Original subtitles

As Lee's Army of Northern Virginia slowly strangled in Grant's iron grasp

at Petersburg, the United States Navy conducted operations to seal off the

last southern ports open to blockade runners.

The most important of these coastal attacks fell at Fort Fisher, which

guarded the approaches to Wilmington, North Carolina.

If the Union could take Fort Fisher, the Confederacy would at last be cut off

from all outside assistance.

In December of 1864, Admiral David Dixon Porter assembled the largest fleet of

the war for a combined Army-Navy expedition against the fort with General

Benjamin Butler.

Beginning on the 24th, the fleet pummeled the fort for two days, but

inflicted only light damage, and Butler chose to withdraw rather than risk a

direct assault on the Confederate stronghold.

After Butler's failure to take Fort Fisher, Grant took this opportunity to

fire him. He'd been a political appointee who'd been responsible for

many failures and many disasters, and after the election of 1864, he'd really

outlived his usefulness. So Lincoln gave him permission to can him, and that's

exactly what Grant did.

He ordered Butler to go to Lowell, Massachusetts, but instead of obeying

his commanding officer, Butler instead went to Washington, D.C. to complain

before Congress.

With Butler out of the way, Grant soon dispatched General Alfred Terry to take

the fort with some 8,000 veteran troops.

Again supported by Porter's warships, the Bluecoats waded ashore on January

13th. And the attack comes in at one end of the fort. The Navy is bombarding, and

they're able to maneuver and plan their bombardment almost like a rolling

barrage of the soldiers, Marines and the sailors, and their Army assaulting

troops come over the fort.

It is a real beautiful piece of coordination between naval gunfire and

an attacking land force.

In the other previous attacks that failed, they would attack the fort, they

would throw them back, attack the fort. A lot of these are sort of formal and

hope-type things, but this is a real concentrated, you know, point-blank

naval gunfire support while the attack is in progress.

And yes, they take heavy losses, but they do roll through the fort.

And yet it is another nail in the coffin, another port closed, another

vast store of Confederate military resources consumed to no effect.

The news that Fort Fisher had fallen came as a shock to Benjamin Butler, who

learned of its capture at a most inopportune time.

Butler was actually in the middle of testifying before a congressional

hearing as to the fact that Fort Fisher's defenses were impregnable when

news of the fort's... capture reached Congress and at first he refused to

believe it but pretty soon word was confirmed and the entire chamber erupted

in laughter.

Now to Butler's credit he actually joined in and laughed along with

everybody else but ultimately Butler had the last laugh because Congress a few

weeks later exonerated him of all the charges that Grant had leveled against

him and all the reasons why he was relieved of command.

With Fort Fisher gone, Wilmington was cut off from the sea, and Lee's soldiers

at Petersburg were forced to tighten their belts yet another notch.

If there's something symbolic of the last gasp of the Confederacy, it

probably is the fall of Fort Fisher in North Carolina. That was the last place

that the Confederacy had to bring in supplies, and they were able to sneak

through blockade runners and bring things in.

Once Fort Fisher fell in early 65, that was it. Now the entire south was bottled

up. The blockade was complete, and no longer would any southern flag fly in

defiance except at Charleston, and it was pretty much devastated beyond being

used by the Confederates for anything other than a symbolic gesture of

defiance. But otherwise, the Confederacy was pretty much done.

Grant was now free to unleash the full fury of the combined Union armies upon

the remnants of the Confederacy.

At this point in the war, Grant is really able to capitalize on Union

strategic mobility, and he is able to send forces throughout...

the remaining areas of the Confederacy almost at will, just tearing the literal

heart out of the Southern war effort.

And at the same time, he's tying down Robert E. Lee's army in the defenses of

Richmond with the Army of the Potomac.

By the spring of 1865, Lee's lines at Petersburg extended some 53 miles.

Ill-fed, ill-clothed, and hopelessly outnumbered, hundreds of men were

deserting nightly.

A Union soldier on the Petersburg line wrote,

The boys talk about Johnnies as at home we talk about suckers and eels.

They'll look around in the evening and joke that there'll be a good run of

Johnnies tonight.

Lee's only hope was to somehow slip from Grant's grasp at Petersburg and march

south to link up with General Johnston, named by Lee himself to command the

Southern Army in the Carolinas.

Lee figured that if he could join with Johnston, he could use their combined

strength to strike at Sherman or Grant individually and thereby sustain

resistance long enough to force a negotiated peace on favorable terms.

Born from desperation, Lee's strategy was doomed to failure.

Uniting with Johnston was a remote possibility, especially since Johnston

himself was busy planning a counteroffensive of his own.

Outnumbered almost four to one, General Joseph Johnston could not hope to stop

the combined might of William T. Sherman's armies as they drove north

through the Carolinas.

Instead, Johnston relied on the same delaying tactics he used outside of

Atlanta, trading space for time as he waited for an opportunity to strike at a

portion of Sherman's force.

He finally got that chance outside of Bentonville.

With the Army of Northern Virginia pinned behind the defenses of Richmond

and Petersburg and the fall of Savannah to Sherman, President Lincoln turned the

last phase of the war over to his two leading professional soldiers.

Accordingly, General Grant wired Sherman from the federal base at City Point and

ordered him to march north from Savannah, devastating the Carolinas en

route before linking up with the Army of the Potomac in Virginia.

to strike at lee sherman believed his soldiers had a third purpose in mind

the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance

upon south carolina i almost tremble at her fate but feel that she deserves all

that seems to be in store for her sherman's army moved into south carolina

in mid-january 1865 slicing through the state toward the capital of columbia 60

,000 Blue Avengers brought war and its terrible consequences to the state where

it had all begun some four years before.

A Union private declared,

Here is where the treason began, and by God, here is where it shall end.

If the Federals had made Georgia howl, they made South Carolina weep. Few

houses in their path were left standing.

On February 17th, Columbia fell to Sherman's legions.

By the next morning, much of the city was rubble and ashes.

The city virtually burned to the ground, and though both sides would later point

accusing fingers, just who was responsible for torching the city

mattered little.

General Sherman best summed up the northern viewpoint.

Though I never ordered it, and never wished it, I believe that it hastened

what we all fought for.

The end of the war.

Although Sherman's march to the sea is a much more well-known episode in the

Civil War, Sherman himself believed, and it's borne out by the facts, that his

movement through the Carolinas was a much more significant and difficult

task. It was difficult because now, instead of moving parallel with rivers

and through fertile farmland, they were moving across rivers.

and through swamps and low-lying areas along the coast. And the fact that they

could maintain 10 miles a day was really a remarkable achievement.

It was significant in that they were now moving through the birthplace of the

Confederacy. Pretty much at will.

Although this is where it all started, the Confederate States of America were

unable to stop the advance of this Union force.

On February 22nd, General Schofield and a force of 14,000 men took Wilmington

and began moving in from the coast toward Goldsboro and restoring the rail

lines to that city.

Sherman's men continued their march toward and finally into North Carolina,

battling southern troops virtually every day, but easily sweeping aside what

resistance the outnumbered rebels could offer.

By the middle of March, it was clear to Johnston that Sherman was headed for

Goldsboro to link up with Union forces moving in from the coast.

Here in the Carolinas, Johnston tried to refight the Atlantic campaign.

Basically, what he wanted to do was trade space for time while he built up

his own forces and waited for an opportune moment to strike at an

isolated portion of Sherman's army.

As Johnston consolidated the scattered Confederate units, some of the South's

top leaders joined his ragged army.

Braxton Bragg, Alexander Stewart, and Benjamin Cheatham arrived from the

decimated Army of Tennessee, while Lafayette McClaws and D.H. Hill joined

Johnston after serving for years in the Army of Northern Virginia.

Johnston received an additional boost when General Hardy evacuated Charleston

and joined up with him.

As experienced as his commanders and some of his men were, the gathering

rebel forces were a hodgepodge of fractured units and men.

Composed of young boys and old men, they were the last of the South's available

manpower.

Remnants of veteran regiments were mixed with raw militia units that had never

fired a shot in anger.

It was an army with severe problems, and the experienced Johnston knew he would

have to wield it carefully.

Scouting Sherman's advance, Confederate cavalry under General Wade Hampton

reported to Johnston that the Federals were marching in two widely separated

columns.

Seizing on the opportunity, Johnston ordered his force to Bentonville to

block the advance of Slocum's wing and defeat it before the troops of Oliver

Howard could arrive.

The Southern commander had been erroneously informed that the two

Federal forces were out of supporting distance of each other.

Johnston's plan called for Hampton's cavalry to skirmish with the Federals

and lead Slocum's men into a trap along the Goldsboro Pike.

The Confederate Army deployed in the shape of a large sickle, with Bragg as

the handle and Hardy and Stewart the cutting edge.

On the morning of March 19th, Slocum's column encountered Wade Hampton's

cavalry in a dismounted skirmish line near Cole's Plantation.

Well used to Confederate delaying tactics by now, the veteran Union

formations shook out into line, formed up, and came on.

Blue skirmishers went out and battle lines moved forward as Hampton's men

gave ground and fell slowly back on the waiting Rebel trap.

As the Yankees moved forward, the Confederate screen melted away and the

Union troops ran headlong into the main southern line.

The attackers paused, then renewed their advance, despite having less than 10,000

men against almost 35,000 rebels.

At this point, it really looks like Johnston's plan is going to succeed

exactly like he has it set up. He, in fact, has created, for all intents, an L

-shaped ambush, and the federal troops are moving into that.

And just at the critical moment, Bragg, who's holding the base of that L, feels

that he needs reinforcements to hold off this Union attack.

And the only place that Johnston can get them from is to pull them out of the

other end of the L from the attacking force and send them down that way. And

that confusion caused by the marching and counter-marching to get forces into

position delays the Confederate counterattack long enough for the Union

to bring enough forces onto the battlefield to be able to ultimately

stop the Confederate counterattack when it does finally occur.

Slocum used the time given him by the Confederate mistake to double the Union

troops on the field, hurrying infantry and artillery forward into the growing

battle. He sent word to Sherman of the Confederate attack and Oliver Howard was

ordered to Bentonville with all possible speed.

When Johnston's attack finally went forward the Union left was almost

immediately driven back by a flanking attack launched by General Stewart

It

was

now the southern troops that swept forward throwing the Federals back in

disorder while capturing some Union artillery

Despite the reverse on the Union left, Morgan's men, which made up Slocum's

right, stood firm.

Pressed by Bragg's men to their front, they were also assailed by Hardy on

their exposed flank.

It was a precarious situation, but they fought on against mounting odds.

Just as it appeared they might be overwhelmed, Cogswell's Union Brigade

appeared on the Rebel flank to bolster Morgan's exhausted men.

Together, they stemmed the Rebel tide.

As the Union line began to stabilize, Johnston saw his chances beginning to

slip away.

He sent wave after wave against the Federal position in a desperate attempt

to throw back the Yankees before they could be reinforced.

by the end of the day johnston's army had spent its strength on gallant but

futile attacks nothing had been gained in fact much had been lost for the

southern blood that flowed on the field at bentonville that day could never be

replaced

The following morning, the first of Oliver Howard's bluecoats arrived on the

scene, and by late afternoon, his entire army was on hand.

With all this power assembled against him, Johnston realized he could no

longer hope to take the offensive.

His only chance lay in blunting Sherman's own assaults.

Johnston stayed put and ordered his men to dig in deeper and prepare to give the

Yankees a very deadly welcome.

March 21st found the men on both sides resting securely behind their line of

entrenchments, and Sherman was surprised that Johnston's force of about 20,000

had not retreated.

Only desultory firing of skirmishers and artillery broke the calm of the winter

day, as neither side seemed willing to make the first move.

In the early afternoon, however, increased firing on the Confederate left

signaled a break in the stalemate.

Joseph Moore's Union Division, which had been sent out on a reconnaissance in

force, realized that they had turned the rebel flank and turned in on the

Confederates' rear.

The dismayed rebels reacted quickly.

The Yankee attack met with great success, at one point coming within 50

feet of Johnston's headquarters and threatening the Confederate line of

retreat. But Sherman, who did not want a general assault, ordered Moore back,

concerned that his road-weary veterans might take unnecessary casualties.

He would rather win by strategy and maneuver than by battle.

Johnston recognized that his force was too small to hold their position at

Bentonville, and that night he ordered his army to withdraw toward Raleigh.

Sherman did not even bother to pursue.

The Battle of Bentonville became the Confederate swan song in the Carolinas.

On March 23, Schofield met up with Sherman at Goldsboro as planned, adding

another 14,000 men to his already powerful force.

Here, the Federals paused to rest and refit before moving on to join Grant

outside Petersburg.

With Sherman on the Georgia coast at Savannah ready to push north through the

Carolinas, General Grant went to work against Lee's desperate Army of Northern

Virginia.

He carefully extended his lines to the left, ever closer to Lee's last railroad

link to the broken remnants of the Confederacy.

Grant's move forced Lee to lengthen his own lines, thinning his defenses as he

sought to protect his only remaining supply line.

With Lee overextended, Grant launched his final killing blows that ultimately

led to Appomattox Courthouse and the surrender of Lee's shattered army.

Grant's army in Lee's front occupied a line that stretched in a huge semicircle

with the northern tip opposite Richmond and the southern tip curled around

southwest of Petersburg.

If the Army of Northern Virginia was to survive, it had to give Grant the slip.

Once again, Lee decided on a bold, if somewhat desperate, move.

On the night of March 25, 1865, John Gordon launched... a surprise attack

against Fort Steadman. And this was a night attack that was successful. It

actually took the fort really by bayonet. At first, it looked like this

whole assault might work, but the Union forces quickly counterattacked and

retook the fort and dealt Gordon's division a severe defeat.

So Lee's last attempt to break the siege by force of arms at Petersburg had

failed.

Determined to keep the pressure on Lee, Grant sent Philip Sheridan, recently

returned from the Shenandoah Valley, to threaten the last rail lines supplying

Lee's army.

Informed of this latest federal move, Lee really has no choice. He has to hold

his supply line if possible.

So he sends George Pickett and his units out to stop Sheridan and push him back.

But Pickett really isn't able to do anything more than just stop Sheridan's

advance because the Union forces dig in.

and pickett is unable to make any progress against them so he falls back

to the area of five forks and his units dig in and at that point he turns the

initiative back over to the federals and waits for their next move sheridan

struck back at pickett's man on april 1st 1865.

attacking through a forest the yankees hit the rebel forest from the front and

both flanks simultaneously

The federal assault crushed the Confederates and their lines collapsed.

By the end of the battle, around 5,000 hungry, tired rebels had fallen into

Union hands, and Lee's last line of supply had been eliminated.

Five Forks was an important victory for the Union because they were able to

inflict a serious defeat on the Confederates. They were able to force

Lee... to give up his line at Petersburg and result in the chase down to

Appomattox and the final end of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Grant, upon hearing the news from Sheridan, ordered a general assault on

the Confederate lines.

Attacking at many points simultaneously, the Union juggernaut was unstoppable.

In Richmond, Jefferson Davis was at church when he received a dispatch from

the War Department.

General Lee telegraphs that he can hold his position no longer.

Davis, ashen-faced, quietly left and set about evacuating Richmond.

That same night, as the Confederate government and its army garrison left

Richmond, factories, arsenals, and mills were systematically destroyed.

Fires rapidly spread, and much of the city was consumed by the terrible

Holocaust. A rebel gunner described the wild, horrible scene.

Miles and miles of fire, mountain piled upon mountain of black smoke, one

ceaseless babble of human voices, crying, cursing, one mighty pandemonium

of woe.

And while Richmond burned, Lee's forces withdrew from Petersburg.

With Richmond lost, Lee was rapidly running out of options.

Worse, his men were running out of supplies. They were starving, they

didn't have ammunition, and Lee realized that his only hope was to march his men

to Amelia Courthouse.

and meet a couple of train loads of supplies that he had ordered to be

brought there before Union cavalry reached it and captured those supplies.

From there, his plan was to use the Danville rail line to get down to

Johnston and continue the struggle down in the Carolinas. But given the

condition of his men and the size of the Union force he was facing, this really

was an unrealistic plan at best.

As the weak and dispirited Army of Northern Virginia rallied and formed at

Amelia Courthouse, the starving soldiers discovered the supply train staged there

contained no food, only ammunition.

Lacking the rations to continue his flight, Lee allowed the troops a day to

forage through the countryside in an effort to improve their condition.

Time, and with it the chance to escape, was rapidly slipping away from the

rebels.

General Grant, sensing that the end was near, sent Sheridan's cavalry and three

infantry corps on a wild cross-country pursuit of Lee's staggering army.

During the past year, Grant had raced Lee to such places as Spotsylvania, Cold

Harbor, and Petersburg, but had always come up short.

His men, however, grew convinced that this was a dash to the finish.

We grew tired.

but we wanted to be there when the rebels found the last ditch of which

they had talked so much on april fifth the hard-marching federals cut the

danville railroad forcing lee to change his plans he pointed his army to the

west and marched along the line of the appomattox river

Nipping at the heels of their hard-pressed foe, the Union infantry

kept up the pressure while Sheridan's cavalry raced to get ahead of the

remnants of Lee's army and head them off.

The Confederates, with Anderson's men in the van and Yule following, were

approaching the two forks of Sailor's Creek when their advance was halted by

Union cavalry under the command of Wesley Merritt.

With the situation to his front unclear and Union forces breathing down his

neck, General Ewell deployed his men atop a small hill just west of Little

Sailor's Creek.

It was April 6th, 1865.

Ewell's men were greatly outnumbered and could expect no help from Anderson, who

had his hands full with Merritt's cavalry.

Sending skirmishers out to contest the Federal advance, the tattered rebels

awaited the coming onslaught.

Under the command of General Joseph Kershaw, the thin gray line of rebel

skirmishers was able to slow the Federal advance and fought doggedly in spite of

the odds.

The Federal troops facing the Confederates were some of the Army of

the Potomac's best units, experienced soldiers that recognized that the rebel

situation was hopeless.

Supported by artillery and an unrelenting desire to see the thing

finished, the blue-clad line moved steadily forward, opposed only by the

rebel skirmishers who slowly melted back into the main Confederate line.

Ewell was debating whether he should withdraw when a seemingly endless line

of Yankees formed up and marched toward the waiting rebels.

As they began to close the distance, the Union lines suddenly halted before the

silent Confederates.

and many of the men waved white handkerchiefs, calling on the rebels to

surrender.

Ewell's men sent back an emphatic reply.

Staggered by the unexpected volley, the Federal line fell back to reform, and

the Confederates seized the opportunity and swarmed after them.

Miraculously, it looked for a time as if the Confederates might carry the day.

The Northerners soon regrouped, however, and fell on both flanks of the rebel

attack.

Lee's men fought back with stunning ferocity.

A Confederate officer later recalled the struggle.

I saw numbers of them kill each other. bayonets and the butts of muskets, and

even bite each other's throats, ears, and noses, rolling the ground like wild

beasts.

In spite of their valor, the Southerners were driven back.

Ewell's men had fought bravely, but the issue was never really in doubt.

The Yankee lines reformed and started forward in a final determined assault.

This time, there would be no calls for surrender from the Grimm Union ranks.

The Union troops drove relentlessly forward, enveloping the Confederate

battle line and sending Ewell's men back in a rout.

At the same time, Merritt's cavalry overran Anderson's line, and the Union

troopers soon galloped into Ewell's rear.

The scene was utter chaos, and the Confederates, exhausted and confused,

began surrendering en masse.

Some 8,000 men, accounting for approximately one-fourth of Lee's army,

were lost or taken prisoner.

Summing up the effect of the Union victory, Sheridan sent a dispatch to

Grant, which read, If the thing is pressed, I think Lee will surrender.

Grant forwarded the message by telegraph to Lincoln, who replied almost

immediately, Let the thing be pressed.

Following the defeat at Sailor's Creek, Lee consolidated his army at Farmville,

where at last the men found a small amount of food.

Once the rations had been issued, Lee put his army on the road again, heading

west for Appomattox.

As Lee begins to move off, he leaves a small rear guard behind to destroy the

bridge over the Appomattox River.

Unfortunately for the Confederates, the Federal Advanced Guard arrives and in a

really quick skirmish pushes them off the bridge before it can be destroyed.

It's quickly repaired and when Lee is informed of this he has to decide

whether he's going to continue to run or if he has to stand and fight at that

point.

Lee halted the army and deployed to meet an assault which never came.

The real danger was Sheridan's rapidly moving cavalry, which had returned to

the road heading toward Appomattox Station.

Union cavalry under George Custer reached the railroad and captured

several trains of supplies that had been sent to the relief of Lee's struggling

soldiers. That night, Grant sent Lee a dispatch proposing that he surrender.

The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of

further resistance.

I feel that it is my duty to shift from myself responsibility for any further

effusion of blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the

Confederate State Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.

Feeling that they were now cut off, Lee called a council of war and proposed

that surrender was the best course of action given the circumstances.

His subordinates disagreed and urged a morning assault on the Union cavalry to

reopen the escape route.

The following morning, General Gordon deployed his men and attacked, knowing

the fate of the Confederacy marched with them.

At first, they pushed the Federal cavalry back, but as they topped a small

rise, the rebels stopped cold.

Deployed on the reverse slope were at least 20,000 Federals, with thousands

more streaming into view.

The sight of such an overwhelming force blocking their escape tore the heart out

of the rebel attack.

Lee had finally been trapped, and this time there would be no way out.

Out of supplies, out of time, and out of hope,

Robert E. Lee succumbed to the inevitable.

Brokenhearted, he asked his staff to arrange a meeting with General Ulysses

S. Grant to discuss the terms of surrender.

Four years of ferocious fighting had finally come to a merciful end.

On April 9th, Lee sent a message to Grant calling for a ceasefire.

and requesting a meeting to discuss terms of surrender.

Grant sent an officer ahead to meet with Lee and followed with the rest of his

staff.

After meeting Grant's representative, Lee sent an aide into Appomattox

Courthouse to select a spot for the discussions with Grant.

It was Palm Sunday, and this sleepy Virginia county seat was about to

witness one of the most important episodes in American history.

Lee's aide asked Wilbur McLean to assist him in selecting a suitable spot to

conduct the meeting.

In 1861, McLean had lived near Manassas, where the first Battle of Bull Run had

raged across his fields.

He had moved to this remote village to escape the contending armies, and now,

by an incredible turn of fate, what had started in his front yard was about to

be finished in his front room.

Lee arrived first, splendidly arrayed in full dress uniform with sash and

carrying a magnificent sword, which he expected to surrender as Grant's

prisoner. Grant arrived about 30 minutes later, dressed in a mud-spattered

uniform because his headquarters wagon had fallen behind in the race to cut off

Lee. The stage was set for the son of an Ohio tanner, to dictate surrender terms

to the son of a Virginia nobleman.

Lee fully expected to have a very harsh peace imposed on him and his men.

And in reality, Grant gave him... extremely lenient terms and lee frankly

was surprised at this it was emblematic of the mutual respect both sides felt

for each other and in the end as the meeting was breaking up lee actually was

shaking hands with the various members of grant's staff and he came face to

face with eli parker one of grant's staff officers and also a native

american and when lee met him he shook his hand and he said i'm glad to see one

real american represented here well Eli Parker probably summed up the situation

better than anybody else in his reply he looked at Lee and he said sir we are all

Americans with the formalities completed the two generals raised their hats in

salute then somberly parted grant later expressed his emotions

I felt sad and depressed at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and

valiantly and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe,

one of the worst for which a people ever fought.

On the 12th of April, 1865, exactly four years after the first shots of the war

fell upon Fort Sumter, General Joshua Chamberlain's division filed into

Appomattox to officially receive the Confederate surrender.

Wrote Chamberlain,

Great memories and great thoughts went forward. We formed along a principal

street to face the last line of battle and receive the arms and colors of that

great army.

We were remnants also, veterans and replaced veterans, cut to pieces, cut

down, consolidated, divisions into brigades, regiments into one.

As the Confederates marched into view, led by General John Gordon, Chamberlain

ordered his men to give their defeated foe the soldiers' salute, a profound

sign of respect.

The Union troops snapped smartly to attention.

Surprised by the gesture, General Gordon returned Chamberlain's salute, dipping

his sword and ordering his men to carry arms.

Years later, both sides would say the nation's healing began at that moment.

thanks in part to Chamberlain's gracious act.

The peace that Lincoln had envisioned in his second inaugural address came to

fruition that day.

With malice toward none, with charity for all.

with firmness in the right, 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 him who

shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which

may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with

all nations.

The news of Lee's surrender was met with unrestrained joy throughout the North

and by some four million slaves in the South, whose dream of freedom had at

last come to pass.

But for most Southerners, a great deal of soul-searching took place as they

tried to come to grips with the failure of their cause.

For some, it was an intolerable cross to bear.

Edmund Ruffin, widely believed to have fired the first shot at Fort Sumter,

chose suicide rather than life under Yankee rule.

But in time, many Southerners came to agree with Woodrow Wilson, a Virginian,

who in 1880 wrote, Because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the

Confederacy. Slavery was an intolerable affliction upon our society.

Nevertheless, I recognize and pay loving tribute to the immortal courage of the

soldiers of the Confederacy.

President Lincoln shared in the sense of euphoria that swept across the North and

could look back with satisfaction at having achieved his dual purpose of

restoring the Union and freeing the slaves.

But already, he had his eye on the future.

Just two days after Lee's surrender, he delivered a carefully prepared speech on

Reconstruction, hinting at the right to vote for literate Negroes and black

veterans.

Lincoln changed his position.

between 1860 and 1865, rather dramatically.

When he was elected, his position was that if he could preserve the Union and

free no slaves, he'd do it.

If he could preserve the Union by freeing all the slaves, he'd do that.

And if he could preserve the Union by freeing some and leaving others in

slavery, he would do that.

He said his personal feelings were against slavery, but politically, he

didn't think it was something to be done at that point.

However, continuing pressure, both the need to enlist freed blacks in the army

and pressure from the abolitionists, led to Lincoln issuing the Emancipation

Proclamation, and by the end of the war, coming out very carefully in favor of

blacks voting and participating in public government.

William Lloyd Garrison, one of the leaders of the abolitionists, put it

this way.

He said, if Lincoln was able to grow, it was because we watered him.

Radical Republicans applauded the president, but at least one listener

took umbrage. To a companion, John Wilkes Booth snarled, That means nigger

citizenship. Now, by God, I'll put him through.

That is the last speech he'll ever make.

John Wilkes Booth was one of the more famous actors.

of his day in the united states and he was very unabashed in his pro-southern

sympathies so when lincoln was elected president he moved to strike a blow for

the south and what he did was establish a group of conspirators who would go out

and kidnap the president of the united states and while they attempted this

twice both times they were unsuccessful but the fallout for this that was

important was that

His magnetic personality, Booth was a very charismatic guy, had attracted

these lowlifes who would be willing later to assist him in an assassination

attempt.

After Lee's surrender, Booth realized kidnap would be futile. His only hope

was to reignite the war, and that called for murder.

There are people who believe that if peace is unsatisfactory, therefore war

must be better.

The South was headed for a peace that John Wilkes Booth felt was

unsatisfactory Therefore let us try the alternative Booth resolved to kill

President Lincoln while his co-conspirators assassinated Secretary

of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson Booth shared

his plan with the others involved in the kidnapping plot just two hours before he

would fire the fateful shot While he killed Lincoln, Louis Payne and David

Herold would strike at Seward, and George Atzerodt would assassinate Vice

President Johnson.

On the evening of April 14, 1865, Lincoln was supposed to escort his wife

to see the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater.

It was there that John Wilkes Booth planned to strike.

While the president and his party watched the play from a balcony box,

Booth slipped into Ford's theater and prepared to carry out his murderous

plan.

John Wilkes Booth entered Lincoln's box and shot him in the back of the head

with a single shot derringer, which eventually killed Lincoln.

Well, after the shot was fired, Lincoln's guest...

Major Rathbone stood up and tried to stop Booth, but Booth stabbed him and

then leaped from the balcony, and he fell to the stage and broke his leg.

He was actually able to limp away and get off into the night.

Meanwhile, the other conspirators were carrying out their attack on Seward,

where Harold and Payne broke into Seward's house, and Payne stabbed him

repeatedly while Seward was in bed.

Amazingly, Seward survived, but Payne and Harold were able to initially get

away.

The third aspect to the conspiracy was the assassination of Vice President

Johnson, which Atzerodt was supposed to carry out, but he got drunk in a bar

instead, and then when he heard of the assassination of the president, he just

fled.

A massive, if disorganized, manhunt ensued until Booth and Harold were

tracked to a Virginia farm.

On April 26th, they were surrounded by a cavalry detail and ordered to surrender.

Harold obeyed, but Booth refused, even after the barn in which he was hiding

was set ablaze.

Finally, one of the men took aim and fired.

Following Booth's death, most of his co-conspirators were swiftly caught and

executed, but the North refused to forget this last crime committed in the

name of the Southern cause.

The impact of the assassination of Lincoln was absolutely tremendous, and

everyone even then recognized it. They knew that if Lincoln had survived, there

would have been a much more magnanimous attitude toward the South, and that

Reconstruction would not have been as harsh or as vengeful as it ended up

being. And Lincoln also, it would have been interesting to see how he would

have dealt with the freed slaves and how to integrate them into society.

But all that ended with the assassination in the spring of 65.

And although Lincoln survived to see the end of the war, to see this final

success of the federal government, he wouldn't be able to live beyond that to

have any more impact.

And I think it was the post-Civil War that his loss is felt the greatest by

the country.

With Lincoln dead, all hopes of a tempered peace were lost.

While the nation mourned the passing of their commander-in-chief, Vice President

Andrew Johnson, a moderate Democrat from eastern Tennessee, became the nation's

17th president.

Johnson and Congress soon clashed over how the South was to be reconstructed.

President Andrew Johnson basically stood as a roadblock against any efforts by

the Senate and the Congress to change the economic situation in the South.

And the fight was so severe it eventually led to his being impeached on

some rather technical grounds.

The attempt failed by one vote.

but made it clear that Johnson had to go, and he was replaced the next

election by Ulysses S. Grant.

Under Grant, Reconstruction went ahead full steam.

It meant full voting rights for black citizens, at least men, and this meant

the election of blacks in the state legislatures and into the Congress from

most of the southern states, if not all.

It led to public education, not just for blacks, but for poor whites as well, for

the first time. time and many widespread changes across the South.

This continued until 1870 when it was culminated by the passage of the 15th

Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed discrimination in voting

against persons based on race or previous condition of servitude.

Subsequently, this amendment was honored more in the breach than in the actual

practice up until the Voting Rights Act was passed in the 1960s.

Under Grant, the old Southern order was turned on its head.

Blacks, who were slaves only a few years before, now became congressmen, state

legislators, sheriffs, and militia commanders.

The new order proved to be an anathema to most Southern whites.

This directly led to the creation of a variety of white terror organizations,

most notably the Red Shirts in South Carolina and the Ku Klux Klan, which got

started in Pulaski, Tennessee.

Well, during this period, the late 1860s, thousands of blacks were murdered

in cold blood.

Because of the escalating violence throughout much of the South, thousands

of Union troops along with homegrown black militia units were forced to

occupy the former Confederate states.

But even their presence could not entirely stem the bloodshed.

The social climate was extremely volatile, and soon political maneuvering

would destroy that delicate balance.

Ulysses S. Grant was elected to the presidency by a margin of 300,000 votes

and in that election 700,000 southern blacks voted and they voted almost to a

man Republican.

By 1876 however the Republican Party had decided that its alliance with southern

blacks was no longer so important and that it was more interested in having a

relationship with the

essentially the old wealthy southern ruling group.

The election came out of tie, although there was a great deal of ballot

skullduggery. The state of Florida bringing in two separate delegations of

electors with differing vote counts, and the electoral college was deadlocked,

not able to elect a president.

Finally, a compromise was worked out, and the compromise was this.

The Democrats would vote.

for the republicans and allow the republicans to win the presidency for

rutherford b hayes and the republicans in turn would withdraw federal troops

from the south abolish the freedmen's bureau and allow the southern ruling

group to do whatever essentially it liked with southern blacks the tilden

hayes compromise effectively ended interracial democracy in the south and

represented a tremendous step backward for the former slaves

But the political structure that existed in the antebellum era did not reassert

itself. Far from it. The Civil War's outcome changed forever the American

system of government.

Perhaps the farthest reaching effect the Civil War had on the United States was

the fact that it unified the country under one strong federal authority.

And while today states' rights continues to be an issue and there's always that

delicate balance, the fact remains that the Civil War immeasurably strengthened

the federal government's role in domestic affairs.

Not only did the role of state government take a backseat to

increasingly powerful federal authority, but the political tendencies of voters

north and south would prove critical for decades the civil war had the effect of

polarizing american voting patterns for over 100 years after its end for example

southern whites voted consistently democratic up until 1980

at which point most southern conservatives decided they'd rather be

republicans but that word had been unmentionable in southern white circles

beforehand african americans on the other hand those who were allowed to

vote after the civil war consistently voted republican up until the election

of franklin delano roosevelt and since then have voted consistently democratic

After the war, the poet Walt Whitman stumbled across a solitary grave of a

Union soldier in Virginia.

In his tribute to that unknown boy, Whitman immortalized his generation's

sacrifice.

I marked at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier.

Mortally wounded, he, and buried on the retreat.

Easily all I could understand.

The halt of a midday hour went up. No time to lose yet this sign left.

on a tablet scrawled and nailed on the tree by the grave, bold, cautious, true,

and my loving comrade.

Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering, many a changeful season to

follow and many a scene of life.

Yet at times through changeful season and scene abrupt, alone or in the

crowded street, comes before me the unknown soldier's grave.

comes the inscription rude in Virginia's woods, bold, cautious, true,

and my loving comrade.

The legacy of the Civil War remains with us even now, over 140 years later, in

the graves of the more than 600,000 Union and Confederate soldiers whose

lives were snuffed out by the raging conflict.

Through the haze of smoke, through the misery of the blood-soaked hospitals and

all the other horrors that generation endured in its crucible of war, there

emerged one noble ideal that men clung to through all measure of hardship.

This nation, these United States, this great experiment in democracy was worth

saving. And as they united the country, So they saved generations to come from

the oppression that millions once suffered.

And therein lies the great truth of America's Civil War battlefields, where

once they bore witness to untold suffering, they now provide a beacon to

every succeeding generation.