All language subtitles for The.Civil.War.S01E09.The.Better.Angels.of.Our.Nature.1990

Original production
of "the civil war"

was made possible by
generous contributions

from these funders.

And by the corporation for
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thank you.

Corporate funding for
this special 25th anniversary

presentation was provided by.

Before thousands
fell on the battlefield,

before millions were
freed and before a country

forged its identity...
A nation declared a new

birth of freedom,
rededicating itself to the

proposition that all
men are created equal.

Bank of America is proud
to sponsor "the civil war,"

a film by Ken burns,

newly restored for
it's 25th anniversary.

"Were these things real?

"Did I see those brave
and noble countrymen of mine

"laid low in death
and weltering in their blood?

"Did I see our country
laid waste and in ruins?

"Did I see soldiers marching,

"the earth trembling and jarring
beneath their measured tread?

"Did I see the ruins

"of smoldering cities
and deserted homes?

"Did I see the flag
of my country,

"that I had followed so long,

furled to be
no more unfurled forever?"

"Surely they are
but the vagaries

of mine own imagination."

"But hush! I now hear
the approach of battle.

"That low, rumbling sound
in the west

is the roar of Cannon
in the distance."

Private Sam Watkins, company H,
1st Tennessee regiment.

"Strange, is it not,

"that battles, martyrs, blood,
even assassination

should so condense
a nationality?"

Walt Whitman.

It is the event
in American history

in that it is the moment

that made the United States
as a nation,

and I mean that
in different ways.

The United States
was obviously a nation

when it adopted a constitution,

but it adopted a constitution

that, uh, required a war
to be sorted out

and therefore required a war
to make a real nation

out of what was
a theoretical nation

as--as it was designed at
the constitutional convention.

Before the war, it was said,
"the United States are."

Grammatically,
it was spoken that way

and thought of as a collection
of independent states.

After the war, it was always
"the United States is,"

as we say today without being
self-conscious at all.

And that sums up
what the war accomplished.

It made us an "is."

The confederate states
of America had once stretched

from the Rappahannock
to the Rio Grande.

Its leaders had once dreamed
of a tropical empire

reaching ever southward

to Mexico, Guatemala,
Nicaragua, Brazil.

By April 1865,
the dream was gone.

Richmond had fallen.

The confederate government,
and Jefferson Davis with it,

had fled into the wilderness
of north Carolina.

The confederate armies,
once the terror of the union,

had been battered and starved
almost out of existence

and then forced to surrender
at Appomattox,

where Ulysses S. Grant had
finally cornered Robert E. Lee.

In April 1865,

Elisha Hunt Rhodes would receive
the best news of the war

and then the worst.

In the woods of north Carolina,
two old adversaries,

William Tecumseh Sherman

and Joseph E. Johnston,

would meet on the field
of battle one last time.

By then, confederate Sam Watkins
would write,

"the once proud army
of Tennessee

had degenerated to a mob."

In April 1861,

Abraham Lincoln had implored
his countrymen not to go to war,

to listen to "the better angels
of their nature."

Now in April 1865,

the bloodshed was finally
coming to an end.

But in Washington,

John Wilkes booth could not
accept that the war was over.

In four years,

more than a million photographs
were made of the war.

Now no one seemed
to want them anymore.

Mathew Brady went bankrupt.

Thousands of
glass-plate negatives were lost,

mislaid or forgotten.

Thousands more were sold
to gardeners,

not for the images they held,
but for the glass itself.

In the years
that followed Appomattox,

the sun slowly burned
the image of war

from thousands
of greenhouse glass panes.

"The civil war," a Harvard
professor wrote at the time,

"opened a great Gulf

"between what happened before
in our century

"and what has happened since.

"It does not seem to me
as if I were living

in the country
in which I was born."

The war was over,
and it was not over.

"My shoes are gone.
My clothes are gone.

"I'm weary, I'm sick,
I'm hungry.

"My family have all been killed
or scattered.

"And I have suffered all this
for my country.

"I love my country,
but if this war is ever over,

I'll be damned if I ever
love another country."

"So Blackwood
and I left the army--our army--

"left them there on the hill

"with their arms stacked
in the field,

"all in rows,
never to see it anymore.

"Telling Clarke and bell
good-bye,

"we crossed the road
into the fields and thickets

"and in a little while
lost sight of all that told

of the presence
of what was left of the army."

Barry Benson.

"Monday, April 10.

"Lee and his army
have surrendered!

"Gloria in excelsis deo.

"They can bother and perplex
none but historians henceforth,

"forever.

There is no such army anymore.
God be praised."

George Templeton strong.

"Near Appomattox
courthouse, Virginia.

"Glory to god in the highest!

"Peace on earth,
good will to men!

"Thank god Lee has surrendered,
and the war will soon end.

"How can I record
the events of this day?

"Such a scene only happens
once in centuries.

"General Meade rode like mad
down the road with his hat off,

shouting, "the war is over,
and we are going home.

"The men threw their knapsacks
and canteens into the air

"and howled like mad.

"The rebels are half-starved,

"and our men divided
their rations with them.

"I cried and laughed by turns.

"I was never so happy
in my life.

"I thank god
for all his blessings to me

and that my life has been spared
to see this glorious day."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

Word of Lee's
surrender spread fast.

A galloping rider
shouted the good news

to Sherman's army
in north Carolina,

and one gleeful soldier
bellowed back at him,

"you're the son of a bitch
we've been looking for

all these four years!"

Church bells rang out
in every northern town.

The people of deer isle, Maine,

had followed the steady march
of union victories

with the same joy felt by towns
all over the north,

and when news of Appomattox
got out to the islands,

shouting horsemen carried it
from house to house,

but the grieving did not end.

Private William Toothaker
succumbed to disease

aboard a transport ship,

leaving four small children

whose memories of him
would quickly fade.

And a letter came, informing
private Albion Stinson's wife

that her husband had been killed
near Appomattox courthouse

just five days before
the confederate surrender.

When the news reached
Clarksville, Tennessee,

the union military governor

ordered a grand
citywide celebration.

"All the storehouses
were brilliantly lighted.

"These blue devils
desecrated our churches

"by ringing the bells.

They did all in their power
to a-rile us."

Nannie Haskins.

At Vicksburg,
2,000 liberated union prisoners

crowded onto the decks
of the steamboat sultana,

gleeful to be on their way north
at last.

Near Memphis, a boiler exploded,

and she burst into flames.

More than 1,200 men died,

still hundreds of miles
from home.

"We are scattered,

stunned..."

"The remnant of heart
left alive in us

"is filled with brotherly hate.

"Whose fault?

"Everybody blamed
by somebody else.

"Only the dead heroes
left stiff and stark

on the battlefield
escape."

Mary Chesnut.

When the news of the surrender
reached Edmund Ruffin,

the old Virginia secessionist

who had fired one of
the first shots at fort Sumter,

he draped a rebel flag over
his shoulders and shot himself

rather than live, he wrote,

in a restored union with members
of "the Yankee race."

"You may forgive us,"

a surrendering rebel officer
told Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

after the ceremony at Appomattox,

"but we won't be forgiven.

"There is a rancor in our hearts
which you little dream of.

We hate you, sir."

April 14, 1865 was good Friday.

It also marked to the day

the fourth anniversary
of the surrender of fort Sumter,

and within the fort's
pulverized walls that morning,

everything was being readied
for a noontime ceremony.

The fort's old union commander,
colonel Robert Anderson,

was to raise the same flag

he had been forced
to haul down in 1861.

An audience of northern soldiers
and dignitaries

and some 4,000 former slaves
watched.

Few local whites
chose to attend.

"At first, I could
not hear colonel Anderson,

"for his voice came thickly,

"but in a moment,
he said clearly,

"I thank god that I have lived
to see this day.

"And after a few more words,
he began to hoist the flag.

"It went up slowly
and hung limp,

"a weather-beaten,
frayed, and shell-torn old flag

"not fit for much more work,

"but when it had crept clear
of the shelter of the walls,

"a sudden breath of wind
caught it,

"and it shook its folds and flew
straight out above us.

"I think we stood up.

"Somebody started
the star-spangled banner.

"And we sang the first verse,

"which is
all that most people know.

"But it did not make
much difference,

"for a great gun was fired close
to us from the fort itself,

"followed, in obedience
to the president's order,

"by a national salute
from every fort and battery

that fired upon fort Sumter."

In Washington that same day,

John Wilkes booth dropped
by Ford's Theatre

to pick up his mail.

A stagehand told him
the president and general Grant

were both expected to attend
that night

to see the actress Laura Keene

in a British comedy
called our American cousin.

Booth told his band of
devoted followers of a new plan.

He would shoot Lincoln
and Grant.

Lewis Paine was to kill

secretary of state
William Seward.

George Atzerodt was to shoot
the vice president,

Andrew Johnson.

Early that evening,
booth led his horse

out of the livery stable
near Ford's Theatre.

A young boy was told to hold it
at the stage door.

At the last minute,

general and Mrs. Grant
begged off the Theatre party

and left the city
for Philadelphia.

The Lincolns arrived

and took their seats
in the presidential box.

With them were
major Henry Rathbone

and his fiancee, Clara Harris.

What would you advise, ma?

Just remember, dear, he's rich.

Hush! here he comes.

Ah, Mr. Trenchard!

We were just saying

how you always seem sure
of hitting your Mark.

The president seemed
to be enjoying the play.

His wife held his hand.

Booth swallowed two brandies
at a nearby bar,

then returned to the Theatre.

He waited
for the laughter to rise,

then slipped silently
into the president's box.

He held a dagger
in his left hand,

a derringer pistol in his right.

The nasty beast!

Sir, your vulgarity
renders you intolerable

in polite society.

Maybe I don't know the
manners of polite society,

but I guess I know enough to
turn you inside out, old gal,

you sockdolagizing
old man-trap.

Booth fired, then vaulted
over the front of the box,

caught his right spur
in the draped flag,

and landed on stage,
breaking his left leg.

He waved his dagger

and shouted something
to the stunned audience.

Some thought he said,
"sic semper tyrannis" --

thus be it ever to tyrants,

Virginia's state motto.

Others heard it
as "the south is avenged!"

For a long moment,
the Theatre was still,

then Mary Lincoln screamed.

The bullet from booth's pistol

had entered the back
of Lincoln's head,

torn through his brain,

and lodged behind his right eye.

A surgeon from the audience
pronounced the wound mortal.

Soldiers carried the unconscious
president from the Theatre

into a boarding house
across 10th street.

"We put him on the first floor

"and laid him on the bed.

"When we took him into
the room, we had to get out.

"They wouldn't let anybody in

without it was a doctor
or something."

Private Jacob soles.

"The giant sufferer lay extended
diagonally across the bed,

"which was not long enough
for him.

"He had been stripped
of his clothes.

"His slow, full respiration
lifted the covers

"with each breath he took.

His features were calm
and striking."

Gideon Welles.

The doctors could do nothing.

Mary implored her husband
to speak to her

and wept so inconsolably,

she was finally taken
into the front parlor.

Cabinet officers
stood by helpless all night,

doubly shocked to hear

that booth's accomplice
Lewis Paine

had stabbed
secretary of state Seward,

then run out
into the street crying,

"I'm mad! I'm mad!"

George Atzerodt had been
too frightened

to carry out booth's order
to kill the vice president.

Around 6:00 in the morning,

Navy secretary Welles
stepped outside

and found the streets filled
with silent, anxious people.

"A little before 7:00,
I went back into the room.

"The death struggle had begun.

"Robert, his son, stood
at the head of the bed.

"He bore himself well,

"but on two occasions gave way
and sobbed aloud,

leaning on the shoulder
of senator Sumner."

At 7:22 on the morning
of April 15, 1865,

Abraham Lincoln died.

He was 56 years old.

Secretary of war
Edwin Stanton said,

"now he belongs
to the ages."

His pockets contained
two pairs of spectacles,

a pocket knife,
a linen handkerchief,

and a wallet.

In it were
nine newspaper clippings

and a confederate $5.00 bill.

"Mother prepared breakfast
and other meals as usual,

"but not a mouthful was eaten
all day by either of us.

"We each drank half a cup
of coffee. That was all.

"Little was said.

"We got every newspaper,
morning and evening,

and passed them silently
to each other."

Walt Whitman.

The telegraph carried the news

across the country in minutes.

No president

had ever been murdered.

People would remember
for the rest of their lives

where they were
and what they felt

and what the weather was like

when they heard
what had happened.

"Near Appomattox
courthouse, Virginia,

"Saturday, April 15.

"Bad news has just arrived.

"Corporal Thomas Parker has just
said president Lincoln is dead,

"murdered.

"We cannot realize
that our president is dead.

May god help his family
and our distracted country."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

"I have been expecting this.

"I am stunned,

"as by a fearful
personal calamity,

"though I can see
that this thing

"occurring just at this time

"may be overruled
to our great good.

We shall appreciate him
at last."

George Templeton strong.

"On the Avenue
in front of the white house

"were several hundred
colored people,

"mostly women and children,

"weeping and wailing their loss.

"This crowd did not diminish

"through the whole
of that cold, wet day.

"They seemed not to know
what was to be their fate

"since their great benefactor
was dead,

"and though strong and brave men
wept when I met them,

"the hopeless grief
of those poor colored people

affected me more than
almost anything else."

Gideon Welles.

Lincoln's casket lay in state,

first in the east room
of the white house,

then in the rotunda
of the capitol.

He was to be buried
in Springfield, Illinois,

his adopted home.

The small coffin
of his son Willy,

who had died in Washington,

was disinterred
to make the journey with him.

Mary Lincoln was
too overcome with grief to go.

The funeral train took 12 days

and traveled 1,662 miles through
the soft spring landscape,

retracing the route
Lincoln had taken to Washington

four years earlier.

In Philadelphia,

Lincoln's coffin lay
in independence hall,

where he had declared he would
"rather be assassinated"

than surrender the principles

embodied in the declaration
of independence.

In New York, the procession
took four hours.

Scalpers sold choice window
positions along the route

for $4.00 and up.

From his grandfather's window,

a young Theodore Roosevelt
watched the procession pass.

At Cleveland, 10,000 mourners

passed through a specially built
outdoor pavilion

every hour, all day,

despite a driving rain.

It ended in Springfield
on may 4th.

The coffin rode
to the Illinois state house

in a magnificent
black-and-silver hearse

borrowed from St. Louis

and lay open in the chamber
of the house of representatives

where Lincoln had warned

that "a house divided
against itself cannot stand."

Among the thousands of people
who shuffled past his coffin

were many who had known him
in the old days--

farmers from new Salem,

law clients and rival attorneys,

neighbors who had nodded to him
each morning on his way to work.

Sarah, the president's
stepmother,

had had a premonition

when Lincoln left for Washington
four years before.

"I felt it in my heart that
something would happen to him,"

she said, "and that I
should see him no more."

General Joseph hooker

led the final, slow march
to oak Ridge cemetery

through a gentle spring rain.

"You white people are
the children of Abraham Lincoln.

"We are at best
only his stepchildren.

"Viewed from the genuine
abolition ground,

"Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy,
cold, dull, indifferent,

"but measuring him
by the sentiment of his country,

"a sentiment he was bound
as a statesman to consult,

"he was swift, zealous,
radical, and determined.

"Taking him all in all,

"measuring the tremendous
magnitude

"of the work before him,

"considering the necessary means
to ends,

"infinite wisdom has seldom
sent any man into the world

better fitted for his mission
than Abraham Lincoln."

Frederick Douglass.

On April 26,

union cavalry trapped
John Wilkes booth

in a Virginia tobacco barn
and set it afire.

His accomplice David Herold
surrendered.

Booth preferred death.

A soldier shot him in the neck.

At the end, he asked
to have his hands raised,

looked at them, and said,
"useless, useless."

That day, in a farmhouse near
Durham station, north Carolina,

confederate general
Joseph Johnston

surrendered what was left
of his army

to William Tecumseh Sherman.

Jefferson Davis,
exhausted but still defiant,

fled southward,

hoping somehow to rally
the confederacy from Texas.

"It may be that with
a devoted band of cavalry,

"I can force my way
across the Mississippi,

"and if nothing
can be done there,

"then I can go to Mexico

and have the world from which
to choose a location."

On may 10
at Irwinville, Georgia,

union cavalry
caught up with him.

With the arrest
of its president,

the confederate government
ceased to exist.

Davis was sent north to Virginia
under heavy guard.

Northern newspapers spread
the false rumor

that Davis had been apprehended
wearing women's clothes.

North and south, he was reviled
as the villain of the war.

These misconceptions about Davis
are so strange,

that it's as if a gigantic
conspiracy was launched.

It was partly launched
by southerners who,

having lost the war,

did not want to blame it
on their generals,

so they blamed it
on the politicians,

and, of course, Davis
was the chief politician.

So it was the southerners
more than the northerners

who vilified Jefferson Davis.

The northerners wanted to hang
him from a sour apple tree,

but, uh, the southerners really
tore him down after the war.

Davis was imprisoned
at fortress Monroe

in a cell kept perpetually lit

and was made to wear chains,

though he protested

that "those are orders
for a slave,

and no man with a soul in him
would obey such orders."

"dear Varina, this is not
the fate to which I invited you

"when the future was
Rose-colored for us both,

"but I know you will bear it
even better than myself,

"and that, of us two,

I alone will ever look back
reproachfully on my career."

Scattered fighting stuttered
on in Louisiana, Alabama,

and Mississippi,
and even further west,

where on may 13, 1865,

private John J. Williams
of the 34th Indiana

became the last man killed
in the civil war,

in a battle
at Palmitto ranch, Texas.

The final skirmish was
a confederate victory.

On the morning of may 23, 1865,

the American flag flew at
full staff above the white house

for the first time
since Lincoln's death.

U.S. grant and the new
president, Andrew Johnson,

stood side by side

to watch the grand armies
of the Republic pass in review

down pennsylvania avenue
from the capitol.

"And so it came,

"this glorious
old army of the Potomac,

"for six hours marching past,

"18 or 20 miles long,

"their colors telling
their sad history.

"It was a strange feeling

"to be so intensely
happy and triumphant

and yet to feel
like crying."

The great procession
took two days.

General George Armstrong Custer

stole the show the first day,

galloping past the dignitaries
far ahead of his men,

brandishing his sabre,

his long yellow hair
whipping in the wind.

But the crowds cheered loudest
the next morning

as William Tecumseh Sherman
rode past

at the head of the great army
he had led to the sea.

By may, most of the Yankees

had withdrawn
from Clarksville, Tennessee.

What remained of the 49th
and 14th Tennessee regiments

came home.

Private John J. Denny
of company K

was not among them.

He had died at Chancellorsville.

Of the 29 Stewart college
seniors who went to war,

16 had been killed in battle.

7 more had died
of wounds and disease.

In September, railway service
to Clarksville was resumed.

Deer isle, Maine, was
an indirect casualty of the war.

When its men came home,

they found fishing
had fallen off.

There was new money to be made
in other industries

in nearby towns.

The old families moved away.

Some of the houses
they left behind

became summer homes
for vacationers,

most of whom were unaware
of what had happened there.

John Wilkes booth's accomplices

were swiftly tried
before a military commission.

All eight were found guilty.

Four were sentenced
to be hanged,

including Mary Surratt,
whose only crime may have been

that she owned
the boarding house

in which the conspirators met.

The executions took place

in the courtyard
of the old penitentiary building

on July 7.

The prisoners climbed
the 13 steps

and sat in chairs while
the charges were read aloud.

Two priests
comforted Mrs. Surratt

and shielded her from the sun.

White hoods were slipped
over their heads.

General Winfield Scott Hancock,
the hero of Gettysburg,

clapped his hands three times,

and soldiers knocked
the front part of the platform

out from under the condemned.

It took them more than
five minutes to die.

A northern newspaper said,

"we want to know
their names no more."

"somewhere they crawled
to die alone in bushes,

"low gullies,
or on the sides of hills.

"There, in secluded spots,

"their skeletons,
bleached bones, tufts of hair,

"buttons, fragments of clothing

are occasionally found yet."

"Our young men,
once so handsome and so joyous,

"taken from us--

"the son from the mother,

"the husband from the wife,

the dear friend
from the dear friend."

Walt Whitman.

3.5 million men
went to war.

620,000 men died in it,

as many as in all the rest
of America's wars combined.

1/4 of the south's white men
of military age were dead.

In Iowa, half the men
eligible to fight

served in the union army,

filling 46 regiments in all.

13,001 iowans died--

3,540 in battle,

515 while prisoners of war,

and 8,498 of disease.

Those figures were typical.

The 5th New Hampshire regiment

started out from Concord
in 1861 with 1,200 men.

When they returned
to New Hampshire

after Gettysburg,

there were only 380 left.

In Mississippi in 1866,

1/5 of the state's entire budget

was spent on artificial limbs.

Millions were left
with vivid memories of men

who should have still
been living but were not.

The survivors went home

and got on
with the business of living.

"The morning
after my arrival home,

"I doffed my uniform
of first lieutenant,

"put on some of
my father's old clothes,

"and proceeded to wage war
on the standing corn.

"The feeling I had
was sort of queer.

"It almost seemed, sometimes,

"as if I had been away
only a day or two

"and had just taken up
the farm work

where I had left off."

Leander still well,
formerly 61st Illinois.

The boys who had gone
off to war were old men now.

They walked over
the old battlefields

with their families,

pointing out the places
where they had once done things

that now seemed impossible,
even to them.

They had a theoretical
notion of having a country,

but when the war was over,

on both sides, they knew
they had a country.

They'd been there.

They had walked its hills
and tramped its roads.

Uh, they--they saw
the country,

and they knew
they had a country,

and they knew the--the effort
that they had expended

and their dead friends
had expended to preserve it.

It did that.

It made their country
an actuality.

By the turn of the century,

monuments and memorials
and statues

stood in city parks
and courthouse squares

from Maine to Mississippi.

"Number 220--
statue of American soldier.

"Price, $450.

"When used as a family monument

"and photos of the deceased
soldier can be furnished,

"we will model a new head
in a true likeness.

The extra cost
will be but $150."

The monumental bronze company,
Bridgeport, Connecticut.

"Hall's hill, Virginia,
July 4, 1865.

"Another independence day
in the army,

"and this has been my fifth.

"The first we passed
at camp Clark near Washington,

"the second
at Harrison's landing,

"the third at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania,

"the fourth at Petersburg,

"and today we are back
in Washington

"with our work finished.

The day has been fun."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

The war made Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

Having risen from private
to colonel during the war,

he was promoted
to brigadier general after it,

then went into the cotton
and wool business in Providence.

He devoted nearly every
idle hour to veterans' affairs

and never missed
a regimental reunion.

"America has no north,
no south, no east, no west.

"The sun rises over the hills
and sets over the mountains.

"The compass just points
up and down,

"and we can laugh now
at the absurd notion

"of there being a north
and a south.

We are one
and undivided."

Sam Watkins.

Sam Watkins returned
to Columbia, Tennessee,

ran the family farm,

and in the evenings
worked on his memoirs,

company Aytch,

despite, he said,
"a house full of young rebels

clustering around my knees
and bumping my elbows."

But for the war,

these men were like
any other possible friends.

You can, uh, remember the--
Thomas Hardy's poem.

"Had he and I but met,
in some old ancient inn,

we might sit down to wet
right many a Nipperkin."

You know, "but ranged as
infantry, standing face to face,

"I shot at him as he at me,
and killed him in his place.

"Strange and curious, a war is.

"You shoot a fellow down
you'd treat where any bar is,

or help to half a crown."

Isn't that it?

Especially in our own,
uh--our own society,

where these men
shared a common history,

men and women,

shared a common love of Liberty,

gave it slightly
different English

as it spun through their lives,

but at the same time,
when death came

and there was no more
to fight about,

the sort of ocean
of--of love and respect

closed over them again,

and they were together.

"I think we understand
what military fame is--

"to be killed
on the field of battle

and have our names spelled
wrong in the newspapers."

William Tecumseh Sherman.

William Tecumseh Sherman
remained a soldier,

fighting Indians
and shunning politics

until his retirement in 1883.

"If nominated, I will not run,"

he told a republican delegation
urging him to run for president.

"If elected,
I will not serve."

He died in New York City
in the winter of 1891.

Among the honorary pallbearers
who stood bareheaded

in the cold wind
outside the church

was 82-year-old
Joe Johnston,

who had fought Sherman
in georgia and the carolinas.

When a friend warned him
he might fall ill,

Johnston told him,
"if I were in Sherman's place

"and he were
standing here in mine,

he would not
put on his hat."

Johnston died 10 days later
of pneumonia.

"April 1866.

"There are nights here
with the moonlight,

"cold and ghastly,
and the whippoorwills

"and the screech owls alone
disturbing the silence,

"when I could tear my hair
and cry alone

for all that is past
and gone."

Mary Chesnut.

When James and Mary Chesnut

returned to mulberry plantation,

they found the old house
stripped by union men,

the cotton burned.

Mary managed
to make a little money

selling butter and eggs

in partnership
with her former slave,

and she continued to write,

but she never completed
the mammoth task

of reworking her war diary.

Jefferson Davis was never
tried for treason,

nor could he ever bring himself
to ask for a pardon.

After two years in prison,

he was released on bond
and spent the rest of his life

living off the charity
of a wealthy widow

and working on a massive memoir,

the rise and fall
of the confederate government.

He died, still persuaded
of the justice of his cause,

at the age of 81.

Hiram revels of Mississippi
became the first black man

ever elected to
the United States senate,

filling the seat
last held by Jefferson Davis.

Vice president
Alexander Stephens

was imprisoned briefly
and then re-elected

to his old congressional seat
from Georgia

as if there had never been
a confederacy.

Mary Todd Lincoln

never recovered
from her husband's murder.

Her son tad died in 1871.

Five years later,
her eldest son Robert

had her committed
to a mental institution.

She spent her last years
in Springfield,

rarely leaving a room

whose curtains
were never raised.

For Clara Barton,

the angel of the battlefield,

the grim work continued.

After the war,
she went down to Andersonville

and helped arrange
dignified burial

for thousands
of the union prisoners

who had died there,

then went on to found
the American red cross.

On November 10, 1865,
Henry Wirz,

commandant
at Andersonville prison,

was hanged in the yard

of the old capitol prison
in Washington

for war crimes.

He pleaded
he had only followed orders.

Walt Whitman published
drum taps,

a book of civil war poems
he thought his finest,

then turned largely to prose.

His writings revolutionized
American literature.

Phil Sheridan went out west
to take on a new enemy,

declaring that the only
good Indian was a dead Indian.

George Armstrong Custer
went west, too,

carrying with him his belief
in his own invincibility.

In 1876, the Sioux and Cheyenne
proved him wrong.

George McClellan stayed abroad
for three years

after losing the election
to Lincoln.

He heard no slander
about himself there, he said.

Then he came home

and got himself elected
governor of New Jersey.

The conqueror of fort Sumter,

Pierre Gustave
Toutant Beauregard,

promoted railroads,

managed the Louisiana
state lottery,

and got rich.

Nathan Bedford Forrest

promoted railroads, too,
but failed.

In 1867, he became
the first imperial wizard

of the Ku Klux Klan

but quit when the Klan
grew too violent even for him.

General Dan sickles
somehow escaped court-martial

for his blunder at Gettysburg.

He had the leg he lost
in the peach orchard

mounted in a miniature casket

and gave it to the army
medical museum in Washington,

where he visited it regularly
for 50 years.

John bell hood, who had survived

some of the fiercest fighting
of the war,

died with his wife and daughter

in the New Orleans yellow fever
epidemic of 1878,

leaving 10 orphaned children.

George Pickett never
overcame his bitterness

over the destruction
of his division at Gettysburg.

Suffering
from severe depression,

he turned down offers of command
from the ruler of Egypt

and the president
of the United States

and ended up
in the insurance business.

Confederate general
James Longstreet

joined the republican party,

served as Grant's
minister to Turkey,

dared to criticize
Lee's strategy at Gettysburg,

and for all these things

was considered
a traitor to the south

by his former
comrades-in-arms.

Frederick Douglass

continued to fight
as hard for civil rights

as he had against slavery

and became the most powerful
black politician in America.

A young visitor once asked him
what he should do with his life.

"Agitate!" the old man answered.
"Agitate! Agitate!"

Julia Ward Howe

helped lead the American woman's
suffrage association

for 55 years.

At her funeral in 1910,

4,000 mourners joined in singing

the battle hymn of the Republic.

Colonel Washington Roebling

left the army corps
of engineers,

finished his father's bridge
at Cincinnati,

and went on to build

the greatest suspension bridge
in the world in Brooklyn.

"I have fought against
the people of the north

"because I believed they were
seeking to wrest from the south

"its dearest rights,

"but I have never
cherished toward them

"bitter or vindictive feelings,

and I have never seen the day
when I did not pray for them."

Robert E. Lee

swore renewed allegiance
to the United States

and by so doing persuaded
thousands of his former soldiers

to do the same.

He was weary, ailing,
and without work

in the summer of 1865

when an insurance firm
offered him $50,000

just for the use of his name.

He turned it down.

"I cannot consent to receive pay

for services
I do not render."

He ended up in the noble
way you might have expected

after you'd learned
to expect it.

He was, uh--didn't know what to
do with himself after the war.

His profession was gone.

Even his country was gone.

Uh, and he was approached,
with a good deal of hesitation,

by these people
from a little school

called Washington college,

and he accepted the presidency
of Washington college.

He had an annual salary of
$1,500 and a house to live in,

and he spent
the rest of his life

at what after his death
was called Washington and Lee.

"The greatest mistake
of my life," he said,

"was taking
a military education."

And whenever his students

and those of the neighboring
Virginia military institute

marched together,

Lee made a point
of staying out of step.

He never returned
to Arlington again.

Once, on his way to Washington,

he glimpsed his old home
from a passing train.

He died in 1870.

In his last moments,
he went back to the war,

ordering A.P. Hill
to bring up his troops,

just as stonewall Jackson had

on his deathbed
at Chancellorsville.

Then Lee called out,
"strike the tent."

"for he will smile

"and give you
with unflinching courtesy,

"prayers, trappings, letters,
uniforms and orders,

"photographs, kindness,
valor and advice,

"and do it
with such grace and gentleness

"that you will know you have
the whole of him pinned down,

"mapped out,
easy to understand--

"and so you have.

"All things except the heart.

"The heart he kept...
A secret to the end

from all the picklocks
of biographers."

"I feel that we are
on the Eve of a new era

"when there is to be
a great Harmony

"between the federal
and the confederate.

"I cannot stay
to be a living witness

"to the correctness
of this prophecy,

but I feel it within me
that it is to be so."

The qualities

that served Ulysses S. Grant
so well in war--

stubbornness, independence,
aversion to politics--

deserted him in peacetime.

He entered the white house

pledged to peace, honesty,
and civil rights,

but corruption tainted
his two terms.

After the presidency,
he settled in Manhattan,

where he lent his name
to a wall street brokerage firm.

Another partner in the firm

stole millions
from the shareholders in 1884

and bankrupted the Grant family.

Once again,
U.S. Grant was penniless.

At almost the same moment,
he was found to be suffering

from inoperable cancer
of the throat.

Determined to provide
for his family before he died,

he set to work
writing his memoirs.

In the summer of 1885,
he moved to a cottage

at mount McGregor
in the Adirondacks.

Unable now to eat or speak,

he sat on the front porch
in the afternoons,

laboring over his manuscript.

He finished it on July 16

and died one week later.

Grant's memoirs sold
half a million copies

and restored
his family's fortune.

In 1913, the government held
a 50th anniversary reunion

at Gettysburg.

It lasted three days.

Thousands of survivors

bivouacked
on the old battlefield,

swapping stories,
looking up old comrades.

The climax was to be

a re-enactment
of Pickett's charge.

As the rebel yell rang out

and the old confederates
started forward again

across the fields,

a moan, "a gigantic gasp
of unbelief,"

Rose from the union men
on cemetery Ridge.

"It was then,"
one onlooker said,

"that the Yankees, unable
to restrain themselves longer,

"burst from
behind the stone wall

"and flung themselves
upon their former enemies,

"not in mortal combat,
but embracing them

in brotherly love
and affection."

"pageant has passed.

"The day is over, but we linger,

"loath to think we shall
see them no more together--

these men, these horses,
these colors afield."

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

was at the Gettysburg reunion,

still imposing at 83,
despite almost constant pain

from the unhealed
internal damage done him

by a confederate minie ball
at Petersburg.

The reunion was, he said,
a transcendental experience,

"a radiant fellowship
of the fallen."

He had received
the medal of honor

for his courage
at little round top,

served four terms
as governor of Maine,

then became president
of Bowdoin college,

where he managed to teach
every subject in the curriculum

except mathematics.

He died
of his ancient wound in 1914.

The war was over.

Who won the war?

The union army
obviously won the war

in the sense that they were
the army left standing

and holding their weapons

when it was all over.

Uh, so the soldiers who fought
in the union army,

the generals who directed it,

the president
who led the country during it

won the war.

If we're not talking
just about the series of battles

that finished up with
the surrender at Appomattox,

but talking instead
about the struggle

to make something higher
and better out of the country,

then the question
gets more complicated.

The slaves won the war,
and they lost the war

because they won freedom,
that is, the removal of slavery,

but they did not win freedom
as they understood freedom.

I suppose that slavery

is merely the, uh--the horrible
statutory expression

of a deeper--of a deeper rift
between people based on race,

and that is what
we struggle still to--to heal.

And, uh, I think the--the
significance of Lincoln's life

and his victory

was that--that
we will never again

enshrine these concepts
into law,

but now let's see
what we can do to erase them

from the hearts
and minds of--of people.

The civil war

is not only the central event
of American history,

but it's a central event in
large ways for the world itself.

If we believe, today, in the
20th century, as surely we must,

that popular government
is the way to go,

it is the way

for the emancipation
of the human spirit,

then the civil war
established the fact

that a popular government
could survive,

that it could overcome
an internal secession movement

that could destroy it.

So the war
becomes--in essence, it becomes

a testament for the liberation

of the human spirit
for all time.

Four million Americans
had been freed

after four years of agony,

but the meaning of freedom
in American life

remained unresolved.

"Emancipated slaves
own nothing,"

one Tennessee planter wrote,

"because nothing but freedom
has been given them."

Thousands of blacks
wandered Southern roads

searching for relatives
or looking for work or food.

Thousands more stayed
on their plantations

as hired hands or sharecroppers.

The 13th amendment

was followed
by a 14th and a 15th,

promising full citizenship

and due process
for all american men,

white and black.

But the promises
were soon overlooked

in the scramble
for a new prosperity,

and white supremacy
was brutally reimposed

throughout the old confederacy.

The white south
won that war of attrition.

It would take another century

before blacks
gained back the ground

for which so many
had given their lives.

I think what we need
to remember most of all

is that the civil war
is not over

until we, today, have done
our part in fighting it,

as well as understanding
what happened

when the civil war generation
fought it.

William Faulkner, uh, said once

that history is not "was,"
it's "is,"

and what we need to remember
about the civil war

is that the civil war

is in the present
as well as in the past.

The generation
that fought the war,

the generation that argued
over the definition of the war,

the generation that had
to pay the price in blood,

that had to pay the price
in blasted hopes

and a lost future,

also established a standard
that will not mean anything

until we have finished the work.

You can say there's
no such thing as slavery anymore

we're all citizens.

But if we're all citizens,
then we have a task to do

to make sure that that, too,
is not a joke.

If some citizens live in houses
and others live on the street,

the civil war is still going on.

It's still to be fought,

and regrettably,
it can still be lost.

Gettysburg's guns are still,
and the dead sleep on.

America's most famous
battleground is a camp again

with a road dividing
the blue and gray.

There is no other
dividing line now

as 2,500 veterans gather
from north and south

to Mark the 75th anniversary
of America's Armageddon.

Hello.

Hello.
how are you?

Glad to see you.

Ha ha ha!
You're all right.

That's the rebel yell.

We think that we are

a wholly superior people.

If we'd been anything like
as superior as we think we are,

we would not
have fought that war,

but since we did fight it,

we have to make it
the greatest war of all times

and our generals were the
greatest generals of all time.

It's very American to do that.

In time, even death itself
might be abolished.

Sergeant Barry Benson,
a south Carolina veteran

from McGowen's brigade,
Wilcox's division,

A.P. Hill's corp,
army of Northern Virginia,

he had enlisted
three months before Sumter,

at age 18,
and served through Appomattox--

saw it so when he got around
to composing the reminiscences

he hoped would
"go down amongst my descendants

for a long time."

Reliving the war in words,

he began to wish
he could relive it in fact.

And he came to believe
that he and his fellow soldiers,

gray and blue,

might one day
be able to do just that,

if not here on earth,
then afterwards in Valhalla.

"Who knows?" He asked, as his
narrative drew toward its close,

"but it may be given to us,
after this life,

"to meet again
in the old quarters,

"to play chess and draughts,

"to get up soon to answer
the morning roll call,

"to fall in at the tap of the
drum for drill and dress parade,

"and again to hastily Don
our war gear

"while the monotonous patter
of the long roll

"summons to battle.

"Who knows, but again
the old flags, ragged and torn,

"snapping in the wind,
may face each other and flutter,

"pursuing and pursued,

"while the cries of victory
fill a summer day.

"And after the battle,

"then the slain and wounded
will arise

"and all meet together
under the two flags,

"all sound and well.

"There will be talking
and laughter and cheers,

"and all will say,
did it not seem real?

Was it not
as in the old days?"

Corporate
funding for this special 25th

anniversary presentation of
the civil war was provided by.

Before thousands
fell on the battlefield,

before millions were
freed and before a country

forged its identity...
A nation declared a new

birth of freedom,
rededicating itself to the

proposition that all
men are created equal.

Bank of America is proud
to sponsor "the civil war,"

a film by Ken burns,

newly restored for
it's 25th anniversary.

Original
production of "the civil war"

was made possible by
generous contributions

from these funders.

And by the corporation
for public broadcasting.

And by contributions
to your PBS station from

viewers like you, thank you.