Original subtitles

‐ General Grant.

‐ Retain your sidearms, General.

‐ You'll go after Lee.

You'll go after him until he's finished.

It all depends on you.

‐ Gentlemen. ‐ Grant may have won

some victories in the west, but this is Virginia.

‐ We'll cross the Rapidan into the Wilderness.

‐ His army is twice ours, sir.

‐ Well, we'll just have to even the odds,

catch them before they get through the Wilderness.

‐ Scouts say Grant's packing up.

Finally retreating, sir.

‐ No, he's not a retreating man.

‐ We're heading south? ‐ To Richmond.

‐ Richmond? ‐ To Richmond.

‐ We're headed south!

‐ Very few people really know who Ulysses S. Grant was.

‐ Today there is this sense that he's forgotten.

‐ He's been called so many things over the years.

‐ The greatest general of his time.

‐ A military genius.

‐ A bloody butcher.

‐ A corrupt president.

‐ A belligerent drunk who got lucky.

He didn't get lucky.

‐ Ulysses S. Grant is this perfectly average,

humble individual from a poor, hardscrabble background.

‐ With a lot of hard times and failures in his life.

‐ But he's got this dogged determination,

this bulldog mentality.

‐ This guy comes from nothing,

rises to the highest ranks

of the Union army.

‐ Fights bloody, terrible battles.

‐ With indomitable will.

‐ To save the Union.

‐ To heal his country.

‐ To lead the nation towards justice for everybody.

‐ He's the unheroic hero

of our greatest national epic, the American Civil War.

‐ It's truly an American story

not only of patriotism to the nation

but for the values of who we are

and who we aspire to be.

‐ Fall in!

‐ The armies were now ready to move

for the accomplishment of a single goal:

Lee, in the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond.

That was the main end to which all were working.

‐ When Grant marches off in 1864,

it's gonna set off a titanic struggle

for the end of the war.

Grant is going to keep their focus lasered on

to Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia

because Grant understood the destruction of Lee's army

meant the destruction of the Confederacy.

At the beginning of the campaign,

Grant mentions to a correspondent

who's headed off to Washington, D. C.‐‐

he says to him, "If you get through the lines

"and you make it and you see President Lincoln,

"tell him from me that whatever happens,

there will be no turning back."

‐ After the Wilderness, Grant heads south,

and it's just sustained combat.

He just keeps seeing these opportunities, and he attacks,

and he attacks, and he attacks.

And it rains, and the weather is miserable,

but they just keep going for weeks.

‐ The battles of the Wilderness,

Spotsylvania, and North Anna,

bloody and terrible though they were on our side,

were even more damaging to our enemy.

‐ In some of the most savage fighting of the war,

you see 5 1/2 weeks of constant movement,

constant entrenching, constant fighting

that ultimately will produce 55,000 Union casualties,

35,000 Confederate casualties.

Now Grant's men are simply exhausted.

By the time Grant reaches

the crucial crossroads of Cold Harbor,

these soldiers understand keenly what's ahead.

And it's more loss. It's more rivers of blood.

‐ If you're a soldier, you think,

"Our chances aren't good."

And this is when we have heartbreaking stories of men

writing on sheets of paper,

"Today was the day I was killed at Cold Harbor,"

and pinning that to the inside of their uniforms.

But Grant still believes that Lee's army is almost broken.

"All I have to do is push a little bit harder,

and they will break."

Company, prepare!

Keep pressing forward!

Hold your ground!

Come on, boys!

Let's go, let's go, let's go! Come on!

Move it! Let's go!

Go, go, go!

Let's show them what Ohio's worth!

Advance!

‐ Cold Harbor was a disaster.

Robert E. Lee's army had set up crossfire positions.

They had an enormous advantage,

and within only five hours' time,

Grant's army had sustained

thousands of casualties in one morning assault.

‐ One Union soldier likened that combat at Cold Harbor

to a volcanic blast,

that wasn't war; it was murder.

‐ Grant is a very aggressive general,

and we see that in several mistakes

that he makes throughout the war,

including Cold Harbor.

Some have said Cold Harbor was the price that the Union

had to pay to have Grant as their commander.

‐ I have always regretted

the last assault at Cold Harbor.

No advantage whatever was gained to compensate

for the heavy loss we sustained.

‐ By 1864, people are tired.

There is no clear winner,

and there is no clear end in sight

for this conflict.

We have over 600,000 people dead,

and people are tired of it.

‐ The Northern public was craving some good news.

Initially, the morale in the North had been buoyed

by this new decisiveness of Grant after the Wilderness,

and they demanded a quick victory.

But by the time Grant reaches Cold Harbor,

they were impatient

as the rivers of blood continued.

‐ That's it, General. One more in a minute, sir.

‐ General Grant, our readers are keen to understand

how you lost so many men during this campaign.

‐ Lee had the advantage of being on the defensive.

He was entrenched.

I had to attack his army where it was,

and I made him pay.

‐ Cold Harbor, General, 12,000 good Union men dead,

wounded, and missing.

‐ Do you have a question? ‐ Was it worth it, sir?

What did you gain?

‐ General Grant, sir, if you please?

‐ General, you haven't answered my question.

‐ Hold, please.

‐ Cold Harbor, 12,000. What did we gain?

‐ We lost a lot of boys your age...

fighting to keep this country together.

What have you done for the Union?

‐ General Grant, sir,

if you please?

‐ They called me a butcher.

‐ Hold, please.

‐ I sometimes could hardly bring myself

to give an order at battle.

‐ He wasn't a butcher.

Many casualties came out of the overland campaign,

but it was fundamentally necessary

in order to win the war.

Robert E. Lee lost 50% of his entire army

during the exact same duration,

but is Lee remembered as a butcher?

‐ Being in command of a‐‐ of a large effort,

being the commander is a pretty unique experience.

You know, there's no one in whom you can confide.

It's a‐‐it is a lo‐‐it's lonely at the top, as they say.

And the casualties are going to be tough,

and Grant is experiencing the butcher's bill,

as they termed it.

And it takes a great deal of, again, just sheer fortitude,

sheer determination to continue on

and not let this grind you down.

‐ What Grant accomplishes after Cold Harbor is, I think,

one of his most impressive feats of the war.

Grant decides to flank the Army of Northern Virginia

and then cross the even more formidable obstacle

of the James River.

‐ He's trying to keep the initiative,

continue the momentum, drive the energy,

and force Lee to react to what he's doing.

This is one of his great strengths.

‐ It's an incredibly dangerous maneuver

to move an army of that size across a major body of water,

especially whenever you're faced off against an enemy

as wily as the Gray Fox, Robert E. Lee.

And so he finds a way, secretly, at night,

to take an army of 115,000

and disappear.

And Robert E. Lee misses this.

He misses the movement of Grant's army.

‐ To my dear wife, Julia.

Since Sunday, we have been engaged

in one of the most perilous movements ever executed

by a large army,

that of withdrawing from the front of an enemy

and moving past his flank,

crossing the James River with a bridge we have to improvise.

‐ U. S. Grant sets out to construct

something that nobody thought could be constructed:

an actual pontoon bridge

across a 2,000‐foot span of the James River.

The bridge consists of pontoon boats,

rather large boats that have excellent buoyancy,

strung together and connected by wooden planks.

And through these bridges,

you could march not only soldiers

but also artillery, supplies, and whatnot.

‐ This is the largest pontoon bridge

built during the entire war.

They built it in seven hours. I mean, think about that.

He's gonna cross 100,000 men across the James River,

including these wagons and artillery.

But just think about the engineering feat that that is.

That's remarkable.

‐ And so Grant gets across the James River,

which will put his forces in assaulting position

onto the crucial rail hub of Petersburg, Virginia.

‐ Petersburg is the logistics hub,

the transportation hub.

It's connected to all the supplies

that can come up from the south.

If Lee is gonna maintain his army,

let alone Richmond, the city, he needs Petersburg.

So Grant understands this.

And so by threatening Petersburg,

he, in fact, threatens Richmond.

And now we are talking about a siege.

‐ Colonel Pleasants, what's this plan of yours?

‐ Our Pennsylvania boys are coal miners.

They can tunnel right underneath their lines.

‐ How far? ‐ About 150 yards, sir.

They dig a shaft right underneath them.

We fill the chamber with powder and blow those rebs sky‐high.

‐ Could it break through their fortifications?

‐ General, we have no assurances this will work.

‐ My boys can do it. ‐ We have to consider‐‐

‐ Once the line is broken, we go in.

We need to move quickly after the blast.

Have artillery ready to support the charge.

How big a hole will it blow? ‐ No one can say, sir.

But it'll be an awful lot of powder.

‐ Ulysses S. Grant had been familiar with the use of mines

tunneling under the enemy positions at Vicksburg.

He tried it several times with limited success.

The Confederates heard the Union working.

They feared that there was a mine tunneling under.

They dug countermines down

to try to drop in onto the Union troops.

They could never find it in time, however.

‐ We learned through deserters that the people believed

very wild rumors about what was going on.

They said that we had mined the whole of Petersburg

and they were resting on a slumbering volcano

and did not know at what moment

they might expect that eruption.

‐ The mine was constructed and ready to be exploded.

And I wanted to take the occasion

to carry Petersburg, if I could.

‐ They packed the mine

underneath the Confederate trenches

with 8,000 pounds of explosives

to try to blast a hole into the Confederate earthworks.

‐ The fuse starts burning.

They pack sandbags so the explosion

doesn't come out toward the Union troops.

‐ Go! Move, move, move!

‐ Let's go! ‐ Faster, faster!

‐ Go!

‐ And then the earth just shook.

It immediately killed and disintegrated

300 South Carolinians,

blowing a massive hole in the Confederate line.

‐ And then the Union army

gets ready to launch frontal assaults.

‐ Despite all the thought that went into this attack,

Grant's commanders put the worst possible guy in command,

a guy named James Ledlie,

known to be a drunk and a coward,

in command of the attack.

‐ The problem is that instead of going around

to the rim of the crater, as initially planned,

James Ledlie blunders his division

right into the middle of the crater,

and it becomes a virtual turkey shoot.

‐ I expected our troops not to stop in the crater at all

but to push on to the top of the hill,

which would have given us everything.

‐ And then they send in

the United States Colored Troop regiments.

Nothing incited the rage of a Confederate soldier

like the sight of an African‐American soldier

wielding a musket in a blue uniform.

‐ They just start killing these guys wholesale.

Many blacks that tried to surrender

are shot or bayoneted.

And even white Union officers, realizing that they also have

a death sentence for leading black troops,

they turn their pistols on their own soldiers

to try to save themselves.

‐ And so at the crater,

what you have is a racial massacre.

A North Carolinian recalled his delight

at bayoneting these African‐American soldiers.

It was an all‐out slaughter.

‐ They slaughtered us all.

No place to go...

except to die.

‐ The effort was a stupendous failure.

It was the saddest affair I witnessed in the war.

‐ Grant is really at fault at Petersburg

in delegating so much

that it interfered with the execution of the plan.

He tries the experiment of the crater

because he knows how important a victory is

during the election year.

‐ 1864 is an election year.

You see Abraham Lincoln

running for reelection on the Republican ticket.

The Democratic nominee is George McClellan,

who is running on a platform of peace.

The Democrats in 1864

want to end the war as soon as possible.

They are fine with letting the Confederacy go.

‐ McClellan was on record that he was willing

to trade emancipation for peace.

Grant considered this little short of outright treason.

‐ People forget that there was not uniform support

for the Union effort in the Northern states.

Back in 1863 in New York City, there were huge draft riots.

There was a lot of unrest because it didn't seem

as if the Union was prevailing.

So now Lee's only hope

was that Lincoln would be defeated.

McClellan would win and sue for peace.

‐ To have peace on any terms, the South would demand

the restoration of their slaves already freed.

They would demand a treaty

which would make the North slave hunters for the South.

‐ So '64 is a big year.

The war's now no longer just about preserving the Union.

Now it's become a war for freedom.

And with the election, everything's at stake.

‐ General Grant...

I hold you in the highest esteem,

but this catastrophe in the crater...

Every day, I hear from the press that I'm too timid

or too tyrannical, too weak or... too tall.

My reelection and the outcome

of this miserable war... depends on you.

‐ General Sherman is at the threshold of Atlanta,

and I am at the threshold of Petersburg‐‐

‐ And I am at the threshold of losing the presidency.

‐ Mr. President, you will never hear of me

farther from Richmond than I am now.

I will fight it out till the end.

‐ Hold on with a bulldog grip,

and chew and choke as much as possible.

‐ Grant is working with Lincoln,

very much in concert,

on how they want to conduct this war.

And we see that in how Grant plans his campaigns.

He's really, I think,

the first general that Lincoln had

that had an overall strategy for the entire war.

‐ I mean, this is still a very fluid war, even by '64.

So the Union needs some decisive wins.

‐ One of the key prongs of Grant's strategy

for the reduction of the South is, of course, to take Atlanta.

‐ If you don't topple Georgia,

which was one of the top manpower‐delivering states

behind the Confederate war effort,

and you don't topple Atlanta,

which is a hub of industry for the South,

then it makes it possible to sustain

the Confederate war effort for a prolonged period of time.

‐ This is a no‐fail mission, and you give it to the person

who you've developed a level of trust

and who you know is hard enough to do it,

smart enough to do it,

and also will do the intent of what you want them to do

rather than getting off base, and Sherman is that person.

‐ Send this to General Grant at once.

"We are in close proximity and constantly skirmishing

"but are not yet able to penetrate

the city's fortifications."

‐ William Tecumseh Sherman would lead

the military division of Mississippi

through northwest Georgia,

targeting the industrial heart of Georgia at Atlanta:

the machine shops, the mills, the factories that were

keeping the Confederate army in the west going.

‐ And it's Grant who, from afar,

is choreographing this effort.

And Grant and Sherman

maintain a constant communication via telegraph

despite the more than 1,000 miles

that intervened between them.

‐ "If you can hold tight as you are now,

you will destroy most of that army."

"I would never advise going backward."

‐ As Sherman is approaching Atlanta,

Grant is sort of pushing him

that, "We need to get this done.

We need to take Atlanta before the election comes."

‐ "I have lost a good many regiments."

Continue sending.

"I might have to circle Atlanta before I take it,

but I will take it."

‐ We learned that Sherman had our troops in Atlanta.

The news of his success set the country aglow.

‐ Sherman drives on Atlanta, delivering Atlanta,

and effectively, you do have some aspects of total war.

We are about collapsing the will of the Confederate people

to realize, "You are being defeated."

‐ The fall of Atlanta boosts Northern morale.

People now begin to see that a Union victory is,

while not inevitable, at least in sight.

And it has an enormous impact on the election of 1864.

‐ Lincoln would win the election.

What ultimately gave Lincoln

that election on the battlefield

was Sherman's capture of Atlanta.

This was part of Grant's grand strategy

for how to bring about an end to the war.

Grant has a brilliant strategic plan.

He's going to move multiple armies simultaneously

to bring about maximum pressure on the Confederacy

while also holding down Robert E. Lee's

much‐vaunted Army of Northern Virginia

at Petersburg.

‐ When Grant starts to settle in at Petersburg,

he sees, "If I put Lee into a siege, he can't move."

"And a Robert E. Lee who cannot maneuver

"is a Robert E. Lee that's not nearly as dangerous.

"So if I pin Lee,

"we'll eat the rest of the Confederacy

while we stand here and watch this all take place."

‐ So Grant decides to move

Phil Sheridan up the Shenandoah Valley,

threatening the logistical supply line

of Robert E. Lee's army,

threatening the bread basket of the Confederacy

that for three years

had supplied the Army of Northern Virginia.

‐ To General Sheridan:

Do all the damage to railroads and crops you can.

We want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste.

Move quickly with the goal of destroying all in your path.

‐ After Philip Sheridan

destroys the Shenandoah Valley,

William Tecumseh Sherman marches through Georgia.

Grant famously says,

"The Confederacy is a hollow shell.

I know it, and Sherman is about to prove it."

‐ To General Sherman: If you are satisfied

the trip to the seacoast can be made,

you may make it,

destroying all the railroad as you think best.

‐ What Sherman is doing in Georgia

is sending a message to Lee's army:

"You guys hold out here in Richmond

"and you hold out here in Petersburg,

but we're just tearing out the guts of the Confederacy."

‐ And meanwhile, Robert E. Lee's army

is becoming malnourished.

His men are living in conditions

that are rife for disease.

The biological decline of his men

is beginning to show to Robert E. Lee

in a way that he'd never seen before.

‐ They are severely worn down,

and they are the ones that have to defend Petersburg.

Petersburg is the logistics hub,

the transportation hub

connected to five separate railroads

that come into Petersburg that feed Richmond,

the capital of the Confederacy.

Robert E. Lee can't lose Petersburg,

or he loses Richmond.

‐ By April of 1865, Grant has captured

all of the important railroads

at Petersburg with the exception of one,

and that's the Southside Railroad.

And there's a crucial intersection

that commands control of the Southside Railroad.

It's known as Five Forks.

‐ Everything looked favorable to the defeat of the enemy

and the capture of Petersburg and Richmond

if the proper effort was made.

‐ And so Grant will unleash Phil Sheridan

to get out in front of Robert E. Lee

and keep him from getting to that railroad

and those supplies.

‐ It's a vicious fight.

At one point, Sheridan, he's actually on horseback himself

and launches himself over Confederate attackers,

ordering the men to surrender.

‐ The Confederates will lose this battle,

and they lose the Southside Railroad.

‐ And now, finally, we find

Grant is able to sever those supply lines

that come into Petersburg, and Robert E. Lee

now has to realize, "We have to abandon Richmond."

‐ Richmond was in the most utter confusion.

The city was on fire,

started by some connected with the retreating army.

When it was evacuated, the Confederacy at once

began to crumble and fade away.

‐ The Confederates now scramble to the west

to make this desperate attempt to link up

with Joe Johnston's Army of Tennessee.

And if they can link up again, they can prolong the war.

And so it becomes a chase.

‐ Lee's troops were pursued by our cavalry so hotly

and closely that they threw away ammunition, clothing,

and almost everything to lighten their loads.

‐ No sooner has Lee evacuated his lines

than Grant takes off after him.

Any other Union general would have marched into Petersburg

and marched into Richmond

with bands playing and great celebrations and parties

and all kinds of self‐congratulatory speeches

and reviews and messages sent back to Washington

about how wonderful it was,

they have now captured Richmond.

Not Grant.

‐ One of ours, sir.

A messenger from General Sheridan

who made it through their lines.

‐ Soldier.

Good job, soldier.

Sheridan wants me to come to him at Jetersville.

Says he can finish Lee.

We'll go right away. I'll take the advance troops.

‐ General, you're the commander.

You've gotta stay‐‐ ‐ We'll go right away.

‐ Grant is managing more people

than anyone else in the world at this moment.

And then he gets a message from Phil Sheridan saying,

"I think we can capture

or destroy the Confederate army now."

As the commander of all those armies,

sometimes your presence is simply needed.

No matter how tired he was,

no matter how far away Sheridan was,

Grant was gonna get there.

‐ I then started with a few of my staff

going directly through the woods.

The night being dark, our progress was slow.

Sometimes I had great difficulty

in getting through the lines.

‐ We've got Lee in a box, General.

‐ We should be protecting our position at Richmond,

not chasing Lee.

‐ We can't let him slip.

I can capture his whole damn army!

‐ Holding Richmond won't end this war.

Destroying Lee's army will.

Go after him. ‐ Yes, sir.

‐ It now became

a life‐and‐death struggle for Lee

to get south to his provisions.

We wanted to get ahead of Lee and cut him off.

‐ The armies finally met on Sailor's Creek.

The enemy's loss was very heavy.

Lee's army was rapidly crumbling.

‐ The final battle between Grant's army and Robert E. Lee

comes at Sailor's Creek, April 6, 1865.

‐ Lee's army haven't eaten for five days.

He's had 2/3 of his force whittled away

by attacks from his rear.

He is out of options.

‐ Robert E. Lee sees the men

streaming from the battlefield in chaos,

and Lee turns, and he says to one of his staff officers,

"My God, has the army dissolved?"

‐ 7,000 of his men were made prisoners.

I knew that the men who had fought so gallantly

and so long for the cause which they believed in

had lost hope.

‐ Come on, keep moving!

‐ Grant knows Lee's out of options,

and he is counting on Lee

to be chivalrous and end the war.

‐ To General R.E. Lee:

The result of the last week must convince you

of the hopelessness of further resistance.

I regard it as my duty to shift from myself

the responsibility of any further effusion of blood...

By asking of you the surrender of that portion

of the Confederate States Army

known as the Army of Northern Virginia.

‐ Lee realizes that the game is over,

and so he sends a message to Grant:

"If we could discuss matters

"as you had previously indicated,

I would be happy to meet with you."

‐ When Lee talks about having to go

and capitulate to Grant, Lee says,

"I would rather go die a thousand deaths

than go do what I'm about to do."

But he asks for the cease‐fire

to talk about terms of surrender.

‐ A messenger came up to Grant

and gave him the letter from Lee saying,

"Can you meet me at the McLean house in Appomattox?'

And so he went to Appomattox to meet Lee.

‐ It all ends at the Wilbur McLean farmhouse.

Robert E. Lee stands in his best uniform.

Lee dreads having to do this.

‐ Dismount!

‐ General Lee.

‐ General Grant.

‐ Perhaps you remember,

we met once back in the Mexican War.

‐ Yes, I'm sure you're right. I don't quite recall.

‐ I was with the Fourth Regiment.

‐ It was a long time ago.

‐ Please.

‐ As they sit there in that room,

it's truly a remarkable scene.

You capture this whole nature of the changing character

of war in that farmhouse.

You have Robert E. Lee,

immaculately dressed with his sash and his sword,

a patrician of the Virginia caste society,

the son of a Revolutionary War general,

a single commander commanding as if he were

a 16th‐century prince

representing the last of the old wars.

Meanwhile, you have Ulysses S. Grant,

representing the first of the new.

Grant has been riding overland.

His boots are mud‐spattered.

He's the son of a tanner,

a poor, humble, hardscrabble background.

He sits now at the top of this meritocracy

surrounded by a very capable staff.

And he has an American Indian on his staff,

Eli Parker, a brigadier general,

a Seneca Indian that's gonna write out

the terms of surrender.

‐ General Grant...

we should write terms now.

‐ General Parker.

‐ At least there's one real American in this room.

‐ We're all Americans here, sir.

‐ Your terms are generous.

They'll have a good effect on my men.

‐ Good.

And I must ask you in return

that you ask the rest of your armies

lay down their arms.

They'll listen to you,

and this war can end quickly without further suffering.

‐ That's not up to me.

That's up to my president.

‐ There's only one president now.

‐ I felt like anything rather than rejoicing 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.

‐ Grant and Lincoln wanted, at all costs,

to prevent a kind of guerilla warfare,

which is why Grant gave the terms

that he did to Lee at Appomattox.

‐ The surrender terms are relatively lenient.

Officers can keep their sidearms.

Men with horses can keep their horses

so that they might go back and plant crops.

This is an idea of, "How do we win the peace?"

‐ Grant really tried to honor what Lincoln asked for.

Let him up easy. Let these men go home.

Just lay down your guns, and just go home.

‐ Grant actually went a little bit further than Lincoln

might have wanted him to.

He paroled the Southern army, Lee's army.

And that meant Lee himself would be free from arrest.

‐ Very significantly, Grant did not allow

his soldiers to in any way gloat or celebrate.

He felt that that would simply be rubbing salt into the wounds

of these defeated Confederate soldiers.

And I think the fact that Grant had experienced

so much failure in his own life gave him a special sensitivity

and tact in dealing with these

defeated Confederate soldiers at Appomattox.

So you can see that there's this yearning

to be brothers again.

There were shared memories and shared experiences

that these men had had, and these are people

who had belonged to the same nation

and that would again.

‐ When news of the surrender of Lee's army

gets back to Washington, Lincoln is so thrilled.

A crowd of well‐wishers comes with bands to serenade him.

Lincoln comes out and gives them an impromptu speech.

‐ Now, fellow citizens, give three good, hearty cheers

for General Grant and all under his command.

‐ Grant stands in the front rank

of great Americans of all time.

He was the man who saved the Union.

‐ Grant is one of the greatest military strategists

that the United States has produced.

It is his strategy implemented and pushed forward

to its conclusion that wins the war.

‐ The news of Appomattox

is immediately reported across the country.

There was a jubilant feeling, at least in the‐‐in the North,

and a great feeling of relief.

‐ There's such this feeling of celebration

throughout the North:

the fireworks that are being set off,

people in the streets celebrating,

the bunting that's being put up all across

Washington and New York and elsewhere,

and ministers across the North begin preparing sermons

to talk about the rebirth of the nation.

‐ I'm relieved we didn't go to the theater tonight,

and the children will be so happy to see you, finally.

‐ It's been a long time. ‐ Mm.

Do you know that man?

‐ I don't care for such looks.

Driver!

‐ On the night of April 14th,

the Lincolns had invited the Grants

to attend Ford's Theatre with them.

But they were instead planning to visit their children.

While the Grants were en route to the train,

a man on horseback galloped up,

tried to thrust his head in as if to see who was there.

Always afterwards, Julia Dent Grant believed

that man had been John Wilkes Booth.

‐ General Grant.

‐ What is it?

‐ These are for you, sir.

‐ Excuse me, gentlemen.

‐ What is it, Ulys?

‐ I have to return to Washington.

President Lincoln has been shot.

He won't survive.

‐ John Wilkes Booth had gathered a small band

of conspirators

because Booth planned not only to murder Lincoln

but to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson,

Secretary of State Seward, and General Ulysses S. Grant.

He planned to decapitate the entire

United States government, if he could do it.

‐ I did not know what it meant.

Here was the rebellion put down in the field

and starting up in the gutters.

Now we had to fight it as assassination.

‐ Grant gets back in Washington

by 10:00 the next day,

and Andrew Johnson is already being sworn in

as president of the United States.

What a different world Ulysses Grant has returned to.

‐ The joy that I had witnessed among the people in the street

and in public places in Washington

had been turned to grief.

The city was in reality a city of mourning.

‐ Lee surrenders to Grant on April 9th,

and only a week later,

on Good Friday, Lincoln is assassinated.

And a city that had been so full of hope

and joy and messages of peace

is immediately brought to mourning.

And the churches that had been decorated for Easter Sunday,

full of their lilies and other symbols of peace,

are now draped in mourning.

Only days after coming back from Appomattox

and being this great, victorious general,

now Grant is tasked with planning the funeral

of a man who had been not only his president

but also had become a dear friend.

‐ To know Lincoln personally was to love and respect him

for his great qualities of heart and head.

His death was the greatest possible

calamity to the country

and especially to the people of the South.

‐ After the war, the South is devastated.

What was all of their wealth has largely been wiped out.

Lincoln gets killed.

Now who's gonna provide that stability?

Who is gonna be the one man who can provide that stable,

guiding hand on the nation?

‐ When the war ends,

Ulysses S. Grant is still general in chief.

And this becomes extremely significant

because there's nobody who has a more comprehensive view

of what's going on in the South

in the years after the Civil War than Grant.

‐ And so in 1865, Grant's duties,

his responsibilities as general of the armies,

was to run the largest civil project

ever the federal government had taken on,

known as Reconstruction.

Reconstruction, fundamentally, was military occupation.

And it was organized around five military districts

within the American South.

‐ Reconstruction was three things.

It was to rebuild infrastructure in the South.

It was to help transition newly freed people

and what freedom could look like for them,

most of whom are completely illiterate,

who have no property, who have no prospects,

but who have desire.

And it was to restructure legal systems

to help protect newly freed people

and to address this idea of equality for everyone.

‐ But I don't think anyone recognized the true magnitude

of what Reconstruction was going to look like in America,

the level and number of challenges

of problems that could potentially emerge

from the end of the American Civil War.

‐ The success of the Union army

doesn't mean a return to the status quo.

It means the Union restored without slavery.

And so the most egregious part of Union victory

for former Confederates is emancipation.

And so they push back on it from the very beginning.

They push back in legal ways called the Black Codes.

‐ They create a series of actions

that will mirror the conditions of slavery.

And so throughout the 1860s, in major cities,

conflicts would erupt between former Confederate soldiers

and free African‐Americans.

‐ You see this conflict in New Orleans in 1866.

African‐Americans and a handful of white Republicans

are trying to write a new constitution for the state

that would recognize African‐American voting

and civil rights.

What happens is, a local newspaper whips up a frenzy.

Ex‐Confederates gather, trying to stop them.

It was an absolute powder keg.

‐ We stand here today as free men,

but that's just the beginning.

We have to stand up for our rights.

We have to fight‐‐

‐ Come on! Out the back!

‐ I just got a telegraph from General Sheridan.

This outrage in New Orleans must be punished.

I simply can't allow‐‐

‐ General, we don't know if the freed men provoked this.

It was a riot.

‐ This is an atrocity.

Sheridan is there.

‐ They're gettin' away!

‐ And the way he tells it, this is a massacre.

Don't let him get away!

Hold him, boys!

‐ It's my duty to protect the people.

‐ Try telling that to President Johnson.

‐ Instead, I wish I could speak with Lincoln.

We could declare martial law.

‐ Sir‐‐ ‐ It won't be popular,

but I don't want another war.

We can't have another war.

‐ So in 1866, Grant receives reports

from his commanders throughout the South,

and it becomes quite evident that there are hundreds

if not thousands of so‐called outrages of African‐Americans

being killed in horrific, barbarious ways.

‐ Grant is constantly compiling statistics

for President Andrew Johnson

in terms of the scale of violence

going on against the 4 million former slaves in the South,

and Johnson refuses to believe it.

‐ Andrew Johnson is able to emerge as a figure

who is a friend of the Confederacy

who will not implement Reconstruction

with the great force of the federal government.

‐ Grant is increasingly frustrated

and furious that Johnson is trying to impede

any sort of military intervention in the South.

But I think we underestimate

how politically savvy Grant was.

‐ Grant is an interesting man as a political figure.

He doesn't seek out the nomination

for the presidency ever,

but he doesn't turn down the nomination

for the presidency either.

‐ Because of the Civil War

and because of Grant's heroism‐‐

and at Appomattox,

Grant becomes the hero not only in the North

but in the South for his fairness

to the defeated Confederate troops‐‐

Grant enjoyed a certain status

and sort of levitated

above the level of American politics.

‐ And not unlike Washington,

that Washington was the father of the country

and Grant was the savior of the country

is something that is on many people's minds.

‐ And of course, at that time, it was considered unseemly

for a candidate to openly campaign for president,

and that was just fine with Grant.

And rather than campaigning,

he's kind of swept into the presidency.

‐ Grant wins the 1868 election

in an electoral college landslide,

but his presidency would be the presidency

that had the responsibility of securing political rights

for African‐Americans.

He had an enormous responsibility

and an incredibly difficult one,

because there were so many people,

both in the South and in the North,

who were opposed to those ideas.

But he was given the difficult task, not once,

but twice, of doing this,

winning the war and then winning the peace.

‐ In here, Mr. President.

‐ The country having just emerged

from a great rebellion, many questions will come before it

for settlement in the next four years

which preceding administrations

have never had to deal with.

In meeting these, it is desirable

that they should be approached calmly,

without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride.

I ask patient forbearance, one toward another,

throughout the land and a determined effort

on the part of every citizen

to do his share towards cementing a happy Union.

‐ I feel the responsibilities of the position

but accept them without fear.

And I bring to it a desire and determination

to fill it to the best of my ability.

‐ When Ulysses Grant is inaugurated as president,

he has what amounts to a colossal mess on his hands.

He has not only Reconstruction,

but he has a botched attempt at beginning Reconstruction

under Andrew Johnson that he has to overcome.

And that's going to create a formidable agenda

for him to deal with as president.

Reconstruction meant the reintroduction

of the Confederate states back into the American Union,

which sounds pretty simple,

but you've got to have some way

of reintegrating the Southern economy

with the rest of the national economy.

Then you have to think about what you're going to do

with the freed slaves.

The 13th Amendment abolishes slavery,

but what does it do beyond that?

‐ When Grant becomes president of the United States,

he is absolutely committed to the aims of Reconstruction.

He is committed to making America fully just,

fully equal for black people and white people.

He is committed to this in his own simple and elegant way.

‐ So it's very important to remember that Grant

is the first American president

to govern after the 14th Amendment

that guarantees equal rights before the law

and, most importantly, after the 15th Amendment,

which gives black men the right to vote.

After the passage of the 15th Amendment,

African‐American men began to vote in extraordinary numbers.

‐ Americans are finally who they say they are.

All men are truly created equal.

I think this utterly is reflected of Grant

and what he believes this nation is

and what it should aspire to be.

‐ So now we have 3.5 million people from Mississippi

to Louisiana to South Carolina

voting themselves and the candidates of their choosing.

‐ African‐Americans in most Southern states

were elected for the first time to Washington, D. C.,

as senators and as congressmen

but on a state level as well.

And all these things, this incredible

biracial experiment, was happening.

‐ And the changes that they make are extraordinary.

They establish free public education for every child.

They establish systems that make it easier

for people to vote and to be able to acquire land.

‐ It's a period of possibility in American history.

It was not just a political project.

It was also a social project.

And you see the building of schools,

the building of banks.

You see more people are learning to read

among African‐American communities than ever before.

‐ You probably had more political progress

for black people than you actually had in the North.

You know, not just because there were more black people

but because of what was happening was so revolutionary.

‐ There is a profoundly progressive agenda

moving the arc towards justice for everybody.

And then it falls apart.

‐ The Ku Klux Klan very quickly grows

to become a paramilitary insurgency

in which armed Confederate veterans

will turn to violent tactics.

‐ There were thousands of blacks

who were killed for registering and daring to‐‐to vote,

and black voting would drop off to near zero.

‐ In many counties throughout the ex‐Confederate South,

the Ku Klux Klan is really controlling

the levers of power,

and they are meting out their brand of vigilante justice.

‐ Mr. President.

You're thinking like a politician, not a general.

‐ Well, there's more than one way to get things done.

‐ But these Ku Kluxers' minds won't be changed by words.

You of all people know that.

‐ Yes, and I know the misery that the use of force leads to.

‐ That misery is all on my people's heads right now.

Should we just wait, be patient?

‐ No. That wouldn't be fair.

You will see the general in me soon enough.

‐ Frederick Douglass, he understands

Grant's huge popularity among the people,

and he wants to help Grant

be that next great American leader

in the vein of a George Washington.

‐ But the question is, what exactly can he do

about the activities of the Klan?

Because this is, after all, a state matter.

What Congress does is to equip Grant

with the Ku Klux Klan Act.

‐ Grant felt so strongly about the KKK Act

that he actually marched up to Capitol Hill

with his entire cabinet to lobby for it.

This was a very powerful and sweeping act.

‐ It allows Grant to declare martial law

and send federal troops in directly to intervene.

‐ I've been there, seen it myself, Mr. President.

The Ku Kluxers are all over those towns.

They're farmers, sheriffs, politicians.

‐ You served in the war, didn't you?

‐ Yes, sir. Missouri.

‐ And you faced your share of rebel guerillas there.

How'd you deal with them?

‐ Well, sir, we had to find the enemy any way we could.

We used informants, spies.

‐ Exactly. ‐ We had to gather information,

identities, find out who the leaders were.

‐ And that's what you're gonna do now against the Klan.

After you learn who your targets are, you'll strike.

And I don't care if they're doctors or farmers or lawyers.

You arrest them and try them.

‐ Yes, sir.

‐ You're gonna root them out, Merrill,

no matter what it takes.

‐ You can count on me, Mr. President.

‐ And so in 1871, several companies

of the Seventh Cavalry are sent into South Carolina,

where, under Major Lewis Merrill,

they actually go out and begin arresting large numbers

of Klan members to bring them to justice.

‐ It took a lot of

counterintelligence operations,

of getting to know who the political leaders were,

getting to know who the Klan leaders were‐‐

a difficult thing to do,

but ultimately, Grant is going to be successful

at defeating the Klan.

‐ For all practical purposes, by 1872,

the operations of the Ku Klux Klan

had been pretty successfully suppressed,

and it is one of the significant achievements

of Grant's administration.

‐ I think fighting and defeating

the Klan is a big deal.

And so that Grant defeats the first wave of the Klan is,

I think, something that people

have not paid enough attention to.

‐ And so the 1871 Klan Acts made it safe enough

for African‐Americans to vote in the South.

But there was pushback,

and there was pushback in large part

because many people believed that Grant was overextending

his hand with the Klan Acts.

Many white Northerners,

including a fair number of Union soldiers,

are never on board with occupying the South.

They say, "If this can happen in the South,

why can't it happen in the North?"

‐ And the country's also aware of the great cost

of this military occupation,

the great cost of Reconstruction.

And quite frankly, they've grown weary of Reconstruction.

‐ Grant is well aware that public opinion

goes strongly against the use of federal troops

just being sent in whenever there's some kind of emergency

and martial law being declared.

In other words, he could wreck

the entire Reconstruction project

if he reaches for the martial law weapon too much.

‐ I thought I could run the government

of the United States as I did the staff of my army.

It was my mistake,

and it led me into other mistakes.

‐ What's this? ‐ Requests, Mr. President.

Suggestions for cabinet appointments.

Businessmen want to meet with you.

Another report of violence in the South.

Sherman wants troops in the west to contain the Indians.

One of the Indians, a chief named Red Cloud,

wants to come to Washington to meet you.

‐ When Grant is president, he's dealing with a host

of issues with the Transcontinental Railroad,

certainly with Native Americans.

He makes a pledge of leniency

and goodwill toward Native Americans

which ultimately doesn't pan out.

And we're moving into the period when industry

and capitalism are coming to the forefront.

‐ The economy in the North, in particular, had expanded

tremendously during the war.

So you have‐‐ during Grant's presidency,

you have the beginnings of the rise of big business.

At the same time, there's an enormous expansion

of the federal government,

and there is much more opportunity

for government corruption than before.

‐ Grant himself was not corrupt.

Ironically, his presidential administration goes down as one

that is remembered as being corrupt.

‐ Grant thinks everybody has a good heart,

everybody has as good a heart as he does.

‐ Grant has a blind loyalty to people,

and some of the people that he appointed were corrupt.

‐ You see that fierce loyalty with his secretary,

Orville Babcock.

Babcock was involved with the Whisky Ring,

which was government officials

working with whiskey distributors

and dealers to embezzle money

to the tune of $1 1/2 million a year,

and it was a major, major scandal.

But Grant's loyalty was so strong,

he vouched for Babcock.

‐ There was an innocence about Grant,

and because he was not deceitful himself,

he had a lot of difficulty seeing that in other people.

And everyone who knew Grant was mystified by his gullibility.

‐ Corruption increasingly becomes a problem

as bribes become more evident.

And so there is a cultural shift that's going on.

‐ Voters take their frustrations to the polls

in the midterm elections in 1874,

and they put a Democratic majority,

for the first time since the Civil War,

into the House of Representatives.

Once there's a Democratic majority

in the House of Representatives,

Grant finds himself crippled

in all of these Reconstruction measures.

‐ The notion that his administration

is full of corruption leads people to doubt

and to pull back from supporting him,

especially when it comes to Reconstruction.

But Grant remained popular,

and he certainly remained popular with Union veterans.

‐ Good to see you, sir. ‐ Thank you.

‐ You're too good to your country.

Good men. Good men and true.

‐ Thank you, sir. ‐ It's nice to meet you, sir.

‐ Pleased to meet you, President Grant.

I fought with General Thomas over in Chattanooga.

‐ I won't forget you, soldier.

‐ Thank you, sir. Thank you.

‐ Excuse me, gentlemen. ‐ General.

‐ In September 1875,

Grant gets an appeal from

Governor Adelbert Ames of Mississippi,

and Ames says that there's already so much violence

ahead of the November elections.

And so he asks Grant to send down federal troops.

‐ There's a real pushback

to any more intervention in the South.

Many white Northerners say enough is enough.

There's a notion that corruption abounds

in the federal government, and there's no longer

a real willingness of white Northerners to say,

"More needs to be done for African‐Americans."

‐ So now Grant has to weigh what intervention in the South

will mean at the polls

in Northern states for Republicans.

Do you sacrifice the Republican Party,

and the only party that's supporting

and defending African‐American voting rights,

or do you capitulate to this terrorism

on the ground in the South?

‐ It was duty on one side and party obligation on the other.

Between the two, I hesitated.

If a mistake was made,

it was one of the head and not of the heart.

Tell the governor of Mississippi

that I won't be sending troops.

I should not have yielded.

It requires no prophet to foresee that the results

of the war would be in large measure lost.

‐ And so after Grant leaves office,

Reconstruction is effectively over.

‐ Grant is not the one who abandoned Reconstruction.

The American people abandoned Reconstruction,

and he just couldn't rally them back in

because of the swirl of things around him.

And the abandonment

was also an abandonment of the ideals behind it,

which was really equality for everyone.

And when that was abandoned,

the remnants of this white supremacy

was able to reemerge.

The subjugation of black people

was allowed to reassert itself unchecked.

It will take another 100 years

of people pushing against status quo

before we can even get to a point where we get Congress

to actually enforce the amendments of Reconstruction.

‐ But Grant's presidency, in many ways,

was a heroic presidency.

All of these things that he accomplished,

he didn't accomplish because

he was pursuing fame or money or power.

All these things that he accomplished

were just in the course of doing his patriotic duty.

‐ He was probably the most respected man

and maybe the only who could have led at those times,

and look what he does.

He starts the Justice Department.

Then he battles the Ku Klux Klan.

He passes the 15th Amendment.

Under his watch, the nation advances,

and he does not just one but two terms.

And yet ultimately, I don't really think

he was a political animal in any sense.

‐ Personally, I was weary of office.

I never wanted to get out of a place

as much as I did the presidency.

‐ Grant felt, especially in his second term,

he felt that was in jail every single day.

In fact, he used that in a letter:

"I'm breaking out of jail."

He couldn't wait to leave, and he planned to travel.

He loved to travel. He loved to be on the move.

And he and Julia spent two years

traveling around the world.

He went to India.

He went to China. He went to Japan.

‐ And in every country where he goes,

he's received by tremendous crowds.

So routinely, 100,000, 200,000, 250,000 people

would pour into the streets.

So clearly, after Abraham Lincoln,

the one name that the world knew was Ulysses S. Grant.

‐ When Grant returns to the United States

after his two‐year world tour, he is looking for an income.

Presidents had no pension at the time,

and his son Ulysses Jr.

Had gotten involved in Wall Street.

So Grant and his son started a partnership for a firm

with a man named Ferdinand Ward,

an up‐and‐coming phenom in the Wall Street market.

The principal members are given allowances

of $3,000 a month.

There's just money rolling in.

‐ Father... we need to speak.

‐ What is it?

‐ Ward is gone.

He's taken the money.

Everything's lost... everything.

‐ And it turned out that Ferdinand Ward

was the Bernie Madoff of his day.

The whole thing was a big Ponzi scheme.

Grant woke up one morning only to discover

that he was worth exactly $80

and Julia was worth exactly $130.

He was wiped out.

All his children were wiped out.

‐ What's the matter, Ulys? You look ill.

‐ I must speak with you.

‐ Of course. What is it?

‐ This morning, I was a wealthy man.

And now I've lost everything.

‐ So what brings the famous Mark Twain to my parlor?

‐ General...

a reason for my visit.

I hear you've agreed to write your memoirs

for "The Century" magazine.

‐ They've made me an offer.

‐ And what royalty have they promised you?

‐ 10%.

‐ General, they are treating you

as if you were a private in an army

nobody ever heard of.

Let me make you a better offer. ‐ But you're too late, Clemens.

I have committed to "Century's" publisher,

and I can't go back on my word.

‐ Let me publish your memoirs.

I promise, you'll leave your family well off

and the nation richer for your story.

‐ In 1884, Ulysses S. Grant,

Civil War general and two‐term president

of the United States, was now faced with poverty.

And Sam Clemens, better known as Mark Twain,

arrived at his home to see if he could help Grant

by having him write his memoirs

and leave a lasting legacy of how he saw the war

and how he saw one of the most pivotal moments

in American history.

So eventually, Grant did go with Twain's offer

to make money for his family to save them from poverty.

‐ But during the summer before he started writing,

he bites into a peach, and he says that somehow

something stung him from the peach in his throat

and he can't figure out what it is.

He sees a doctor, and at that point,

they realize that it's cancer and that they can't operate.

So he realizes that it's fatal.

‐ What is to be my fate?

Will I have to lay awake again?

Making it a study how to get a breath

is about as much as I could stand

to go through another night.

‐ Grant wrote the memoirs under horrific conditions.

He said that every time he drank a glass of water,

it was like drinking a glass of molten lead.

This was a truly heroic effort of Grant in agonizing pain,

writing the memoirs.

And he literally willed himself to stay alive.

‐ And it's the final battle of his life,

the battle to outrace his terminal cancer

in order to finish his memoirs

and rescue his family from bankruptcy.

‐ But as everything else in his life,

he did not let it defeat him.

In the end, he would prevail, and he would finish the book.

‐ These volumes are dedicated to the American soldier

and sailor, U. S. Grant, 1885.

‐ He dies three days after writing the last page,

and Twain realizes at once that what Grant has written

is a monument in American literature.

‐ My family is American and has been for generations.

In all its branches, direct... ‐ This memoir

is hugely important and hugely powerful.

It earns over half a million dollars for Julia,

which, of course, in today's money, would be much more.

It's very successful, and people read it everywhere.

I think something people tend to forget now

is that Grant, at his death,

was arguably the most famous American in the world.

‐ The response to his death was amazing.

The national funeral which took place in New York City

that day began with bells ringing all over the country,

North and South.

It was just a national outpouring of grief for him.

‐ In 1900, Theodore Roosevelt

suggested that Grant, Lincoln, and Washington

loomed as the three great heroes of American history.

So even as late as the turn of the century,

he's part of this heroic firmament.

And then in the decades that follow,

that diminishes rapidly.

‐ What happened was that the history of the war

came to be written by a lot of pro‐Southern historians

who exercise a powerful sway.

It's often called the Lost Cause.

‐ The Lost Cause narrative

is really an effort of the South to say,

"How did we sacrifice so much for a cause so bad as slavery?"

So they changed the narrative.

"No, no, it was about state's rights and independence."

And so that narrative

has become the predominant narrative,

and I think a part of it that gets buried in there

is the role of Grant.

‐ There were three separate attacks on his legacy.

Grant is known by many as the butcher.

Grant is known as the drunk. Grant is known as the corrupt.

‐ Everything else gets stripped away,

and you've got the guy that won the Civil War

and he was an alcoholic and a failed president.

‐ And the Lost Cause casts Grant as the villain

and Lee as the hero.

So once the memory of that generation

that venerated him passed on, he was forgotten.

‐ And so Confederates lost the Civil War,

but they certainly won the war of myth.

And Grant was on the wrong side of that myth.

‐ Shall I read one to you?

This one's from a Confederate soldier.

Ulys?

"Dear General Grant, I hope you will allow one who,

"when a boy, laid down his arms at Appomattox

"and pledged allegiance to the Union

to express his warmest sympathy..."

‐ For you and your suffering.

I have watched your movements

from the hour you gave me my horse and sword

and told me to go home and assist in making a crop.

I have been proud to see the nation do you honor.

And now, dear General, in the hour of your pain,

I weep that so brave,

so magnanimous a soul must suffer as you do.

‐ There's something, like, really beautiful and American

in his whole story.

He just comes from nothing.

‐ From the hardscrabble background

who's had a lot of hard times and failures in his life,

who rises to the highest level of power,

becomes the greatest general of his time.

‐ Against all odds, against incredible obstacles,

he became the winning general of the Civil War.

‐ He was the commander of the victorious army

that led to the emancipation of 4 million people.

‐ Grant is the unheroic hero

of our greatest national epic,

the Civil War and Reconstruction.

‐ He was committed

to making America fully just, fully equal.

‐ Grant was the first civil rights president.

‐ It's as improbable a rise

as any other figure in American history.

‐ Indomitable will. ‐ Dogged determination.

‐ Moral vision. ‐ He's a fighter.

‐ It's truly an American story

of not only patriotism to the nation

but for the values,

who we are and who we aspire to be.

‐ One of my superstitions has always been,

when I started to go anywhere or to do anything,

never to turn back or stop

until the thing intended was accomplished.