WEBVTT

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We have shared 
the incommunicable experience of war.

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"We have felt, we still feel,

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"the passion of life to its top.

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"In our youth, our hearts
were touched with fire."

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— Oliver Wendell Holmes.

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By the summer 1861
Wilmer McLean had had enough.

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Two great armies
were converging on his farm

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and what would be 
the first major battle of the Civil War,

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Bull Run, or Manassas, 
as the Confederates called it,

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would soon rage
across the aging Virginian's farm,

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a Union shell going so far as to explode
in the summer kitchen.

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Now McLean moved his family 
away from Manassas

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far south and west of Richmond.

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Out of harm's way, he prayed,

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to a dusty little crossroads
called Appomattox Courthouse.

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And it was there, in his living room, 
three and a half years later,

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that Lee surrendered to Grant.

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And Wilmer McLean could rightfully say,

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"The war began in my front yard
and ended in my front parlor".

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[The Civil War]

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The Civil War was fought in 10,000 places,

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from Valverde, New Mexico
and Tullahoma, Tennessee,

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to St. Albans, Vermont, 
and Fernandina, on the Florida coast.

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More than three million Americans 
fought in it

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and over 600,000 men, 
2% of the population, died in it.

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American homes became headquarters.

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American churches and schoolhouses
sheltered the dying.

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And huge foraging armies 
swept across American farms

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and burned American towns.

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Americans slaughtered one another
wholesale, here, in America,

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in their own corn fields, 
and peach orchards,

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along familiar roads and by waters 
with old American names.

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In two days, at Shiloh, 
on the banks of the Tennessee,

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more American men fell than 
on all previous American wars combined.

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At Cold Harbor, 7,000 Americans 
fell in 20 minutes.

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Men who had never strayed 20 miles
from their own front doors,

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now found themselves 
soldiers in great armies,

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fighting epic battles 
hundreds of miles from home.

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They knew they were making history

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and it was the greatest adventure
of their lives.

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The war made some rich, ruined others

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and change forever the lives 
of all who lived through it.

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A lackluster clerk from Galena, Illinois,

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a failure at everything
except marriage and war,

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who in three years would be 
head of the Union army

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and in seven 
President the United States.

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An eccentric student of theology 
and military tactics,

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a hypochondriac who rode in the battle
with one hand raised

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"to keep", he said, "the blood balanced".

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A college professor from Maine,
who on a little hill in Pennsylvania,

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ordered an unlikely textbook maneuver,

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that saved the Union army
and possibly the Union itself.

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Two ordinary soldiers, 
one from Providence, Rhode Island,

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the other from Columbia, Tennessee,

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who each serve four years

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and together seemed to have been
everywhere during the war

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and live to tell the tale.

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The courtly unknowable aristocrat

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who disapproved of secession and slavery.

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yet went on to defend them both

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at the head of one 
of the greatest armies of all time.

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The runaway boy 
who "stole himself" from slavery,

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recruited two regiments of black soldiers

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and helped transform the Civil War

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into a struggle for the freedom
of all Americans.

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And then there was 
the rough man from Illinois,

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who would rise to be the greatest President
the country has ever seen.

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Between 1861 and 1865, 
Americans made war on each other

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and killed each other in great numbers

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if only to become the kind of country

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that could no longer conceive
how that was possible.

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What began as a bitter dispute
over Union and states' rights,

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ended as a struggle over 
the meaning of freedom in America.

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At Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln 
can said perhaps more than he knew.

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The war was about "a new birth of freedom".

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1938 — 75th anniversary 
of the Battle of Gettysburg.

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President Roosevelt spoke 
to the remaining few Civil War veterans.

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"Veterans of the Blue and the Gray.

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"On behalf of the people 
of the United States,

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"I accept this monument

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"in the spirit of brotherhood and peace".

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Year after year, the nation remembered.

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In 1930, veterans of the Union army
marched in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Four years later in New York City.

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They and the surviving veterans 
of the Confederacy

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were the last link 
with the terrible conflict

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that tore America apart,

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from 1861 to 1865.

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The last Civil War veteran 
would die in 1959

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and no longer were there been 
living memories of long ago battles.

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Only History and legends.

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Any understanding of this nation
has to be based,

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and I mean, really based 
on an understanding of the Civil War.

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I believe that firmly. It defined us.

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The Revolution did what it did.

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Our involvement in European wars, 
beginning with the I World War,

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did what it did.

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But the Civil War defines us 
as what we are

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and it opened us to being what we became,

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good and bad things.

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It is very necessary 
if you are going to understand

NOTE Paragraph

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the American character,
in the 20th century,

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to learn about this enormous catastrophe 
of the mid-19th century.

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It was the crossroads of our being
and it was a hell of a crossroads.

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For me, the picture of the Civil War,

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as a historic phenomenon,

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is not on the battlefield.

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It's not about weapons.

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It's not about soldiers,

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except to the extent that weapons
and soldiers at that crucial moment,

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joined a discussion 
about something higher,

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about humanity, about human dignity,

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about human freedom.

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"From whence shall we expect 
the approach of danger?

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"Shall some trans-Atlantic giant
step the earth and crush us at a blow?

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"Never.

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"All the armies of Europe and Asia

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"could not by force take a drink 
from the Ohio River

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"or make a track on the Blue Ridge 
in the trial of a thousand years.

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"No, if destruction be our lot we must 
ourselves be its author and finisher.

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"As a nation of free men,
we will live forever

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"or die by suicide".

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— Abraham Lincoln, 1837.

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[1861— the Cause]

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In 1861 most of the nation's 
31 million people

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live peaceably on farms 
and in small towns.

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At Sharpsburg, Maryland,
a German pacifist sect, the Dunkards,

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made their home
in a sea of wheat and corn.

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In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 
population 2,400,

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young men studied Latin and Mathematics
at the small college there.

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Steamboats filled with cotton,

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came and went at Vicksburg 
on the Mississippi.

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In Washington D.C., 
Senator Jefferson Davis

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reviewed plans for remodeling the Capitol.

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In Richmond, the 900 employees
of the Tredegar Iron Works

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turned out gun carriages and cannon
for the US government.

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At West Point, on the Hudson, 
officers trained

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and friendships were formed, 
they thought, would last a lifetime.

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"In thinking of America,

NOTE Paragraph

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"I sometimes find myself 
admiring her bright blue sky

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"her grand old woods, her fertile fields,

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"her beautiful rivers,

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"her mighty lakes 
and star-crowned mountains.

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"But my rapture is soon checked

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"when I remember that all is cursed

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"with the infernal spirit 
of slaveholding and wrong,

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"when I remember that 
with the waters of her noblest rivers

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"the tears of my brethren
are borne to the ocean,

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"disregarded and forgotten,

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"that her most fertile fields drink daily 
of the warm blood of my outraged sisters,

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"I am filled with an unutterable loathing".

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— Frederick Douglass.

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[All Night Forever]

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"No day ever dawns for the slave", 
a freed black man wrote.

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"nor is it looked for.

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"For the slave, it is all night,

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"all night forever."

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One white Mississippian was more blunt.

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"I'd rather be dead", he said,

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"than be a nigger on one 
of these big plantations".

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A slave entered the world in a one-room,
dirt-floored shack.

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Drafty in winter, reeking in summer,

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slave cabins bred pneumonia, typhus,

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cholera, lockjaw, tuberculosis.

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The child who survived
to be sent to the fields at 12,

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was likely to have rotten teeth,
worms, dysentery, malaria.

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Fewer than four out of a hundred 
lived to be 60.

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Work began at sunrise and continued
as long as there was light.

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Fourteen hours sometimes,

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unless there was a full moon
when it went on still longer.

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On the auction block, 
blacks be made to jump and dance

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to demonstrate their sprightliness

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and stripped to show 
how little whipping they needed.

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Buyers poked and prodded them,

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examined their feet, eyes and teeth,

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"precisely", one ex-slave recalled, 
"as a jockey examines a horse".

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"A slave could expect to be sold 
at least once in his lifetime.

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"maybe two times, maybe more.

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"Since slave marriages had no legal status,

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"preachers changed 
the wedding vows to read

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"until death or distance do you part".

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"You know what I'd rather do,

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"if I thought that I'd ever be 
a slave again?

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"I'd take a gun and just end it 
all right away.

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"Because you're nothing but a dog.

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"You're not a thing but a dog.

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"Some slaves refused to work.

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"Some ran away.

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"Still, blacks struggled 
to hold their families together,

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"created their own culture 
under the worst of conditions

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"and yearned to be free.

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If there was a single event 
that caused the war,

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it was the establishment 
of the United States

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in independence from Great Britain,

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with slavery still a part of its heritage.

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It was because we failed to do the thing.

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We really have a genius for,
which is compromise.

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Americans like to think of themselves
as uncompromising.

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Our true genius is for compromise, 
our whole governments founded on it,

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and it failed.

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"There was never a moment in our History

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"when slavery was not a sleeping serpent.

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"It laid coiled up under the table

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"during the deliberations
of the Constitutional Convention.

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"Owing to the Cotton Gin, 
it was more than half awake.

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"Thereafter, slavery was on everyone's mind,

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"though not always on his tongue".

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— John G. Chapman.

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By the time the nation was founded, 
slavery was dying in the North.

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There were doubts in the South too.

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But few could conceive of any alternative.

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Thomas Jefferson in Virginia said

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maintaining slavery 
was like holding a wolf by the ears.

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"You didn't like it 
but you didn't dare let it go".

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Then, in 1793, a Northerner, Eli Whitney,

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taught the South how to make slavery pay.

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Whitney's engine, or "gin", made it easier
to separate cotton from its seed.

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Where before it had taken one slave

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ten hours to produce
a single pound of lint,

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the Cotton Gin could crank out
a thousand pounds a day.

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Production soared

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and with it, the demand for slaves.

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By 1860, the last year of peace,

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one out of every seven Americans 
belonged to another American.

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Four million men, women 
and children were slaves.

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[Are We Free?]

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In Boston, in 1831, claiming
that "which is not just, is not law",

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William Lloyd Garrison began publishing

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a militant, anti-slavery 
newspaper, "The Liberator".

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He called for complete 
and immediate abolition.

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"I am in earnest. I will not equivocate.

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"I will not excuse,

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"I will not retreat a single inch

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"and I will be heard!"

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He was heard

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and his message was clear.

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Slavery was sin

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and those who maintained it, criminals.

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The abolition movement grew
inspired by passionate leaders.

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Harriet Tubman, called Moses by the slaves
who followed her north to freedom.

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Wendell Phillips, named 
the Golden Trumpet of Abolitionism,

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for his oratory

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and Frederick Douglass,

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the son of a slave and a white man.

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"I appear this evening 
as a thief and robber

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"I stole this head, these limbs

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"this body from my master

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"and ran off with them.

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Douglass was so eloquent that skeptics 
charged he could never have been a slave.

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In part to prove them wrong, 
he wrote an autobiography,

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purchased his freedom with 600 dollars 
obtained from English admirers

00:20:57.354 --> 00:20:59.146
and returned to the struggle.

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[Southern men!
Down with the abolition press]

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"The abolitionists would raise the negroes

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"to a social and political equality
with the whites

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"and, that being effected, would soon see

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"the present condition 
of the two races reversed.

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"They and their Northern allies
would be the masters and we the slaves".

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— John C. Calhoun.

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More and more Southerners worried

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about the growing political as well 
as economic power of the North.

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Northerners were increasingly 
hostile to slavery.

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Still most Southerners refused 
to acknowledge even the possibility

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of changing their way of life.

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"On the North Bank of the Ohio 
everything is activity, industry.

00:21:46.165 --> 00:21:48.993
"Labor is honored. There are no slaves.

00:21:49.439 --> 00:21:52.610
"Pass to the South Bank 
and the scene changes so suddenly

00:21:52.630 --> 00:21:55.268
"that you think yourself 
on the other side of the world.

00:21:55.507 --> 00:21:57.993
"The enterprising spirit is gone."

00:21:58.637 --> 00:22:00.399
— Alexis de Tocqueville.

00:22:02.160 --> 00:22:06.160
"We are separated because 
of incompatibility of temper.

00:22:06.321 --> 00:22:09.432
"We are divorced North from South

00:22:09.432 --> 00:22:12.167
"because we hated each other so."

00:22:12.613 --> 00:22:14.159
— Mary Chesnut.

00:22:17.699 --> 00:22:21.699
On the clear moonlit night 
of November 7th, 1837,

00:22:21.699 --> 00:22:25.100
a mob surrounded a warehouse 
at Alton, Illinois,

00:22:25.100 --> 00:22:28.369
intent on destroying 
an antislavery newspaper,

00:22:28.404 --> 00:22:31.185
run by the Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy.

00:22:31.762 --> 00:22:35.100
When one of the mob moved 
to set the building on fire,

00:22:35.100 --> 00:22:37.924
Lovejoy armed with a pistol 
came out to stop him.

00:22:38.425 --> 00:22:39.612
(Gunfire)

00:22:39.641 --> 00:22:41.947
The slavery men shot him dead

00:22:42.065 --> 00:22:44.711
and dumped his printing press 
into the Mississippi.

00:22:47.929 --> 00:22:49.691
The news stunned the nation.

00:22:49.744 --> 00:22:52.440
A white man had been killed 
over black slavery.

00:22:53.293 --> 00:22:55.919
Protest meetings were held
throughout the North.

00:22:57.272 --> 00:22:59.356
One abolitionist wrote that,

00:22:59.356 --> 00:23:01.651
"Thousands of our citizens
who lately believed

00:23:01.651 --> 00:23:04.370
"that they had nothing to do with slavery,

00:23:04.370 --> 00:23:06.666
"now begin to discover their error".

00:23:08.811 --> 00:23:12.420
In Hudson, Ohio, a clergyman
told a church gathering,

00:23:12.677 --> 00:23:17.239
"The question now before us is no longer 
'can slaves be made free?'

00:23:17.239 --> 00:23:21.535
"but 'are we free 
or are we slaves under mob law?'"

00:23:23.120 --> 00:23:26.399
In the back of the church
a strange gaunt man

00:23:26.399 --> 00:23:29.426
rose to his feet 
and raised his right hand.

00:23:30.581 --> 00:23:34.200
"Here, before God, 
in the presence of these witnesses,

00:23:34.200 --> 00:23:37.905
"I consecrate my life 
to the destruction of slavery".

00:23:39.232 --> 00:23:40.756
— John Brown.

00:23:45.627 --> 00:23:49.180
[A House Divided]

00:23:53.270 --> 00:23:56.546
In 1846 a lawyer 
from Springfield, Illinois,

00:23:56.546 --> 00:23:58.394
was elected to Congress.

00:23:59.272 --> 00:24:02.298
He was born in Kentucky, 
the son of a farmer,

00:24:02.298 --> 00:24:04.403
who could barely sign his name.

00:24:04.546 --> 00:24:08.499
He became a legislator at 24,
a prosperous attorney

00:24:08.569 --> 00:24:12.759
and, after a turbulent courtship, 
the husband of Miss Mary Todd,

00:24:13.171 --> 00:24:16.390
the daughter of a slave-holding 
Kentucky banker.

00:24:17.979 --> 00:24:21.151
For Abraham Lincoln, 
the Declaration of Independence

00:24:21.151 --> 00:24:22.951
was to be taken literally.

00:24:23.263 --> 00:24:27.049
All men had the right to rise 
as far as talent would take them,

00:24:27.049 --> 00:24:28.463
just as he had.

00:24:29.655 --> 00:24:31.885
He detested slavery,

00:24:31.885 --> 00:24:36.114
but he called for its restriction, 
not immediate abolition.

00:24:38.745 --> 00:24:41.488
By mid-century the country 
was deeply divided.

00:24:41.767 --> 00:24:44.853
Southerners feared the North
might forbid slavery.

00:24:45.247 --> 00:24:48.457
Northerners feared 
slavery might move west.

00:24:49.443 --> 00:24:52.559
As each new state was added to the Union,

00:24:52.559 --> 00:24:56.259
it threatened to upset 
the delicate equilibrium of power.

00:25:00.356 --> 00:25:03.747
"There are grave doubts
at the hugeness of the land

00:25:04.499 --> 00:25:08.581
"and whether one government 
can comprehend the whole.

00:25:09.769 --> 00:25:11.249
— Henry Adams.

00:25:15.160 --> 00:25:17.455
Now events accelerated.

00:25:17.960 --> 00:25:22.360
In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe 
published "Uncle Tom's Cabin".

00:25:23.192 --> 00:25:27.583
Its portrayal of slavery's cruelty 
moved readers as nothing else had.

00:25:28.166 --> 00:25:30.214
Queen Victoria wept over.

00:25:30.300 --> 00:25:34.852
Within a year more than 1.5 million copies
were in print worldwide.

00:25:36.686 --> 00:25:41.829
In 1854, Congress allowed settlers
in the Kansas and Nebraska territories

00:25:41.829 --> 00:25:44.962
to decide for themselves 
whether or not to permit slavery.

00:25:45.656 --> 00:25:47.399
Kansas exploded.

00:25:48.779 --> 00:25:52.151
Five thousand pro-slavery men 
invaded the territory.

00:25:52.532 --> 00:25:56.227
In the next three months 
200 men died in bleeding Kansas.

00:25:56.529 --> 00:25:59.520
The killing would not stop for 10 years.

00:26:00.990 --> 00:26:05.809
In 1857, the Supreme Court 
refused to free a slave, Dred Scott,

00:26:05.888 --> 00:26:09.193
even though he had lived 
for many years on free soil.

00:26:10.312 --> 00:26:12.992
Chief justice Roger B. Taney said

00:26:12.992 --> 00:26:17.010
a black man had no rights 
a white man was bound to respect.

00:26:19.238 --> 00:26:23.733
"As a nation we began by declaring
that 'all men are created equal'.

00:26:24.449 --> 00:26:29.372
"We now practically read it 
'all men are created equal, except negroes'.

00:26:30.538 --> 00:26:32.341
"Soon it will read

00:26:32.341 --> 00:26:36.796
" 'all men are created equal, except negroes
and foreigners and Catholics'.

00:26:37.360 --> 00:26:40.681
"When it comes to this, I should prefer
emigrating to some country

00:26:40.681 --> 00:26:43.718
"where they make no pretense
of loving liberty.

00:26:43.809 --> 00:26:45.538
"to Russia, for instance,

00:26:45.615 --> 00:26:48.177
"where despotism can be taken pure

00:26:48.272 --> 00:26:51.301
"and without the base alloy of hypocrisy".

00:26:52.328 --> 00:26:53.930
— Abraham Lincoln.

00:26:57.948 --> 00:27:00.976
Violence reached the floor 
the United States Senate

00:27:00.976 --> 00:27:04.319
where congressman Preston Brooks
of South Carolina

00:27:04.338 --> 00:27:08.338
savagely beat abolitionist 
Senator Charles Sumner with his cane.

00:27:09.448 --> 00:27:12.770
Southern sympathizers 
sent Brooks new canes.

00:27:13.603 --> 00:27:17.120
Members began carrying knives and pistols
into the Chamber.

00:27:18.497 --> 00:27:23.316
Meanwhile, the nation's chief executive, 
James Buchanan, did nothing.

00:27:26.855 --> 00:27:29.703
"A House divided against itself 
cannot stand.

00:27:31.133 --> 00:27:33.828
"I believe this government cannot endure,

00:27:33.835 --> 00:27:36.740
"permanently half slave and half free.

00:27:37.722 --> 00:27:40.303
"I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,

00:27:41.106 --> 00:27:43.687
"I do not expect the House to fall,

00:27:44.441 --> 00:27:46.774
"but I do expect
it will cease to be divided.

00:27:47.763 --> 00:27:49.678
"It will become all one thing

00:27:50.309 --> 00:27:52.166
"or all the other.

00:27:52.450 --> 00:27:53.766
— A. Lincoln.

00:27:55.385 --> 00:27:57.613
[The Meteor]

00:28:01.916 --> 00:28:05.963
On Sunday evening, October 16, 1859,

00:28:05.963 --> 00:28:09.010
the radical abolitionist John Brown

00:28:09.010 --> 00:28:13.156
led 5 blacks and 13 whites 
into Harper's Ferry, Virginia.

00:28:14.120 --> 00:28:16.457
He brought along a wagon loaded of guns

00:28:16.457 --> 00:28:19.329
to arm the slaves 
he was sure would rally to him.

00:28:19.857 --> 00:28:22.909
Once they had, he planned 
to lead them southward

00:28:22.909 --> 00:28:25.100
along the crest of the Appalachians

00:28:25.114 --> 00:28:26.852
and destroy slavery.

00:28:28.271 --> 00:28:32.785
Brown was an inept businessman 
who had failed 20 times in six states

00:28:32.785 --> 00:28:34.421
and defaulted on his debts.

00:28:34.786 --> 00:28:38.430
Yet he believed himself 
God's agent on Earth.

00:28:40.349 --> 00:28:43.921
In 1856, at Pottawatomie Creek, in Kansas,

00:28:44.068 --> 00:28:49.804
he and his sons had hacked five proslavery
men to death with broadswords.

00:28:50.218 --> 00:28:54.294
All in the name of defeating Satan
and his legions.

00:28:56.915 --> 00:29:01.134
Brown and his men quietly seized
the armory, arsenal and engine house

00:29:01.134 --> 00:29:05.439
and took up hostages, including 
George Washington's great-grandnephew.

00:29:06.278 --> 00:29:08.621
After that, nothing went right.

00:29:09.417 --> 00:29:13.360
The first person killed was 
the town baggage master, a free black.

00:29:14.123 --> 00:29:16.180
The slaves did not rise up.

00:29:16.207 --> 00:29:17.960
Angry town's people did.

00:29:19.471 --> 00:29:23.518
The first of Brown's followers to fall 
was Dangerfield Newby,

00:29:23.518 --> 00:29:24.975
a former slave.

00:29:25.430 --> 00:29:28.934
Someone in the crowd 
cut off his ears as souvenirs.

00:29:32.551 --> 00:29:35.277
On Tuesday morning, Federal troops
arrive from Washington

00:29:35.607 --> 00:29:38.740
led by a U.S. army colonel, Robert E. Lee.

00:29:40.219 --> 00:29:42.438
Lee's men stormed the engine house

00:29:42.438 --> 00:29:45.098
and nine more of Brown's men were killed,

00:29:45.098 --> 00:29:46.786
including two of his sons.

00:29:47.214 --> 00:29:50.395
Brown, severely wounded, 
was turned over to Virginia

00:29:50.621 --> 00:29:52.365
to be tried for treason.

00:29:56.222 --> 00:29:58.355
"In firing his gun

00:29:58.409 --> 00:30:01.818
"John Brown has merely told
what time of day it is.

00:30:02.061 --> 00:30:05.280
"It is high noon, thank God!"

00:30:06.189 --> 00:30:07.932
— William Lloyd Garrison.

00:30:09.683 --> 00:30:13.260
"An undivided South says, 
'Let him hang'."

00:30:13.473 --> 00:30:15.578
— Albany Georgia patriot.

00:30:16.633 --> 00:30:19.995
Virginia found Brown guilty 
and sentenced him to death.

00:30:21.965 --> 00:30:24.193
Among the troops 
at the scene of his hanging

00:30:24.193 --> 00:30:27.120
were cadets from 
the Virginia military Institute,

00:30:27.120 --> 00:30:30.872
led by an eccentric professor,
Thomas J. Jackson.

00:30:32.504 --> 00:30:36.340
Also there was a private 
in the Richmond Grays,

00:30:36.340 --> 00:30:38.606
a young actor named John Wilkes Booth.

00:30:41.823 --> 00:30:44.195
December 2nd, 1859.

00:30:45.770 --> 00:30:49.770
"Old John Brown has been executed 
for treason against the state.

00:30:50.731 --> 00:30:55.646
"We cannot object even though he agreed
with us in thinking slavery wrong.

00:30:56.366 --> 00:31:00.128
"That cannot excuse violence, 
bloodshed and treason.

00:31:00.658 --> 00:31:04.218
"It could avail him nothing 
that he might think himself right."

00:31:05.224 --> 00:31:06.786
— Abraham Lincoln.

00:31:08.942 --> 00:31:12.660
Ralph Waldo Emerson 
likened Brown to Christ.

00:31:13.347 --> 00:31:17.795
Nathaniel Hawthorne declared, 
"No man ever more justly hanged".

00:31:18.912 --> 00:31:22.912
And Herman Melville called him 
"the meteor of the war".

00:31:26.525 --> 00:31:29.173
Brown had said nothing from the gallows,

00:31:29.289 --> 00:31:31.925
but he did hand one of his guards a note.

00:31:33.642 --> 00:31:37.422
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain

00:31:37.431 --> 00:31:42.384
"that the crimes of this guilty land 
will never be purged away but with blood".

00:31:47.464 --> 00:31:51.759
"His zeal in the cause of freedom
was infinitely superior to mine.

00:31:52.354 --> 00:31:54.354
"Mine was as the taper light.

00:31:55.107 --> 00:31:57.802
"His was as the burning sun.

00:31:58.486 --> 00:32:00.295
"I could live for the slave.

00:32:01.312 --> 00:32:04.922
John Brown could die for him".

00:32:11.247 --> 00:32:16.871
John Brown... John Brown... 
very important person in History.

00:32:16.871 --> 00:32:19.324
Important, though, for only one episode.

00:32:19.425 --> 00:32:21.514
Failure of everything in life,

00:32:21.514 --> 00:32:25.939
except he becomes
the single most important factor,

00:32:25.988 --> 00:32:28.236
in my opinion, in bringing on the war.

00:32:28.812 --> 00:32:31.124
The militia system in the South

00:32:31.124 --> 00:32:33.234
which had been a joke 
before this, before them,

00:32:33.234 --> 00:32:34.910
becomes a viable instrument

00:32:34.910 --> 00:32:38.815
as the Southern militias 
begin to take a true form

00:32:39.249 --> 00:32:42.602
and the South begins to worry 
about Northerners

00:32:42.602 --> 00:32:46.516
agitating the blacks 
to murder them in their beds.

00:32:48.779 --> 00:32:51.840
It was the beginning 
of the Confederate army.

00:32:55.158 --> 00:32:58.434
[Secessionists]

00:33:06.297 --> 00:33:08.490
"The feeling among the Southern members

00:33:08.490 --> 00:33:11.462
"for dissolution of the Union 
is becoming more general.

00:33:11.790 --> 00:33:14.366
"Men are now beginning 
to talk of it seriously

00:33:14.366 --> 00:33:17.556
"who twelve months ago hardly 
permitted themselves to think of it.

00:33:18.590 --> 00:33:20.704
"The crisis is not far ahead.

00:33:21.113 --> 00:33:22.856
— Alexander Stephens.

00:33:23.800 --> 00:33:26.305
The country was coming apart.

00:33:26.642 --> 00:33:31.392
In the presidential election of 1860, 
Buchanan happily stepped aside

00:33:31.392 --> 00:33:34.365
but not before his ruling Democratic Party

00:33:34.365 --> 00:33:37.510
was fatally split 
over the issue of slavery.

00:33:40.996 --> 00:33:44.129
The Republicans, a new party, 
saw their chance

00:33:44.129 --> 00:33:46.739
and nominated Abraham Lincoln, a moderate.

00:33:47.228 --> 00:33:51.095
His platform pledged only 
to halt slavery's further spread.

00:33:53.433 --> 00:33:57.347
"On that point, hold firm
as with a chain of steel.

00:33:58.923 --> 00:34:02.894
"Those who denied freedom to others 
deserve it not for themselves.

00:34:03.431 --> 00:34:06.859
"and under a just, 
God cannot long retain it".

00:34:11.981 --> 00:34:14.659
Radical abolitionists 
in the North complained

00:34:14.659 --> 00:34:17.978
that Lincoln's opposition to slavery
did not go far enough.

00:34:18.385 --> 00:34:20.365
But to most people in the South

00:34:20.365 --> 00:34:23.556
the prospect of Lincoln's election
posed a lethal threat.

00:34:26.221 --> 00:34:29.402
The 1860 campaign had become a referendum

00:34:29.402 --> 00:34:31.583
on the southern way of life.

00:34:35.419 --> 00:34:38.848
On November 6th, 1860, Abraham Lincoln

00:34:38.848 --> 00:34:41.981
won the presidency 
with only 40% of the votes.

00:34:43.558 --> 00:34:47.367
He did not even appear on the ballot 
in 10 Southern states.

00:34:49.779 --> 00:34:52.833
"The election of Mr. Lincoln 
is undoubtedly the greatest evil

00:34:52.833 --> 00:34:55.452
"that has ever befallen this country

00:34:56.160 --> 00:34:58.262
"but the mischief is done,

00:34:58.262 --> 00:35:00.995
"and the only relief 
for the American people

00:35:00.995 --> 00:35:06.410
"is to shorten sail, send down the top masts,
and prepare for a hurricane".

00:35:07.063 --> 00:35:08.853
— Richmond Whig.

00:35:09.757 --> 00:35:12.519
In the South, Lincoln was burned in effigy.

00:35:12.938 --> 00:35:16.605
Now the South Carolina legislature
called for a convention

00:35:16.605 --> 00:35:19.148
to consider seceding from the Union.

00:35:22.628 --> 00:35:25.666
Southerners would have told you
they were fighting for self-government.

00:35:25.993 --> 00:35:31.347
They believed the gathering of power 
in Washington was against them.

00:35:31.824 --> 00:35:34.903
When they entered into that Federation,

00:35:35.043 --> 00:35:37.388
they certainly would never 
have entered into it,

00:35:37.388 --> 00:35:40.038
if they hadn't believe 
it would be possible to get out.

00:35:40.065 --> 00:35:42.847
And when the time came 
that they wanted to get out,

00:35:42.847 --> 00:35:44.758
they thought they had every right.

00:35:46.815 --> 00:35:51.182
The Southerners saw 
the election of Lincoln as a sign

00:35:51.182 --> 00:35:54.413
that the Union was about to be radicalized

00:35:54.508 --> 00:35:58.508
and that they were about to be taken 
in directions they did not care to go.

00:35:59.715 --> 00:36:06.532
They figured they were about to lose
what they call their property

00:36:06.762 --> 00:36:08.343
and face ruin.

00:36:12.487 --> 00:36:15.820
Yet many Southerners thought 
secession was madness.

00:36:17.229 --> 00:36:20.273
"South Carolina", 
one Southern politician wrote,

00:36:20.273 --> 00:36:22.537
"Is too small for a republic

00:36:22.608 --> 00:36:25.113
"and too large for an insane asylum".

00:36:28.915 --> 00:36:31.324
"November 18th, 1860.

00:36:31.822 --> 00:36:34.299
"A most gloomy day in Wall Street.

00:36:34.299 --> 00:36:35.873
"Everything at a deadlock.

00:36:35.873 --> 00:36:37.920
"First class paper not negotiable.

00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:39.463
"Stocks falling".

00:36:39.909 --> 00:36:42.233
— George Templeton Strong.

00:36:42.612 --> 00:36:45.596
In New York emotions 
were no less explosive.

00:36:45.795 --> 00:36:48.593
And George Templeton Strong, 
a conservative lawyer,

00:36:48.593 --> 00:36:50.165
who distrusted Lincoln,

00:36:50.165 --> 00:36:52.898
began to keep track of events in his diary.

00:36:53.512 --> 00:36:56.693
"The bird of our country 
is a debilitated chicken

00:36:56.693 --> 00:36:58.236
"disguised in eagle feathers.

00:36:58.619 --> 00:37:00.457
"We have never been a nation.

00:37:00.468 --> 00:37:02.621
"We are only an aggregate of communities

00:37:02.621 --> 00:37:05.145
"ready to fall apart 
at the first serious shock".

NOTE Paragraph

00:37:09.118 --> 00:37:11.385
When Abraham Lincoln was elected President,

00:37:11.385 --> 00:37:13.708
there were 33 states in the Union

00:37:13.766 --> 00:37:16.814
and a 34th, free Kansas, 
was about to join.

00:37:17.676 --> 00:37:20.809
By the time of his inauguration, 
five months later,

00:37:20.816 --> 00:37:23.321
just 27 states would remain.

00:37:24.190 --> 00:37:28.104
The suddenness of secession
took everyone by surprise.

00:37:33.759 --> 00:37:37.018
South Carolina led the way 
on December, 20th.

00:37:37.391 --> 00:37:41.228
A bell in Charleston tolled
the succession of departing states.

00:37:42.234 --> 00:37:44.720
Mississippi, on January, 9th.

00:37:47.335 --> 00:37:49.106
Florida, on the 10th.

00:37:50.733 --> 00:37:54.466
Then Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana.

00:37:59.341 --> 00:38:02.274
In Texas, Governor Sam Houston
was deposed,

00:38:02.274 --> 00:38:05.827
when he tried to stop his state 
from joining the Confederacy.

00:38:06.553 --> 00:38:08.420
"Let me tell you what is coming.

00:38:09.170 --> 00:38:11.904
"After the sacrifice 
of countless millions of treasure

00:38:11.904 --> 00:38:14.404
"and hundreds of thousands of lives

00:38:14.404 --> 00:38:16.870
"you may win Southern independence

00:38:17.032 --> 00:38:18.620
"but I doubt it.

00:38:18.945 --> 00:38:21.600
"The North is determined 
to preserve this Union.

00:38:22.143 --> 00:38:24.886
"They are not a fiery, 
impulsive people as you are

00:38:24.886 --> 00:38:26.857
"for they live in colder climates.

00:38:26.969 --> 00:38:29.417
"But when they begin to move 
in a given direction,

00:38:29.417 --> 00:38:33.744
"they move with the steady momentum 
and perseverance of a mighty avalanche".

00:38:35.891 --> 00:38:37.867
Texas left anyway.

00:38:39.192 --> 00:38:41.992
Even Virginia, the most popular
Southern state,

00:38:42.081 --> 00:38:45.301
birthplace of seven Presidents,
seem sure to follow.

00:38:47.179 --> 00:38:50.788
"All the indications are that 
this treasonable inflammation,

00:38:50.931 --> 00:38:55.103
"secessionists, keeps on making
steady progress, week by week.

00:38:56.511 --> 00:38:59.397
"If disunion becomes an established fact,

00:38:59.960 --> 00:39:01.798
"we have one consolation.

00:39:02.628 --> 00:39:07.152
"The self-amputated members were diseased
beyond immediate cure

00:39:07.698 --> 00:39:10.726
"and their virus 
will infect our system no longer.

00:39:11.663 --> 00:39:13.263
— George Templeton Strong.

00:39:15.479 --> 00:39:17.446
The Charleston Mercury:

00:39:17.446 --> 00:39:19.531
"The tea has been thrown overboard.

00:39:19.566 --> 00:39:22.518
"The revolution of 1860 has been initiated".

00:39:27.468 --> 00:39:30.868
After South Carolina seceded, 
the handful of federal troops,

00:39:30.868 --> 00:39:34.192
still stationed in Charleston,
withdrew to Fort Sumter,

00:39:34.192 --> 00:39:35.887
far out in the harbor.

00:39:36.266 --> 00:39:39.171
Their commander, Major Robert Anderson,

00:39:39.171 --> 00:39:43.171
said he has moved his men in order 
to prevent the effusion of blood.

00:39:43.788 --> 00:39:46.940
They were quickly surrounded 
by rebel batteries.

00:39:51.189 --> 00:39:53.933
[Gen. Jefferson Davis,
President of the Southern Republic]

00:39:53.933 --> 00:39:55.550
[On his way to Montgomery]

00:39:55.603 --> 00:39:57.607
"Thank God, we have a country at last

00:39:57.607 --> 00:40:01.736
"to live for, to pray for
and, if need be, to die for".

00:40:01.958 --> 00:40:03.720
— Lucius Quintus Lamar.

00:40:05.498 --> 00:40:08.478
On February, 18th, 
a few minutes after noon,

00:40:08.528 --> 00:40:12.766
Jefferson Davis stood on the steps
of the Alabama Statehouse at Montgomery.

00:40:13.139 --> 00:40:15.479
He took the oath of office as President

00:40:15.479 --> 00:40:18.106
of the provisional 
Confederate States of America.

00:40:20.133 --> 00:40:26.124
The crowds cheered, wept, sang farewell
to the star-spangled banner and Dixie,

00:40:26.345 --> 00:40:29.253
a minstrel tune written by a Northerner.

00:40:31.396 --> 00:40:35.101
He was brittle, nervous, 
often unable to sleep,

00:40:35.101 --> 00:40:36.843
and partly blind in one eye.

00:40:37.449 --> 00:40:40.680
Accustomed to being obeyed,
he scorned the bargaining

00:40:40.680 --> 00:40:43.416
that made Democratic government work.

00:40:43.570 --> 00:40:48.328
Sam Houston said he was cold as a lizard 
and ambitious as Lucifer.

00:40:51.159 --> 00:40:53.521
Like Lincoln he was a Kentuckian,

00:40:53.521 --> 00:40:55.378
the son of an itinerant farmer,

00:40:55.378 --> 00:40:57.883
but he had been educated at West Point,

00:40:57.883 --> 00:41:01.601
fought in Mexico 
and served as Secretary of War.

00:41:02.373 --> 00:41:06.592
As Senator from Mississippi, he resisted
secession as long as he could.

00:41:07.189 --> 00:41:09.155
But when his state 
withdrew from the Union,

00:41:09.155 --> 00:41:13.446
he headed home to his plantation,
Brierfield, South of Vicksburg.

00:41:14.865 --> 00:41:17.255
He and his wife Varina, were there,

00:41:17.255 --> 00:41:19.341
clipping roses in the garden,

00:41:19.341 --> 00:41:22.227
when word came that 
he had been elected President.

00:41:23.936 --> 00:41:27.062
"Reading that telegram
he looked so grieved

00:41:27.062 --> 00:41:31.372
"that I feared some evil 
had fallen in our family.

00:41:31.372 --> 00:41:33.992
"After a few minutes he told me

00:41:34.221 --> 00:41:37.383
"as a man might speak 
of a sentence of death".

00:41:39.328 --> 00:41:43.575
"Upon my head were showered 
smiles, plaudits and flowers

00:41:44.635 --> 00:41:48.384
"but beyond them, 
I saw troubles innumerable".

00:41:48.654 --> 00:41:50.426
— Jefferson Davis.

00:41:51.953 --> 00:41:56.153
The Confederate Constitution was almost
identical to the U.S. Constitution.

00:41:56.744 --> 00:42:01.708
But it gave the President a line-item veto,
a six-year term

00:42:01.829 --> 00:42:04.848
and it outlawed international 
slave trading.

00:42:11.985 --> 00:42:15.462
The Confederate cabinet met 
for the first time in a hotel room.

00:42:15.462 --> 00:42:18.881
A sheet of stationery pinned to the door,
marked the President's office.

00:42:20.134 --> 00:42:22.210
"Where will I find the State Department?"

00:42:22.210 --> 00:42:24.792
a visitor asked Robert Toombs, 
Secretary of State.

00:42:25.516 --> 00:42:29.165
"In my hat, sir, and the archives
in my coat pocket".

00:42:32.699 --> 00:42:35.794
"Our new government is founded
upon the great truth

00:42:36.020 --> 00:42:39.266
"that the negro is not equal 
to the white man".

00:42:39.713 --> 00:42:42.621
— Vice President Alexander Stephens.

00:42:43.979 --> 00:42:48.434
"God forgive us! 
But ours is a monstrous system.

00:42:49.101 --> 00:42:52.727
"Like the patriarchs of old, 
our men live all in one house

00:42:52.727 --> 00:42:55.392
"with their wives and their concubines

00:42:55.392 --> 00:42:58.383
"and the mulattoes one sees in every family

00:42:58.383 --> 00:43:01.152
"exactly resemble the white children.

00:43:01.267 --> 00:43:07.705
"All the time they seem to think themselves 
patterns, models of husbands and fathers".

00:43:08.767 --> 00:43:10.472
— Mary Chestnut.

00:43:12.889 --> 00:43:15.280
Mary Chestnut and her husband James,

00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:18.108
a former United States Senator 
from South Carolina,

00:43:18.409 --> 00:43:21.447
moved among the highest circles 
of the Confederacy

00:43:21.563 --> 00:43:24.382
and were close 
to Jefferson Davis and his wife.

00:43:25.524 --> 00:43:28.457
Mary was subject 
to depressions and nightmares

00:43:28.529 --> 00:43:31.440
for which she sometimes took opium.

00:43:32.693 --> 00:43:35.293
Now she, too, began to keep a diary.

00:43:36.535 --> 00:43:40.306
"This journal is intended 
to be entirely objective.

00:43:40.748 --> 00:43:43.281
"My subjective days are over".

00:43:50.765 --> 00:43:54.003
"The impression produced 
by the size of his extremities

00:43:54.003 --> 00:43:57.006
"and by his flapping 
and wide-projecting ears,

00:43:57.006 --> 00:44:00.988
"may be removed by the appearance
of kindliness, sagacity.

00:44:01.033 --> 00:44:03.775
"The nose itself, a prominent organ,

00:44:03.791 --> 00:44:07.043
"stands out from the face, 
with an inquiring, anxious air,

00:44:07.043 --> 00:44:09.978
"as though it were sniffing
for some good thing in the wind.

00:44:10.087 --> 00:44:13.604
"The eyes dark, full, and deeply set,

00:44:13.627 --> 00:44:16.835
"are penetrating, but full of an expression

00:44:16.835 --> 00:44:20.138
"which almost amounts to tenderness".

00:44:20.740 --> 00:44:23.441
— William Russel, The London Times

00:44:26.567 --> 00:44:29.384
Two days after Jefferson Davis left home,

00:44:29.492 --> 00:44:33.625
Abraham Lincoln set out from Springfield,
Illinois, for his capital.

00:44:36.032 --> 00:44:38.956
"Here I have lived a quarter of a century

00:44:39.094 --> 00:44:41.855
"and passed from a young to an old man.

00:44:42.785 --> 00:44:46.242
"Here my children have been born
and one is buried.

00:44:47.200 --> 00:44:52.601
"I now leave not knowing 
when or whether ever I may return,

00:44:52.950 --> 00:44:57.519
"with the task before me greater 
than that which rested upon Washington.

00:44:58.608 --> 00:45:02.552
"Without the assistance of that divine Being
who ever attended him,

00:45:02.794 --> 00:45:04.508
"I cannot succeed.

00:45:05.155 --> 00:45:08.793
"With that assistance, I cannot fail.

00:45:09.916 --> 00:45:15.430
"To His care commending you, as I hope 
in your prayers you will commend me,

00:45:16.229 --> 00:45:18.720
"I bid you an affectionate farewell".

00:45:22.150 --> 00:45:24.819
En route to Washington, 
the President's train stopped

00:45:24.819 --> 00:45:27.495
at Cleveland, Buffalo, 
Albany and New York.

00:45:28.291 --> 00:45:31.110
In Philadelphia, warned 
of plots to kill him,

00:45:31.110 --> 00:45:33.977
Lincoln declared he would rather 
be assassinated

00:45:33.977 --> 00:45:37.186
than see a single star removed 
from the American flag.

00:45:38.120 --> 00:45:43.043
Two days later he reluctantly canceled plans
for a grand arrival in Washington

00:45:43.043 --> 00:45:46.338
and slipped into the capital 
by train at dawn,

00:45:46.338 --> 00:45:49.586
wrapped in a shawl and protected 
by two armed guards.

00:45:55.480 --> 00:45:58.947
Inauguration day, in Washington, 
was cloudy and cold.

00:45:59.203 --> 00:46:03.203
A large, tense crowd gathered 
beneath the unfinished dome.

00:46:03.318 --> 00:46:05.556
Cannon guarded the Capitol grounds.

00:46:05.649 --> 00:46:07.783
Sharp shooters lined the roof.

00:46:09.660 --> 00:46:12.203
Lincoln promised 
not to interfere with slavery,

00:46:12.203 --> 00:46:15.165
but he denied the right 
of any state to secede,

00:46:15.262 --> 00:46:17.700
vowed to defend Federal installations,

00:46:17.700 --> 00:46:20.430
and spoke directly to the South.

00:46:22.921 --> 00:46:27.683
"In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen,
and not in mine,

00:46:27.683 --> 00:46:31.168
"is the momentous issue of civil war.

00:46:31.988 --> 00:46:34.207
"The government will not assail you.

00:46:34.706 --> 00:46:38.678
"You can have no conflict without being 
yourselves the aggressors.

00:46:39.909 --> 00:46:42.566
"We are not enemies but friends.

00:46:43.155 --> 00:46:45.260
"We must not be enemies".

00:46:46.259 --> 00:46:50.583
"Though passion may have strained, 
it must not break our bounds of affection.

00:46:52.138 --> 00:46:56.566
"The mystic chords of memory 
stretching from every battlefield

00:46:56.566 --> 00:47:02.604
"and patriotic grave to every living heart
and hearthstone all over this broad land,

00:47:02.620 --> 00:47:05.611
"will yet swell the chorus of the Union,

00:47:06.073 --> 00:47:08.909
"when again touched,
as surely they will be,

00:47:09.791 --> 00:47:12.429
"by the better angels of our nature".

00:47:14.947 --> 00:47:16.681
[Revival of rumors of war]

00:47:16.684 --> 00:47:18.798
[An attack on Fort Sumter Expected]

00:47:23.200 --> 00:47:26.943
[4:30 a.m. April 12, 1861]

00:47:32.481 --> 00:47:35.890
"I do not pretend to go to sleep, 
how can I?

00:47:36.066 --> 00:47:39.518
"If Anderson does not accept terms, 
at four,

00:47:39.721 --> 00:47:42.140
"the orders are he shall be fired upon.

00:47:42.843 --> 00:47:47.185
"I count... four St. Michael chimes.

00:47:48.722 --> 00:47:50.367
"I begin to hope.

00:47:51.476 --> 00:47:52.976
(Cannon fire)

00:47:53.367 --> 00:47:55.616
"The heavy booming of a cannon.

00:47:55.616 --> 00:47:58.198
"I sprang out of the bed 
and on my knees prostrated,

00:47:58.198 --> 00:48:00.951
"I prayed as I have never prayed before".

00:48:01.649 --> 00:48:02.906
(Cannon fire)

00:48:03.335 --> 00:48:08.811
The Civil War began at 4:38 a.m. 
on the 12th of April, 1861.

00:48:09.538 --> 00:48:14.010
General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
ordered his Confederate gunners

00:48:14.010 --> 00:48:16.213
to open fire on Fort Sumter,

00:48:16.213 --> 00:48:20.151
at that hour, only a dark shape out
in Charleston Harbor.

00:48:21.150 --> 00:48:23.834
Confederate commander
Beauregard was a gunner,

00:48:23.859 --> 00:48:26.916
so skilled as an artillery student 
at West Point

00:48:26.916 --> 00:48:30.517
that his instructor kept him on 
as his assistance for another year.

00:48:31.250 --> 00:48:33.993
That instructor was Major Robert Anderson,

00:48:33.993 --> 00:48:36.736
Union commander inside Fort Sumter.

00:48:46.510 --> 00:48:49.314
All the pent-up hatred
of the past months and years

00:48:49.314 --> 00:48:52.314
is voiced in the thunder of this cannon.

00:48:52.314 --> 00:48:55.095
And the people seem almost
beside themselves

00:48:55.095 --> 00:48:58.404
in the exultation of a freedom 
they deemed already won.

00:49:01.141 --> 00:49:05.141
The signal to fire the first shot 
was given by a civilian, Edmund Ruffin,

00:49:05.241 --> 00:49:09.575
a Virginia farmer, and editor,
who had preached secession for 20 years.

00:49:10.756 --> 00:49:14.756
"Of course", he said, 
"I was delighted to perform the service".

00:49:35.587 --> 00:49:39.825
34 hours later, a white flag over the Fort
ended the bombardment.

00:49:40.923 --> 00:49:43.891
The only casualty had been 
a Confederate horse.

00:49:45.135 --> 00:49:49.516
It was a bloodless opening 
to the bloodiest war in American history.

00:50:17.323 --> 00:50:22.142
"The first gun that was fired in Fort Sumter
sounded the dead knell of slavery.

00:50:23.288 --> 00:50:26.936
"They who fired it were 
the greatest practical abolitionists

00:50:26.936 --> 00:50:28.718
this nation has produced.

00:50:31.159 --> 00:50:35.388
"April 13, so Civil War 
is inaugurated at last.

00:50:35.846 --> 00:50:37.465
"God defend the right".

00:50:39.184 --> 00:50:41.980
[Fort Sumter surrender!]

00:50:41.980 --> 00:50:44.263
[Maj. Anderson, a prisoner of war]

00:50:44.493 --> 00:50:46.578
[The white flag displayed on the walls!]

00:50:46.578 --> 00:50:48.284
["Nobody hurt!"]

00:50:49.396 --> 00:50:51.377
[Major Anderson taken!]

00:50:51.425 --> 00:50:53.511
[Entrance obtained under a flag of truce]

00:50:53.511 --> 00:50:55.250
[New Yorkers implicated!]

00:50:56.638 --> 00:51:00.105
14 April, Montgomery daily advertiser:

00:51:00.791 --> 00:51:03.648
"The intelligence that Fort Sumter 
has surrendered

00:51:03.648 --> 00:51:05.839
"to the Confederate forces yesterday

00:51:05.839 --> 00:51:09.962
"sent a thrill of joy to the heart
of every true friend of the South.

00:51:10.757 --> 00:51:14.530
"The face of every Southern man 
was brighter, his step lighter

00:51:14.530 --> 00:51:17.358
"and his bearing prouder
than had been before".

00:51:19.507 --> 00:51:23.279
In Boston, jubilant volunteers 
marched past Faneuil Hall,

00:51:23.279 --> 00:51:25.260
eager to avenge Fort Sumter.

00:51:26.610 --> 00:51:30.295
In Baltimore, anti-Lincoln men 
rampaged through the streets.

00:51:32.741 --> 00:51:35.331
In Richmond a mob 
marched on the Statehouse,

00:51:35.382 --> 00:51:37.477
tore down the stars and stripes

00:51:37.477 --> 00:51:39.668
and raised the stars and bars.

00:51:39.668 --> 00:51:43.430
There was no longer any doubt
that Virginia would secede.

00:51:46.891 --> 00:51:50.815
In New York a hundred thousand people
crowded Union Square

00:51:50.882 --> 00:51:53.350
where the Sumter flag now flew.

00:51:56.145 --> 00:52:00.230
Walt Whitman, sometime poet 
and journalist for the Brooklyn Standard

00:52:00.230 --> 00:52:02.078
was stunned by the news.

00:52:03.300 --> 00:52:07.230
"All the past we leave behind 
with the Sumter", he said.

NOTE Paragraph

00:52:12.418 --> 00:52:16.495
"Woe to those who began this war 
if they were not in bitter earnest."

00:52:17.797 --> 00:52:19.454
— Mary Chestnut.

00:52:22.887 --> 00:52:26.192
[Traitors and Patriots]

00:52:29.380 --> 00:52:33.513
"Father and I were husking out corn 
when William Corry came across the field.

00:52:33.513 --> 00:52:35.271
"He was excited and said,

00:52:35.271 --> 00:52:38.189
"'Jonathan, the rebels 
have fire upon Fort Sumter'.

00:52:38.926 --> 00:52:41.869
"Father got white and couldn't say a word".

00:52:42.995 --> 00:52:44.867
— Theodore F. Upson.

00:52:45.173 --> 00:52:46.622
[Lincoln declares war]

00:52:46.737 --> 00:52:49.795
April, 15. Events multiply.

00:52:49.988 --> 00:52:54.159
The President is out with a proclamation
calling to 75,000 volunteers.

00:52:55.743 --> 00:52:59.838
It is said 200,000 more 
will be called within a few days.

00:53:02.177 --> 00:53:05.974
On the day Sumter fell, 
the regular army of the United States

00:53:05.974 --> 00:53:08.583
consisted of fewer than 17,000 men,

00:53:08.926 --> 00:53:11.450
most of whom were stationed
in the Far West.

00:53:12.156 --> 00:53:15.737
Only two of his generals had ever 
commanded an army in the field

00:53:15.912 --> 00:53:18.340
and both were long past their prime.

00:53:19.265 --> 00:53:22.151
Winfield Scott, 
the hero of the Mexican war,

00:53:22.151 --> 00:53:23.817
"Old Fuss and Feathers",

00:53:23.817 --> 00:53:26.124
was too fat even to mount a horse.

00:53:26.764 --> 00:53:28.500
[To arms! To arms!]

00:53:28.500 --> 00:53:30.250
[The capital of our country in danger!]

00:53:34.694 --> 00:53:36.294
[A few good men wanted]

00:53:36.394 --> 00:53:38.375
[Young men join this company!]

00:53:42.614 --> 00:53:44.690
[Sharp shooters for the war]

00:53:46.498 --> 00:53:48.410
[The best regiment yet!]

00:53:48.690 --> 00:53:50.590
[Recruits wanted immediately]

00:53:54.257 --> 00:53:55.533
[Ho! For the war!]

00:53:55.533 --> 00:53:57.809
[Soldiers for the U.S. army wanted!]

00:54:00.655 --> 00:54:03.997
"We were treated as good as a company
could be at every station.

00:54:04.410 --> 00:54:07.231
"We got kisses from the girls 
at a good many places

00:54:07.231 --> 00:54:09.171
"and we returned the same to them".

00:54:09.257 --> 00:54:11.380
— Hercules Stanard.

00:54:12.347 --> 00:54:15.653
"I've got the best suit of clothes
I ever had in my life".

00:54:17.450 --> 00:54:20.755
In the North they came 
by hundreds and by thousands,

00:54:21.369 --> 00:54:23.750
from Boston, Massachusetts,

00:54:24.320 --> 00:54:26.423
from Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan,

00:54:27.688 --> 00:54:30.600
and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the rain.

00:54:32.264 --> 00:54:34.207
Whole towns signed up.

00:54:34.360 --> 00:54:38.570
The 10th Michigan Volunteer Infantry
was made up of Flint boys.

00:54:38.846 --> 00:54:40.798
Their commander was the Mayor.


00:54:40.866 --> 00:54:43.917
Their regimental doctor, the man 
who had been taking care of them

00:54:43.917 --> 00:54:45.981
since they were young.

00:54:46.163 --> 00:54:49.821
The 6th New York contained so many boweries

00:54:49.821 --> 00:54:53.821
it was said a man had to have done time
in prison just to get into the regiment.

00:54:54.690 --> 00:54:56.913
The elite 7th, on the other hand,

00:54:56.913 --> 00:55:00.284
set out for Washington 
with sandwiches from Delmonico's,

00:55:00.284 --> 00:55:02.636
and 1,000 velvet covered campstools

00:55:02.636 --> 00:55:04.379
on which to sit and eat them.

00:55:06.102 --> 00:55:10.655
On his way to war, Lieutenant
George Armstrong Custer, just 22,

00:55:10.655 --> 00:55:12.796
and less than a month out of West Point,

00:55:12.796 --> 00:55:15.106
where he graduated
at the bottom of his class,

00:55:15.106 --> 00:55:17.653
stopped in New York 
to have himself fitted out


00:55:17.653 --> 00:55:20.199
with a splendid new uniform,

00:55:20.199 --> 00:55:22.180
then went to a photographer.

00:55:26.881 --> 00:55:31.348
In Pawtuxet, Rhode Island, 19 year old, 
Elisha Hunt Rhodes left his job

00:55:31.348 --> 00:55:33.567
as a harness maker's clerk

00:55:33.567 --> 00:55:37.348
and signed on as a private 
in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers.

00:55:38.761 --> 00:55:42.880
He would have joined earlier but his 
widowed mother begged him to stay home.

00:55:44.881 --> 00:55:47.053
"We drilled all day and night.

00:55:47.053 --> 00:55:49.002
"Standing before a long mirror,

00:55:49.002 --> 00:55:52.954
"I put many hours of weary work 
and soon thought myself quite a soldier.

00:55:53.487 --> 00:55:56.383
"I was elected first Sergeant, 
much to my surprise.

00:55:56.917 --> 00:56:01.470
"Just what a first sergeant's duties 
might be, I had no idea".

00:56:03.512 --> 00:56:07.360
After two weeks of drilling, 
the 2nd Rhode Island moved out.

00:56:08.792 --> 00:56:13.487
"Today, we have orders to pack up 
and be ready to leave for Washington.

NOTE Paragraph

00:56:14.351 --> 00:56:18.351
"My knapsack was so heavy that I could 
scarcely stagger under the load.

00:56:18.572 --> 00:56:23.225
"At the wharf an immense crowd had gathered
and we went on board our steamer

00:56:23.225 --> 00:56:25.714
"with mingled feelings of joy and sorrow.

00:56:28.951 --> 00:56:31.623
"In Baton Rouge William Tecumseh Sherman

00:56:31.623 --> 00:56:34.942
"resigned as superintendent
of the Louisiana Military Academy

00:56:34.942 --> 00:56:36.864
"and headed North".

00:56:37.349 --> 00:56:41.349
"You politicians", he told his brother
Senator John Sherman of Ohio,

00:56:41.522 --> 00:56:43.674
"have got things in a hell of a fix

00:56:43.746 --> 00:56:46.256
"and you may get them out 
as best as you can.

00:56:46.256 --> 00:56:48.349
"I will have no more to do with it".

00:56:49.785 --> 00:56:53.420
But when Sumter fell, 
he put his uniform back on

00:56:53.429 --> 00:56:55.565
and reluctantly he went to war.

00:56:55.773 --> 00:56:58.104
"You might as well attempt 
to put out the flames

00:56:58.104 --> 00:57:00.159
"of a burning house with a squirt gun".

00:57:00.159 --> 00:57:03.559
"I think this is to be 
a long war, very long,

00:57:03.559 --> 00:57:06.572
"much longer than any politician thinks.

00:57:09.306 --> 00:57:11.353
"There were but two parties now,

00:57:11.562 --> 00:57:13.648
"Traitors and Patriots.

00:57:13.857 --> 00:57:16.981
"And I want hereafter
to be ranked with the latter".

00:57:18.037 --> 00:57:19.513
— Ulysses S. Grant.

00:57:21.449 --> 00:57:24.579
In Galena, Illinois,
39 year old, Ulysses S. Grant

00:57:24.579 --> 00:57:27.125
was working
in his father's harness shop.

00:57:27.125 --> 00:57:31.868
Having failed as a peace time soldier 
and considered by some a drunk,

00:57:33.898 --> 00:57:36.408
now he signed on as mustering officer

00:57:36.429 --> 00:57:38.901
handling the flood of volunteers

00:57:39.094 --> 00:57:41.493
at 4.20 dollars a day.

00:57:59.233 --> 00:58:01.125
New Orleans, 1861.

00:58:01.306 --> 00:58:04.010
"I feel if I would like to shoot a Yankee

00:58:04.119 --> 00:58:08.506
"and yet I know that this would not be 
in harmony with the spirit of Christianity".

00:58:08.762 --> 00:58:10.343
— William Nugent.

00:58:12.140 --> 00:58:14.340
"So impatient did I become for starting

00:58:14.340 --> 00:58:18.340
"that I felt like a thousand pins 
were pricking me in every part of my body

00:58:18.340 --> 00:58:21.693
"and I started off 
a week in advance of my brothers."

00:58:24.411 --> 00:58:27.463
"I found Mobile boiling over 
with enthusiasm.

00:58:27.980 --> 00:58:29.999
The young merchants 
had dropped their ledgers

00:58:29.999 --> 00:58:32.999
and were forming and drilling 
companies by night and day.

00:58:34.699 --> 00:58:37.489
"Everyday regiments marched by.

00:58:37.574 --> 00:58:40.242
"Charleston is crowded with soldiers.

00:58:40.242 --> 00:58:42.731
"These new ones are running in fairly.

00:58:42.731 --> 00:58:46.293
"They fear the war will be over 
before they get sight of the fun.

00:58:46.819 --> 00:58:49.595
"Every man from every 
little county precinct

00:58:49.595 --> 00:58:51.886
"wants a place in the picture".

00:58:54.250 --> 00:58:57.644
The Confederate government, 
its capital now in Richmond,

00:58:57.644 --> 00:59:00.407
called for 100,000 volunteers.

00:59:01.444 --> 00:59:05.587
So many Southerners volunteered
that a third of them had to be sent home.

00:59:07.797 --> 00:59:11.397
They came from Catahoula, 
and Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

00:59:12.919 --> 00:59:16.527
Greenville, Mississippi, 
Mooresvile, Alabama,

00:59:16.527 --> 00:59:18.833
and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

00:59:22.456 --> 00:59:24.538
Tennessee joined the Confederacy.

00:59:24.942 --> 00:59:27.699
So did Arkansas and North Carolina.

00:59:29.547 --> 00:59:33.227
In Memphis, Nathan Bedford Forrest,
a blacksmith's son

00:59:33.227 --> 00:59:36.928
who had made himself a millionaire
selling land, cotton and slaves,

00:59:36.928 --> 00:59:41.337
put up posters calling on anyone
who wanted to kill Yankees

00:59:41.337 --> 00:59:43.237
to come and ride with him.

00:59:44.519 --> 00:59:49.548
The Clinch Rifles from Augusta, Georgia 
started out in May, 1861.

00:59:50.689 --> 00:59:53.203
Only the drummer boy would survive.

00:59:56.990 --> 01:00:00.275
The odds against 
a Southern victory were long.

01:00:00.815 --> 01:00:03.787
There were nearly 21 million 
people in the North,

01:00:04.238 --> 01:00:06.715
just 9 million in the Confederacy,

01:00:06.987 --> 01:00:09.257
and 4 million of them were slaves,

01:00:09.374 --> 01:00:11.883
whom their masters did not dare arm.

01:00:15.418 --> 01:00:19.951
The value of all the manufactured goods
produced in all the Confederate states

01:00:20.130 --> 01:00:24.130
added up to less than one fourth 
of those produced in New York state alone.

01:00:26.505 --> 01:00:30.828
But none of this matter to the men 
who joined the Tallapoosa Thrashers

01:00:30.828 --> 01:00:34.822
and Chickasaw Desperados 
and Cherokee Lincoln Killers.

01:00:42.233 --> 01:00:46.233
"The histories of the lost cause 
are all written out by big bugs,

01:00:46.274 --> 01:00:48.960
"generals and renowned historians.

01:00:48.964 --> 01:00:52.307
"Well, I have as much right as any man
to write a history".


01:00:52.841 --> 01:00:54.213
— Sam Watkins.

01:00:55.000 --> 01:00:57.135
One of the first to answer 
the Southern call

01:00:57.135 --> 01:01:01.183
was 21-year-old Sam Watkins
of Columbia, Tennessee.

01:01:01.319 --> 01:01:04.838
He joined Company "H" 
of the 1st Tennessee at Nashville.

01:01:05.409 --> 01:01:08.491
Like most rebel soldiers, 
he owned no slaves,

01:01:09.844 --> 01:01:13.908
The bugle sound...
and place everything aboard the cars.

01:01:14.410 --> 01:01:17.229
"We went bowling along
at 30 miles an hour,

01:01:17.229 --> 01:01:19.447
"as fast as steam can carry us.

01:01:20.696 --> 01:01:22.533
"At every town and station,

01:01:22.533 --> 01:01:24.987
"citizens and ladies
were waving their handkerchiefs

01:01:24.987 --> 01:01:28.251
"and hurrahing for Jeff Davis
and the Southern Confederacy".

01:01:30.514 --> 01:01:33.578
"It's worth soldiering 
to receive such a welcome as this".

01:01:37.953 --> 01:01:41.153
"If the President of the United States 
would tell me

01:01:41.165 --> 01:01:45.260
"that a great battle was to be fought
for the liberty or slavery of the country

01:01:45.260 --> 01:01:48.833
"and asked my judgement 
as to the ability of a commander,

01:01:48.833 --> 01:01:54.724
"I would say with my dying breath, 
let it be Robert E. Lee".

01:01:55.678 --> 01:01:57.551
— General Winfield Scott.

01:02:00.840 --> 01:02:03.913
"I can anticipate no greater calamity 
for the country

01:02:03.921 --> 01:02:06.239
"than a dissolution of the Union.

01:02:07.141 --> 01:02:10.723
"It would be an accumulation 
of all the evils we complain of.

01:02:11.767 --> 01:02:15.822
"And I am willing to sacrifice everything 
but honor for its preservation".

01:02:16.993 --> 01:02:18.866
— Robert E. Lee.

01:02:24.795 --> 01:02:27.604
The most promising officer 
in the regular army

01:02:27.604 --> 01:02:29.859
was Robert E. Lee of Virginia.

01:02:30.566 --> 01:02:33.530
On April 18, four days after Sumter,

01:02:33.530 --> 01:02:36.530
Lee was summoned
to Blair House at Lincoln's behest

01:02:36.530 --> 01:02:40.175
and offered field command
of the entire Union army.

01:02:40.748 --> 01:02:42.903
Lee said he would think about it.

01:02:42.977 --> 01:02:45.969
Virginia had voted to secede
the day before.

01:02:48.343 --> 01:02:51.361
That night, he paced anxiously 
in the gardens,

01:02:51.361 --> 01:02:54.334
around his Arlington mansion,
across the Potomac.

01:02:55.494 --> 01:02:57.912
At midnight, Saturday the 20th,

01:02:57.912 --> 01:03:01.760
Lee wrote his letter of resignation
from the United States army.

01:03:02.843 --> 01:03:05.789
On the 21st, the Governor of Virginia

01:03:05.828 --> 01:03:08.282
asked Lee to take command
of the state militia.

01:03:10.532 --> 01:03:14.321
When Lee had to choose 
between the nation and Virginia,

01:03:14.321 --> 01:03:17.402
there was never any doubt 
about what his choice would be.

01:03:17.402 --> 01:03:19.366
He went with his state, and he said,

01:03:19.373 --> 01:03:21.982
"I can't draw my sword 
against my native state",

01:03:21.982 --> 01:03:24.504
or, as he often said, "my country".

01:03:24.731 --> 01:03:27.310
Lincoln had lost his best soldier.

01:03:30.433 --> 01:03:34.137
"Not by one word or look, 
can we detect any change

01:03:34.137 --> 01:03:36.443
"in the demeanor of the negro servants.

01:03:38.215 --> 01:03:39.906
"They make no sign.

01:03:40.535 --> 01:03:43.707
"Are they stupid or wiser than we are?

01:03:44.117 --> 01:03:46.871
"Silent and strong, biding their time?"

01:03:47.522 --> 01:03:49.104
— Mary Chestnut.

01:03:50.595 --> 01:03:53.550
Both sides thought 
it would be a 90-day war.

01:03:54.350 --> 01:03:57.548
And both sides agreed 
it was to be a white man's fight.

01:03:58.727 --> 01:04:02.026
Blacks who tried to sign up
were turned away.

01:04:04.153 --> 01:04:06.952
[... Regiment attacked in Baltimore!
Two soldiers killed!]

01:04:07.052 --> 01:04:08.507
April, 19.

01:04:08.507 --> 01:04:11.479
"There has been a serious disturbance 
in Baltimore.

01:04:11.703 --> 01:04:14.378
"Regiments from Massachusetts
assailed by a mob

01:04:14.378 --> 01:04:16.787
"that was repulsed by shot and steel.

01:04:18.735 --> 01:04:21.744
"It's a notable coincidence 
that the first blood in this great struggle

01:04:21.744 --> 01:04:25.463
"is drawn by Massachusetts men 
on the anniversary of Lexington."

01:04:28.303 --> 01:04:32.076
[Gun Men]

01:04:36.616 --> 01:04:39.408
"We are in Washington, and what a city!

01:04:39.785 --> 01:04:43.967
"Mud, pigs, negroes, palaces, 
shanties everywhere.

01:04:45.087 --> 01:04:48.512
"As we passed the White House,
I had my first view of Abraham Lincoln.

01:04:49.128 --> 01:04:51.422
"He looks like a good, honest man.

01:04:51.422 --> 01:04:53.395
"And I trust that, with God's help,

01:04:53.395 --> 01:04:55.813
"he can bring our country safely
out of its peril.

NOTE Paragraph

01:04:55.935 --> 01:04:57.998
— Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

01:04:59.401 --> 01:05:02.346
The Rhode islanders set up their bunks
at the patent office.

01:05:02.346 --> 01:05:05.799
New Yorkers slept on the carpeted floor
of the House Chamber.

01:05:06.353 --> 01:05:09.170
Massachusetts men camped in the rotunda

01:05:09.200 --> 01:05:11.802
and cooked their bacon 
on furnaces in the basement.

01:05:12.460 --> 01:05:15.569
Overhead, the Capitol dome 
remained incomplete.

01:05:16.299 --> 01:05:19.597
Despite the war, 
Lincoln insisted that the work go on.

01:05:20.561 --> 01:05:24.561
"I take it as a sign", he said,
"that the Union will continue".

01:05:27.258 --> 01:05:30.145
"The first thing in the morning is drill.

01:05:30.145 --> 01:05:32.749
"Then drill, then drill again.

01:05:33.301 --> 01:05:36.683
"Then drill, drill, 
a little more drill, then drill.

01:05:37.411 --> 01:05:39.384
"Then, lastly, drill.

01:05:39.905 --> 01:05:44.569
"Between drills, we drill and sometimes 
stop to eat a little and have a roll call."

01:05:48.198 --> 01:05:50.005
"Outskirts of Baltimore,

01:05:50.005 --> 01:05:54.397
"My dear William, I can now march
20 and 25 miles a day,

01:05:54.402 --> 01:05:58.402
"live on short rations 
of hardtack, raw, rancid bacon,

01:05:58.402 --> 01:06:00.666
"green roasting and use cold water,

01:06:00.666 --> 01:06:04.257
"sleep out in the rain and heavy dew 
with nothing but an army coat over me

01:06:04.279 --> 01:06:06.724
"and enjoy myself capitally."

01:06:07.290 --> 01:06:09.663
— Edward Hastings Ripley.


01:07:01.383 --> 01:07:05.435
Early in the war, 
there was a Confederate veteran,

01:07:05.435 --> 01:07:08.435
a young country boy, on guard duty.

01:07:08.435 --> 01:07:10.853
He's walking his post in the woods.

01:07:10.853 --> 01:07:15.762
And there was an owl, unknown to him,
in a tree nearby

01:07:16.433 --> 01:07:19.640
and the owl said, "Who-o-o-o!"

01:07:19.956 --> 01:07:23.066
And the boy, trembling with fear, said,

01:07:23.456 --> 01:07:27.101
"It's me, sir, John Albert, 
a friend of yours".

01:07:38.781 --> 01:07:42.126
In May, Union troops crossed 
the Potomac by torchlight

01:07:42.126 --> 01:07:44.417
and took the heights of Arlington.

01:07:46.166 --> 01:07:50.312
Robert E. Lee's house would be occupied
by Union troops for the rest of the war.

01:07:53.569 --> 01:07:57.569
In late June, the new general in charge 
of the Union army, Irvin McDowell,

01:07:57.569 --> 01:08:00.769
outlined plans for attacking 
the Confederates in Virginia,

01:08:01.842 --> 01:08:04.133
but he did not yet want to fight.

01:08:04.718 --> 01:08:07.299
"This is not an army", 
he warned the President.

01:08:08.297 --> 01:08:10.952
"You are green, it is true", 
Lincoln answered,

01:08:10.972 --> 01:08:13.450
"but they are green also.

01:08:13.450 --> 01:08:15.363
"You are all green alike".

01:08:18.021 --> 01:08:19.800
To preserve the Constitution,

01:08:19.800 --> 01:08:22.800
Lincoln had for three months 
gone beyond it,

01:08:22.800 --> 01:08:25.636
waging war without congressional consent,

01:08:25.649 --> 01:08:30.449
seizing northern telegraph offices, 
suspending habeas corpus.

01:08:32.268 --> 01:08:37.231
To keep the border states from seceding, 
Lincoln sent troops to occupy Baltimore

01:08:37.320 --> 01:08:42.538
and clapped the Mayor and 19 secessionist 
legislators in jail without trial.

01:08:43.304 --> 01:08:47.290
Chief Justice Taney ruled that the President
had exceeded his power.

01:08:47.290 --> 01:08:49.418
Lincoln simply ignored him.

01:08:49.529 --> 01:08:54.200
"More rogues than honest men 
find shelter under habeas corpus", he said,

01:08:55.240 --> 01:08:58.880
and even contemplated 
arresting the chief justice.

01:09:00.886 --> 01:09:05.223
A very mysterious man, 
he's got so many sides to him.

01:09:06.485 --> 01:09:09.531
The curious thing about Lincoln to me

01:09:09.531 --> 01:09:12.806
is that he could remove himself 
from himself,

01:09:12.806 --> 01:09:15.206
as if he were looking at himself.

01:09:15.206 --> 01:09:20.670
It's a very strange, very eerie thing 
and highly intelligent,

01:09:20.805 --> 01:09:22.787
it's such a simple thing to say,

01:09:22.787 --> 01:09:27.405
but Lincoln's been so smothered
with stories of his compassion,

01:09:27.405 --> 01:09:30.614
that people forget 
what a highly intelligent man he was.

01:09:30.823 --> 01:09:35.595
And almost everything he did,
was calculated for effect.

01:09:48.251 --> 01:09:52.251
"Teach the rebels and traitors 
that the price they are to pay

01:09:52.251 --> 01:09:55.424
"for the attempt to abolish this government

01:09:55.424 --> 01:09:58.296
"must be the abolition of slavery".

01:10:00.372 --> 01:10:02.200
— Frederick Douglass.

01:10:13.184 --> 01:10:17.184
From the start of the war, slaves fled 
their plantations for the Union lines,

01:10:17.894 --> 01:10:20.303
but Lincoln's policy was clear.

01:10:20.383 --> 01:10:25.837
Despite pressure from the abolitionists,
he insisted he was making war on secession,

01:10:25.837 --> 01:10:27.466
not slavery,

01:10:27.477 --> 01:10:30.868
and ordered the army 
to return fugitives to their owners.

01:10:32.511 --> 01:10:36.511
But now, an unlikely figure 
helped to change men's minds.

01:10:36.734 --> 01:10:40.334
General Benjamin Butler 
was a Massachusetts politician,

01:10:40.334 --> 01:10:42.715
with crossed eyes and mixed motives

01:10:42.715 --> 01:10:46.715
who had once backed Jefferson Davis 
for President of the United States.

01:10:47.838 --> 01:10:51.838
"Returning slaves 
only aided the enemy", Butler argued,

01:10:51.861 --> 01:10:55.861
And he got permission to hold 
fugitive slaves as contraband of war

01:10:56.569 --> 01:10:59.405
and employ them as laborers
in the Union army.

01:11:01.635 --> 01:11:05.509
"Major Cary of Virginia asked
if I did not feel myself

01:11:05.514 --> 01:11:09.105
"bound by my constitutional obligations

01:11:09.105 --> 01:11:13.105
"to deliver up fugitives 
under the Fugitive Slave Act.

01:11:13.802 --> 01:11:17.256
"To this, I replied 
that the Fugitive Slave Act

01:11:17.304 --> 01:11:19.395
"did not affect a foreign country,

01:11:19.395 --> 01:11:21.750
"which Virginia claimed to be.

01:11:21.750 --> 01:11:26.141
"And she must reckon it 
one of the infelicities of her position

01:11:26.189 --> 01:11:30.189
"that insofar, at least, 
she was taken at her word".

01:11:31.321 --> 01:11:33.539
— General Benjamin Butler.

01:11:36.201 --> 01:11:40.783
The trickle of runaways coming 
into Northern lines now swelled to a flood.

01:11:41.956 --> 01:11:46.402
One ex-slave who had recently 
bought his freedom told a Union soldier,

01:11:46.566 --> 01:11:50.857
"If I had known you gun men were coming,
I'd have saved my money".

01:11:54.876 --> 01:11:56.540
[Explosions)

01:11:58.445 --> 01:12:01.554
War was breaking out 
all across the country.

01:12:02.173 --> 01:12:06.173
There were engagements at Big Bethel, 
Virginia and Booneville, Missouri.

01:12:06.843 --> 01:12:10.188
Skirmishes from Maryland
to New Mexico territory.

01:12:13.562 --> 01:12:18.599
At Philippi, in Western Virginia, 
a young Union general, George McClellan

01:12:18.670 --> 01:12:23.452
won a small, highly publicized victory 
over a tiny Confederate force.

01:12:25.140 --> 01:12:28.158
But still, there had been 
no decisive battle.

01:12:38.440 --> 01:12:41.949
"July 9, our battle Summer.

01:12:42.467 --> 01:12:46.467
"May it be our first 
and our last so-called.

01:12:47.701 --> 01:12:50.910
"After all, we've not had 
any of the horrors of war".

01:12:51.944 --> 01:12:53.571
— Mary Chestnut.

01:12:58.196 --> 01:13:01.414
"July 16, it begins to look warlike

01:13:01.414 --> 01:13:03.568
"and we shall probably have a chance

01:13:03.568 --> 01:13:08.104
"to pay our Southern brethren a visit 
upon the sacred soil of Virginia very soon.

01:13:08.542 --> 01:13:12.424
"I hope we shall be successful and give
the rebels a good pounding".

01:13:12.790 --> 01:13:14.554
— Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

01:13:16.222 --> 01:13:21.877
On July 16th, the Volunteer Union Army
of 37,000 men marched into Virginia.

01:13:22.209 --> 01:13:25.300
Their aim, to cut the railroad at Manassas,

01:13:25.300 --> 01:13:27.663
then move on at last to Richmond.

01:13:31.703 --> 01:13:33.348
Washington Star:

01:13:33.348 --> 01:13:36.121
"The scene to the hills was grand.

01:13:36.121 --> 01:13:40.430
"Regiment after regiment was seen coming
along the road and across the long bridge,

01:13:40.430 --> 01:13:42.583
"their arms gleaming in the sun.

01:13:44.773 --> 01:13:47.973
"Cheer after cheer was heard 
as regiment greeted regiment.

01:13:47.973 --> 01:13:51.545
"With the martial music and sharp, 
clear orders of commanding officers,

01:13:51.545 --> 01:13:55.236
"it made a combination of sounds 
very pleasant to the ear of a Union man".

01:14:03.668 --> 01:14:05.931
To stop the Union invasion,

01:14:05.931 --> 01:14:09.486
22,000 Confederate troops 
had moved north from Richmond

01:14:09.486 --> 01:14:11.913
commanded by General Beauregard,

01:14:11.916 --> 01:14:14.216
who knew in advance 
the Federals were coming.

01:14:14.777 --> 01:14:18.295
Rose Greenhow, 
a prominent socialite in Washington,

01:14:18.295 --> 01:14:21.150
and a Confederate spy, had alerted him.

01:14:22.750 --> 01:14:26.932
Now Beauregard made his headquarters
in Wilmer McLean's farm house.

01:14:32.489 --> 01:14:35.898
The Confederates formed 
a meandering 8-mile line

01:14:35.898 --> 01:14:38.289
along one side of Bull Run Creek.

01:14:38.679 --> 01:14:43.661
They were less than 25 miles 
from Washington, and there they waited.

01:14:46.660 --> 01:14:49.460
Hundreds of Washingtonians in holiday mood

01:14:49.460 --> 01:14:52.533
rode out to Manassas 
hoping to see a real battle.

01:14:52.974 --> 01:14:56.901
Some brought field glasses, 
picnic baskets, bottles of champagne.

01:14:58.471 --> 01:15:01.361
"We saw carriages 
which contained civilians,

01:15:01.426 --> 01:15:04.917
"who'd driven out from Washington 
to witness the operations.

01:15:04.917 --> 01:15:07.399
"A Connecticut boy said, 
'There's our Senator!'

01:15:07.399 --> 01:15:10.480
"and some of our men recognized
other members of Congress.

01:15:11.189 --> 01:15:14.835
"We thought it wasn't a bad idea 
to have the great men from Washington

01:15:14.835 --> 01:15:17.580
"come out to see us thrash the rebs".

01:15:18.420 --> 01:15:20.656
— private James Tinkham.

01:15:25.867 --> 01:15:29.867
On the morning of the 21st, 
McDowell sent his men across Bull Run.

01:15:32.213 --> 01:15:34.695
They smashed into the left side
of the Confederate line,

01:15:34.750 --> 01:15:37.586
driving the rebels 
from one position after another.

01:15:38.305 --> 01:15:41.942
The civilian onlookers waved hats 
and fluttered handkerchiefs.

01:15:42.406 --> 01:15:45.760
It was not yet noon, and all was going
just as they wanted.

01:15:47.872 --> 01:15:51.381
"On reaching a clearing separated
from our left flank by a rail fence,

01:15:51.381 --> 01:15:53.735
"we were saluted by a volley of musketry

01:15:53.735 --> 01:15:57.172
"which was fired so high 
that all the bullets went over our heads.

01:15:57.573 --> 01:16:01.445
"My first sensation was astonishment 
at the peculiar whir of the bullets

01:16:01.445 --> 01:16:05.691
"and that the regiment immediately laid down
without waiting for orders".

01:16:10.527 --> 01:16:13.418
"We fired a volley 
and saw the rebels running.

01:16:14.283 --> 01:16:16.956
"The boys were saying constantly
in great glee,

01:16:16.956 --> 01:16:18.492
" 'We've whipped them'.

01:16:18.492 --> 01:16:21.128
" 'We'll hang Jeff Davis 
to a sour apple tree.

01:16:21.128 --> 01:16:23.410
" 'They're running. The war's over'."

01:16:26.618 --> 01:16:31.265
An onlooker remembered that the advancing 
Union army looked like a bristling monster

01:16:31.285 --> 01:16:35.630
lifting himself by a slow, wavy motion 
up the laborious ascent.

01:16:36.701 --> 01:16:40.456
Union victory seemed so sure 
that on one part of the battlefield

01:16:40.456 --> 01:16:43.183
men stopped to gather souvenirs.

01:16:45.224 --> 01:16:48.115
But holding a hill at the center 
of the Southern line,

01:16:48.115 --> 01:16:51.505
was a Virginia brigade 
led by General Thomas Jackson.

01:16:52.263 --> 01:16:56.263
While other Southern commands wavered, 
Jackson's held firm.

01:16:57.250 --> 01:17:01.125
One Confederate officer, trying to rally 
his own frightened men, shouted,

01:17:01.416 --> 01:17:05.789
"Look! There's Jackson with his Virginians,
standing like a stone wall".

01:17:07.012 --> 01:17:08.903
The name stuck.

01:17:09.930 --> 01:17:12.660
He had the strange combination

01:17:12.660 --> 01:17:16.660
of religious fanaticism 
and a glory in battle.

01:17:16.743 --> 01:17:19.801
He loved battle. His eyes would light up.

01:17:19.801 --> 01:17:21.451
They called him "Old Blue Light"

01:17:21.451 --> 01:17:24.133
because of the way his eyes
would light up in battle.

01:17:24.133 --> 01:17:28.133
He was totally fearless, 
had no thought whatsoever of danger

01:17:28.133 --> 01:17:30.315
at any time the battle was on,

01:17:30.361 --> 01:17:32.661
and he could define what he wanted to do.

01:17:32.661 --> 01:17:35.634
He said, "Once you get them running, 
you stay right on top of them.

01:17:35.634 --> 01:17:38.779
"That way a small force 
can defeat a large one every time".

01:17:39.576 --> 01:17:44.995
He knew perfectly well that a reputation
for victory would roll and build.

01:17:47.337 --> 01:17:49.274
It was the turning point.

01:17:49.378 --> 01:17:52.232
At 4:00, Beauregard ordered 
a counterattack.

01:17:54.244 --> 01:17:57.180
Jackson urged his men to yell like furies.

01:17:59.513 --> 01:18:03.895
The rebel yell first heard that day 
would echo from 1,000 battlefields.

01:18:07.743 --> 01:18:10.580
Confederate reinforcements began to arrive.

01:18:10.580 --> 01:18:12.487
The first came on horseback.

01:18:12.487 --> 01:18:15.409
More arrived by train, 
something new in war.

01:18:15.527 --> 01:18:17.682
The Northern army fell apart.

01:18:19.764 --> 01:18:22.100
The retreat soon became a rout,

01:18:22.100 --> 01:18:26.100
as Union guns became entangled 
with the carriages of fleeing spectators.

01:18:28.250 --> 01:18:30.678
"We tried to tell them 
that there was no danger,

01:18:30.678 --> 01:18:33.360
"called on them to stop, 
implored them to stand.

01:18:33.360 --> 01:18:35.369
"We called them cowards.

01:18:35.720 --> 01:18:39.620
"Put out our heavy revolvers 
and threatened to shoot, but all in vain".

01:18:47.564 --> 01:18:50.692
"Along the shady little valley 
through which our road lay

01:18:50.711 --> 01:18:55.101
"the surgeons had been plying their vocation
all the morning upon the wounded.

01:18:55.644 --> 01:18:58.162
"Tables about breast-high had been erected

01:18:58.202 --> 01:19:01.420
"upon which screaming victims 
were having legs and arms cut off.

01:19:02.410 --> 01:19:05.237
"The surgeons and their assistants,
stripped to the waist

01:19:05.237 --> 01:19:08.174
"and all bespattered with blood, 
stood around.

01:19:08.186 --> 01:19:10.041
"Some holding the poor fellas,

01:19:10.068 --> 01:19:12.659
"while others, armed with long, 
bloody knives and saws,

01:19:12.659 --> 01:19:16.659
"cut and saw away with frightful rapidity,
throwing the mangled limbs

01:19:16.694 --> 01:19:19.957
"on a pile nearby, as soon as removed.

01:19:20.663 --> 01:19:24.208
— Lieutenant colonel W.W. Blackford, 
1st Cavalry, Virginia.

01:19:26.630 --> 01:19:28.964
"What a horrible sight it was!

01:19:29.141 --> 01:19:33.833
"Here a man, grasping his gun firmly 
in his hands, stone dead.

01:19:35.722 --> 01:19:39.131
"Several with distorted features, 
all horribly dirty.

01:19:39.935 --> 01:19:43.281
"Many were terribly wounded, 
some with legs shot off,

01:19:43.281 --> 01:19:45.135
"others with arms gone.

NOTE Paragraph

01:19:46.516 --> 01:19:50.152
"Some so badly wounded, 
they could not drag themselves away,

01:19:50.152 --> 01:19:52.507
"slowly bleeding to death.

01:19:53.485 --> 01:19:56.667
"We stopped many times 
to give some a drink

01:19:56.667 --> 01:20:01.220
"and soon saw enough 
to satisfy us with the horrors of war".

01:20:02.348 --> 01:20:04.520
— Lieutenant Josiah Favill.

01:20:10.753 --> 01:20:13.980
"I struggled on, clinging 
to my gun and cartridge box.

01:20:14.136 --> 01:20:17.560
"Many times, I sat down in the mud, 
determined to go no further

01:20:17.560 --> 01:20:19.988
"and willing to die and end my misery.

01:20:21.241 --> 01:20:24.478
"But soon a friend would pass 
and urge me to make another effort,

01:20:24.489 --> 01:20:26.926
"and I would stagger a mile further.

01:20:29.695 --> 01:20:32.204
"At daylight, we could see 
the spires of Washington,

01:20:32.204 --> 01:20:34.212
"and a welcome sight it was.

01:20:34.732 --> 01:20:37.241
"The loss of regiment 
in this disastrous affair

01:20:37.241 --> 01:20:40.795
"was 93 killed, wounded or missing".

01:20:42.770 --> 01:20:48.416
There is a congressman,
I believe from Alabama

01:20:48.416 --> 01:20:50.288
— I've forgotten where from —

01:20:50.288 --> 01:20:52.225
who said there would be no war.

01:20:52.225 --> 01:20:55.170
And he offered to wipe up all blood 
that would be shed

01:20:55.170 --> 01:20:57.234
with a pocket handkerchief.

01:20:57.481 --> 01:20:59.507
That was his prediction.

01:21:00.280 --> 01:21:02.861
I've always said, someone could get a Ph.D.

01:21:02.861 --> 01:21:05.735
by calculating how many 
pocket handkerchiefs it would take

01:21:05.735 --> 01:21:07.880
to wipe up all the blood that was shed.

01:21:07.880 --> 01:21:10.344
It would be a lot of handkerchiefs.

01:21:12.245 --> 01:21:14.545
From the Confederate White House 
in Richmond,

01:21:14.545 --> 01:21:16.627
Jefferson Davis rejoiced.

01:21:17.679 --> 01:21:20.533
"My fellow citizens, your little army,

01:21:20.533 --> 01:21:22.897
"derided for its want of arms,

01:21:22.897 --> 01:21:27.397
"derided for its lack of all 
the essential material of war,

01:21:27.397 --> 01:21:30.115
"has met the grand army of the enemy,

01:21:30.115 --> 01:21:32.697
"routed it at every point,

01:21:32.697 --> 01:21:35.824
"and it now flies inglorious in retreat,

01:21:35.824 --> 01:21:37.897
"before our victorious columns.

01:21:38.883 --> 01:21:40.756
"We have taught them a lesson

01:21:40.756 --> 01:21:43.992
"in their invasion
of the sacred soil of Virginia".

01:21:44.593 --> 01:21:47.593
[Great Southern Victory!]

01:21:48.116 --> 01:21:50.990
"Today will be known as Black Monday.

01:21:51.281 --> 01:21:56.454
"We are utterly and disgracefully routed, 
beaten, whipped by secessionists.

01:21:57.391 --> 01:21:59.572
— George Templeton Strong,

01:22:01.510 --> 01:22:03.255
London Times:

01:22:03.511 --> 01:22:06.793
"The inmates of the White House 
are in a state of utmost trepidation

01:22:06.801 --> 01:22:09.235
"and Mr. Lincoln in despair.

01:22:09.326 --> 01:22:11.518
"Why Beauregard does not attack Washington,

01:22:11.518 --> 01:22:14.122
"I know not, nor can I well guess".

01:22:16.361 --> 01:22:19.430
It was remembered as the "great skedaddle".

01:22:19.572 --> 01:22:23.117
For days, discouraged troops 
straggled back into Washington.

01:22:24.992 --> 01:22:26.992
"I saw a steady stream of men,

01:22:26.992 --> 01:22:29.338
"covered with mud, 
soaked through with rain,

01:22:29.338 --> 01:22:33.338
"who were pouring irregularly
up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol.

01:22:33.989 --> 01:22:36.917
"A dense stream of vapor 
rose from the multitude.

01:22:36.917 --> 01:22:40.226
"I asked a pale young man 
who looked exhausted to death,

01:22:40.226 --> 01:22:42.371
"whether the whole army had been defeated.

01:22:42.652 --> 01:22:44.670
"That's more than I know", he said.

01:22:44.670 --> 01:22:46.561
"I know I'm going home.

01:22:46.561 --> 01:22:49.206
"I've had enough of fighting 
to last my lifetime".

01:22:52.485 --> 01:22:55.594
The North was appalled 
at the 5,000 casualties.

01:22:56.358 --> 01:23:00.210
Both sides now knew 
it would be no 90 days war.

01:23:01.937 --> 01:23:05.110
Two days later, 
Canny real estate speculators

01:23:05.110 --> 01:23:07.901
bought up the battlefield 
to make a second kind of killing.

01:23:07.901 --> 01:23:09.910
— as a tourist attraction.

01:23:14.685 --> 01:23:17.976
"What upon earth is the matter
with the American people?

01:23:18.463 --> 01:23:20.627
"Do they really covet the world's ridicule,

01:23:20.627 --> 01:23:23.300
"as well as their own social 
and political ruin?

01:23:25.440 --> 01:23:27.549
"The national edifice is on fire.

01:23:28.420 --> 01:23:32.420
"Every man who can carry a bucket of water
or remove a brick is wanted.

01:23:33.988 --> 01:23:36.679
"Yet government leaders persistently refuse

01:23:36.679 --> 01:23:39.260
"to receive as soldiers the slaves,

01:23:39.260 --> 01:23:42.150
"the very class of men 
which has a deeper interest

01:23:42.150 --> 01:23:45.460
"in the defeat and humiliation 
of the rebels than all others.

01:23:46.636 --> 01:23:49.880
"Such is the pride, the stupid prejudice

01:23:49.880 --> 01:23:51.917
"and folly that rules the hour".

01:23:52.488 --> 01:23:54.306
— Frederick Douglass.

01:23:59.444 --> 01:24:02.353
"Little did I conceive 
of the greatness of the defeat,

01:24:02.353 --> 01:24:06.244
"the magnitude of the disaster,
which had entailed upon the U.S.

01:24:07.442 --> 01:24:10.160
"So short-lived has been the American Union

01:24:10.160 --> 01:24:14.296
"that men who saw it rise 
may live to see it fall".

01:24:15.381 --> 01:24:17.972
— William Russell, London Times.

01:24:21.676 --> 01:24:25.385
[A Thousand Mile Front]

01:24:28.142 --> 01:24:30.069
[Disaster to the National Army]

01:24:32.530 --> 01:24:34.348
[90,000 rebels in the field]

01:24:34.515 --> 01:24:37.515
[The retreat of our forces 
on the eve of victory]

01:24:37.679 --> 01:24:39.570
[A panic among the Temmsters and civilians]

01:24:39.779 --> 01:24:42.779
[Exaggerated statements of our losses]

01:24:43.166 --> 01:24:46.166
[Measures of the government
to retrieve the disaster]

01:24:48.617 --> 01:24:51.034
"Washington, August.

01:24:51.489 --> 01:24:53.989
"I found no preparations whatever 
for defense.

01:24:54.845 --> 01:24:57.087
"Not a regiment was properly encamped,

01:24:57.087 --> 01:24:59.381
"not a single avenue or approach guarded.

01:24:59.604 --> 01:25:02.977
"All was chaos, and the streets, 
hotels and bar rooms

01:25:02.977 --> 01:25:04.768
"were filled with drunken officers

01:25:04.768 --> 01:25:07.332
"and men absent from their regiments
without leave.

01:25:07.505 --> 01:25:09.169
"Perfect pandemonium!"

01:25:09.693 --> 01:25:11.375
— George McClellan.

01:25:17.184 --> 01:25:19.693
Five days after the disaster at Bull Run,

01:25:19.693 --> 01:25:23.693
a new general took over what is now
called the "army of the Potomac".

01:25:23.693 --> 01:25:28.311
George Brinton McClellan, only 34,
seemed just what the North needed.

01:25:29.028 --> 01:25:31.483
He brought with him 
to the demoralized capital,

01:25:31.483 --> 01:25:35.755
what one aide called 
an indescribable air of success.

01:25:37.496 --> 01:25:40.469
He replaced inept officers with regulars.

01:25:41.493 --> 01:25:46.248
He laid out tidy camps around Washington
to accommodate the 10,000 new volunteers

01:25:46.332 --> 01:25:50.595
arriving each week, 
drilled them 8 hours a day,

01:25:50.723 --> 01:25:53.723
staged grand reviews to boost morale.

01:25:57.920 --> 01:26:00.492
"All the attention 
was upon the young general

01:26:00.492 --> 01:26:02.929
"with the calm eye, with the satisfied air,

01:26:02.929 --> 01:26:05.911
"who moved around 
followed by an immense staff

01:26:05.911 --> 01:26:09.202
"to the clanking of sabers 
and the acclamation of the spectators".

01:26:09.949 --> 01:26:11.752
— Régis de Trobiand.

01:26:13.848 --> 01:26:16.766
"I find myself in a new 
and strange position here

01:26:16.766 --> 01:26:20.766
"— president, cabinet, general Scott —
and all deferring to me.

01:26:20.999 --> 01:26:24.999
"By some strange piece of magic,
I seem to become the power of the land.

01:26:25.424 --> 01:26:28.579
"I almost think that were I to win
some small success now,

NOTE Paragraph

01:26:28.579 --> 01:26:32.424
"I could become dictator 
or anything else that might please me.

01:26:32.592 --> 01:26:34.937
"But nothing of that kind would please me.

01:26:34.982 --> 01:26:37.127
"Therefore, I won't be a dictator".

01:26:37.960 --> 01:26:40.170
Admirable self-denial.

01:26:41.966 --> 01:26:44.657
The newspapers called him "young Napoleon".

01:26:44.857 --> 01:26:47.567
And he could not help
seeing the resemblance himself.

01:26:48.655 --> 01:26:52.101
But 100,000 untrained volunteers
had become an army,

01:26:52.612 --> 01:26:54.604
McClellan's army.

01:26:54.682 --> 01:26:57.836
His men, who loved him 
for having made them proud of themselves,

01:26:57.836 --> 01:26:59.492
called him Little Mac.

01:27:00.471 --> 01:27:04.735
"His specialty is preparing troops to fight

01:27:04.735 --> 01:27:06.772
"and he did that superbly.

01:27:07.853 --> 01:27:09.608
"McClellan trained that army.

01:27:09.608 --> 01:27:13.489
"Whatever the army of the Potomac did 
in the after years

01:27:13.489 --> 01:27:17.262
"is largely due to the training McClellan 
gave them in that first year".

01:27:18.893 --> 01:27:21.394
With Lincoln, McClellan and his staff

01:27:21.394 --> 01:27:23.802
devised a three-pronged attack 
on the Confederacy.

01:27:24.391 --> 01:27:27.455
One army would drive into Virginia
and take Richmond.

01:27:28.917 --> 01:27:31.717
Another would secure 
Kentucky and Tennessee,

01:27:31.720 --> 01:27:34.256
then push into the heartland 
of the Confederacy

01:27:34.264 --> 01:27:37.373
and occupy Mississippi, 
Alabama and Georgia.

01:27:38.226 --> 01:27:40.714
Meanwhile, the navy would 
clear the Mississippi,

01:27:40.714 --> 01:27:44.199
surround the Confederacy by sea, 
and choke off supplies.

01:27:45.647 --> 01:27:49.560
The war would be fought 
along a 1,000-mile front.

01:27:50.924 --> 01:27:54.445
That fall, Lincoln elevated McClellan
to general in chief,

01:27:54.445 --> 01:27:56.991
replacing the aging Winfield Scott.

01:27:57.678 --> 01:27:59.860
"I can do it all", McClellan said,

01:27:59.984 --> 01:28:01.829
but he did nothing.

01:28:03.088 --> 01:28:06.152
As Summer turned to Autumn,
it became increasingly clear

01:28:06.152 --> 01:28:08.534
that having made a magnificent army,

01:28:08.534 --> 01:28:12.861
George McClellan had no immediate plans 
to lead it anywhere.

01:28:18.722 --> 01:28:21.167
"As we approached the brow of the hill,

01:28:21.167 --> 01:28:23.795
"my heart kept getting higher and higher,

01:28:23.795 --> 01:28:26.495
"until it felt to me it was in my throat.

01:28:26.945 --> 01:28:32.832
"I would have given anything then
to be back in Illinois, where I kept ride on.

NOTE Paragraph

01:28:33.505 --> 01:28:36.868
"When the valley below 
was in full view, I halted.

01:28:37.792 --> 01:28:40.100
"The enemy's troops were gone.

01:28:41.726 --> 01:28:47.135
"My heart resumed its place
and it occurred to me at once

01:28:47.135 --> 01:28:51.708
"that he had been 
as much afraid of me as I of him.

01:28:52.985 --> 01:28:55.903
"This was a view of the question 
I had never taken before,

01:28:56.496 --> 01:28:59.278
"but it was one I never forgot afterwards".

01:29:00.493 --> 01:29:02.439
— General Ulysses S. Grant.

01:29:06.188 --> 01:29:08.333
In September, Ulysses S. Grant

01:29:08.333 --> 01:29:12.642
took Paducah, Kentucky, a strategic city
at the mouth of the Tennessee.

01:29:13.315 --> 01:29:17.240
But two months later, his undisciplined 
recruits were almost destroyed,

01:29:17.240 --> 01:29:21.240
looting a captured rebel camp 
instead of preparing for a counterattack.

01:29:22.449 --> 01:29:24.958
Grant was returned to desk duty.

01:29:28.516 --> 01:29:31.771
In November, 
William Tecumseh Sherman was relieved

01:29:31.771 --> 01:29:33.735
as Union commander in Kentucky

01:29:33.735 --> 01:29:36.289
when he insisted that at least 200,000 men

01:29:36.289 --> 01:29:38.871
would be needed to suppress 
the rebellion in the West.

01:29:40.180 --> 01:29:42.170
No one believed him.

01:29:43.078 --> 01:29:47.260
He grew melancholic, 
prone to fits of anxiety and rage.

01:29:48.480 --> 01:29:51.635
"Sherman", McClellan said, 
"is gone in the head".

01:29:52.450 --> 01:29:55.348
December found him at home 
in the care of his wife,

01:29:55.348 --> 01:29:57.383
contemplating suicide.

01:29:58.568 --> 01:30:00.632
No. No one thought it would last long.

01:30:00.632 --> 01:30:02.940
No one on the either side 
thought it would last long.

01:30:02.940 --> 01:30:06.113
Those few individuals
who said that it would,

01:30:06.113 --> 01:30:10.506
— Tecumseh Sherman, for instance —
were actually judged to be insane

01:30:10.610 --> 01:30:13.137
for making predictions about casualties,

01:30:13.137 --> 01:30:14.756
which were actually low.

01:30:15.528 --> 01:30:19.773
In November, a Union warship 
stopped a British steamer at gunpoint

01:30:19.813 --> 01:30:24.813
in international waters and arrested 
two Confederate diplomats found on board.

01:30:25.161 --> 01:30:28.734
Britain's Prime Minister, 
Lord Palmerston, was outraged,

01:30:28.734 --> 01:30:30.770
demanded their immediate release

01:30:30.770 --> 01:30:33.761
and dispatched 11,000 troops to Canada.

01:30:34.867 --> 01:30:36.943
"One war at a time", Lincoln said,

01:30:36.943 --> 01:30:39.479
and quietly let the two Confederates go.

01:30:43.978 --> 01:30:47.796
By December, optimists on both sides
were disappointed.

01:30:48.191 --> 01:30:51.336
The Confederacy showed no signs 
of imminent collapse.

01:30:53.260 --> 01:30:57.460
The North would not abandon its efforts
to reunite the nation by force.

01:30:58.419 --> 01:31:02.219
By the end of the year, there were 
700,000 men in the Union army.

01:31:03.465 --> 01:31:06.656
No one knew how many 
Confederates there were.

01:31:10.957 --> 01:31:12.948
"December 31st.

01:31:12.948 --> 01:31:15.884
"Poor old 1861 just going.

01:31:16.212 --> 01:31:19.393
"It has been a gloomy year 
of trouble and disaster.

01:31:20.260 --> 01:31:22.170
"I should be glad of its departure,

01:31:22.170 --> 01:31:25.871
"were it not that 1862 
is likely to be no better".

01:31:26.586 --> 01:31:28.822
— George Templeton Strong.

01:31:31.645 --> 01:31:35.408
[Honorable Manhood]

01:31:39.295 --> 01:31:41.668
A week before the battle of Bull Run,

01:31:41.668 --> 01:31:45.841
Sullivan Ballou, a major in the
2nd Rhode Island Volunteers,

01:31:46.106 --> 01:31:48.615
wrote home to his wife in Smithfield.

01:31:50.264 --> 01:31:53.919
"July 14, 1861, Washington, D.C.

01:31:55.569 --> 01:31:59.223
"Dear Sarah, 
The indications are very strong

01:31:59.223 --> 01:32:02.441
"that we shall move in a few days,
perhaps tomorrow.

01:32:03.140 --> 01:32:06.214
"And lest I should not be able 
to write you again,

01:32:06.214 --> 01:32:08.441
"I feel impelled to write a few lines

01:32:08.441 --> 01:32:11.230
"that may fall under your eye
when I'm no more.

01:32:13.987 --> 01:32:17.169
"I have no misgivings about 
or lack of confidence

01:32:17.169 --> 01:32:19.614
"in the cause in which I am engaged,

01:32:19.792 --> 01:32:22.374
"and my courage does not halt or falter.

01:32:24.234 --> 01:32:29.038
"I know how American civilization now leans
upon the triumph of the government,

01:32:29.038 --> 01:32:32.430
"and how great a debt we owe
to those who went before us

01:32:32.430 --> 01:32:35.390
"through the blood 
and suffering of the Revolution,

01:32:35.570 --> 01:32:37.721
"and I am willing, perfectly willing,

01:32:37.721 --> 01:32:40.503
"to lay down all my joys in this life

01:32:40.524 --> 01:32:44.333
"to help maintain this government 
and to pay that debt.

01:32:46.721 --> 01:32:50.721
"Sarah, my love for you is deathless.

01:32:51.347 --> 01:32:53.774
"It seems to bind me with mighty cables

01:32:53.801 --> 01:32:56.510
"that nothing but Omnipotence can break

NOTE Paragraph

01:32:56.686 --> 01:33:00.541
"and yet my love of country 
comes over me like a strong wind

01:33:00.541 --> 01:33:04.568
"and bears me irresistibly 
with all those chains to the battlefield.

01:33:06.971 --> 01:33:10.144
"The memory of all the blissful moments
I have enjoyed with you

01:33:10.185 --> 01:33:12.252
"come crowding over me

01:33:12.252 --> 01:33:18.710
"and I feel most deeply grateful to God
and you that I've enjoyed them for so long,

01:33:19.575 --> 01:33:22.311
"and how hard it is for me to give them up

01:33:22.311 --> 01:33:25.993
"and burn to ashes 
the hopes of future years,

01:33:25.993 --> 01:33:29.820
"when, God willing, we might still 
have lived and loved together

01:33:30.227 --> 01:33:34.227
"and see our boys grown up 
to honorable manhood around us.

01:33:35.532 --> 01:33:38.641
"If I do not return, my dear Sarah,

01:33:39.529 --> 01:33:42.338
"never forget how much I loved you,

01:33:43.660 --> 01:33:47.410
"nor that when my last breath 
escapes me on the battlefield

01:33:47.596 --> 01:33:49.732
"it will whisper your name.

01:33:52.415 --> 01:33:57.360
"Forgive my many faults 
and the many pains I have caused you.

01:33:58.472 --> 01:34:01.927
"How thoughtless, how foolish
I have sometimes been.

01:34:03.863 --> 01:34:08.227
"But, oh, Sarah, if the dead 
can come back to this earth,

01:34:08.328 --> 01:34:11.571
"and flit unseen around those they love,

01:34:11.571 --> 01:34:15.435
"I shall always be with you 
in the brightest day and the darkest night,

01:34:16.147 --> 01:34:18.675
"always, always.

01:34:21.142 --> 01:34:24.442
"And when the soft breeze fans your cheek,

01:34:24.442 --> 01:34:26.377
"it shall be my breath.

01:34:26.377 --> 01:34:28.832
"Or the cool air at your throbbing temple,

01:34:28.832 --> 01:34:31.377
"it shall be my spirit passing by.

01:34:35.563 --> 01:34:37.927
"Sarah, do not mourn me dead.

01:34:39.180 --> 01:34:43.180
"Think I am gone and wait for me, 
for we shall meet again".

01:34:44.518 --> 01:34:47.260
Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later

01:34:47.260 --> 01:34:50.540
at the first battle of Bull Run.