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia in 1862. By Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Pages 95-97. “I write amid the distant booming of cannon and the hourly arrival of telegrams from the scene of action. The battle began yesterday afternoon.” --------------- See also online: A Volunteer Nurse in the Civil War: The letters of Harriet Douglas Whetten. Wisconsin Historical Society. Pages 141-143. “I supposed there was no woman there, but to my great comfort I found Mrs. Griffin & Miss Wormley making lemonade, cracker punch &c and one of the woman nurses. But there was enough for all to do. Men to be washed and fed...” .

Listening to this simple man I’m reminded how poor our education system is in this country. I can imagine an average 25 year old having spent 4 years in bloody war writing so beautifully 🙏🏻❤️

BEAUTIFUL

I work in aerospace and run large software projects. There are people that are good at planning but they are terrible at starting and running projects. I can plan them well enough, but running them is a messy affair. I run them. Think of Grant. You need guts, initiative and the team needs to trust you when things go wrong. Things always go wrong. The best plan in the world is ruined at the first shot.

What a contrast - in writing style, intelligence, faith, patriotism, valor - to today's poor equivalences; seems to me we are fortunate, as a race, to still have preserved for us the foundation of a nation that has given so much for our salvation. Thank you for bringing to light these historic men and women who sacrificed so much for us.

Ron...beautiful...Patriotic till the end bringing life into the world...Ireland

Gettysburg was a victory by committee. I honor Meade’s victory but, he was no great captain (although he was a solid division commander). Sickles was an anomaly which came into being due to the of lack of success among the professionals from West Point. Had the academy actually developed trained killers instead of engineers, Sickles would’ve never become known to history.

I wonder if McClellan was popular with the troops because he didn't use them aggressively in attacks but instead just had them in camp and doing drills. : caused More casualties in the long-term because he didn't want to risk casualties in the short term.

I believe there's a generational effect where in the movie industry and the video games industry the best and brightest minds have reduced a number and the others have aged out, and you don't get the best minds coming in because the 18-year-old whiz kids are deciding to do other things with their life. Maybe finance maybe other forms of entrepreneurship, and so you only get mediocrities to choose from so the gaming industry has been fucked for a lot longer than we are thinking it is

Wonderful story of a wonderful woman. Thanks for sharing!

Even after he was fired a second time, the Union rank and file bemoaned McClellan's absence, and complained bitterly about his successors.

Love your videos, thanks for sharing them.

He may have been fighting for the wrong side for his sense of duty and allegiance, but make no mistake, it was the wrong side, it was anti-American, and they lost the war. Any veneration of the CSA outside of a museum is an outrage. They wanted a divided states of America, we are a United States of America. Keep any statues that were erected before 1890, the rest are racist symbols of white power.

Yankee lies.

Wonderful remembrance of a wonderful lady of mercy! Sad, she couldn't enjoy a well deserved, family life, post Civil War!

The whole thing was a great tragedy.

Lol 2nd

First!

Please do a video on Ambrose Burnside

Very meaningful and moving. Thank you for sharing this.

Can someone explain why he wasn’t charged with treason or disciplined in some way for disobeying a direct order from the President?

Lincoln went to McClellans house one night, and McClellan knew the President was coming. When the president knocked on the door, the general went upstairs to his room, and never cam down. His servant had the president sit in the parlor, but when McClellan didn’t come down after a lengthy period of time, the president left. That is not how you show respect for your C and C.

Fitzhugh Lee was one of four Confederate Generals who served in the Spanish American war... I wish you had taken 30 seconds to includ that tiny little detail, as the Spanish American war, for what ever it accomplished, was a true reuniting of old enemies in a war by the Reunited States. I love your presentations and am subscribed. Thanx for all you do!

I’ve read many accounts from soldiers of the Civil War. I was struck by the lack of bitterness toward their former enemies.

I think he bears a great resemblance to Abe Lincoln.

Lincoln replaced McClellan with Burnside, even though Burnside warned him he wasn't up to the task. Sure enough, he wasn't. Fredericksburg. Let's suppose Lincoln took Burnside at his word and allowed the Generals of the Army of the Potomac to nominate a commander. Do you think they would have been able to overcome their own egos and select a competent?

The Lincoln movie was good but I was disappointed at how hard the plot went at the debate about the Emancipation Proclamation and barely touched many other brilliant parts of Abe's Presidency. I especially wished an effort had been made to re-create Lincoln's meeting with Mcclelland at Antietam. The event is documented with several photographs and numerous other accounts. McClellands awkwardness at having his boss in his CO just screams to be eavesdropped upon. ..enjoy your videos very much Ron.

Amazing how well the Union did considering how inept an stupid most of the corps commanders were.