All language subtitles for [English (auto-generated)] The Civil War When America Went to War with Itself Full Documentary Serie

It was the most tragic episode in

America's history.

During four years of bitter and bloody

fighting between the North and the

South, more than 600,000 soldiers lost

their lives while thousands more

returned to civilian life crippled and

maimed.

There was hardly a family in the land

that had not been affected in some way

by the dreadful fighting. And for those

who had lived through the war, life

would never be the same again. [music]

>> From the first shots at Fort Sumpter in

1861 to the emotional Confederate

surrender at Appamatics [clears throat]

Courthouse [music] in 1865,

these programs tell the epic story of a

conflict that scarred the soul of our

nation.

This is the story of the American Civil

War.

Oh,

[music]

Amazing [singing]

grace,

how [singing] sweet

the sound

that [singing]

>> in all social systems there must be a

class to do the menial duties to perform

the drudgery of life. Fortunately for

the South, she found a race adapted to

that purpose.

>> In thinking of America, I sometimes find

myself admiring her bright blue skies,

her fertile fields, her mighty lakes,

and starcrowned mountains.

>> But my rapture is soon checked when I

remember that all is cursed with the

infernal spirit of slaveholding and

wrong.

my [singing] heart

to feel.

>> We desire no trading, no mechanical or

manufacturing classes as long as we have

our rice, our sugar, our tobacco and

cotton. We can command [music] wealth to

purchase all we want.

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that

the crimes of this guilty land will

never be purged away but with blood.

[singing]

>> The truth was that the northern states

and the southern states of America were

on a collision course for many years

before the first fateful shots of the

Civil War were fired.

For the two sides that would spend four

blood soaked years of war with each

other, there was perhaps no other way to

settle their differences. They had, in

most respects, become irreconcilably

divided, like two strangers living in

the same house. [cheering]

[screaming]

>> The people of these two sections shared

a common history. They shared the same

constitution.

They shared

the same religions.

They shared the same language.

The one big thing that was separating

these two sections was the existence of

slave labor below the Mason Dixon line

and the existence of free labor and no

slave labor north of the Mason Dixon

[music] line. The industrial revolution

had well and truly come to the north by

the civil war and the north was an

industrialized economy. Pittsburgh was

belching out steel by the time of the

American Civil War.

And in the south there was a an agrarian

economy that was tied to producing

goods, especially cotton, but also

tobacco for instance. And it meant that

the southern economy was far more

dependent on retaining the idea of

unfree labor as opposed to the north

which was perfectly willing to enslave

theoretically free people as as factory

workers.

>> [screaming]

>> The Southern Americans before the Civil

War thought of themselves

as closely ethnically connected

with the British Isles and thought of

themselves as far more closely connected

than the northerners.

And in the racial theories of the time,

that meant that southerners viewed

themselves as a sort of ethnically pure

British stock as opposed to the

northerners who had all sorts of of

Hungarians and and Germans and Jews uh

polluting the ethnic purity of the the

native British stock. This sort of

thought was common in the 19th century.

It shaped people's view of themselves as

as a nation and it meant that people in

the south viewed themselves as quite

superior to northerners. The

stereotypical

cardboard cutout of a southerner would

be an indolent, lazy uh slave owner or

slave driver who's afraid of hard work,

who's not at all uh interested in

anything except his own aristocratic

heritage, his pretentious line lineage,

his his cavalier blue blood uh inside

him and and the purity of the lady who's

hanging on to his arm.

Similarly, the stereotypical northerner

would be a pasty-faced shop clerk or a

wage slave or a grimy factory hand

corrupted by the decadence of the

northern cities. Uh, chasing after the

almighty dollar, rubbing shoulders with

the great unwashed, the immigrants

festering in their in their crowded

tenementss in, you know, New York or

Boston or someplace. Northerners are

going to perceive uh a given image of a

stereotypical southerner just like a

southerner is going to perceive a

certain image of a northerner. But they

were all Americans up to that point in

time.

America had changed beyond all

recognition since winning [music] its

independence from Britain in 1776.

At that time, its population numbered

only 4 million. By 1861, [music]

that number had swollen to 31 million,

thanks in part to an influx of German

and Irish immigrants. Many of the 27

million new Americans had settled in the

north.

The country's largest city was New York,

which was then the home to more than

half a million people. [music]

Chicago, a mere point on the map in

1830, had grown to hold a population of

100,000.

On the other hand, the largest, indeed

the only major city in the south was New

Orleans,

which was populated by 150,000 people.

Great advances and improvements in

transportation and communications had

had a dramatic effect on American

society. The enormous new opportunities

offered by booming cities and towns

sparked a rush away from the traditional

settlements and villages of the country.

The figures are startling.

In 1820, a mere 1 in4 of the population

lived [music] in the city, but only 40

years later, over 1th of the population

had become city dwellers. [music]

This huge demographic shift also ensured

that when war broke out, the north

enjoyed an enormous numerical advantage

over its enemy. There were some 20

million northerners, but only 9 million

southerners.

crucially for the future of the Union.

Of those 9 million, more than 4 million

were black American slaves. And it was

perhaps the issue of slavery, more than

any other which would drive a wedge

between the north and the south.

>> There are economic difference between

the north and the south. There are

cultural and social differences between

the northern section of the country and

the southern section of the country. But

all of them have as their root have as

their nucleus if you will the

institution of slavery.

>> Uh you have those who will state that

the civil war was a war over states

rights that the south wanted to defend

their rights or their independence.

However, you have to ask the question

the state's right to do what they want

to defend their property rights but

their property rights and what and it

all revolves around the issue of

slavery. Slavery was the main cause of

the civil war and as historians pointed

out was were there no slavery in the

United States of America there would

have been no civil war. At the same time

it is always worthwhile to point out

that only 25% of southerners actually

own slaves. That left the vast majority

non-slaveholders or even related to

slaveholders.

In so far as slavery was needed to be

the catalyst to start the war to win

over the majority of the southern

population, other issues were needed.

And the other issues surrounded the

southern economy and the interpretation

of the constitution, especially states

rights. You don't leave the wife and

kids. You don't leave the family farm.

You don't leave your home to go to fight

a war over tariffs. It was slavery in

the minds of the south that formed the

basis of their society

and a threat to the institution of

slavery is what motivates the south and

it is perhaps less slavery that

motivates the north. But slavery is

still the core issue that makes it worth

spilling blood in the 1860s as opposed

to making a lot of noise in Congress.

>> Slaves had first been imported from

Britain to Virginia in 1619.

By 1776,

one in five of Americans was black, and

a very lucrative trade in slaves had

grown, operated mainly by rich

northerners.

Although slavery was abolished [music]

in seven states after independence, it

was retained in Maryland, Delaware,

Virginia, North Carolina, South

Carolina, and Georgia. By 1819, the

number of slave and free states was

equal at 11 each. And as [music] each

state, regardless of size, had equal

representation in the Senate, a fine

political balance came to exist. times

[singing] I'm

most

>> However, the next few decades were to

see the two groups drift inexraably and

dangerously apart.

Before long, the North, the home of the

free states, and the South, the home of

the slave states, had evolved into very

distinct cultures and economies, and

relations between them had deteriorated.

An atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust

particularly in the south came to exist

between the two regions.

>> Some in the south some politicians uh

may have exhibited some jealousy

um because the north had been doing well

as a result of the industrial

revolution. the fact that uh most of the

very large uh banking interests were in

the north. A lot of the uh shipping and

commercial interests were in the north.

Uh the fact that there were so many

miles of railroads in the north. But the

south, the people of the south had these

opportunities too. And most in the south

chose to remain with their way of life

which was based on that uh uh very

agrarian and rural lifestyle. There were

large cities in the south, don't get me

wrong. And there was manufacturing in

the south, but the north was doing well,

was prospering in the decades of the

1840s and the 1850s. There wasn't so

much resentment over the North's

economic uh prowess, particularly

industrialization. But there was

irritation in the South at attempts by

the North or Northern politicians to

pass legislation that they saw was

beneficial only to the northern part of

the United States, not the South. for

instance, tariffs, rivers and harbors

bills and laws designed to support

American shipping, the ship building

industry because that was all tied up in

the north. So generally when you see the

disputes over the north and the south,

it does come down to this question of

this industrializing north versus this

largely agrarian south and that was

something southerners did get very angry

about.

The feeling that the South had somehow

grown apart from the main US economy was

given further impetus by the sudden and

dramatic rise in demand for cotton,

particularly from the hungry textile

mills that were booming as part of the

industrial revolution in England.

It was now that the institution of

slavery began to pay rich [music]

dividends for the South, for its black

American slaves provided virtually

inexhaustible cheap labor. So much so

that by 1861, the South's output of

cotton had risen to a staggering 5

million bales per year.

But the cotton success story was to have

farreaching effects for the slave owners

chose to reinvest their new wealth not

in agricultural machinery but in more

slaves and land. Very soon the south's

economy was entirely dependent on slave

labor.

In the pre-war south,

regional or sectional poverty was the

price that they paid for the institution

of slavery because, you know, slavery

impoverishes just about everybody but

the uh small slaveolding elite in this

case, the uh the planter class and

perhaps their immediate agents, you

know, export firms and transport firms

and and the like. But for the mass of

the southern populace, both black and

white, slavery meant that they were

largely denied

labor and wages. And you know, the

economic argument is pretty clear. If

you don't have earning power, you don't

have spending power. If you don't have

spending power, you don't have money to

inject back into the economy to help it

diversify, to grow, to expand. And you

know, this would have been the case if

it were a free economy or a planned

economy. It would have been the case if

it were if there were five million or

four million white slaves. The economic

argument would have been the same.

Slavery impoverishes just about

everybody.

There were many other notable

distinctions between northern and

southern society.

If the northerner likes to make money,

the southerner likes to spend it. went a

popular saying. And there is no doubt

that the southern population saw itself

as happygolucky, impulsive, generous,

respectful, and honorable. Men were

polite and chivalous to women. The South

despised what it believed to be the

greedy and grasping northern society

with its addiction to profit and loose

morals.

Southern [music] society as happy

golucky and chivalous and those other

stereotypical sort of things. It is to

some extent an accurate snapshot. Uh the

southern society is a very class

society. Now they didn't so much see

themselves as happygolucky. They saw

themselves a uh most most wealthy

southerners were very serious group of

people. I mean they might gamble. They

might like to uh go to horse races or

race their horses, but they saw

themselves a very serious group of

individuals. And they were very

paternalistic. They ruled over a manner

with servants. And so they they had a

very high ideal of themselves as far as

chivalous. Yes. They they thought that

they lived in in the land of chivalry.

They thought that they were the

protectors of their women and their

home. and they had somewhat of the

oldfashioned and outdated ideas which

they connected to Europe and to into

England and in more to be more specific.

>> Certainly that's what many northerners

believed southerners southern society

looked like. Uh but keep in mind there

was a very large section of plain folk

as we would call them. Hardworking uh

ymen, hardworking farmers uh who who

didn't gamble, who uh didn't have hands

servants waiting on them all the time.

They worked long and hard in the fields

in order to provide for their family.

>> There were however other more tangible

differences between the northern and

southern societies.

differences which were perhaps less

pleasant for the south to contemplate.

For example, over half the population of

the southern states was illiterate.

Education was clearly not a southern

priority, for only half as many white

southern children went to school as

those from the north. Southern society

was also infamous for its violence.

Differences were often settled by

assaults, revenge beatings, and murders.

By contrast, most crime in the north was

directed against [music] property,

theft, burglary, and fraud.

In addition, every southern [music]

state had an organized militia formed in

part to exert control over the

everinccreasing slave population.

Well, elements of southern society

were violent. Um, the fact that uh

instit the institution of slavery was

legal in the south where

it you could legally beat a slave and

scar a slave. I mean, that's pretty

violent in itself. And I would think

that that would help to breed even more

violence. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia,

himself, a slaveholder,

once described the keeping of slaves as

it was like holding a wolf by the ears.

You dare not hold on to it and you dare

not let it go, you know. And the South

had seen a number of slave rebellions or

attempted slave rebellions in the

decades uh you know before independence

and after independence. And the people

who led them demonstrated the real

vengeful potential of human beings who

the popular culture was busy trying to

depict as um you know clowns as buffoons

who actually reveled in in his bondage.

>> There was also this idea the southern

code of honor led to dueling which had

largely died out everywhere else in the

union with the exception of the south

and so then dueling was continued on

right until the advent of the civil war.

The southerner might have viewed himself

as a dualist. The northerner might have

viewed the southerner as an

unpredictable madman given to to flights

of violence, dueling, and and single

combat.

But I think that nobody has done

research which clearly shows that the

19th century New Orleans or Charleston

citizen was more violent than a citizen

of New York or Boston.

Wait in the water, children. Wait

in the water.

[singing]

>> No day ever dawn for the slave, nor is

it looked for. For the slave it is all

night, all night forever.

[singing]

[music]

>> It is expected that slaves should be at

work by the time it is light and while

at work they should be brisk. I have no

objection to their whistling lively

tunes, but no drawing tunes are allowed

for their work keeps time with the

music.

>> [singing]

>> Although not all were treated badly, it

is hard to imagine or understand the

grim everyday life of most slaves. With

every sunrise came the prospect of a

day's backbreaking work. With every

sunset the reality of a return to the

harshest of living conditions.

[music and singing]

>> Born into bondage, a slave knew little

else but a life governed by the whim of

his master. the man who had complete

control of his everyday existence. Sell

the slave, beat the slave, or kill the

slave.

>> It mattered not, for in the South there

was little legal deterrent.

>> A slave could not marry without his

owner's permission. And of course, the

marriage was not legal. As a

consequence, familiar, heartbreaking

scenes were played out in the southern

states as black American slave families

were separated and sold off to different

owners throughout the region, never to

see each other again.

>> The daily life of the slave varied

according to one's labor practices,

according to one's location, and

according to the relationship with with

an owner. I mean, you had slaves living

and working in the cities, and you had

slaves, you know, in the cotton fields.

You could be digging a ditch in the

rain, or you could be a cobbler in a

workshop with a roof over your head and

maybe a nice warm fire in the hearth

next to you. So, your conditions, your

daily conditions as a slave might differ

from those of a fellow slave even a few

miles down the road. The deep south was

generally the worst place to be as a

slave. Uh the expression down river,

sold down river comes from the day slave

days when owners from the upper south

sold their slaves down river, meaning

down the Mississippi River, the

plantations in the deep south.

Furthermore, some states had laws

protect the slaves which were better

enforced than others.

So for instance, Missouri had laws

preventing masters from just murdering

their slaves out of hand. And there are

records of whites being convicted for

murdering slaves. But some states, even

though they had these laws in the books,

made no effort to enforce them.

>> You have uh several groups of

slaveholders. You have those who realize

that they're dealing with a human being

who can be motivated and uh with certain

incentives and therefore they would try

to treat their slaves if you could think

of it in a nice manner for a slave. Then

there were those who had whose minds

have been tainted so tainted by the

racial ideologies that developed in the

United States that they believed that

slaves could only be motivated by the

whip. They saw them as little children

who wouldn't listen unless they had been

punished or sometimes feared you and

therefore uh they would uh abuse their

slaves for any small infraction. And for

the most part a slave's life is harsh.

There is no real good aspect to

unfreedom.

>> But the south knew only economic

reality. And it was upon the foundation

of slavery that the southern economy

proudly stood. There was no prospect of

change, nor was there the will to bring

it about. In fact, quite the reverse.

The slave economy, with all it brought

with it, was soon to be something

thousands of men believed was worth

fighting and [music] dying for.

>> [music]

>> However, it should not be imagined that

the North was a hotbed of desire for

social change. Most northerners outside

the evangelicals and the Quakers were at

best ambivalent to the plight of the

southern slaves. Indeed, in New York

City, the segregation between colors was

strictly enforced, and only in desperate

poverty of the city's ramshackle housing

did black and white coexist in uneasy

peace.

History records that the early

abolitionists, given voice by William

Lloyd Garrison's liberator news sheet,

were roundly abused by North and South

alike. To many in the north, they were

an acute, irritating embarrassment. But

to the volatile southerners, the

abolitionists represented a positive

threat to their way of life.

The abolitionists were a very radical

protest group

uh who believed that slavery was evil.

Uh that slave owners were evil. Uh that

slavery should be abolished immediately

and by any means necessary to include

violence.

>> The abolitionists were not egalitarians.

They did not believe that that black

people that African-Americans could be

equal with them socially or economically

or morally. So it is a mistake to view a

northern abolitionist as being a

champion of the human rights of the

African-American slave.

>> Garrison was a Massachusetts Baptist and

unforgiving hater of slavery who saw it

as an abomination before God. and he

published the country's most fiery

abolitionist journal, The Liberator. Its

banner cry was, "I will not equivocate

and I will be heard." Which pretty well

sums up his character. I mean, this was

a guy who publicly burned the United

States Constitution on the 4th of July

because it protected slavery. And

Garrison was so firebrand that

eventually he was seen as an extremist

or even a crank even by many within his

ranks.

The kind of people who would read a

special purpose newspaper, a political

periodical, were the kind of people who

would respond to what William Lloyd

Garrison had to say. And that makes

slavery a a nationwide issue in the

United States

because if you agree with Garrison, then

you've got that newspaper in hand to

agree with. And if you disagree with

Garrison, you must respond to your

neighbor who has got a copy of the

liberator on his front table.

>> Gradually, the abolitionists won greater

and wider support.

>> They were helped by books such as Uncle

Tom's Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher

Stowe. Stowe was a Connecticut-born

evangelist who came from a family of

prominent American social reformers.

Now, she'd never lived in the South. Uh

she lived in Ohio for some time, and she

said that everything she knew about

slavery, she learned from looking across

the Ohio River into into Kentucky and

seeing the practices of uh chatt slavery

there. So, in Uncle Tom's cabin, you

have two escaped slaves, George and

Eliza, who who make it across the north

and into Canada with their child, and

eventually they settle in Liberia.

More problematically, you have the

figure of Uncle Tom, who's sort of a a

Christlike figure. He's patient. He's

meek, unbelievably so. Uh he turns the

other cheek, and eventually he's uh he

becomes a martyr. He's beaten to death

by a cruel overseer.

And at the time, the book's melodrama

and its uh sentimentality and in

particular its championing of family

values, that was the book's great

argument that slavery breaks up

families.

All these did a lot to um unite not only

northern opinion against American

slavery, but European opinion as well.

When we look at this book now, we see it

as being very much emotive literature,

um, some ways sentimental, but

nonetheless struck a powerful chord. It

was published in the national era in

serial form and has sold 300,000 copies

in first publication and it was a

worldwide bestseller. What Uncle Tom's

Cabin does is it makes it makes slavery

a popular issue amongst ordinary folk

who don't read abolitionist newsletters,

who don't uh perhaps even go to a church

where the the parson is especially

abolitionist. And that's true overseas

as well. Uncle Tom's Cabin makes North

American slavery, makes American slavery

an issue in Canada. It makes American

slavery an issue in England. And it

makes American slavery an issue when

it's when it's published in translation

in France as well. Everybody in Europe

understands American slavery through the

prism of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle

Tom's cabin.

The year 1856 saw the birth of the

Republican Party, the first mainstream

political party to take a stand against

the spread of slavery into the Western

Territories. Events

in Kansas during the 1850s saw the

country take another huge step on the

road to war.

Left to decide for itself whether it

should be a free or a slave state,

Kansas quickly degenerated into bloody

civil strife, earning its unfortunate

nickname, Bleeding Kansas.

It was more positive proof that it would

be almost impossible to settle the issue

by peaceful democratic means.

>> The Republican party was born out of the

pressures of the moment and it really

didn't take long for it to become the

dominant uh political party in the

north. Um but it didn't even exist

before 1856 and that's what 5 years

before the start of the Civil War. It

wasn't an abolitionist party as such. It

was founded as a party against the

extension of slavery into the

territories

uh and states out in the west. They

believe that the western territories

should be the enclave of free white

labor, that rich southern plantation

owners should not be allowed to move to

these territories and take their uh

gangs of slave labor with them and they

would have this unfair economic uh

advantage over the the common man, the

middle class man who moves out to the

western territories with his family. So,

it's not so much the Republican party

was against slavery, but they were for

free labor, especially in the Western

territories.

In 1857, the South economy largely

escaped the financial chaos that brought

about panic in the financial

institutions of Wall Street. The fact

was that demand for cotton was still as

strong as ever, and the South looked on

with barely concealed amusement as the

northern economy struggled. To the

people of the south, it was yet another

reason to protect their chosen way of

life.

On the night of October 16th, 1859 came

perhaps the central act in the unfolding

drama.

This was John Brown's infamous raid on

the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry,

Virginia. An ill- fated enterprise that

was supposed to rouse the slaves into

open rebellion.

A twice married farmer who had fathered

20 children, the 59-year-old Brown was a

fanatical abolitionist.

I suppose nowadays you'd call John Brown

an anti-slavery terrorist or perhaps a

freedom fighter depending on your moral

stance. John Brown was driven by the

certainty that God spoke to him and told

him to wipe out slavery and the people

who perpetuated it. So he proclaimed

himself the captain of an anti-slavery

gerilla band in um Kansas. and he and

his followers cut down a group of

pro-slavery settlers at Pawatami Creek.

And I mean they did this with

broadswords. You know, this was the

vengeance of the Lord playing itself out

on the plains of bleeding Kansas. John

Brown was a very intense man. And he was

sufficiently intense that if you look at

a photograph of him, John Brown's eyes

come out at you from the photograph. You

can see this man's intensity and you can

see that John Brown is a bit crazy. John

Brown is not a sane man. He and his

family hack people to bits. They launch

crackpot plans. They are mad people led

by a madman.

But he's got perhaps the same kind of

mad leadership intensity that that

Hitler later had in service of of a much

less worthy and moral cause. And that

means that John Brown has the ability to

bring people with him. His family and

his friends bring people with him on his

mad schemes.

Believing that the Harper's Ferry raid

had been given God's blessing, Brown

ignored the military procedures that

might have given it a greater chance of

success. [music]

As it turned out, the whole episode was

not only a military disaster, it also

failed to raise the slaves to rebellious

[music] frenzy.

Brown's small force of 18 men, which

included three of his sons, seized the

arsenal, but were soon surrounded. First

by angry locals and then by 90 United

States Marines under the command of

Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee.

During the fight that followed, nine of

Brown's men were killed, a total that

included two of his sons.

Brown himself was severely wounded by a

sword thrust when the arsenal was

stormed. He was captured and imprisoned

to await trial for treason against the

state of Virginia.

>> John Brown's attempted insurrection took

place in Virginia or part of Virginia

which is now West Virginia. So it was

the state of Virginia that tried him for

treason and for murder. In spite of its

failure, the Harper's Ferry raid was

proof to the Southerners that their

precious institution, slavery, was now

under violent attack from the north.

And it was during his trial that John

Brown uh self-consciously and I think

quite effectively engineered his

transformation from terrorist to martyr.

In fact, he actually wrote to his wife

and said that uh he knew he was going to

hang and that he would be much more

valuable hanged than acquitted.

And he conducted his defense eloquently,

masterfully.

His mission, he argued, was not treason,

was not insurrection. It was simply one

thing to free people, slaves. And if he

had done the same thing for more

powerful people, he would have been

rewarded for it. He also argued at his

trial that he had not come to Virginia

to start a slave uprising. He had come

to free the slaves and then armed them

for self-defense. Well, the court of

Virginia saw that as distinction without

difference. The uh court in Virginia,

however, was also dealing with a great

deal of mob pressure. Many Southerners,

had they been given a chance, would have

never even given John Brown a trial.

They'd have simply strung him up from

the nearest tree. So, it didn't take

long for the state of Virginia to find

the infamous John Brown. remembering his

activities in Kansas, guilty of

fermenting slave insurrection and murder

and sentenced him to hang.

>> And he used very Christlike imagery as

he described the mingling of his own

blood with that of the millions of

American slaves which was crying out

from the soil of America in some sort of

shared martyrdom. So that when he was

hanged, the

crowds across the north did fall silent

and the church bells did ring and the

northern papers reported his execution

as a crucifixion.

>> Within the month John Brown was hanged

and with his death, the North had its

first martyr while the South had further

proof of the North's true intent.

Brown's prophetic words to his

executioner still loom large in the

pages of American history.

I, John Brown,

am now quite certain that the crimes of

this guilty land will not be purged away

but with blood.

Even Brown could hardly have known that

his name would soon be upon the lips of

thousands of northern soldiers as they

prepared to do battle with their

southern foe.

John Brown's body lies a molding in the

grave, but his soul goes marching on.

The pace of events was quickening and

the southern states now talked openly of

secession from the union.

They were a people who were fiercely

protective of their way of life, proud

of their strong economy, suspicious,

fearful of change, and horrified at the

thought of slave insurrection. But in

truth, mere suspicion and mistrust of

the North had by now been superseded by

open hostility.

after John Brown's raid on Hopper's

Ferry and other events that occurred

around that time such as a uh what they

call the riot in Christian,

Pennsylvania, where a Maryland

slaveholder attempted to uh obtain his

slaves using the fugitive slave law, the

new fugitive slave law of 1850 and uh

was killed in the process. Southerners

saw a northern conspiracy to uh destroy

the institution of slavery and therefore

uh abuse the property rights or the

civil rights of southerners. Southerners

quite wrongly linked John Brown with the

new Republican party and they formed

these militia bands all across the South

in preparation for what they were sure

would be a black Republican invasion in

in the wake of John Brown's

insurrection. And they tred and

feathered northerners that they found on

southern soil. They they rid them out of

town on a rail. They they they lynched

some of them. They shut down northern

businesses and drove the proprietors

back up to the north. And this meant

that as the politicians

and and as the opinion formers are

getting closer and closer to an open

break between north and south, at the

individual level in some of the the more

cosmopolitan towns in the south, there

is individual violence that is an

expression of sectional loyalty,

northern or perhaps more important,

southern loyalty. More significantly for

what was to come, the South turned its

back on the Democratic Party for not

protecting slavery viciferously enough.

Uh the the southern uh membership split

the party. They formed their own plank

which explicitly promoted and protected

slavery and thereby left the Republicans

with a divided opposition. So that even

though uh Lincoln and the other

Republican candidates didn't even appear

on the ticket in like 10 southern states

because the the campaigners and the and

uh the candidates would probably have

been lynched if they'd shown up. U still

the Democrats were were divided enough

and in enough disarray to enable the

Republicans basically to walk in in

1860.

Although he pulled less than 40% of the

popular vote in 1860, [music] the

Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected

president of the United States.

The [music] attempts by the new

president to plate the South and to

reassure it of its [music] future were

futile. And by the end of December 1860,

South Carolina, always at the forefront

[music]

of the secessionist cause, decided to

leave the Union.

Within weeks, [music] Mississippi,

Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,

and Texas had all followed its lead. And

[music] Jefferson Davis, a senator from

Mississippi, had been elected by a

convention of delegates gathered at

Montgomery, Alabama to be the [music]

first president of the Confederate

States of America.

Alexander [music] Stevens, the vice

president of the Confederacy, made a

speech in Savannah, Georgia on March

21st, [music] 1861 that perfectly summed

up the irreconcilable differences

[music] between what were now two

nations.

The cornerstone of the Confederacy rests

upon the truth that the negro is not

equal to the white man. That slavery

subordination to the superior race is

[music] his natural and normal

condition.

This our new government is the first in

history based upon this great physical,

[music]

philosophical and moral truth.

Not all the southern states [music]

voted for secession. In fact, Virginia,

soon to be a [music] main theater of the

Civil War, voted 2:1 against it, while

Arkansas and Missouri [music] both

decided to remain within the Union. Some

were so disinterested in the idea that

they declined even to arrange

conventions to debate the matter.

The northern states watched on with a

mixture of bewilderment [music]

and confusion.

Clearly something needed to be done to

bring the errant [music] south back into

line. But what

once the lower south ceeded and formed

the confederacy

um northerners became uh very indignant.

They could not, they were angry,

extremely angry that the southerners

would break away, ceed, form their own

country and in essence dissolve the

union. In fact, northern newspapers uh

uh ran headlines saying the union is

dissolved. And to people who are proud

of their country, this angered many

northerners. They saw it as an insult

and and couldn't believe that the South

would dissolve the Union over the issue

of slavery. In essence, they wanted to

find some ways to reunify the country

and welcome the prospects of war. They

believed that southern slaveholders and

the slaveolding aristocracy or as they

called it the slaveocracy needed to be

taught a very valuable lesson.

In addition to the clear clash of

ideologies, there were also practical

considerations, not the least of which

were the two federal garrisons that were

positioned in Confederate states.

What was to be done about Fort Pickins

at Pensacola, Florida,

and Fort Sumpter, which lay in

Charleston Harbor?

The Star of the West, a merchant navy

ship, had already tried to deliver

supplies to the Sumpter garrison during

January 1861.

But shellfire from shore batteries

manned by cadets from the Military

College of South Carolina had forced

them to return home with their cargo

undelivered.

Feelings in both the north and south

were running high, and their positions

became more intractable and more

polarized with every passing day. Fort

Sumpter, in particular, began to take on

great symbolic significance. For the

South, it was an affront to have a

federal military installation in the

very heart of the Confederacy. South

Carolina had, after all, been the first

state to secede. For the North, the

prospect of abandoning the fort

voluntarily was unthinkable.

And so Lincoln made a fateful decision.

The garrison would be relieved under the

strictest orders that it should use

force only if it came under fire from

the South Carolinians, as the previous

relief expedition had done.

Lincoln was determined to absolve

himself of any responsibility for firing

the first shot in any armed showdown.

>> By now, however, a political solution to

the showdown was nighon impossible.

Although several attempts to reach a

compromise were tried, the game of

brinkmanship was about to end. The South

had accepted that only the bullet and

the cannon shell would settle the

matter. It was a view probably widely

held by many in the north.

With the northern relief convoy due to

arrive on April the 11th, the

Confederates demanded the surrender of

Fort Sumpter. On April 10th, Major

Robert Anderson, the federal commander,

refused.

But the garrison had only a few days

worth of supplies remaining. As few as

three or four days, according to

Confederate reckoning.

What if the relief expedition was some

kind of federal trick? The Confederate

commanders asked themselves, why wait

until it arrived and take the chance?

So, it was that at 4:30 a.m. on April

12th, 1861, Confederate forces began the

bombardment of the Federal Gallon at

Fort Sumpter, and the first shots of the

American Civil War were fired.

The first shot of the Civil War was

fired [music] by a white-haired old

fiery Virginia secessionist named Edmund

Ruffin. He was 67 years old, long white

hair down to here. And he felt that the

first shot of the Confederacy should be

a shot of honor and he was going to fire

it. in Fort Sumpter. Uh Anderson's

second in command was Abner Double Day.

Double Day was lying in bed in his

quarters in Fort Sumpter. And about 4:30

in the morning, Ruffin's first shot

crashes into the fort and buries itself

in the wall about 2 feet above Double

Day's head. So I think Double Day

probably stayed in bed for a little

while longer. Certainly the the Federals

didn't even begin returning the

Confederate fire for another two hours,

but they they were completely outgunned.

Um they had no mortars in the fort. They

had no uh they had no fuses for their

cannons. And meanwhile, the Confederate

fire had just been building and building

and building. One of the Confederate

gunners, gentleman by the name of Daniel

How, while he was loading the gun, one

of the men had not swapped the barrel

down properly and as a result there was

a flame in the cannon. So the gun went

off prematurely, ripped off his arm and

he was dead within moments. He was the

first casualty of the American Civil

War. After that, the casualties were few

and far between. None of the soldiers,

northern soldiers in the fort were

harmed, but the fort was reduced to

rubble.

In all, Fort Sumpter took more [music]

than 600 direct hits during the 34-hour

artillery bombardment.

No federal soldier was killed or even

seriously [music] hurt. The fort itself,

though, took a battering.

Realizing the hopelessness of the

garrison's position, [music]

Anderson surrendered Fort Sumpter on

April 13th, and he and his men were

allowed to leave aboard the ships of the

Federal Relief Expedition.

The federal commander, a southerner by

birth, took with him the tattered and

torn union flag that had proudly and

defiantly overlooked the Confederate

town of Charleston only a few hours

previously.

Incredibly enough, there were only four

Union casualties from the bombardment,

all of them wounded. And the only death

occurred after Fort Sumpter surrendered.

As the Union garrison was leaving on

April 14th, Major Anderson received

permission to fire a salute to the flag.

And it was during that exercise uh that

one of the cannons uh exploded and

killed one of the gunners. So the only

death occurring as a result of

bombardment of Fort Sumpter actually

occurred after the surrender after the

fact.

>> The bombardment and surrender of Fort

Sumpter provides the clear military

causes belly that makes the civil war

into a war. There had to be some trigger

the shot heard around the world for this

war. And Fort Sumpter provides that

trigger.

For months, even years, the pressure had

been building and the tension had been

rising, but the events at Fort [music]

Sumpter put an end to all the

uncertainty.

Maybe it was a relief for both sides

[music] to have finally reached a

position that all understood this was

war and to the victor [music] would go

the spoils.

Now, President Lincoln had no recourse

but to use armed force. While he called

for 75,000 volunteers to put [music]

down the rebellion, the states of the

upper south seceded from the Union,

meaning that the Confederacy [music] was

able to welcome the arrival of North

Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and

Virginia. Meanwhile, the North was

quickly engulfed by a wave of patriotic

fervor, and thousands of volunteers

flocked to the colors to put an end to

the rebellion in the South.

What would the men who raced to join

[music] the ranks of thought had they

known what lay in store for them.

Not the short, sharp, glorious winner

take all battle that would decide the

war in one dramatic thrust,

but four miserable years of carnage and

bloodshed.

Had any man on either side been able to

[music] foresee what lay ahead, would

the course of events have been any

different?

As the drums of war beat [music] ever

louder, it is difficult to believe they

would.

There can be no neutrals in this war,

only patriots [music] or traitors.

Whatever may have been my political

opinions before, I have but one

sentiment now. That is, we have a

government and laws and a flag, and they

must all be sustained.

So impatient had I become for starting

that I felt like a thousand pins were

pricking me in every part of my body.

and I started off [music] a week in

advance of my brothers.

The streets of Charleston are crowded

with armed [music] men singing and

prominating men, the battle blood

running through their veins. [music]

That oxygen which is called the flush of

victory on their cheeks.

the dramatic events. at Fort Sumpter in

South Carolina [music] in April 1861

finally put an end to the political

posturing of the federal government and

the [music] newly formed Southern

Confederacy.

With the surrender of the United States

fort, any small hope of a peaceful

[music] resolution of the deep-seated

ideological differences that existed

between the two sides had gone.

The new currency was the bullet, the

bayonet, and the cannon shell. It seemed

that men and women from [music] each

side understood that their fate had been

wrenched from the grasp of the

politicians and placed [music] into the

hands of the soldiers that wore the blue

of the Union forces and the gray and

butternut of the Confederate army.

And so America prepared to go to war,

not with a foreign foe, but with itself.

At stake [music] were not just the ways

of life of the North and the South, but

the very future of the United States.

Dear brother, they are volunteering

right smartly here. If you want to join

a company, come down here and let's go

together. [music]

I have the best suit of clothes that

ever I had in my life.

Or I can't sleep. [music] I can't study.

I don't know as I can write.

If a fellow wants to go with a girl now,

he better enlist. [music]

People in the south had a view of war

based on the Victorian chivalriic

romance rather than on modern industrial

reality. The outbreak of war in effect

led to a wave of southern nationalism,

of southern patriotism, and young men

flocked to the recruiting offices to

fill [music] the ranks of local militias

and the Confederate army.

>> The people of the south felt that uh

they had been agrieved enough by uh what

they perceived to be the abolitionist

north and now they had succeeded [music]

and formed their own sovereign nation.

And they would not for a moment have

considered

that they were going into a modern 19th

century industrialized war in which

having things like shipyards and

foundaries and steel mills would have

made a difference. Having railways of of

of one gauge would be an advantage. It

doesn't occur to people in the South

that they're going into a five-year meat

grinder of a war. And as a result, the

South goes to war with a romantic ideal

[music]

as their paradigm of what war is all

about. And it is a false paradigm.

I think there was a lot of indignation

in the north [music] and again anger uh

similar to when the states of the deep

south seceded. How dare they secede? How

dare they fire on the flag of the

[music] United States? And I believe the

firing on Fort Sumpter gave uh even

those people in the north who

were ambivalent about secession, it gave

them sort of uh something to rally

around. uh gave them something uh to

look to and say, "Look, uh not only did

they succeed, not only destroying our

Union, uh but now they've fired on on

our soldiers." It was viewed as [music]

treason against the United States. It

was viewed as rebellion. It was viewed

[music] as heresy against the civic

religion of America. And this anger led

to a rise of northern patriotism of uh

unionism. Northern men then rushed to

their recruiting stations to fill the

ranks of local militias to join the

Union Army. That meant that the North

could not imagine

a peaceful solution [music]

to this. Treason is punishable by death

in the common imagination. And as a

result, it was blood and war that would

rectify the situation.

It must have been with some relief that

North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and

Arkansas were welcomed into the

Confederate fold since these four states

were to provide the Confederate army

with half its food and almost a third of

its men. Virginia was also strategically

important to the South, lying as it did

across the PTOAC, close to Washington,

the federal capital. However, many

citizens of Western Virginia were not

crazy about the idea of secession from

the federal government. In fact, that

part of Virginia sent thousands of men

to serve in the Union Army. In 1863, the

western half of the state would itself

secede from Virginia, giving birth to

the new state of Western Virginia.

Likewise, some men from eastern

Tennessee formed their own regiments to

serve in the Union Army. Another

crucial [music] state was Maryland.

>> Sea communications between Washington

and and New York or Boston or

Philadelphia are controlled by Maryland.

You've got to go through Maryland or

Virginia to get to the sea.

And that means that Abe Lincoln could

not afford to lose Maryland to the

Confederacy. And what Abe Lincoln does

is he packs Maryland with so many

northern militia men, so many federal

soldiers that there is no physical way

that Maryland can join the Confederacy.

Even if the Maryland legislature votes

to secede, they cannot physically leave

the Union. And Maryland bows to that

reality and Maryland stays within the

Union as a for the moment slaveowning

state within the United States.

>> Not all Southerners were gripped by

secessionist fervor. Many people [music]

found themselves wrestling with the

terrible dilemma of giving their loyalty

to their country or their state. One

soldier in the Union Army who agonized

over this question was a certain Robert

E. Lee, a man who would [music] play a

central role as the drama of the Civil

War unfolded.

Never a keen secessionist, Lee was

actually offered command of all the

Union forces. But his loyalty to his

native Virginia, against which he

famously said he could not raise his

sword, persuaded him that his rightful

place lay with the Confederate army.

>> Many of the best officers of the United

States Army were southern, including

Robert E. Lee and they resigned their

commissions and went south. And even the

Confederate President Jefferson Davis

was a very experienced soldier from the

Mexican War days. And he was a former

Secretary of War for the United States.

Compare that with the northern

commander-in-chief, Abraham Lincoln,

whose entire military experience

consisted of, I think, 80 days as the

captain of some jackle leg regiment out

in the frontier in Illinois uh during

the Blackhawk Indian Wars. And as he

said, he didn't see any fighting. He

spent most of that time swatting

mosquitoes and running away from the

Indians. So at least the federal

government had the framework uh to to

expand the size of the regular army and

then create a very very large volunteer

force. Um they als they had the

infrastructure uh they had the the

bureaucratic system in Washington to

enable them to do this. The Confederate

government had to start from scratch.

They had none of this. The way they went

about raising their armies uh were to

they they both relied heavily on the

militias, but they opened up recruiting

offices uh and offered bounties to men

who would join their armies for a

certain amount of days. Realizing that

uh you know men aren't going to join for

a year to four years as they would in

the regular army that they needed to get

citizen soldiers who would join for 90

days because the common belief uh

believe it or not was that the war would

only take three months. Each side

believed that they would be able to whip

the other one in in in quick decisive

battles and that this would be a

short-lived war. So therefore they the

recruiters uh signed up men for 90 days

and the states offered bounties. In this

way you had men running to the

recruiters realizing that they could

leave the farm and come back in time to

either harvest the crops or save the

farm from disaster. They wouldn't be

away from their loved ones long. And

since each thought they would be a part

of the superior and victorious army,

they believed [music] they'd come home

to the agilation of loved ones and the

cheers of their nation.

[music]

Perhaps it was the overall aims of both

sides that [music] had the greatest

effect on military thinking. The South

was about to fight a defensive war

because, as Jefferson Davis had [music]

said, it merely wished to be left alone

to live its life. There was no need to

conquer the North to win. What the South

needed to do most [music] of all was to

prevent a conquest by the North.

It was very different for the Federal

Army. The South would have to be subdued

for victory to be won.

The North entered the war with vastly

superior manpower and manufacturing

[music] capabilities than its foe. But

with the same fervor drive its army

forward, it was not, after all, fighting

for [music] its very life, but to

maintain the Union. There were even

those who argued that the North should

not go to war at all and that [music]

the South, which was not

self-sufficient, could be defeated

merely by mounting effective blockades.

>> [music]

>> The northern public were calling for a

quick and decisive victory. A single

glorious triumph that would put the

upstart south in its place and teach it

a lesson. Forward to Richmond was the

cry from some sections of the northern

press for whom revenge for Fort Sumpter

was the minimum requirement.

It was in May 1861 that the first

notable casualty of the war came. Elmer

E. Ellsworth was a colonel in the Union

Army, an attorney by profession and a

personal friend of Abraham Lincoln. He

was shot and killed by the keeper of a

hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, as he

tried to remove a Confederate flag from

its roof. His death gave the North

briefly another martyr.

And [snorts] so the pace quickened still

further until on a roasting July day in

1861, the Union and Confederate armies

finally got their opportunity to face

each other on the battlefield. To the

soldiers of the South, the battle was

called Manasses, but in the north it was

known as Bull Run.

>> The first three months after Fort

Sumpter were really a strange time for

both armies. I mean these two nations

were supposedly at war yet no battles

had been fought.

So both armies were really in limbo.

And the first thing for both sides was

the protection of their capital cities.

And this was especially important for

the south since they'd moved their

capital north from Montgomery to

Richmond.

And so this place uh Manasses is about

75 miles north of Richmond. And it was

strategically very important. I mean two

major railroads met there at Manasses

junction and there was a set of roads

leading out into all directions.

So this was the place where the

Confederates deployed their first troops

in order to protect their capital and

also to secure this strategic location.

Both sides believe that their two armies

are going to approach each other and

fight a grand decisive battle that will

go largely according to the plans of the

commanders.

In reality, none of this happens. So,

everybody goes out thinking that there's

going to be a grand Napoleonic battle.

And just as French people did for the

battle of of Sedon in 1870, not long

after, spectators came out to watch.

They assumed that it would be a

Napoleonic style battle held on a

battlefield between armies with no

involvement of non-combatants. Well, why

not go out and watch? And the result was

that when nothing goes according to

plan, the spectators are are caught up

in the Union retreat and and and some

some congressmen, including one from

from Rochester, New York, are uh are

captured.

Bull Run Manasses, the first battle

there goes according to plan for nobody

in any possible way. Bull Run was an

eyeopener and a surprise to everyone

involved.

>> When the fighting began, there was early

success for the federal forces. At 9:30

a.m., General McDow ordered his army of

northeastern Virginia across the Bullrun

stream, [music] and they smashed into

the Confederate positions.

One by one, the Confederate lines began

to crumble, and men began to flee, much

to the joy of the Union soldiers, some

of whom could be heard crying that the

South was beaten and the war was over.

However, they had not reckoned on the

brigade at the center of the Confederate

positions, commanded by the Virginia,

Thomas Jackson. These troops had

recently arrived from General [music]

Joseph E. Johnson's army of the

Shannondoa, and they refused to give

way, holding firm against the Union

attacks.

"Look men, there is Jackson standing

like a stone wall," cried General B of

South Carolina as his own troops

faltered in the face of the oncoming

[music] federal troops. "A turning point

in the battle had been reached, and the

legend of Stonewall Jackson was born.

Suddenly, the federal tide was stemmed

[music] and the fighting began to eb and

flow across the battlefield. Then more

Confederate [music] forces under the

command of General Joe Johnson began to

appear and the arrival of these new

fresh troops had a dramatic effect on

the exhausted, [music]

hungry, and thirsty Union soldiers. It

was 4 in the afternoon. Sensing that the

moment had come, General Boligard

organized a huge Confederate attack on

the Union lines and the southern troops

swarmed forward.

Incredibly, given the events of the

morning, the federal lines broke and the

northern troops were soon in full

retreat. The panicstricken route became

known later in the north as the great

skiadle. The southern army that had been

a whisker from defeat had now won total

victory and Washington, the capital of

the Union lay undefended before them. In

light of the uh disorderly retreat of

the northern army uh at the battle of

Manasses, a lot of people are surprised

that the uh southern army did not push

on and capture Washington. But this is

the first battle. You're you're you're

dealing with uh amateur uh troops and

you're dealing with uh a southern

confederacy that uh whose strategy is

more to wage a war of attrition in which

they would force the uh northern uh the

federal army to bleed itself and uh and

and sue for and then and then allow the

southerners to sue for peace than to

actually wage an offensive war to

capture Washington.

>> This was not to be seen as a war of

southern aggression. All we want is to

be left alone. Those were his words and

that's what he wanted the world to

believe.

But also I think first Borrun Manasses

was such a muddle, such a mess that it

took quite a while for even the

Confederate commanders to realize that

they gained the victory. I think at one

point Jefferson Davis actually rode up

on horseback from the rear and he looked

around and he couldn't tell whether he

was looking at victory or defeat.

And one of the uh Confederate generals

there, Joe Johnston, later said that the

southern forces seemed to be more

disorganized by their victory than the

Federals were by their defeat.

Bullr Run First Manasses [music] had

seen 4,500

men killed, seriously wounded, or taken

prisoner from both sides.

But as the fighting wore on, even these

figures would pale when compared to the

[music] casualties at battles such as

Shiloh, Antitum, Gettysburg, and

Fredericksburg.

The events of July 1861 gave the

politicians, the military, and the

public a severe jolt. [snorts] The war

was obviously not going to be won or

lost [music] in a day. It was going to

be a long, hard road. The South was

rocked by disagreements [music] between

those within the military that urged

that the Southern Army attack Washington

without delay and the more cautious

voices that were being heard in

Richmond. In the north, General McDow

paid the price for the disaster at

Manasses when the popular George B.

Mlelen replaced him.

In [music] 1861, the coastal war also

begins to take shape. uh the Union Navy,

which which is growing larger uh by the

month, uh will begin to uh

blockade the southern the southern coast

and along the Gulf Coast and then up the

Mississippi River. This is the Union

Navy, applying pressure, squeezing the

life out of the Confederacy, while Union

armies begin to apply pressure at

different points.

>> Lincoln's blockade of the South got off

to a shaky start. it was porous and and

there were many uh blockade runners,

merchant ships that were getting through

fairly easily. So many people

particularly in Europe were calling it

the paper blockade. You know, it worked

well on paper but it wasn't actually

working well at sea. Now towards the end

of 1861 the federal navy was able to

secure some important coastal ports like

uh Hatteris and North Carolina and ship

island in the Gulf, Port Royal in South

Carolina and some others. So they were

able to strengthen the blockade uh

towards the end of 1861. But the

blockade was also sending mixed signals

politically and especially to the one

power that both Lincoln and Davis

desperately wanted to court and that was

Great Britain. And the problem was this

that in order to forstall

European recognition of the Confederacy,

Lincoln maintained from the beginning

that this was not a war between two

powers. It was merely a domestic

insurrection to be put down locally. It

was a purely internal affair. And so a

number of prominent people in Europe,

particularly Britain, were saying,

"Well, all right, if this is just a

domestic insurrection, a local affair,

then what in the world is the president

of the United States doing blockading

his own people? That's an act of

barbarity."

And they argued that if Lincoln wanted

them to respect the blockade as

legitimate war measure under

international maritime law, then he in

turn would have to admit that the

Confederacy was in fact a legitimate

belligerent power with all the rights

that are due to them from other neutral

nations at war. So in effect, the

blockade was giving the Confederacy more

legitimacy than Lincoln actually wanted

them to have.

During the early weeks and months of

1862,

the thoughts of both sides turned more

sharply to the prosecution of the war at

sea. The fact was that in the mid 19th

century, America was far from being a

naval power. When war came, the Federal

and Confederate navies were as

chronically unprepared as their armies,

and the race for supremacy of the seas

soon began.

It was a huge task. One thing, though,

was abundantly clear to all. The old

wooden ships could not hope to withstand

a bombardment from the new artillery

shells.

>> Throughout the 19th century, guns get

more accurate. Guns get more powerful

and are quicker to reload, relay, and

fire.

And that means that ships have got to

deal with other ships and with shore

batteries that have got stronger and

stronger guns in them. The Confederates

develop an ironclad ship, the

Confederate States ship Virginia, which

was built on the hall of the old USS

Marramac.

And it's got guns poking out of gunports

all along its sides and four and a half.

And it it's got a ram in it because 19th

century Americans were tremendous

classicists and they love the idea of of

reviving the classical ram.

And they're going to use this to break

the Union blockade. This thing steamed

out of Hampton Road and immediately

began to engage the the wooden Union

warships that were protecting the supply

ships and other vessels that were

supplying George Mlen's army. And the

Virginia immediately begins to sink and

set fire to some of these ships.

>> It was not a seaorthy vessel. It was a

barge. It could barely move. It sailed

like a pig, but it had a lot of guns and

it was covered with iron.

>> Luckily for the United States Navy and

for the US Army operating peninsula,

naval uh experts had thought about this

earlier and they came up with their own

contraption.

It was the brainchild of a Swedish

inventor by the name of John Ericson. It

was called the USS Monitor.

The monitor put its guns in a rotating

turret, which was new. It had almost no

freeboard. That is, it it didn't stick

out above the water much, which was new.

All the accommodation

and and running gear and everything was

below decks and below the water line,

which was new. It was the first perhaps

the first modern warship.

>> USS Monitor's mission was was limited to

one thing. protect the Union fleet in

Hampton Road and that it did well. It

fought the CSS Virginia to a standstill.

Uh the Virginia went back into port and

never to be seen in active operations

again.

>> These two concepts, the the southern

idea of taking a lot of thick sheet

metal uh and and thick rails actually

bolting it onto the outside of a ship

and using it as a gun barge. and the

northern idea of completely radicalizing

naval design both come from the

different bases that the North and the

South had to work on. The North could

start with a new engineering concept.

They could build a new hull. They could

build a new engine. They could build a

rotating turret. The North could do all

these things because the North had an

industrial base. They had more than one

steel mill, more than one shipyard. They

had engineers who had practiced naval

architecture in the north for years.

What did the South have? The South had

one steel mill. They had almost a

shipyard. At any one time, the

Confederacy can take its entire steel

output and build an almost useful pig of

a ship.

And in the long term, that means

that however good their their captains

are and however heavily gunned these

barges are, the Confederacy cannot beat

the Union Navy at sea.

>> Despite the drama of the clashes on the

southern coastline, the main focus of

the war during the early months of 1862

was still, of course, the battle on

land. For the North, still smarting from

the events of the previous summer, there

was at last some good tidings when news

came of the capture of Fort Henry and

Fort Donaldelsson, two major Confederate

positions in Tennessee. The architect of

these victories was Ulyses S. Grant, a

man who was destined to cast a long

shadow over the remainder of the war.

Nothing except unconditional and

immediate surrender can be accepted, he

told the Confederate commander at

Donelsson. And another Civil War legend

was given life. Unconditional surrender

Grant was promoted to major general and

the northern press had a new, if

unlikely, hero.

>> Now, the South went into deep shock and

mourning when the first of their state

capitals was evacuated.

And the Union despair at Bullrun

Manasses was transformed overnight into

giddy elation. Plus these momentous

Union victories

which gained the North such extensive

southern territory and control sent a

very sobering signal to any European

powers considering intervening on the

side of the Confederacy.

The scene was now set for one of the

bloodiest episodes of the entire war. It

came on April 6th, 1862,

a beautiful Sunday morning along the

banks of the Tennessee River in

southwestern Tennessee.

The place was near Shiloh Church. In

Hebrew, it means tranquility.

Never can a place have been given such

an inappropriate name.

>> God grant that I may never see such

scenes again.

>> Their canonade was like a mighty

hurricane sweeping all before it.

>> The Battle of Shiloh, which was called

the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing in the

North uh was the bloodiest battle of the

war to point. It pitted two huge armies

[music] against each other. Both of

these armies were relatively green

though. Uh especially the Confederate

army which was under the command of

General Albert Sydney Johnston. [music]

Uh the battle began uh early in the

morning. Uh the Union forces literally

were were caught basically just getting

out of their tents as they're fixing

breakfast. uh they should have known

that the Confederates were getting ready

to attack.

>> And Grant was just stunned. He didn't

expect so soon after his victories at

Fort Henry and Donaldson to have to face

this onslaught of 40,000 Confederate

troops. But an attack does come and the

first day of the Battle of Shiloh goes

totally against the Union [music]

forces. Uh at the battle of what's

what's called the Battle of the Hornets

Nest, uh a Union brigade gets

surrounded. Uh, Confederate artillery is

brought up and they blast the Union

defenders almost at point blank range.

Uh, the Union Brigade that fights there

though is able to uh to buy time for the

Union Army to regroup. Uh, luckily

nightfall sets in [music] and luckily

for US Grant who's back at Pittsburgh

Landing on the Tennessee River. Uh,

luckily for him, Union reinforcements

begin to arrive during the night.

They're shuttled across the river by the

Union Navy. uh and he is able to launch

a massive counterattack the next day and

is able to get back all of the ground

that he had lost from the previous day

[music] and force the Confederates to

evacuate the field. So although Shiloh

is a near-run thing, it is still a

pretty clear-cut victory for the North

and another laurel for US Grant to put

in his hat. But the the but the cost was

staggering. uh tens of thousands of

casualties on both sides. Uh the field

was was literally crawling with wounded

men. Uh the the bloodiest battle uh that

any you any US army any army that the

United States or the Confederate States

could could feel up to that time. It's

the bloodiest battle they ever fought

in. But more was yet to come. The

suffering of the poor wounded on both

sides during the wild night of April 6th

and 7th is hard to comprehend. As the

surgeons worked like fury, piles of

bloody amputated limbs began to form.

Horrific testimonies to the ferocity of

the fighting. It was said that wild pigs

from the surrounding woods feasted on

the bodies of the dead and dying.

Battle was rejoined the following

morning, but now 25,000 reinforcements

had arrived to bolster the Union side,

and the Confederate army's attacks were

repulsed. By the afternoon of Monday,

April 7th, they were in full retreat,

and a long line of beaten and battered

southern soldiers stretched some 7 miles

back towards the town of Corinth.

Perhaps the federal troops should have

given chase, but they were simply too

exhausted and disorganized.

Nearly 4,000 dead men littered the

battlefield at Shiloh. 2,000 more were

mortally [music] wounded. The blood bath

had been the worst of the war by far,

and the endless lists of dead and

wounded came as a horrible shock to both

sides.

overall and in spite of the ambiguity of

that battle, you know, all the

attrition, all the bloodletting,

the military position for the North was

strengthened. You know, Shiloh

consolidated the uh the the northern

victories at Fort Donaldelsson and Fort

Henry, and it hit Confederate morale and

let the Federals know that for the most

part, they were the ones who'd be in

charge of the Western Theater. If the

defeat at Shiloh had been a setback for

the Confederacy in the West, more bad

news came from the deep south. As a

result of a brilliant tactical maneuver

by federal ships under the command of

flag officer David G. Farragut, New

Orleans, the largest city in the

Confederacy, had fallen without a shot

being fired. What was more and just as

bad, Baton Rouge had also surrendered,

as had Nachez, Mississippi.

Only in the eastern theater did things

look a little better for the south. But

in the early spring of 1862, even the

situation there was bleak. Luckily for

the south, Lincoln and Mlen could not

agree on union strategy.

And in the Shannondoa Valley, Stonewall

Jackson's [music] inspired and brilliant

leadership was making him a hero to the

people of the South.

We've received some mixed images of

Jackson down through the years which

really indicate how complex a figure he

was.

I think first and perhaps most

frivolously, you've got Jackson, the

eccentric, you know, the goofball, the

um the one who his own troops call crazy

Tom.

>> He did things which are downright weird.

He uh he was convinced that if he didn't

hold one arm up in the air all the time,

all the blood would pull in it and um he

would therefore sit around with one one

arm in the air all the time. This is the

Jackson who, you know, who won't eat

pepper because it makes his left leg

hurt. You know, the one who's always

sucking on lemons in order to cure his

sour stomach. Perhaps this is the uh

Jackson

who seems to have a direct line to God,

you know, like John Brown said he had,

you know, so he gets a divine

inspiration for his military strategies.

And then I think most importantly,

you've got the military strategist, the

military professor, which he was.

>> He was a stern taskmaster and a

risktaker. uh his ability to march his

troops over long distances uh in a short

amount of time earned him uh a lot of

accolade. In fact, his unit was called

Jackson's Foot Cavalry. Uh he was not

afraid to fight. He wasn't afraid to

take a risk and therefore his uh his

tactics and strategies are in line with

those of his commander, General Robert

E. Lee. He was an absolutely useless

lecturer in military science but a

brilliant practitioner of military

science. He suddenly became

almost a textbook military genius.

While the Jackson legend continued to

grow, Mlelen's cautious progress on the

Virginia Peninsula was earning him the

nickname the Virginia Creeper. Lincoln

had become angry and frustrated by the

slow speed of the Union advance towards

the Confederate capital of Richmond.

Although to be fair to Mlelen, terrible

weather was hindering the movement of

the Union troops. Less understandable

perhaps was the constant suspicion of

the Union commander that his enemy

outnumbered him.

Eventually, Mlelen's troops pushed on to

within 5 miles of the Confederate

capital. Inside the city, there was

chaos as the people feared the worst.

Even Jefferson Davis's government

prepared to pack up and leave.

It fell to Joe Johnson to march his men

south of the Chikah River, where they

fought a savage two-day battle at Fair

Oaks. In the south, the battle was known

as seven pines, and it cost the southern

army 6,000 casualties, one of whom was

Johnson himself, [music] who received

serious wounds. The North, meanwhile,

suffered the loss of 5,000 men, and

Mlelen pleaded with Lincoln for

reinforcements that were not

forthcoming.

The Battle of Fair Oaks was

inconclusive, and it left Davis without

a commander for the defense of Richmond.

It did not seem so at the time, but the

Confederate president's appointment of

his senior military adviser, Robert E.

Lee, as replacement for the wounded

Johnson, was something of a master

stroke. Well, Robert E. Lee certainly is

considered one of the greatest generals

in American history. Lee was a very

wellrespected man in both armies. But I

think one of the reasons why Lee is held

in such high regard among military

historians today is because of his great

leadership qualities, his willingness to

take calculated risks, his willingness

to lead from the front if need be, and

also because of his great character and

morality.

Lee was soon on the counterattack

starting at Mechanicsville on June 26th

on a campaign that was to become known

as the seven days.

>> To put it into perspective is is

necessary to understand uh the uh leader

the uh general and chief of the northern

army. Mlen was a West Pointer like many

of them and he was well-versed in

tactics and a good disciplinarian and in

fact he whipped the army of the battoic

into a good professional fighting force.

They looked beautiful. They drilled well

and they were prepared for battle.

However, as time went on, Mlen, who was

initially arrogant and overconfident,

became frightened. He was afraid to go

into battle. He was afraid of what would

happen if he lost. He was so

overconfident that he was afraid of

losing at this point. Finally, Lincoln

started to push him. He he threatened to

even to remove him if he didn't make a

move to just cross the river and attack

the Confederates.

Well, Mlullen came up with a plan. He

would enter Richmond instead of

attacking the army. He would capture

Richmond by uh going up the Battoomeacic

and entering Richmond through the back.

He'd go down the York Rivers. And so in

doing so, he'd come into Richmond

through the back door. Detecting this

move and the possibility of other

movements, uh Roberty Lee called his

forces in around Richmond to protect

Richmond. When Mlen arrives, he

encounters a Confederate force which he

overestimates in size. He acts too

cautiously and throughout this campaign

he doesn't throw his full weight against

Richmond. Likewise, Lee and his

commanders are afraid that the Union

forces would be able to over overwhelm

them and break through. What will occur

next is that he finally after after

several losses, which aren't that

decisive. I mean, he almost overwhelms

the um the Confederate forces in se at

se several at several times, Gaines

Mills and and Fair Oaks, but he begins

to pull back towards Harrison's landing

where the Navy can protect him. At that

point, Lee and his forces begin to take

the offensive, sensing his fear. Like an

animal, they attack. At this point, he

starts to pull back and the campaign is

over. Richmond is safe. Mlen has [music]

failed. Failed not because he didn't

have the resources. He failed because of

fear.

The 7 days campaign saw yet more

terrible bloodshed and appalling losses

on both sides. More than 30,000 men were

killed, wounded, or captured. The bloody

battles of the previous three months had

brought another unwelcome dimension to

the fighting, that of the need for

revenge. Both the Union and Confederate

armies had now suffered defeats and

reverses that needed to be avenged, and

as a result, the prospect of peace

disappeared even further into the

distance. The war was now more than a

year old, and the North and the South

were staring into an abyss.

in order for the Confederacy

to stop what is starting to look more

and more like a Union steamroller,

very well provided for, very wellfed,

very wellarmed, that is rolling

southwards along the line of the Orange

and Alexandria Railway.

Lee needs to force the Union to defend

itself.

And

at the second battle of Bull Run, second

Manasses,

what Lee and Jackson succeed in doing

is forcing the Union onto the defensive

by attacking their supply lines by going

for the key Manasses Junction supply

depot. There were seven days of fighting

in and around Bull Run and at the end of

it and for the first time in the war

it's the Confederates who are poised as

the invading army. John Pope and his

troops fought a rear guard action all

the way back to Washington near about.

So this meant that with an army half the

size of the combined northern forces,

Robert E. was able to push that war

right back to Lincoln's doorstep to

within 20 m of Washington.

>> In September 1862, the spotlight was

once more turned onto the state of

Maryland. Lee, as bold as ever, was

determined to follow up on the victory

at Second Manasses by taking the war to

the front porch of the Union. And there

was genuine hope now on the southern

side, rising mainly from what appeared

to be the crumbling state of the Union.

Disagreements and divisions, both

military and political, an upcoming

election that the Republicans were far

from certain of winning, all combined to

convince the Confederate army that one

last push might bring the entire shaky

northern edifice crashing down.

So it was that on September 14th, 1862,

50,000 troops of the Army of Northern

Virginia crossed the PTOAC River into

Maryland. They were a mere 30 m from

Washington, and this time it was the

federal capital that was thrown into a

panic.

Politically, an invasion of the North

might just tip the balance enough to uh

to bring along European recognition of

the Confederacy, which was still being

withheld. And also, I think most

importantly, as Lee himself proposed to

Jefferson Davis, an invasion of the

North would enable the Confederacy to

hold out an olive branch from a position

of strength without making it seem like

an act of southern aggression. The idea

was to encourage the northern anti-war

faction to boot Lincoln and the

Republicans out of office and to elect a

peace faction which would agree to an

amicable separation rather than to

prolong the war. And the only way to do

this was to invade Maryland. And he

sought to do this in 1862 at a place

called Antidum. Now, the battlefield

wasn't at his choosing, but his plans

were discovered uh by federal troops, a

federal patrol. They found a package on

the ground, a package carelessly left by

a Confederate officer. And this package

contained three cigars wrapped in the

secret orders in Lee's secret orders.

And when they opened up the package,

took out the cigars, and read the

orders, they could return them. and

federal officers knew exactly where and

what Lee was doing, and they were

prepared for him.

At 6:00 a.m. on September 17th, 1862,

federal forces hurled themselves upon

the Confederate left flank, attacking

Stonewall Jackson's troops through a

cornfield that stood between them and

their objective.

Amid scenes of the most shocking

carnage, it seemed that the Union troops

were about to take their objective. But

a frantic counterattack by General John

Bell Hood's division drove them back

into the cornfield.

15 times in 4 hours, the cornfield

changed hands. 8,000 men fell trying to

secure it for their side.

As the fighting raged on the Confederate

left flank, a bitter struggle was also

developing in its center. Here was

[music] a natural sunken road, a fine

defensive position for the southern

troops, and a place that was to earn the

chilling epithet, Bloody Lane.

The best way to characterize this

fighting, it's a standup knockdown

bloody fight. Union brigades will be

brought up. They will be brought

directly in front of the Confederates

defending the lane and they will stand

there and just slug it out with

Confederates of course have an advantage

in that they are being protected from

this [music] natural breast work of the

sunken lane. They've knocked down the

Virginia snake rail fences that run

along the the length of the lane and

they're using that as breast works too.

But the Union forces [music] are coming

in on higher ground and eventually and

because they have more forces, they will

envelop the Confederate flanks and

because that higher position will force

the Confederates to eventually retreat.

As the Union forces pursue the the

vanquished Confederates, they will cross

through this lane, which is littered

with hundreds of dead and wounded

Confederate soldiers. So many that most

first person accounts say that you could

walk from one end of the lane to the

other without [music] stepping on the

ground, just by stepping on the bodies

of the dead and the wounded.

Meanwhile, on the Confederate right

[music] flank, 500 southern troops dug

in on high ground were holding back

12,500

Union troops under [music] General

Ambrose Burnside as they tried to take a

stone bridge over Antitum [music] Creek.

Despite heavy losses, they eventually

managed to scatter the southern troops.

But as the victorious Yankees pushed

[music] on and were about to envelop the

Confederate line, reinforcements in the

shape of the Confederate light division

under AP Hill arrived to rip into the

left flank of Burnside's men. True to

form, Mlelen refused to run the risk of

sending reinforcements to aid Burnside,

informing his desperate comrade that it

would not be prudent.

September 17th, 1862 would go down as

the single bloodiest day in American

history. 8,000 men had been killed or

mortally wounded. 15,000 more received

severe wounds.

Lee's battered army was forced back

across the PTOAC, thus ending the threat

to Washington. Mlen now had the

opportunity to press home the advantage

by pursuing the exhausted southern army

across the river. But even a personal

visit from Abraham Lincoln was not

enough to convince the northern

commander of the need for swift and

decisive action.

>> George Mlen is a very cautious,

deliberate commander, and even when he

is on the offensive, even when he's got

the enemy on the run, it is not in him

to pursue. Mlelen views his army as

being the last

reserve of the last army of the

republic. That's why he doesn't press

his advantage at Antidum. And that's why

he doesn't pursue Robert E. Lee.

>> As battered and beaten as Lee's army was

after the Battle of Antidum, the Army of

the Battoic under Mlullen was just as

battered. And you have to keep in mind

that this army was a relatively new

organization. It was the old army of the

battoic from the peninsula campaign

compi com combined with the army of

Virginia after second manasses. In

addition, new regiments were filtering

into the army regiments that are being

recruited in the summer of 1862.

In addition, there were quite a few

losses in general officers during this

campaign. Uh, one general at South

Mountain was killed. A core commander,

General Joseph Mansfield was killed on

September 17th. Uh, another core

commander, General Joseph Hooker, was

seriously wounded uh, during the fight

of the cornfield. Uh, General Israel

Richardson, a division commander in the

second core, is mortally wounded. And so

the losses of these general officers

plus the the general losses among the

men, the many losses among the men, the

new staffs, the new organization and a

and a less than aggressive general in

the likes of George Mlen. All these

factors combined. Plus, don't forget

Mlen the whole time thinks that Robert

E. Lee outnumbers him. Otherwise, why

would he have divided his forces earlier

in the campaign? Why would he have taken

undertaken this invasion of Northern

Territory? So all that combined will

prevent George Mlen from being audacious

and aggressively pursuing Lee.

For Lincoln, the lost opportunity that

had been purchased at such a high price

at Antum was the final straw. Now

certain that Mlelen was not up to the

job after he made countless excuses for

not aggressively pursuing his beaten

foe, Lincoln relieved the northern

commander of his duties on November 7th.

On September 22nd, just 5 days after the

blood bath at Antitum, President Lincoln

issued his Emancipation Proclamation,

which declared that from January 1863,

all slaves in states still engaged in

rebellion against the Union would be

free. The proclamation stopped short of

abolishing slavery altogether, as many

had hoped. Others cynically [music]

questioned the practical value of

legislation that promised change in

areas not controlled by federal forces.

>> The Emancipation Proclamation or some

call it the preliminary Emancipation

Proclamation was issued September 22nd,

1862.

And what the proclamation states is that

uh any state that is still in rebellion

as of January 1st, 1863

will lose its slaves. In other words,

Lincoln as commanderin-chief of the

armies will emancipate the slaves in

those states that are still in rebellion

as of January 1st, 1863.

This serves a diplomatic purpose because

England cannot

recognize the slaveolding confederacy

in a war for emancipation.

And this makes emancipation a war aim of

the north.

Likewise, what it says to the

Confederacy, if you give up, if the

state comes back to us now, slavery will

be protected. And they have an example

of that. Maryland in 1862 is still a

slave state bordering on Washington DC.

And those fugitive slaves that run from

Maryland are promptly returned to their

slaveholders.

Now there's a third aspect of this this

emancipation proclamation which will

change the United States military and

the United States forever.

It allows, as of January 1st, 1863,

the enlistment of African-Ameans

into the United States Army, and they

will heed that call. Over 175,000

will serve in Uncle Sam's army for the

cause of their death.

If Shiloh had given the entire country a

rude awakening, Antitum came as a

further shock to both the North and the

South. President Jefferson Davis's

popularity, which had never been

particularly high, plunged to new

depths, and the military and political

differences between the leaders of the

Confederacy began to widen. Conscription

[music] introduced in 1862 was a deeply

unpopular policy and it is thought that

nearly half of those men in the South

who were drafted ignored or avoided the

call. To add to [music] the grim mood,

the shortages brought about by the Union

blockade began to bite and prices

soared. Travel within the Confederate

States became a virtual impossibility,

not least because miles of railroad

track had been torn up. In the north,

the emancipation proclamation was not

popular, and the high casualties from

the summer and fall campaigns cast a

gloom over the northern public. In

addition, northern state governments

also began drafting men into the

military.

Mlelen's replacement as commander of the

army of the PTOAC was General Ambrose

Burnside, the man who had been in

command of the Union left flank at

Antitum Creek.

as overall commander. His first

encounter with Robert E. Lee was in

December 1862 [music]

at Frederick'sburg, Virginia. It was

here that 172,000

troops faced each other in combat,

[music] the greatest number in any

battle during the American Civil War.

A chicken could not have lived upon that

field when we opened up on it.

We might as well have tried to take

hell.

>> Basically, Burnside got the jump on

Robert E. Lee and got his army to the

banks of the Rapahanic River while

Roberty E. Lee was nowhere around. They

don't He doesn't have his troops into

place until December. It's a cold and

windy December. He has to cross rivers

and he needs pontoon bridges and they're

being bought up slowly and there's it's

a wet December. So there's alternately

mud and ice that the soldiers have to

trudge through and cold that they have

to deal with. The problem was that the

pontoon boats weren't coming and it took

a long time for Ambrose Burnside to get

his pontoons and that meant that he

wasn't able to build his bridges on

schedule and that meant that the rebels

had time to quite deliberately

build some excellent firing positions

with two cores up on Marie's Heights

overlooking the Union crossings at

Fredericksburg. Still, Ambrose Burnside

realizes that the reason why he's

relieved of that why his predecessors

relieved of command, George Mlen, is

because he wasn't aggressive enough in

launching offensive campaign. So, he

knew he had to attack before winter set

in. Problem is now Lee knows what what

he wants to do and it's much easier to

defend than it is to attack. And by the

time Burnside gets his bridges built and

starts crossing, the whole rebel army is

sitting on top of Marie's Heights at

Fredericksburg, firing down from the

front and from the flank on the Union as

they cross.

>> The Union forces cross the Rapahhanic,

go through Fredericksburg, and confront

the the Confederate forces at Mayor's

height. But the problem they have is

that they're at the foot of a hill. So

what do they do? Burnside orders the

attack. Anyway, the Union [music]

forces begin marching line of breast

brigade by brigade across the open space

between the town and Marie's Heights.

And the rebels are standing behind a uh

a slightly sunken road behind a uh a

stout stone wall in a [music]

natural trench system to the front and

to the flank. They're [music] they're

along a a ridge, a bare ridge that can

fire into into the flank of the Union

[music] forces as they walk up this

hill. And they just march up the hill

towards that sunken road and they're

massacred. Brigade by brigade in dribbs

and drabs, Burnside sends [music] his

troops up this gentle slope where there

is no cover except one little ditch and

they are massacred as they try to climb

[music] the heights to Fredericksburg.

>> Now some people don't think of it as

much of a massacre, but that's what it

was. Uh they charge and charge and

charge again into Confederate rifle fire

until finally Burnside and his [music]

officers realize that they will not be

able to rob the Confederate forces and

they retreat.

We tend sometimes to place all our

emphasis on [music] the Eastern theater

of war. Hemp the Battle of

Fredericksburg uh generally is seen as

the final big battle of 1862,

but it wasn't. In the western theater of

war, in the Tennessee theater, another

battle was taking shape. And that battle

is going to be called the Battle of

Murreey'sboro by the Confederates or the

Battle of Stones River by the Union.

Here between December 31st, 1862 [music]

and January 2nd, 1863,

the Confederate General Braxton Bragg,

commanding the Army of Tennessee, faced

the Union General William S. Rose,

[music] commander of the Army of the

Cumberland.

Appalling weather preceded a confusing

and bloody battle marked by massive

[music]

Confederate frontal attacks against

Union positions. In the face of heavy

losses, the Confederates continued to

charge and on January [music] 2nd were

pummeled by Union artillery as they

crossed Stones River. Despite 13,000

Union casualties, [music] Lincoln was

desperate to claim the victory.

And so the [music] bloody year of 1862

came to a close.

For all the pain and [music] suffering,

deprivation and hardship, broken bodies

and makeshift graves, [music]

was an end to the war any nearer. It

seemed not.

In the north, a poor showing in the

November elections and the disaster at

Fredericksburg had put Lincoln under

enormous pressure. Some thought the

strain was beginning to tell.

In the south, the victory at

Fredericksburg had come as [music] a

welcome boost. And anyway, there was

little else to do but carry on. Already,

thousands of sons of the South had died

to preserve the southern way of life.

The Confederacy had come within a hair's

breadth of defeat, and within touching

distance of victory.

The war was not even halfway through,

and the sacrifices made by the men and

women of the North and the South were

far from over. In fact, though few would

have believed it possible, matters were

to get steadily worse.

After more than 18 months of

increasingly intense and bitter

fighting, the new year of 1863

brought no prospect of relief for the

Union and the Confederacy.

With the bloodshed at Shiloh, the seven

days, second Manasses, and Antitum still

fresh in the memory, [music] the costly

defeat at Frederick'sburg during

December 1862 had come as a terrible

shock to the north

and had naturally raised the spirits of

the embattled south. But throughout the

land, war weariness was spreading. This

was particularly so in the north, where

even news of the close victory at

Storm's River at the beginning of the

new year did little to raise public

morale.

After the slaughter at Fredericksburg,

the hospitals of Washington [music] were

full to overflowing. The cost of the war

in dollars continued to rise with each

passing day, [music] meaning taxes in

the Union states had to be increased.

Perhaps not surprisingly, [music]

army recruitment dropped off

dramatically.

These [music] factors, among many

others, contributed to the growing

disillusionment with the war throughout

the north. Many of the voices that had

once cried forward to Richmond were now

heard wondering aloud if victory should

be won at [music] any price.

Despite [music] all this, there was to

be no end to the fighting. The fact was

that too many lives had already been

lost for [music] either side to turn

back. Those who called the shots were

determined to forge ahead to win their

[music] victory. This was total war.

[ __ ] the boys.

Cheer up they will come and beneath the

starry flag [music] we shall breathe the

air again of the free land in our own

beloved [singing] home.

The strategic situation during the

winter of 1863

basically saw most of the major armies

staring at each other. Uh very little

maneuvering and fighting going on.

>> The Confederacy

is running out of money, running out of

human resources, and running out of

military supplies. The Confederacy must

act to end the war as rapidly as

possible early in 1863. They're not

getting any bigger. They're not getting

any stronger. They have to fight the war

to a conclusion right away.

>> Lincoln had in command of the Western

Theater sort of a pack of I think

incompetent politically appointed

generals.

While the man who would become his best

general, uh, Ulissiz Grant was sitting

there virtually unused, ignored, I think

he was being punished for the high cost

of Shiloh.

>> 1863 is going to be disastrous for the

Confederacy. Roberty Lee, uh, at the

point at the beginning, he's he's going

to, uh, be drunk somewhat on victory.

He's still quite a risk taker, but it is

his risk takingaking that's going to

hurt him in the long run.

This morning we found ourselves covered

with snow that had fallen during the

night. It is too cold to ride. How I

would like to have one of those on to

Richmond fellas out here with us in the

snow.

I can't tell you how many dead I did

see. One thing's for sure. I don't want

to see [music] that sight no more.

>> This is the time when Lincoln is

confiding privately to his friends, we

are on the brink of destruction. Even

God is against us and I cannot see a ray

of hope. Jefferson Davis has a ray of

hope still which is European recognition

of the Confederacy still.

And his greatest headache like Lincoln's

is domestic opposition to the draft. The

southern draft exempted one white man

from every plantation with more than 20

slaves, which in effect meant that the

bulk of the fighting for the South was

being done by poor white men. So here

you had the interests of that plantation

elite, the planter class,

going against the interests of southern

unity, and the cracks were beginning to

show.

The cold, wet winter months of early

1863

forced a restbite from the fighting on

both the Union and Confederate armies.

Quite apart from the bitter cold, roads

turned into a quagmire of mud, making

movement almost impossible. And so the

troops of the northern and southern

armies had [music] to hunker down and

await the spring sunshine.

Not that the lack of action lessened the

pressure or eased the difficulties faced

by the soldiers. Huge numbers of men

living in cramped conditions with poor

sanitation meant only two things:

illness and disease. Now it was not

Yankee or rebel bullets that were

decimating the ranks, but dysentery,

dtheria, measles, and scarlet fever.

>> Well, disease was the great killer of

the Civil War. A lot of the problem was

poor sanitation in the camps. Men

drinking water that was contaminated.

Men who came from rural areas suddenly

thrust together with men from the

cities. These young men from the rural

areas had never been exposed to common

childhood diseases and thus they were

very susceptible to catching that. A lot

of the soldiers themselves didn't

understand how to maintain a sanitary

campground. So you would have situations

in which regiments camped along a river

and soldiers would throw their refuse

into the river or they would build their

latrines close to the river and waste

materials would seep into the water.

That means for the troops downstream the

water wasn't as healthy and it led to uh

certain diseases such as uh dysentery

uh and chalera and that sort of thing.

>> Medical provision for sick and wounded

men in both armies was rudimentary at

best. Germ theory had not yet been

discovered. There was little

appreciation of the need for hygiene,

and field hospitals often did little

more than speed the wounded soldiers to

their graves.

Their grim reputation spread throughout

the ranks of the blue and gray. And

there are recorded instances of wounded

men refusing to leave the battlefield,

preferring to take their chances there

rather than face almost certain death at

the hands of an army surgeon. When

people are hospitalized,

they are at the mercy of [snorts] 19th

century traditional heroic medicine

and the interventions

that were conducted in the 19th century,

the amputations,

the the chunks of of your insides that

they were prepared to haul out for for

bizarre reasons. It's shocking. I mean,

this was a time when people thought

there must be a cure for everything. And

perhaps the more violent and foul the

cure, the more likely it was to work. uh

when you were wounded, you were uh at at

a tremendous risk of post-operative

infection, shock from being operated on

without anesthesia or with with

primitive anesthesia and then afterwards

contracting communicable disease in one

of the huge unsanitary hospitals that

were being run at the time.

There were other factors that affected

morale among ordinary troops. Sheer

boredom was one. Having little to do

gave men time to think about family,

hearth, and home. A homesick man was not

the best fighting soldier.

An army, it is said, marches on its

stomach. Filling the stomachs of Civil

War soldiers with the right food, or in

the case of the South, any food at all,

was a constant problem.

The marching rations of the northern

troops were salt pork, pickled beef, and

hardtac biscuits. And the troops sat

[music] down to these less than tasty

menu items most days while they were on

campaign. Although their daily fair was

somewhat better while they were in camp,

at least their bellies were full. The

winter months were a time of almost

starvation rations for Robert E. Lee's

Army of Northern Virginia and Braxton

Bragg's Army [music] of Tennessee as

southern supply problems really began to

bite.

>> The rebels did not have enough food.

They did not have in particular enough

fresh fruit and vegetables to supply

their people. They did not have enough

wagons to carry the food. They did not

have enough mules to pull the wagons.

They had to use horses uh which could

otherwise have been used on farms

or for cavalry or artillery to uh to

pull supply wagons. Whereas the North by

1863 was going over to an all mule

logistics system. The rebel supply

system was not up to the task of

fighting a modern industrial war. It is

amazing that rebel morale could be

supported by other means because it

certainly was not supported by having a

hot dinner and uh and a cup of coffee

and uh cigar which which the Union army

could provide.

>> There was a popular southern love song,

a real weepy called Lena. very popular

amongst the troops when the years creep

slowly by [singing] Lorina.

The snow is [music] on the grass again.

You know, it [music] went on like that.

I'll spare you the rest of it. The point

is that at one point, Robert E. Lee, who

knew the value of music and the impact

it had on an army, attempted to have

this song banned from anywhere within

the hearing of his troops because he was

afraid of the desertions that it might

cause. Because by far the greatest

number of southern desertions was caused

by the the the soldiers receiving

letters from their sweethearts or their

wives, you know, in which the letters

would would describe uh destitution on

the farms and, you know, the starvation

of their children. And this increased to

epidemic proportions as the war dragged

on.

>> The northern army too was riddled with

desertions particularly in the uh

immediate aftermath of Fredericksburg

when they were losing something like a

hundred men a day to desertion. And this

was at the risk of some really

horrendous consequences. Things which

may have been officially prohibited but

which went on anyway. You could be

branded in your forehead with a letter D

from a hot iron. Uh you could have your

head shaved, be uh drumed out into the

wilderness to fend for yourself. You

could be locked to a ball and chain. And

for repeated desertions, you could face

the firing squad. I think there were

something like 260 executions in the

federal ranks throughout the war. And

well over half of those were for

desertions.

After the debacle at Fredericksburg,

Lincoln replaced the luckless Burnside

with General Joseph Hooker as commander

of the Army of the PTOIC.

Hooker was yet another colorful

character in the story of the Civil War.

He was brave, an excellent organizer,

but self-serving, vain, and boastful.

Hooker set about improving the lot of

the army of the PTOAC in part by the

simple expedient of increasing rations

and ensuring the men were paid. As a

result, there were fewer deserters. Some

even rejoined the army.

He was though an outspoken critic of

Abraham Lincoln and his appointment can

be seen as either a highly magnanimous

act by Lincoln or as a sure sign of the

president's increasing desperation.

In reality, he did not have much of a

choice as Burnside had been relieved of

his duties at his own request and

several of the more capable generals had

themselves been relieved or transferred

as a result of the Fredericksburg

debacle.

As the spring of 1863 [music]

arrived, the Confederate forces around

Fredericksburg prepared themselves for

the inevitable federal attack on the

heavily defended town. But it was not

here that the battle eventually took

[music] place. That came 10 mi west of

Fredericksburg at a place called

Chancellor'sville.

Hooker, despite his reputation, was a

much better general than tradition has

it. For one thing, he'd fought at

several of the major encounters already,

and he'd learned that troops making a

frontal assault against well- entrenched

soldiers was going to lead to massive

casualties and not much land gained. And

he saw this particularly at Mary's

Heights at Fredericksburg. He dismissed

Ambrose Burn's side, the architect of

that plan, as having a brain the size of

a hickory nut. And as [music] he put it,

he lost the number of men that he was

required to lose and then he stopped. So

what he intended to do at

Chancellor'sville was draw Lee out from

behind his defenses [music] by moving

towards Richmond. So if Lee did not come

out in the open and fight him, he would

have to surrender Richmond, the

Confederate capital. In other words,

what Hooker was doing was anticipating

the moves of Ulyses Srant. That is to

force Lee out into the open to fight the

much larger Union forces.

Yet again, the Confederate army was

vastly outnumbered. The ratio was nearly

2:1. Hooker was confident, not only of

victory, but also of annihilating Lee's

army. He wrote, "The enemy must either

in gloriously fly or come out from

behind his defenses and give us battle

upon our own ground, where certain

destruction awaits him."

But he had underestimated the skills of

his opponent.

Hooker could not have anticipated two

audacious moves by Lee and Stonewall

Jackson that flew in the face of all

military convention.

Firstly, Lee divided his outnumbered

army. And secondly, he divided again,

allowing Jackson to make his celebrated

14-mile march around the federal

positions and put himself in position to

attack the Union right flank.

Stonewall Jackson's troops virtually

strolled right across the front line uh

the federal front line and they didn't

know anything about it. Nor did they

know how how meager how thin was the

force that Lee had left behind to defend

Fredericksburg.

Lee gambled that Hooker

would be deceived enough to allow

Jackson to complete that 12mile march.

And that gamble paid off because when

Hooker spies told him that they'd seen

Jackson's forces pulling out, initially

heading south, well, Hooker just

thought, "Yeah, this is the Confederate

retreat that I that I've been

predicting." So, he had no idea of what

was going to come next.

The dense forest that surrounds

Chancellor'sville is known as the

wilderness. This was yet another name

that would soon write itself in blood

into the folklore of the Civil War.

On the evening of May 2nd, while the

Union troops were preparing their

evening rations, 28,000 Confederate

troops [music] suddenly fell upon them

from the woods.

The terrified Union soldiers turned tail

and fled, although eventually they

rallied to engage in some of the

fiercest and most vicious fighting of

the war.

In the tangled mass of trees, men fired

at each other from point blank range. It

was said that hardly a tree was left

unscarred by the gunfire.

Only nightfall put an end to the

Confederate advance.

Tragically for the Confederates,

Stonewall Jackson was seriously wounded

in the darkness.

The following day, May 3rd, more

terrible fighting took place. But it was

not Hooker and the Union forces that

were moving [music] forward to

counterattack. The Union commander

seemed as paralyzed by uncertainty and

lack of confidence [music] as Mlelen

before him, and he chose to remain on

the defensive despite the fact that

Lee's army was now divided into three

parts.

Even more incredibly, the Union

commander threw away the opportunity won

by the capture of Mary's Heights at

Fredericksburg.

Here,

the Union Sixth Corps had overwhelmed

the troops Lee had left behind to defend

the city, and Lee was therefore forced

to detail troops to stop the Union

threat now heading towards him from

Fredericksburg.

Lee left 25,000 troops to face Hooker

and brought the rest eastwards to defeat

the Sixth Corps at a place called

Salem's Church.

Hooker doesn't have a clear picture of

the battlefield from where he is at

Chancellor'sville Farm. He can't

understand what's going on close to him

within within a couple of miles of

Chancellor'sville Farm because the

country is so dense. He does not have

good communications with Fredericksburg

where where he's got people fighting to

try to pin Lee in place on Mary's

Heights.

And once Hooker's injured, he is uh as

completely dysfunctional for the rest of

the day. Hooker is not functioning as

the tactical commander at the Battle of

Chancellor'sville.

>> Hooker had been knocked unconscious by a

cannonball that crashed into his

headquarters.

But later, you know, he said it himself.

I wasn't hurt by a shell and I wasn't

even drunk. I just lost confidence in

old Joe Hooker and that's all there is

to it.

Robert E. Lee had masterminded the

greatest tactical masterpiece of the

war. [music] 17,000 Union troops had

become casualties, and the news of the

defeat [music] resounded around the

North.

My God, my God. What will the country

say? said [music] Lincoln when told of

the catastrophe. The president knew

knives that had been sharpened during

the winter months would now be poised

[music] to strike.

While in the north, Lincoln calculated

the cost of defeat at Chancellor'sville,

in the South, Lee was finally learning

the price of victory.

13,000 troops, nearly a quarter of his

army, were dead or wounded. And Lee knew

full well that the South, with its

limited pool of manpower, simply could

not trade losses like these with the

North.

Sadly for Lee, there was more bad news

to come.

News that would make the victory at

Chancellor'sville seem hollow.

On May 10th, Stonewall Jackson, Lee's

most able [music] and trusted commander

in the field, breathed his last.

Jackson had been shot the week before,

not by a federal [music] bullet, but by

shots from a Confederate volley.

The great soldier's left arm had been

amputated, and at first it appeared that

[music] he would recover, but it was not

to be.

For the South, and for Lee in

particular, the loss of Jackson was a

savage blow. The great commander knew

only too well that the South's

mountainous task was now even more

difficult without Jackson's bold,

adventurous leadership on the

battlefield.

>> Jackson uh was a great battlefield

[music]

commander. Uh Lee was said to have

mentioned after he heard that Jackson

had his left arm amputated. Well, he has

lost his left arm, but I have lost my

right arm. Um, and this probably was the

case. There are a lot of what if

questions. What if Jackson would have

survived? Uh, we can't answer that

because he didn't survive the pneumonia,

which which finally took his life. But

it certainly was a great loss because

there were no other generals in the

Confederate army, in the Army of

Northern Virginia, that displayed

Jackson's uh audacity on the

battlefield. uh his his coolness under

fire, his fearlessness, his ability to

inspire his troops and to drive his

troops uh against overwhelming odds.

While the Battle of Chancellor'sville

had been a costly humiliation for the

North, there was better news from the

deep south.

It was there that Union forces under

Ulissiz Srant had outmaneuvered

Confederate forces and were about to lay

siege [music] to Vixsburg on the

Mississippi River. The culmination of a

wellplanned and bold campaign that made

Grant [music] into a northern hero. The

North needed heroes as much as

victories. and well executed though the

Vixsburg campaign was Grant could hardly

have foreseen the plottits and press

agilation that suddenly came his way.

Grant is the first

Union general to win a big victory.

And when after the the prolonged siege

of Vixsburg, the uh the fortress on the

Mississippi that is is so important to

uniting the Confederacy east and west

across the Mississippi River. Once Grant

takes this strategic point

and opens up the Mississippi to the

Union so that they can they can move

freely right down to the the Gulf of

Mexico.

Once Grant does that, he has provided

the first victory

that the Union has encountered. The

siege of Vixsburg was quite horrible for

the Confederate defenders and the

citizens of Vixsburg itself. Uh that

part of Mississippi in the summer is

extremely hot. Uh imagine Confederate

defenders in exposed positions in

trenches and in uh artillery positions

uh with with no shelter. Um, imagine the

the terrified citizens of Vixsburg under

constant bombardment, not only from

Union artillery surrounding Vixsburg,

but also from the Union Navy on the

Mississippi River. The citizens had to

resort to living underground in many

cases where caves were dug in the hills

around Vixsburg and the citizens would

would live in the caves. Uh, pretty soon

a a food shortage occurred because

Vixsburg was totally surrounded and cut

off.

uh by the Union Army and Union Navy. Uh

there were only uh so many rations in

Vixsburg to begin with. Now they had to

be shared by the Confederate soldiers

and by the citizens themselves uh as

horses and mules uh uh died or were were

killed from combat. Their flesh was

stripped and was eaten by the citizens

and by the soldiers. In some cases uh

they had to resort to killing rats and

eating rats. All of this combined uh

made the situation uh quite bad uh for

the southerners.

>> After the fall of Vixsburg, Lincoln

wrote to Grant. He said, "Uh,

my dear general, I don't believe you and

I have ever met personally." And then he

went on to to tell Grant how surprised

he'd he'd been by the various steps

Grant had taken. You know, I thought you

should have done this, but you did that.

I thought you should have gone south to

get some reinforcements, but you didn't.

You turned north. I thought it was a

mistake. You brought us victory. And I

want to personally acknowledge here that

you were right and I was wrong. You

know, this was the commander-in-chief

sweeping aside all of his glittering top

brass

and humbling himself to a plain, quiet,

mid-ranking general.

The spring days [music] of 1863

slowly turned to early summer, and the

ever ambitious Lee [music] looked to

build upon the victory at

Chancellor'sville by staging a second

invasion of the north. This time [music]

he planned to outflank Washington and to

move against cities to the north of the

capital. Just think of the panic that

would grip the north, he reasoned, if

Confederate forces were seen marching

towards a place such [music] as New

York.

Lee, of course, was an offensive-minded

commander who desperately wanted to take

the war out of Virginia and to strike

the enemy on his own ground. His army

would then be able to feed on the bounty

of the northern land and [music] perhaps

win a major victory at the same time.

In June 1863 [music] came another

significant moment in the story of the

Civil War. It happened on June 9th at

Brandy Station in Northern Virginia when

two great forces of federal and

Confederate cavalry clashed in what

would be the biggest cavalry battle of

the entire war.

Up until then, the southern calvary

[music] men had believed themselves to

be invincible. They were without doubt

superior horsemen, [music] and a myth

had grown on each side that nobody could

defeat them on the battlefield.

They were commanded by James Ule Brown

Stewart, [music]

better known to all as Jeb, a dashing,

gallant cavalry man, a brave warrior,

[music] but a man with a streak of

vanity that made him determined to

protect and enhance [music] his own

great reputation.

At Brandy [music] Station, the

unthinkable happened. The federal

cavalry caught the Confederates unaware

and for the first time matched them in

battle.

The southern cavalry were not [music]

routed, far from it, for it was the

Federals who eventually withdrew across

the Rapahhan River to regroup. But they

survived an extremely close call.

In one day, the myth of Confederate

cavalry invincibility was shattered, and

Jeb Stewart had suffered a huge blow to

his [music] reputation, the restoration

of which became a major priority in his

life. It would [music] not be long

before Lee and the Southern Army had

caused to curse Stuart's personal

[music] vanity.

In the American Civil War, it becomes

clear that cavalry is useful for

reconnaissance, for raiding, and for

protecting lines of communication. And

that's about all.

Jeb Stewart does not see this. Jeb

Stewart sees cavalry as a romantic

extension

of cavalry in the past in the Middle

Ages. and he sees

cavalry action as a decisive arm in the

American Civil War. And that puts him

fundamentally at odds with the changing

reality of battle. And that means that

on occasion, as he did before

Gettysburg,

Jeb Stewart will go riding off into the

countryside

seeking to achieve some sort of decisive

effect and ignoring

reconnaissance, raiding, and securing

lines of communication.

By the last week of June, Lee had

crossed the PTOAC, had arrived in

Pennsylvania and [music] his army was

preparing to attack Harrisburg.

General Hooker had retained command of

the Union forces after the

Chancellor'sville debacle only because

Lincoln was unable to find an obvious

replacement. Now Hooker wanted the large

Union garrison at Harper's Ferry to be

assigned to the Army of the PTOAC.

When his request was refused, he gave

Lincoln an ultimatum. If his demands

were not met, he would resign as

commander.

It was not exactly with a heavy heart

that Lincoln chose to accept Hooker's

resignation.

The man given the ownorous task [music]

of stopping Lee's army was General

George Meade. Me was a quick-tempered

Pennian [music] who through his efforts

at Chancellor'sville and earlier at

Fredericksburg had proved to the

increasingly desperate [music] Lincoln

that unlike his predecessor he was a man

of action unlikely to [music] be phased

by the problems of supply or fears of

numerical disadvantage.

And now that [music] a major battle on

Pennian soil appeared to be imminent,

appointing a native Pennian to command

the army of the PTOAC [music] was surely

a wise move.

President Lincoln even remarked, "Me

will fight well on his own dungill."

And so [music] it proved. It took only a

day or two for me to mobilize his forces

and to begin a march to meet his enemy.

Neither me nor Lee could possibly have

guessed that the most famous and crucial

battle of the Civil War was now only

hours away.

It allegedly came about through want of

shoes and provisions. Lured by the

prospect of perlloining some muchneeded

footwear from the local stores, a

brigade of Confederate infantry men made

their way to a small Pennsylvania market

town that would write its name in blood

into the pages of American history,

Gettysburg.

After General Lee's smashing victory in

the face of overwhelming odds at the

Battle of Chancersville, Lee decided

perhaps the time was ripe once again for

another invasion of Northern Territory.

And so he approached President Jefferson

Davis and members of his cabinet later

in May uh to gain their approval for

such a move. Lee truly believed that to

win the war, he would have to win a

major victory on northern soil to get

the northern people to ask Lincoln for a

negotiated peace. And again, there are

some who think that Lee wanted to get uh

the combat out of Virginia, which was

his native state. Lee successfully

convinced the president that uh this

move northward was the thing to do. And

so that sets the stage for the

withdrawal of his army of northern v

Virginia away from Fredericksburg for

their move west uh to the Shannondoa

Valley using the mountains to mask their

movements to screen their movements to

move north uh down the Shannondoa Valley

moving northward uh towards the Ptoac

River and Maryland and Pennsylvania.

So it was that on July 1st, 1863,

the Confederate forces of AP Hill almost

stumbled into two brigades of Union

cavalry commanded by General John

Buofford.

Buofford's men, who had fought with

distinction at [music] Brandy Station,

were in position some 2 mi northwest of

Gettysburg, and they were vastly

outnumbered. However, they were armed

with breach loading carbines that gave

them a great advantage in firepower over

the muzzle loaded rifles carried by the

Confederate infantry, and the Union men

were able to make an effective fighting

retreat.

General Lee arrived in Gettysburg during

the afternoon, accompanied by General

James Longreet, a man upon whom, in the

wake of Stonewall Jackson's death, Lee

had come to rely. Lee was perturbed to

hear the sound of fighting, for he had

no idea of the strength or size of the

Union forces that faced him. The reason

for this was the absence of Jeb Stewart

and his cavalry. The cavalry that Lee

referred to as the eyes and ears of his

army. Lee, clearly irritated that the

cavalry had failed to show up, said to

his fellow commanders, "I cannot think

what has become of Stuart. I am in

ignorance of what we have in front of us

here.

What would have been his mood had he

known exactly why Steuart and his men

were not yet at Gettysburg?

>> Jeb Stewart, the eyes of of the Army of

uh Northern Virginia was missing uh in

Gettysburg because he uh went on a

circuitous ride around the Union uh

troops. his job most of the time was to

go out and disrupt uh Union supply

routes, engage their calvary, and he had

some unclear instructions or what he

thought were unclear instructions from

General Lee. So instead of sending out

patrols and reconing the area around

Gettysburg and serving as the eyes of

the army, he uh went on one of his rides

around the army of the Battoomeac uh to

disrupt their supply routes. He engaged

their calvary and as such and though he

was successful in this mission he left

the army of Northern Virginia blind and

that had some disastrous results. Uh Lee

may have been able to make other

decisions on the first day and the

second day had he had his calvary with

him to scout out uh positions and to see

uh where the weaknesses were. [cheering]

>> [screaming]

>> The fighting raged on during the

afternoon of July 1st, and gradually the

Confederate attacks pressed home by

generals AP Hill and Jubel Early began

to bear fruit. By late afternoon,

thousands of troops from the Union First

and 11th Corps were fleeing through the

streets of Gettysburg. They rallied in

two positions to the south of the town.

One was Cemetery Hill, the other [music]

was Culps Hill.

That first evening of the battle left

American history with some of its

greatest what-ifs.

What if Early had pressed on to attack

the Union positions? Surely the

Confederates would have won the battle

on the very first day.

What if Jackson had still been alive and

had been leading the attack? Perhaps his

legendary boldness would have been the

deciding factor.

Of course, no one will ever know. All

that is certain is that Early declined

to attack the federal positions on

Cemetery Hill and Culps Hill, and

[music] that perhaps the best chance of

a southern victory was lost.

If Lee had pressed the attack, if it had

been possible for him to concentrate

rapidly and press the attack on the

first day of Gettysburg, and if he'd

been able to overrun the Union there,

then the Union would not have chosen to

fight him.

The Battle of Gettysburg happens because

the Union is able, unhindered, to occupy

positions on Cemetery Ridge.

And if they are not able unhindered to

do so because for instance the rebels

had got up Cemetery Ridge first there

would be no reason for me to attack

Cemetery Ridge. Why stupid? Not at all.

All me's got to do is prepare to fight

with Lee somewhere else.

July 2nd dawned and the Union troops

were now in strong defensive positions

on Cemetery Hill, a section of Cemetery

Ridge [music] and also on Culps Hill and

reinforcements were arriving by the

hour. On the Confederate [music] side,

there was a fundamental disagreement

between Lee and Long Street over

strategy. Lee, remembering the rich

rewards gained by forcing the pace at

Chancellor'sville, [music]

was determined to go on the offensive.

Long Street, though, was a more cautious

man who believed [music] with some

justification that the South usually won

its battles by fighting on the

defensive. [music]

Lee would hear none of Long Street's

plan to withdraw [music]

to a defensive position between

Gettysburg and Washington.

I am going to attack him, he told

Longre, [music]

who returned to his troops full of

forboding.

Longre's slowness in deploying [music]

his men for the attack during the

afternoon attracted much criticism after

the war. Was he sulking because his

advice had been ignored? Some even

suggested afterwards that his lack of

urgency was an act of insubordination

against Lee.

Whatever the truth, by the time Long

Street's men were ready to attack their

target, the federal left on Cemetery

Ridge, it was no longer there. The Union

Third Corps under the flamboyant Major

General Daniel E. [music] sickles had

taken up a new position in a salient

stretching between two infamous

landmarks of the battle, the peach

orchard and devil's den with his right

wing extending up the Emittsburg road.

Sickle's move placed his men on higher

ground, but his decision to change

position was made unilaterally. Worse

yet, no one in the army of the PTOAC had

seemed to notice the tactical importance

of a rocky hill known to the locals as

Little Roundtop.

Located to the south of the Union

defenses, a Union signal detachment had

been using it as a vantage point to send

flag signals.

If the Confederates could seize that

hill, the entire Union position would be

threatened.

Here was the perfect opportunity for the

Confederates to outflank the Union

positions and make an attack to its

rear. Determined to seize the moment,

Longreet urged a change of tactics on

Lee. But the Confederate commander had

made up his mind and he ordered Long

Street to continue with the original

plan, which now meant an attack on

Sickle's exposed position.

At around 4:00, Long Street's 20,000 men

moved forward.

>> Down with the tra

with the star while we rally around the

boys once again.

The uh combat that occurs uh during the

afternoon of July 2nd, 1863 is some of

the most ferocious that will occur

during the entire civil war. The and the

fighting is going to revolve around a

couple of uh significant uh geographical

features. Uh one of them is Devil's Den.

Well, Devil's Den is going to anchor the

left flank of the third core defensive

line. The center of the of the third

core line will be at a place called the

peach orchard which is at the

intersection of a of a farm road and a

major thoroughare called the Emmensburg

road. The third core line is not

supposed to be there and General Sickls

moves his core out without orders. And

when General Lee's plan to attack down

the Emittsburg road is carried out, uh,

he's going to run smack dab into the

third core where it's not supposed to

be. But the third core is isolated and

various units of the Confederate

attacking force will smash into the

third core line and send the reeling

back in retreat. And another area of the

battlefield that becomes very famous for

the amount of blood spilled there lies

between Devil's Den and the Peach

Orchard. And that's just simply called

the Wheatfield. The fighting that occurs

in the wheat field is very bloody and

very confusing. The best way to describe

it is like a like a whirlpool where the

fighting continuously goes in circles.

And at one point, Union soldiers are

looking to their front front and and

fighting Confederates. At another point,

the Confederates are on their left. the

Confederates on the right and vice

versa.

>> Meanwhile, at Little Roundtop on the

federal left flank, a crisis point for

the Union had arrived.

Luckily for George Meade, he had sent

Brigadier General Gner Warren, his chief

engineer, to reconoiter the Union

defenses.

Warren rode down to Little Roundtop in

order to survey the positions with his

field glasses. And from that vantage

point, [music] he spotted Confederate

forces getting into position for a flank

attack. Warren had previously commanded

an infantry brigade. And although he was

now only a staff officer, he used his

general's authority to order two

brigades from the Union Fifth Corps to

move to the defense of Little Roundtop.

Little Roundtop became the crucial arena

of the battle for the remainder of the

day. It was here that the extreme left

flank of the entire Union Army came

under attack. The man charged with

responsibility for defending that

vulnerable position was the

extraordinary Colonel Joshua Lawrence

Chamberlain, commander of the 20th Main

Infantry.

Joshua Chamberlain was in charge of the

20th Maine and he wasn't a a career

soldier. Chamberlain was a a college

professor. He taught languages and

rhetoric at Bodoyne College in Maine.

And he and his men were defending the

heights uh to the left of Cemetery

Ridge. And for 2 hours they stood there

pushing back line after line of

Confederates who were just knocking them

themselves out trying to push their way

up the ridge. And eventually

Chamberlain's regiment was just had been

just chipped away. They were there were

twothirds of his men lying dead around

him and the rest of them had run out of

bullets. And meanwhile the Confederates

had regrouped and they were coming at

them again. Chamberlain just ordered his

men to fix bayonets and charge,

screaming their heads off, just, you

know, outdo the rebel yell.

And the Confederates were stunned. They

didn't expect what they got. They didn't

expect a charge, a bayonet charge of

such audacity and such ferocity. And

they dropped their guns. And

the Union kept possession of the

Heights.

Night fell on July 2nd, and it was time

to consider what had been gained or lost

during a day of furious action.

The frenzied Confederate attacks against

Culps Hill and the eastern portion of

Cemetery Hill on the Union right flank

had met with only limited success. Only

the salient, once occupied by Sickle's

[music] men, had fallen into their

hands. Elsewhere, the Union position

remained as it [music] had at the

beginning of a dark day of terrible

fighting.

During the first two days of the battle,

almost 35,000 men had been killed or

wounded, and there was still [music] no

end to the battle in sight.

As the bodies of the dead [music]

awaited burial and the surgeons of both

sides went about their dreadful

business, Jeb Stewart finally arrived at

the Confederate lines with his cavalry.

Lee gave him a frosty reception.

July 3rd and the sun came up on what

would prove to be the final day of the

Battle of Gettysburg.

Lee and Longre still could not agree on

tactics.

Long Street pleaded to be allowed to

outflank the Union Army on its extreme

left, but again, Lee would not be moved.

He correctly believed the Federal lines

were at their weakest in the center, and

it was there that he intended his forces

to make their attack.

Long street later wrote that he left the

meeting with a heavy heart, but he

hurried off, albeit with a sense of

dread, to organize the artillery

bombardment that would precede the

assault.

Jeb Stewart, [music] no doubt eager to

redeem himself in the eyes of Lee, was

dispatched to the east of Gettysburg

with his cavalry to engage the rear of

the Union positions. But his Confederate

horsemen were no longer infallible or

invincible.

Stuart was stopped in his tracks by

5,000 Union cavalry men in a battle that

ensured he was never able to get near

enough to influence the main action at

Gettysburg itself. It was during this

action that a certain George Armstrong

Kuster at the head of a brigade of

Michigan cavalry first came to

prominence.

While the cavalry battle raged, a fresh

division of Virginiaians [music] under

General George Picket, supplemented by

men from AP Hills corps, were preparing

themselves for their attack. What must

have been their feelings as [music] they

saw what awaited them? An advance of

nearly 3/4 of a mile across open land to

reach the heavily [music] defended Union

positions.

At 3:00, the thunderous Confederate

bombardment lifted.

The order came to begin the attack and

one of the [music] most tragic episodes

in American military history was about

to unfold.

This was Long Street's grand assault,

more commonly remembered as Pickicket's

charge.

What happened was the Confederate

artillery opened up to soften up the

defenders and George Gordon me ordered

the Union cannons to one by one fall

silent to make it look as if they'd been

knocked out. That way it would convince

Confederates there was no more artillery

left to blast their advancing soldiers.

The plan worked. Pickicket's men charged

up the hill and then the Union artillery

opened up as did the Union soldiers. Um,

frankly, it was a massacre. Nonetheless,

by sheer raw courage, some Confederates

managed to actually make it to that

stone wall and breach the Union defenses

very briefly and then are repulsed.

This breaks the back of the Confederate

effort at Gettysburg. And in fact, it is

called the high tide of the Confederacy

because the uh number of losses at

Gettysburg greatly hampers the ability

of the Army of um Northern Virginia to

operate.

It was all my fault. Get together and

let us do the best we can towards saving

that which has left us.

General Lee, I have no division now.

>> The dead lay in the open fields, among

the rocks, behind trees, and in

buildings. They lay in streams, by

walls, in hedges, wherever their

weakening [music] steps could carry

them.

>> Me wouldn't launch a counterattack

because he didn't know how badly Lee's

forces had been decimated. I mean, some

of his men actually expected the order

of a counterattack and and and so they

launched one themselves against the uh

the rebels retreating uh around Little

Roundtop and although they were on the

retreat, the rebels turned around and

wiped them out, but that didn't really

uh help them. Anyway, Long Street got

hit on the retreat by uh two federal

divisions and really that was it. The

Confederates pulled out. Lee knew that

his invasion of the north was over and

he slipped quietly across the PTOAC.

After the appalling carnage of July 3rd,

Robert E. Lee realized that the battle

of Gettysburg [music] could not be won

and he decided to retreat towards

Virginia with his bleeding and battered

troops.

In torrential [music] rain, an ambulance

train that stretched for several miles

carried more than 10,000 wounded

Confederates towards their home state.

They left 6,000 dead comrades behind

them. Gettysburg was as far north as the

rebel army got.

And that mark was the closest [music]

the rebel army came to defeating the

Union Army

and possibly getting recognition for the

Confederate States. After Pickicket's

charge after the battle of of [music]

Gettysburg,

the uh the rebel army is no longer

capable

of fighting the sequence of tactical

actions that Roberty E. had hoped to

fight towards Washington.

>> 5,000 Union [music] troops were also

killed during the battle that had been

the defining moment of the war thus far.

In Washington, the politicians threw up

their hands in horror at Me's failure to

follow up the victory with a crushing

blow that might have ended [music] the

war.

Little did they know he was almost out

of ammunition.

In Richmond, they feared that after

Gettysburg, [music]

all hope of an independent South might

be gone.

If the defeat at Gettysburg were not

enough, on July 4th, Independence Day,

Vixsburg also surrendered.

>> If you look at Gettysburg in combination

with the defeat at Vixsburg, you will

see that the Confederacy is no longer

defending itself. Uh it's just trying to

survive. Uh with a Union victory at

Vixsburg, the Confederacy is split in

half. With a Union victory at

Gettysburg, uh one of its major armies

has been shattered. Lee limps across the

Battoomeac River to sit in defense and

wait for the oncoming battles.

Well, Gettysburg showed that the

northern forces were not just a bunch

of, you know, liy livered um pastyfaced

shopkeepers. You know, it showed that

that even their college professors

could, you know, lead their men to

combat southern fury and determination

with northern fury and determination. It

was certainly Lee's worst defeat and and

it was the end of his hopes for invading

the North.

And so the year 1863 [music]

rolled on. In the North, Lincoln had

earlier signed the Enrollment Act in an

attempt to conscript [music] men between

20 and 45 into the army. And this

triggered violent protests known to

history [music] as the draft riots in

many northern cities.

The worst [music] was in New York only

10 days after Gettysburg. Here a

demonstration against the Enrollment

[music]

Act spiraled out of control and turned

quickly into a full-scale riot during

which several black Americans [music]

were lynched.

In the south, the shortages got [music]

worse and prices continued to soar.

Although news of the Confederate [music]

victory at Chikamagua Creek in the

northwest corner of Georgia near the

border of Tennessee came to bolster

[music] morale.

here. Southern troops from Tennessee and

Virginia under the command of Braxton

Bragg and James Long Street had driven

the Union Army back to Chattanooga.

A tactical error by the Northern General

Rose CR could have resulted in a costly

disaster for the Union, but swift

action, in particular by General George

Thomas, prevented the defeat at

Chikamagua Creek turning into a complete

catastrophe.

It was however a very [music] welcome

victory for the South.

>> But any joy was tempered by news of the

casualty figures.

18,000 men had been killed or wounded.

The southern pool of manpower was being

further drained with each passing week

and month.

On November 19th, 1863,

Abraham Lincoln journeyed [music] to the

newly created military cemetery at

Gettysburg.

There, during the [music] dedication

ceremony, he gave a short 2-minute

speech that became known as [music] the

Gettysburg Address. Some who heard it

thought it inadequate for the occasion.

But Lincoln's fine words have [music]

echoed down the years to provide a

powerful rallying cry for democracy not

only in America but throughout the

world.

The nation under God shall have a new

birth of freedom.

And that government of the people, by

the people, for the people.

Lee had been practically at the gates of

Philadelphia

and uh he'd been beaten back. So there

went all Confederate hopes of French or

British intervention on the side of the

Confederacy.

>> Their supplies are dwindling. Their

stocks of horse flesh, their human

resources, their stocks of weapons and

ammunition

are all depleting. And the southern

economy is beginning to show serious

signs of falling apart. And Lee, though

he's he believes he can hold off a union

offensive, Grant is going to push the

effort even harder. Lee has met his

match. Someone who's willing to take the

same risks. Someone who's willing to uh

expend the lives necessary to obtain his

goal.

>> The end of the year 1863

was quite a contrast to the beginning of

1863.

We see the major union victories at

Vixsburg, at Gettysburg. So on the heels

of that victory, the Lincoln

administration will go into the year

1864 with high hopes. But still, 1864

will be one bloody year.

Heat.

Heat.

January 1864.

The American Civil War was now nearly 3

years old. Those who had believed that

the fight between the North and the

South would be settled in one setpiece

battle at Bull Run in 1861 had been

proved cruy wrong.

For the North was frustration, for the

tide of the war had turned, yet no

decisive [music] victory or breakthrough

could be achieved.

But for the South, [music] there was

desperation.

A muster showed that only 278,000

of its 465,000 [music]

enlisted soldiers were actually

available to fight.

The rest were sick or wounded.

In an attempt to shore up its dwindling

manpower, the South extended the draft

[music] to include 17 to 50 year olds, a

move that increased the opposition to

the already unpopular government [music]

of Jefferson Davis. Hyperinflation and

shortages bit deep as the South grew

ever more dependent [music] on the

blockade runners at sea.

For all this, the war seemed to be at a

stalemate. And still it dragged on.

The South could no longer go on the

offensive on the strategic offensive.

The foray into Pennsylvania that

culminated with the Battle of Gettysburg

is the last time that any Confederate

army is going to be able to strike into

northern territory. It had lost too many

men uh during 1863.

The strategy now is to defend as much

Confederate territory as possible and

hopefully break the will of the northern

people to continue the war.

The best thing for the Confederacy would

have been a brisk defeat in the summer

of of 1864.

They could not have done any better than

they already had. They were a lost

cause. Why

fight a total war? Why allow the South

to be ravaged by two armies when it

would have been so much simpler to just

to just uh give it up?

The early weeks of 1864

did little to convince [music] anyone

that there were quick military solutions

or that any general, Confederate or

federal, was about to put forward a new

strategy to speed the end of the war.

Ever since the exhausting campaign had

begun, Abraham Lincoln had struggled to

find the right man to command the

[music] premier eastern army. Mlelen,

Burnside, Hooker, all had come and gone.

George me still commanded the army of

the PTOAC, but his failure to

aggressively pursue the Army of Northern

Virginia after the Battle of Gettysburg

had [music] left a bad impression on the

president. But now Lincoln believed he

had at last found the man he was looking

for.

Politically, 1864 would be an election

year and Lincoln was fighting a rear

guard action against some members of his

own party. uh the radical wing had had

issued a uh private circular which

actually made it into the newspapers. It

was called the Pomeroy circular.

And in this

published argument, they said their

belief was that Lincoln could not be

reelected. He was unelectable again.

They'd have to search for another

candidate. Lincoln had been saddled with

uh uh overconfident commanders,

incompetent commanders, uh officers who

were not willing to fight, people who

were too cautious. And he was uh

promoting generals to general and chief

or generals in charge of the army of the

battoic who were facing a very crafty

adversary uh general Robert E. Lee. What

he needed was someone who is just as

much of a gambler, a risk taker as

Robert E.

someone who was just as determined and

crafty as Roberty Lee and he found this

in the Victor of Vixsburg.

>> Ulysius Srant

>> to this point in the war had been the

most successful field commander that the

North had

>> his victories early on at Forts Henry

and Donaldelsson, his victory at Shiloh,

his magnificent victory at Vixsburg,

his ability to come into Chattanooga and

to counterattack and break the siege of

Chattanooga and send the Confederate

Army of Tennessee away in defeat. All of

these things were feathers in Ulysus

Grant's cap. Uh Lincoln liked him

because he said that this man fights.

>> General Ulysus S. Grant was promoted

lieutenant general and given overall

command of federal forces in March 1864.

>> Me retained his position as commander of

the army of the PTOAC

>> while Philip H. Sheridan went east with

Grant and took over command of its

cavalry.

Grant's plan for victory when he becomes

general and chief in 1863 is to uh pin

down the army of northern Virginia and

destroy it. He believed that uh the one

way to win the war was to seek out and

destroy his enemy and that enemy's will

to fight. So he was willing to fight an

all-out war, a total war. In his

strategy, he vows that if Lee decides to

split his army and attempt any flanking

movements, uh, then he'll follow that

army. He's going to seek out and destroy

him.

>> The main attack on the Army of Northern

Virginia came in May at a [music] place

that had already won a gruesome

reputation during the fighting that had

occurred only one year earlier.

>> [music]

>> This was the dense forest known as the

wilderness near the old battlefield of

Chancellor'sville.

The chaotic nightmare of the battle in

the thick woods where the choking smoke

made it almost impossible to see can

hardly be imagined.

men, sometimes entire units got lost.

Some fired upon their own troops in the

confusion.

The soldiers of the north and south

fired at each other from point blank

range, and some men were literally cut

in two by the hail of bullets. If this

hell on earth were not enough, the dry

tinder of the forest was set a light,

and many wounded men unable to move in

the brush were burnt alive by the

flames.

Despite the desperate ferocity of the

fighting, neither side was able to gain

victory.

>> [music]

[music]

>> Lee was not beaten, nor [music] was he

outflanked.

And after a two-day struggle, 28,000

dead or wounded [music] men lay on the

battlefield.

This was almost 20% of those who had

taken part.

This time the Union commander was not

prepared to sit back and lick his

wounds.

I will fight it out on this line if it

takes all summer, Grant told Lincoln.

And he was as good as his word.

He marched with his army towards [music]

Spennsylvania courthouse some 12 mi

southwest of Fredericksburg, where Lee,

who had anticipated the move, was

waiting for him.

By 1864, after years of enduring [music]

aimed

rifle fire from the rifled mini musket

and and by 1864, you're starting to see

magazine fed rifles as well. First thing

everybody does is start digging.

And at Spennsylvania [music] courthouse,

we see the emergence of trench warfare

to make incremental gains rather than

breaching the enemy's defense in in a

single mad rush.

At Spennsylvania, the Confederates

[music] had constructed an impressive

set of earthwork defenses that must have

looked impenetrable to the Union troops.

From May 10th to [music] the 19th, these

earthworks were to be the scene of

particularly vicious combat.

The names given to parts of them, the

mule shoe and bloody angle, have endured

as reminders of the new depths of

savagery reached on one grim day. May

12th, 1864.

>> Well, the Battle of Spania actually

lasted uh almost a month, but that day,

the 12th of May, was certainly one of

the bloodiest days of the war. And that

was when the Army of the PTOAC. I mean,

all 20,000 men stormed the Confederate

defenses and charged into, you know, the

belly of Lee's army. And from the

southern viewpoint, it was like this

huge wall of blue bearing down on them.

>> [music]

>> It was 20 hours of close fighting,

really ugly hand-to-hand [music]

combat.

There was an oak tree there, 2 ft thick,

which was actually cut down by a hail of

bullets coming from two different

directions.

much the same way as Lee's army was cut

in two for for a while before they were

able to uh get some reinforcements and

push the Federals back. But the stump of

that oak tree was put on display later

at the World's Fair and sent to the

Smithsonian Institution in in Washington

and it's still on display now. It's a

symbol of the ferocity of the Civil War

and that battle in particular.

The casualty figures from Spotania

[music]

defy belief.

14,000 men had been killed. 16,000 more

were wounded. In just a few hours of

grim slaughter, the entire area had been

turned into an enormous graveyard

where the bodies of the dead lay

together with the wounded and dying in

[music] the torrential rain that came to

drench the battlefield.

I said that the rain seemed to be trying

on nature's behalf to wash away the

blood stains that that the so-called

civilized human beings were spilling on

the surface of the earth. In that

horrible rain at the bloody angle, the

Union was able to just keep on pouring

people against the rebel fortifications

and uh and and Lee was still able by

dent of being properly dug in to hold

out for a very long time.

While this carnage at Spennsylvania was

taking place, Sheridan was [music]

making progress to the rear of Lee's

position, where he began to pose a

serious threat to Richmond.

Sheridan orchestrated a [music] campaign

of destruction that saw railroads ripped

up, supplies destroyed, supply lines

cut, and telegraph lines torn down.

On top of all this, Sheridan claimed a

famous scalp at the Battle of [music]

Yellow Tavern, where the legendary

Confederate cavalry man Jeb Stewart, a

southern icon and hero, was killed.

>> Jeb Stewart was the last of the

cavaliers,

and he was nothing if not conspicuous.

He he'd ride around with this huge

billowing silklined cape, and he had

this sort of lush plumemed slouch hat.

And [music] you know, he made a very

inviting target. I mean, his his uniform

was always getting snipped by bullets.

And I think at one point he actually had

his mustache shot off his face or half

of it, you know, I mean, you know,

straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon

really. So that day at um Yellow Tavern,

one of his aids warned him that he was

too exposed. Um and and Stuart said, you

know, nonsense. There's no danger here.

and he rode to the front of his lines

and was firing his pistol into the air

to encourage his men and he caught a

bullet in the belly from one of George

Kuster's sharpshooters.

>> James Yo Brown Stewart would die in his

home state of Virginia at the Battle of

Yellow Tavern attempting as he always

does to disrupt the federal lines and to

cause havoc amongst federal troops. This

time, however, his his forces are

overwhelmed and Union cavalry using

quickfiring carbines uh as well as Union

infantry uh catch his troopers in the

open. He dies as he lived fighting with

pistol in hand.

Meanwhile, in the battle of wits between

Grant and Lee, the scene had moved to a

small crossroads near the [music]

Chikahan River called Cold Harbor.

This was to be yet another small

insignificant [music] point on the map

that would achieve bloody infamy.

[music] For despite the maze of

defensive earthworks that confronted

Grant and his troops when they arrived

on the 31st of May, the Union commander

was determined to mount an allout

attack.

>> Grant was in hot pursuit of General Lee,

carrying out his strategy of trying to

pin down and destroy those southern

forces.

However, when he catches up with Lee at

the Cold Harbor, he finds that Lee has

uh his troops entrenched behind strong

fortifications. Uh there were a couple

of delays in transportation that allowed

this to happen. Therefore, Grant has two

options. One, he could sit and wait and

even possibly attempt to flank.

Two, he could attack.

Grant being the risktaker that he is

decides that he would use a large

charge, one momentous charge to try to

crack the Confederate lines. He should

have learned by Lee's mistake at

Gettysburg that this would be

disastrous.

[screaming]

At 4:30 a.m. on June 2nd, 60,000 men

began their fateful march towards the

Confederate positions.

They get up out of the trenches.

They go over the top in the phrase of a

later war and they attack the rebel

trench system and the rebels just cut

them to pieces.

It's a good thing that Sam Grant can

outspend Bobby Lee in human material

because at Cold Harbor, Grant does

exactly that.

Men were cut to pieces by the hail of

southern shot and shell and they fell in

tangled heaps as they tried to storm the

Confederate defenses. Hardened veterans

later claimed to have seen nothing like

it, even [music] on the killing grounds

of Antitum, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg,

and Spennia.

It was not war, wrote one Confederate

soldier. It was murder.

Nothing was gained by the Union

assaults. Although Grant wrote after the

war how much he regretted ordering the

attack, he seems to have had no doubts

at the time, for he certainly

entertained the idea of a second

assault.

Cold Harbor did a great deal of damage

to Grant's [music] reputation

and further fueled the northern public's

sense of war weariness and anger at the

way the war was being prosecuted.

But the Union commander was nothing if

not determined. He redeemed himself

within days of the Cold Harbor debacle

with a brilliant tactical maneuver

across the James River that convinced

Lee that the federal forces were

intending to attack Richmond.

In fact, Grant's real objective was

Petersburg, a town and vital rail

junction that lay to the south of

Richmond and the place from where the

Confederate capital received many of its

supplies. Grant's plan was obvious.

capture Petersburg, cut off supplies to

Richmond, and starve it into surrender.

>> Petersburg was almost completely

undefended. I think there were like

5,000 of uh Bo Regard's men holding out

against a federal assault, you know,

three times as large. And Bogard had

actually sent a messenger to Lee

pleading for reinforcements. And Lee

refused. He said, "No, you must be

mistaken. Grant hasn't moved any of his

forces south of the James River. So

Petersburg really was there for the

taking and the North blew it. Perhaps

because the recent memory of the failed

assaults at Cold Harbor was still in the

minds of the commander, the Union

commanders. They failed to use their

overwhelming numerical superiority to

punch through the Confederate defenses.

And what happened is Lee is able to get

his soldiers in to the Petersburg

defenses which were already well

constructed. Trench lines, strong

points, abati, other sorts of obstacles.

He was able to get his troops behind

those defenses while the rest of the

army battoic comes up. And by the time

Lee gets his army in there, the Army of

Northern Virginia combined with

Boeggard's forces will prove to be a

formidable force. uh Grant will realize

that I'm going to have to settle down to

a siege once again.

>> Petersburg, poorly defended and ripe for

the taking, trembled in anticipation of

a huge northern attack,

>> but it never came and a glaring

opportunity to shorten the war was lost.

Oh,

J.

>> She's as sweet as she could be.

>> J,

>> we got to help our generally.

>> If the belleaguered President Lincoln

thought that matters could get no worse

for the North, he was wrong.

Within weeks, Confederate forces under

General Jubel A. Early who was detached

from the army of Northern Virginia had

crossed the PTOAC to stand on

Washington's very doorstep.

Early had come from the Shannondoa

Valley where all attempts to defeat the

southern forces had failed.

But Early's Confederate army was small,

perhaps some 15,000 men, and it had no

hope of overwhelming Washington, let

alone holding it.

So Earlyie took his troops back into

Virginia, but not before part of his

raiding force burnt down the

Pennsylvania town of Chambersburg,

an act of [music] retribution for

similar acts in many parts of the South.

At the siege of Petersburg, there came a

new development, the brainchild of one

of Ambrose Burnside's officers.

A long tunnel was dug under the

Confederate positions. It was packed

with nearly four tons of gunpowder and

intended to blow everything and everyone

above it to smitherines.

Then northern troops would storm what

[music] remained of the southern lines.

On July 30th, the enormous explosion

tore the Confederate lines [music]

apart,

spewing earth, debris, and human bodies

into the air. There was panic and

confusion among the surviving southern

troops as they surveyed the huge crater

left by the blast.

Tragically, phase two of the operation

did not proceed so smoothly. In fact, it

was to provide the war with another of

its great costly disasters.

It took a month to dig 500 yards across

no man's land and put four tons of

dynamite

into the mine that went under the rebel

line. An entire regiment disappeared

into the earth when the Union blew that

mine. And the Union charges into that

breach and they get to the rim of the

crater. They are as stupified and as in

awe as the Confederates. Uh about 300

Confederate soldiers have been blown to

smitherreens. There's body parts lying

all around. There's a 30 foot deep hole

in the ground.

These soldiers basically just mill

around. Some of them are foolish enough

to actually go down inside the crater.

The hole blasted by the Union miners is

just wide enough to pack a whole lot of

Union guys into

and uh and pack them into a killing

ground. And they were massacred by the

rebel forces to either flank, they were

massacred by rebel artillery in depth.

And the result was that they'd blown

physically a big hole in the rebel line.

But it was a matter of uh of of minutes

really for rebel soldiers to dig a new

line of trenches

around the edge

of that mine at Petersburg. And there

was a physical hole in the rebel line,

but the rebel defense was not disrupted.

The unremitting bad news for the Union

in the first half of 1864 had hardly

helped President Lincoln's [music]

chances of reelection.

Lincoln himself expected to lose [music]

and the election campaign was given an

edge when the Democrats announced their

nominee. He was none other than George

B. Mlen, the man who had once [music]

commanded the army of the PTOAC and who

had been dismissed by Lincoln. Mlelen,

it seemed, was back to [music] have his

revenge.

With the odds stacked against him, only

final victory in the field would help

Lincoln's campaign.

Renewed hope for this came in the

formidable shape of William T. Sherman,

who was appointed and ordered by Grant

to take the prize of Atlanta, Georgia.

>> The rebel army

and do the the math as well as anybody

else. They look at a map and they see

that Chattanooga to Atlanta, which was

the the industrial heartland, if there

was one, of the Confederacy,

was uh 100 miles about the same distance

as Washington to Richmond.

and they'd spent the whole war bashing

their heads against the problem of

getting to Richmond

because that was the political heart of

the Confederacy. Oh, why not just go

from Chattanooga to Richmond, the

industrial heart of the Confederacy, win

the war that way. So, while Grant

as general and chief is personally

commanding the army in the politically

sensitive East, Sherman is going for

Atlanta from the west. Sherman in his uh

total war strategy did something that

many soldiers or many generals at this

time were afraid to do. He would cut

away from his supply base so that he

wouldn't have soldiers stretched out for

long distances so he wouldn't be relying

on supplies are so far away that could

be possibly cut off by Confederate

cavalry. Allow his army to live on the

land and move as needed. It gave him a

lot of freedom.

The rebels strategy for dealing with

Sherman's advance towards Atlanta is

essentially to give him enough rope to

hang himself. Let him come. Let him

come. Let him come. He'll make a mistake

and we'll destroy him.

But he never makes the big mistake.

And by the time they realize that there

is William Tecumpsa Sherman and he's

standing outside Atlanta. In the city of

Atlanta itself, there was utter panic

and its citizens, desperate to escape

from the oncoming Union Army, soon

crowded the roads that led out of the

city.

In a last throw of the dice, Jefferson

Davis decided on a new commander for the

defending Southern Army, replacing

General Joe Johnson with the 31-year-old

one-legged John Bell Hood.

Despite [music] having lost the use of

an arm at Gettysburg, Hood was patently

unsuited to high command.

His attempts to halt Sherman's advance

ended in bloody and very costly defeats.

Union shells soon began to fall on

Atlanta.

A bombardment that was maintained

[music] with ruthless efficiency by

Sherman despite Hood's protests that

innocent civilians were in harm's way.

On September 1st, 1864,

Atlanta fell.

Sherman recognizes that in modern

industrial war,

the idea that a citizen is

non-combatant,

even though he works in a factory making

artillery rounds or making wagons to

haul the artillery rounds or dealing in

horses to pull the [music] wagons to

carry the artillery rounds. The citizens

of Atlanta could not be viewed as

non-combatants in a modern industrial

war.

And therefore, Sherman had to destroy

Atlanta.

And when Mayor Calhoun of Atlanta

pleaded with with Sherman, don't destroy

our city,

as Sherman replied in the famous phrase,

"War is cruelty and you cannot refine

it." And often often translated just as

as war is hell.

Atlanta is ours and fairly one, wrote

Sherman to [music] a relieved Lincoln.

While the North rejoiced, the federal

army put the city to the torch. Only

churches [music] and some private

residences were spared.

Abraham Lincoln's presidential prospects

[music]

rose phoenix-like from the ashes of

Atlanta.

The tide was turning. Now it was the

South receiving all the bad news.

Hard on the heels of the fall of Mobile

Bay and [music] Atlanta came word of

events in the Shannondoa Valley where

Grant had entrusted to Philip Sheridan

the task of finally [music] clearing the

Valley of Confederates.

The pugnacious, ruthless cavalryman had

once again gone about his task with

gusto.

The whole country, from the Blue Ridge

to the north mountains, has been made

untenable for a rebel army. I have

destroyed over 2,000 barns filled with

wheat and hay and 70 mills, driven 4,000

head of stock before the army, and

killed 3,000 [music] sheep. When I am

through, the valley will have but little

in it from man or beast.

At Cedar Creek on October 19th, General

Early attacked [music] Sheridan's army

as it slept, achieving a significant

advantage. But the Dominion [music]

Union commander somehow rallied his

troops and drove the Confederates from

the field.

3,000 southern troops were lost in this

[music] final attempt to keep the

Shannondoa Valley open to the

Confederacy.

>> When you think about it, it's quite

remarkable that the presidential

election of 1864 ever took place at all.

The country is in the midst of a civil

war, a bloody civil war. And now you're

going to hold a free election in one

section of the country. But that was

what the made the republic great at that

time. The election of 1864 was basically

a referendum on two things. The

continuation of the war to the final

surrender of the Confederacy and it was

a referendum on emancipation.

The war lasted longer than a lot of

people had expected. You had peace

democrats calling for peace. There was

war weariness with throughout the north.

However, it sets a precedence because

Americans, though they may have

disagreed with Lincoln, were not ready

to change horses in the middle of the

stream, especially if this horse was

victorious. And when Sherman was able to

capture the capture Atlanta, which is

the gym of the South, it was just one

more victory, one more star on uh

Lincoln's shoulder. And so American

people thought, if we are going to win

the war, and if this president is

winning the war, well, maybe we should

stay with him.

On November 8th, 1864,

Abraham Lincoln was reelected as

president.

It was a remarkable personal triumph for

Lincoln and another humiliation for

[music] Mlen who had carried only three

states, Kentucky, Delaware, and New

Jersey. With 54% [music] of the popular

vote, Lincoln had his mandate from the

country, and Mlen, who was particularly

graceless in [music] defeat, hurried off

to Europe, cursing his opponent. And the

result

most gratifying for Lincoln [music] must

have been the results of the vote from

the army. 78% of serving soldiers had

voted Republican.

>> Had Lincoln lost and Mlelen won. The

South may have gained its independence

and the North may have had to go to war

again with the Southern Confederacy in

an attempt to reunify. Slavery would

have lasted a lot longer. or the United

States may have just remained split in

half, one the US other the CSA. But with

the reelection of Lincoln, the North

pursued reunification and was successful

in bringing the southern states back

into the fold.

>> With the political uncertainty behind

him, Lincoln was once again able to turn

his full attention to military matters.

He now had formidable commanders to

steer the North to victory.

Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan had all

proved themselves ready, willing, and

able to bring the South to its knees.

All had made costly mistakes, but had

also won vital victories. And Lincoln

knew that these were the men upon whom

he must rely to finally defeat the

Confederacy.

Sherman, like Sheridan, a most ruthless

advocate of total war, begged to be

allowed to take his [music] army through

Georgia towards Savannah before turning

north through the Carolas and into

Virginia.

I intend to make Georgia howl, promised

German, not noted for going back on his

word.

And so in mid- November 1864,

Sherman's army of 62,000 men in two vast

columns set off on its 300-mile march

towards Savannah and the sea. They

burned, destroyed, plundered, and

pillaged as they went.

We destroyed all we could not eat,

burned their cotton and gins, spilled

their sorghum, burned and twisted their

railroads, and raised hell generally,

wrote one Union soldier. [music]

"One plantation owner, who was left with

nothing after Sherman's army had moved

on, remembered [music]

they came on like demons."

The end result of uh Sherman's uh

destructive war that he's waging on the

southern people is that it it

demonstrates to these people that their

governments, their state government and

their the Confederate government,

Richmond, is not upholding one of its

its important missions, which is to

protect them. women who live in those

areas and whose husbands uh are off

fighting the war with the Confederate

armies [music] are writing letters

saying, you know, the Union Union

vandals have come through and destroyed

the farm, have taken our our food. You

know, we have nothing to eat. And what

will happen is that men will begin to

desert in large numbers to go home and

to defend their families. It it makes

Jefferson Davis look particular

impotent. uh he's having a difficult

time controlling [music] uh the

governors of some of the southern

states, in particular Georgia and North

Carolina. Uh he's going to have a much

tougher time after Sherman's march, but

by this time the end of the Confederacy

is in sight anyway.

Meanwhile, John Bell Hood did his best

to distract Sherman by invading

Tennessee.

The Union commander ignored him and in

any case only had to wait until November

30th when Hood came to grief at Franklin

at the hands of George Thomas's Union

force.

Here more than a quarter of Hood's once

proud army of Tennessee was killed or

wounded and the remainder was scattered

in confused defeat.

Six Confederate generals were killed

including Patrick R. Clayburn, known in

the Southern Army as the Stonewall of

the West.

Although there was no doubting Hood's

devotion to the cause, "Better to die a

thousand deaths than to submit to live

under you," he had told the North. The

gamble to place him in command had

failed.

At the Battle of Nashville on December

15th, the Army of Tennessee was

virtually destroyed and within weeks,

Hood tendered his resignation.

>> Sherman estimated that he'd caused about

hundred million dollar worth of damage

on that march. So, when the shortages

really began to hit Confederacy, that's

when uh southern morale went into its

final uh decline. Certainly the uh the

the Confederate um officer of ordinance,

the secretary of of u the chief of

ordinance was saying that there was no

money in the treasury there. There was

no food to feed Lee's army. Uh he he

couldn't find any troops to chase

Sherman anywhere. The money had run out.

And meanwhile, Lincoln was telling his

Congress that his resources were

unexhausted and in fact inexhaustible.

As long as Robert Lee could himself

[snorts] oppose anyone trying to get

into the heartland of the Confederacy,

as long as the western theater was far

away,

far from the day-to-day concerns

certainly of of Richmond,

it was possible for the Confederacy as

as a body politic to pretend that they

could be defended and they could be

preserved by the military. genius of

Robert E. Lee.

But as

Grant came crushing down from the north

through Virginia

and as Sherman came roaring

through the south, from the west through

through Georgia, marching to the sea,

uh it was demonstrated quite clearly to

the Confederacy

that as a state they could not survive

against the United States.

On December 21st, [music]

Savannah fell to Sherman's army.

I beg to present you as a Christmas

gift, he wrote to a delighted [music]

Lincoln, the town of Savannah with 100

heavy guns, plentiful ammunition,

[music] and 25,000 bales of cotton.

>> [music]

>> The new year of 1865 brought little

prospect of relief, let alone victory

for the South.

Its army was a pitiful sight, down, as

it was, to [music] less than 200,000

ill-fed and badly shawed troops.

The weather was freezing and soldiers,

many of whom were receiving

heart-rending letters telling of the

hardships at home, were deserting

[music] at a higher and higher rate.

Soon, the Confederate Congress had

passed a law that earlier in the war

would have been considered unthinkable.

It provided for the arming of slaves for

the defense of the Confederacy.

Although they were promised their

freedom in return, few slaves took

advantage of an offer made by a dying

government whose individual states had

secceeded four years earlier, primarily

to protect the right of their citizens

[music] to own slaves.

Sherman continued to [music] cut a sway

through southern lands.

Colombia, South Carolina's capital, all

but disappeared in flames. But the

northern general was untroubled by any

qualms or doubts about his actions.

I never shed any tears over it, he said

afterwards. I believe it hastened what

we all fought for, the end of the war.

In South Carolina, uh the men take

particular glee in destroying the

infrastructure of that state. After all,

in their minds, South Carolina was the

state that started the Civil War. They

were the first state to secede from

Union. Uh that is where Fort Sumpter was

located and Fort Sumpter was fired upon

by Confederate forces. Consequently,

when Union forces enter the state

capital of Columbia, South Carolina, uh

it's destroyed uh uh with particular

wantness.

Fires rage for days in that city. A lot

of uh civilian property is intentionally

destroyed and then the [music] Sherman's

troops continue their march northward.

In February, Charleston joined the

growing list of southern cities that had

fallen before Sherman's army.

Although retreating Confederates burned

[music] some cotton stores and military

installations, Charleston was spared the

widescale destruction that Colombia had

suffered.

[music] And still the politicians in the

South, most noticeably Jefferson Davis,

declined to give up the fight. Peace

deals were talked about, but Davis

insisted [music] that the independence

of the South and the preservation of

slavery were to [music] be part of any

settlement.

Inauguration Day fell on March [music]

4th, 1864.

Lincoln's speech was once again eloquent

and elegant in [music] equal measure.

with malice toward none, with charity

for all, with firmness in the right,

[music] as God gives us to see the

right. Let us strive on to finish the

work we are in,

to bind up the nation's wounds, to care

for who shall have borne the battle, and

[music] cherish a just and lasting peace

among ourselves and with all nations.

Listening intently [music] in the

audience was a man who would very soon

leave his own indelible mark on the

nation's history. He was the actor John

Wilks Booth.

Meanwhile, Grant me [music] and the army

of the PTOAC were still besieging

Petersburg.

Lee had been made overall commander

[music] and chief of the Confederate

forces in February 1865,

but his was a hopeless task. The ragtag

southern army that defended [music]

Petersburg and Richmond numbered less

than 30,000 men. Food and ammunition

were [music] running out fast, and Grant

had the bit between his teeth.

Sheridan [music] was dispatched to cut

off Lee's supply lines to the southwest,

and the Confederate [music] leader

realized that soon he would be trapped.

Somehow on [music] April 2nd, he managed

to withdraw his army and head west

in Petersburg. before the uh Union

troops broke through Confederate lines.

Lee was left with a few diehard

uh uh uh uh soldiers. Desertion,

starvation had taken their toll on Lee's

army. And so he had approximately uh uh

uh 35,000 troops left.

Once the Union soldiers had broken

through, captured Petersburg, captured

Richmond, uh the various uh uh groups of

of soldiers retreated and Lee hoped that

they could reunite at Amelia Courthouse

and then attempt to march to Danville

where they could cross over into North

Carolina and hook up with General Joe

Johnson. But what happens is he ends up

fighting a series of running battles

with uh Union troops and his path is

blocked at uh near Appamatics Courthouse

by calvary troopers under General Phil

Sheridan.

At this point he doesn't run.

Petersburg was [music] now in Union

hands. And the following day on April

3rd, 1865,

Richmond, the Confederate capital, also

fell.

The government of Jefferson Davis

[music] was not there to witness the

historic moment. Of course, they had

fled when the news from Petersburg came

through.

fires intentionally [music] started by

fleeing Confederates that were meant to

deny Union troops the spoils of war soon

spread. Only the hard work of the

advancing Union soldiers, troops [music]

of General Godfrey Whitel's All

African-American 25th Corps, saved

[music] the city from complete

destruction.

On April 4th, Lincoln himself was able

to walk through the ruined streets of

the capital of the Confederacy.

For a while, a troop of African-Amean

cavalrymen accompanied him.

a powerful, if unwitting, symbol of what

northern victory meant to the southern

slave population.

Lee and his army marched west [music]

towards the mountains of Virginia with

Grant in hot pursuit. There was more

[music] bloodshed at Sailor's Creek on

the 6th of April where more than 8,000

Confederates were taken prisoner by Palm

Sunday, April 9th. The tiny [music]

southern army was completely surrounded,

and Lee realized the end was near.

"There is [music] nothing for me to do

but go and see General Grant, and I

would rather die a thousand [music]

deaths," said Lee to his subordinates.

"The two men met in a now famous scene

in the home of Wilmer Mlan at Appamatics

Courthouse in Virginia. Many Americans

believe to this day that when Robert E.

Lee's Army of Northern Virginia

surrendered at the tiny hamlet of

Appamatics Courthouse in Appamatics

County, Virginia, that the Civil War was

over. It wasn't. It was the surrender of

one Confederate army. There were still

several Confederate armies still in the

field, still in active hostilities

against United States forces. But I

think it becomes symbolic. This is this

was the premier

eastern Confederate army surrendering to

the premier eastern Union Army and it

was only a matter of time after the Army

of Northern Virginia surrendered that

the other armies would follow suit.

>> Union soldiers have been instructed not

to gloat but to treat their adversaries

with the reverence that they uh

deserved. These soldiers had fought the

hard fight, fought the hard battle. They

had starved and bled for years. And what

was left fighting with Lee was a battleh

hardardened group of men. So when they

marched into the courthouse, there

weren't many people there. What was left

were the slaves who were watching as

these Confederate veterans marched up

the road uh preparing to surrender.

The terms that General Grant gave to

General Lee were um very favorable to

the Confederates. He basically said that

uh I'm going to parole you all and you

are going to go home to your families

and promise not to take arms against the

United States again and uh as long as

you remain lawful citizens that the US

government's not going to bother you.

Grant asked Lee if he had any requests

and Lee thought about it and said yes,

he had one. Most of his men had come to

the war with their own farm animals,

horses and mules and and the like. Could

they return to their farms with these

animals for the spring plowing? And

Grant said yes. And Lee was very

grateful. thought that that would do uh

a lot to consiliate his men towards the

new situation.

>> What Grant is doing by giving them their

horses back is saying we are not going

to treat you as the Romans treat

Carthage. We will not sew your fields

with salt

as part of the nation building that must

go along with a Union victory. You will

be allowed to have your economy back as

well. So the rebels surrender and the

terms which Grant offers are

tremendously rich in cultural symbolism.

Grant offers the rebels their honor and

their economy back in return for

surrendering.

And so the American Civil War, the Great

Rebellion, was [music] finally at an

Lee was dignified and courteous in

defeat. Grant and Sherman magnanimous

and reasonable in victory.

The South had been decimated.

More than a quarter of a million of its

men folk lay in graves. [music]

Its economy was ruined, its countryside

laid waste, [music] and many of its

towns and cities raised to the ground.

For the entire [music]

region, a way of life had been ended.

The South had fought hard for what it

believed, but [music] eventually it had

been dragged, kicking and screaming into

a union it despised. and now resented.

The road to recovery [music]

would be long and painful for a once

proud nation.

[music]

>> The celebrations in the north were long

and loud, but they were surely born more

of relief than jubilation. The men will

[music and singing]

>> Lincoln was determined to begin the

process of binding the nation's wounds,

>> but there was still one [music] more act

in the tragedy of the war to be played

out.

[singing and music]

>> On April 14th, the president visited

Ford's Theater in Washington to see a

production of the play My American

Cousin.

During the performance, a shot from a

Daringer pistol rang out and amid the

screams, the President of the United

States [music]

lay dying from a wound to the head.

The gun had been fired by John Wilks

Booth, a disgruntled actor and

self-styled southern patriot. The man

who had only the previous [music] month

listened to Lincoln's inauguration

speech and who had determined that the

architect of the South's defeat must

die.

Lincoln's name was the [music] most

famous of the 620,000

names of those who died during the

American Civil War.

The nation had seen nothing like it

before and has known nothing like it

since.

Heat.

Heat.

Many wars against foreign foes have

[music] been fought in places all across

the globe.

Each has its own place in the pantheon

of US history and in the hearts of the

American people.

But none perhaps has left [music] scars

like that conflict in the faroff 19th

century

when American fought American in a

bitter struggle for the soul of a

nation.

Heat. Heat.

Heat.

Heat.