Original subtitles

We kept up a continuous artillery fire upon

the enemy around the whole line including that north of the

James River, until it was light enough to move,

which was about a quarter to five in the morning.

At that hour Parke's and Wright's corps moved out as

directed, brushed the abatis from their front as they

advanced under a heavy fire of musketry and artillery,

and went without flinching directly on till they mounted

the parapets and threw themselves inside

of the enemy's line.

Following the Confederate loss at Five

Forks, Grant determined to strike hard at Petersburg.

He ordered continuous artillery fire along the enemy

line, throughout the night of April first.

At four o'clock in the morning on April 2nd,

the Ninth and Sixth Corps would attack

along their respective fronts.

The Sixth Corps assaulted the Confederate trenches along

Boydton Plank Road.

The Ninth Corps was to strike at Confederate-held

Fort Mahone.

Major Oliver Bosbyshell was with the 48th Infantry

Regiment, in the Ninth Corps, and described the assault on

Fort Mahone, or as he named it, Fort Hell.

Four o'clock on the morning of the second

a heavy artillery fire was opened all along

the rebel lines.

The skirmishers were pushed forward,

and at half-past four the troops...

advanced with great alacrity and enthusiasm

upon the rebel fortifications.

Only half rationed, and with scalding coffee hastily

swallowed, the Forty-eighth moved toward the rear

of Fort "Hell,"...

with a savage rush the rebel picket line was reached and

captured without much of a struggle.

...the rebel Fort Mahone's guns belched a very " inferno"

of shot and shell into the ranks.

On, on, pushed the boys determined to capture the dire

old tormentor who had troubled them so the winter long.

The attack was almost impetuous.

The initial attack of the Ninth Corps was

successful, capturing three Confederate batteries.

The southerners were low on manpower,

their line was stretched thin.

But the Confederate trenchworks that had hampered

Union offensive so often, slowed progress to a halt.

Then the Confederates were able to turn their own heavy

guns onto the federals.

But as Bosbyshell of the 48th Regiment describes it,

the Union troops did not stop fighting.

General Curtin, apparently unconcerned under

the tempest of shot and shell poured into the command...

had the regimental colors brought to him...

The men rallied around their standard,

and led by the brave Curtin...

renewed the assault, pushed through the obstructing

abatis, over the moat, scaled the earthwork,

securing a lodgment on the walls.

Along came the Thirty-ninth New Jersey,

the color bearer gallantly springing right into the midst

of the rebels, an act of bravery that excited the

admiration of all who witnessed it.

Captain John L. Williams, of Company F, shouted

"Forward, boys, and save the Jersey colors."

With one bound the men sprang forward,

a hand-to-hand encounter ensued,

which lasted but a moment, the rebels were overpowered,

the fort was captured, and the enemy driven beyond it

for a considerable distance.

The Ninth Corps had overrun the Confederate

trenches, but Southern resistance was fierce.

It was hours before they could overcome Forth Mahone

and hold it, and that was due in large part to the success

of the Sixth Corps.

The Sixth faced Lieutenant General A.P. Hill's

corps of veterans.

But again the Confederate line was thin.

Before dawn, the Sixth had smashed a hole in the

Confederate line at Boydton Plank Road.

Into that hole poured the Twenty-Fourth Corps.

They crossed Boydton Plank Road, headed north.

Before they could reach the city, the Twenty-Fourth had to

overcome Forts Gregg and Whitworth.

They were able to capture both, in hard fighting.

The battle cost the South another of its generals.

A.P. Hill had rushed to the scene upon learning

that the Union forces had broken through his line.

He attempted to rally his men, but instead was shot and killed.

Sergeant Major Osborne of Carolina wrote later:

About 11 a.m. a battery to the right of Fort Mahone

could be spared to run around that rear of the fort.

It was quick work, for less than 30 minutes there was not

one wounded Yankee left.

They retreated down the ravine,

not stopping until they reached their works.

The open space at Fort Mahone was literally covered

with blue-coated corpses.

With that one break through the Confederate lines,

the southern defenses around the city were indeed untenable.

After nine long months of trench warfare that would not

be seen again until World War One,

the siege of Petersburg was over.

The Confederate forces had withdrawn

into the city's inner defenses.

Grant planned another artillery bombardment to begin at

five a.m. on April 3rd, followed by another assault

an hour later.

But General Robert E. Lee evacuated the city in the night.

Lee retreated to the west,

hoping to link up with General Joseph E. Johnston's forces

in North Carolina.

But his own army was disintegrating,

shedding deserters as it marched.

Whatever else it might still have,

the Confederacy did not have enough men to fight the north.

The southern forces were worn out.

But in truth, there was one source of manpower

to which they could still turn to fill their ranks: slaves.

The Union had been recruiting African-American men -

both slaves and free blacks - since the Emancipation

Proclamation on January 1st, 1863.

In fact, some all black fighting units were organized

even before that time.

A large concentration of the United States Colored Troops

were involved in the siege of Petersburg.

Fifteen of these men would earn the Medal of Honor

for their fighting.

So if the North - which certainly had its own racial

prejudices to overcome - recognized the value of

African-Americans as soldiers, why couldn't southerners?

A few southerners did.

In December 1863, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne

prepared a memo to his fellow officers.

Cleburne argued that, given the overwhelming numerical

superiority of the Union forces,

southerners must be willing to give up their slaves,

rather than become slaves themselves.

Some of Cleburne's fellows agreed,

but others were outraged, even calling him a traitor.

Eventually, though, the memo found its way

to President Jefferson Davis.

His cabinet reacted so harshly,

that Davis instructed Joseph Johnston,

commander of the Army of the Tennessee to squash all

discussion of Cleburne's suggestion.

As the war dragged on, however,

more southerners began to consider the possibility

of offering slaves freedom for service

in the Confederate Army.

By late 1864, General Robert E. Lee,

and Secretary of State Judah Benjamin were pushing to

give slaves freedom if they would fight

for the Confederacy.

Although most were still outraged by the idea,

the Confederate Congress finally approved a plan for

enlisting slaves on March 13, 1865.

The Confederacy managed to quickly assemble two companies

of black soldiers, but they never saw combat.

Once Lee was forced to evacuate Petersburg,

it was no longer possible to hold Richmond.

The capital of the Confederacy had to be surrendered.

As President Jefferson Davis sat in church on April 2nd,

he received a dispatch from Lee.

Petersburg would fall. Richmond would follow.

The Confederate government must evacuate immediately.

Davis and his Cabinet fled Richmond on the last

available railroad line.

They brought with them the city's defenders,

the treasury, and whatever records that they could carry.

Everything else that might be of military,

industrial, or intelligence value was burned.

As the soldiers retreated, their orders were to burn the

armory, the bridges, the warehouses,

and any supplies remaining.

The fire spread out of control,

destroying large portions of the city.

As historian James McPherson wrote,

"Southerners burned more of their own capital than the

enemy had burned of Atlanta or Columbia."

Finally, the next day, the Richmond mayor went out to the

Union lines just east of the city,

and officially surrendered the capital.

Union troops then extinguished the fires

set by the Confederates.

General Grant described the situation his army found:

I received a dispatch from General Weitzel

which notified me that he had taken possession of Richmond

at about 8:15 o'clock in the morning of that day,

the 3rd, and that he had found the city on fire in two places.

The city was in the most utter confusion.

The authorities had taken the precaution to empty all the

liquor into the gutter, and to throw out the provisions which

the Confederate government had left,

for the people to gather up.

The city had been deserted by the authorities,

civil and military, without any notice whatever that they

were about to leave.

In fact, up to the very hour of the evacuation the people

had been led to believe that Lee had gained an important

victory somewhere around Petersburg.

President Abraham Lincoln was visiting

General Grant at the time that Petersburg

and then Richmond had fallen.

On April 4, he, and his young son Tad,

toured the fallen capital.

An aide-de-camp of General Weitzel,

named Thomas Graves, assisted with Lincoln's tour.

The President had arrived about 9 o'clock,

at the landing called Rocketts, upon Admiral Porter's flag-ship,

the Malvern, and as soon as the boat was made fast,

without ceremony, he walked on shore, and started uptown.

As soon as Admiral Porter was informed of it he ordered a

guard of marines to follow as escort;

but in he walked of about two miles they never saw him,

and he was directed by negroes.

At the Davis house, he was shown into the reception-room,

with the remark that the housekeeper had said that the

room was President Davis's office.

As he seated himself he remarked,

'This must have been President Davis's chair,

and, crossing his legs, he looked far off with a serious,

dreamy expression.

The war seemed all but over.

But the dying was not yet finished.

General Sheridan's cavalry blocked Lee's flight southwest

to join Johnston, again and again.

Meanwhile the Union army maintained its pursuit.

And on April 3rd, a cavalry division under Brigadier

General George Armstrong Custer struck Lee's rear guard

at Namozine Creek.

Both sides took losses, but Custer's men were able to take

three hundred fifty prisoners, plus one hundred horses

and an artillery piece.

Another Union cavalry brigade burned supply wagons and

skirmished with Confederate forces

at Amelia Springs on April 5th.

The Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia

met for what would be their last significant battle

on April 6th. Grant described the action:

The armies finally met on Sailor's Creek,

when a heavy engagement took place, in which infantry,

artillery and cavalry were all brought into action.

Our men on the right, as they were brought in

against the enemy, came in on higher ground,

and upon his flank, giving us every advantage to be derived

from the lay of the country.

The enemy's loss was very heavy,

as well in killed and wounded as in captures.

Some six general officers fell into our hands in this

engagement, and seven thousand men were made prisoners.

With those losses, Lee had run out of options.

He struggled to reach supply trains at Appomattox Station,

but those had already been captured by Custer's cavalry.

Grant wrote:

The Confederates were surprised

to find our cavalry had possession of the trains.

However, they were desperate and at once assaulted,

hoping to recover them.

In the melee that ensued they succeeded in burning one of

the trains, but not in getting anything from it.

Custer then ordered the other trains run back on the road

towards Farmville, and the fight continued.

A sharp engagement ensued, but Lee quickly set up a white flag.

Grant and Lee had already been exchanging

messages, with Grant hoping to avoid further conflict.

With the supply trains lost, Lee was finally ready

to discuss terms of surrender.

They met in the village of Appomattox Court House,

at the home of Wilmer McLean.

Brevet Brigadier General Horace Porter

described the meeting.

The contrast between the two commanders

was striking... as they sat ten feet apart.

General Grant, then nearly forty-three years of age,

was five feet eight inches in height,

with shoulders slightly stooped...

He had on a single-breasted blouse made of dark blue

flannel, unbuttoned in the front...

He wore an ordinary pair of top boots,

with his trousers inside...

The boots and portions of his clothes

were spattered with mud...

He had no sword, and a pair of shoulder-straps

was all there was... to designate his rank.

In fact, aside from these, his uniform

was that of a private soldier.

Lee, on the other hand, was fully six feet in height,

and quite erect for one of his age...

His hair and full beard were a silver-gray and quite thick...

He wore a new uniform of Confederate gray,

buttoned up to the throat, and at his side he carried a long

sword of exceedingly fine workmanship,

the hilt studded with jewels.

Grant offered lenient terms of surrender.

Lee's men would pledge not to take up arms against the

Government of the United States.

Arms and artillery would be turned over to Grant's army,

but officers would be allowed to keep their side-arms,

private horses, and baggage.

They would then be permitted to return home, undisturbed.

This will have the best possible effect

upon the men.

It will be very gratifying and will do much

toward conciliating our people.

Grant also promised to send Lee's men,

who were desperately undersupplied and hungry,

twenty-five thousand rations.

As Lee left the McLean house, some of Grant's soldiers began

to cheer, and fire celebratory shots into the air.

Grant ordered them to cease.

The war is over,

the rebels are our countrymen again,

and the best sign of rejoicing after the victory will be to

abstain from all demonstrations in the field.

Everyone present at the surrender was aware that

they were present at a momentous point in history.

Grant's policy of reconciliation was in keeping

with his Commander-in-Chief's.

Throughout the war, Lincoln was thinking about how to

bring the rebel states back into the Union

as quickly and smoothly as possible.

The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery,

had been passed by the U.S. Senate on April 8, 1864,

and it passed the House on January 31, 1865.

On December 18 of that year,

it would be adopted into the Constitution.

The Confederate states would be returning to a very

different Union from the one that they had left.

Lincoln wanted to make it relatively easy for states

to return to the fold.

His policy was based on the belief that states could not,

in fact, secede from the Union.

They did not need to be re-admitted,

they merely needed to be restored

to their proper state.

His December 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction,

in addition to pardoning almost all Confederates,

required only that ten percent of a state's voting population

take an oath of loyalty to the United States,

and then vote to re-establish a legitimate

republican government.

New state governments would have to abolish slavery.

The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery

in the United States, had already passed the Senate

and the House.

Three states - Louisiana, Tennessee,

and Arkansas - had already met Lincoln's requirements,

and established Lincoln governments.

Congress resented Lincoln's ten-percent solution.

Most wanted significantly harsher terms imposed

upon the states in rebellion.

They disagreed with Lincoln's belief that these states had

not left the Union, and they believed that re-admittance

should not be easy.

Radical Republicans had passed the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864.

That Bill would require a majority of the state's voters

to take an Ironclad Oath, proclaiming not only their

future loyalty to the Union, but swearing that they had

never personally supported the Confederacy.

Since roughly four out of five white males of military age in

the South had fought for the Confederacy,

this requirement was an impossibility.

He wanted to maintain presidential control over the

restoration of the states, so he tried to accomplish as much

as possible while he could claim the authority given to

the president in times of war.

On April 14, 1865, Lincoln met with his cabinet to discuss

reconstruction, and how to treat confederate leaders

after the war. Lincoln was clear:

I hope there will be no persecution,

no bloody work after the war is over.

No one need expect me to take part in hanging or killing

those men, and even the worst of them.

Frighten them out of the country,

open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off.

Enough lives have been sacrificed;

we must extinguish our resentments if we expect

harmony and union.

There has been too much desire on the part of some of our

friends to be masters, to interfere with and dictate to

those states, to treat the people not as fellow citizens;

and there is too little respect for their rights.

I do not sympathize in these feelings.

Less than twelve hours after making that

statement, President Abraham Lincoln escorted his wife into

Ford's Theatre, to attend a play.

The mood was festive in light of recent events.

The war was not technically over, but the end was near.

Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln had even begun discussing what they

might do now, now that the mountainous burden of civil

war was removed from his shoulders.

Then a little after ten p.m., stage actor John Wilkes Booth

fired a bullet into the President's head.

Booth and a group of co-conspirators planned the

assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson,

Secretary of State William Seward,

General Grant, and others.

They hoped to revive the Confederacy's spirits,

while General Joseph Johnston's army

was still free and fighting.

Booth's co-conspirators failed,

though Seward and his son were wounded.

But President Lincoln died the next day, April 15, 1865.

Andrew Johnson was sworn in as President at eleven a.m.

on the 15th, about four hours after Lincoln breathed his last.

After John Wilkes Booth was killed by his pursuers in late

April, President Johnson established a military

commission to try the surviving conspirators.

They were tried, convicted, and several were executed

before Summer's end.

Not surprisingly, people of the North and South

reacted very differently to the assassination of Lincoln,

as can be seen in diaries from the period.

Caroline Richards of New York wrote, on April 15th:

The news came this morning

that our dear president, Abraham Lincoln,

was assassinated yesterday, on the day appointed

for thanksgiving for Union victories.

I have felt sick over it all day and so has every one

that I have seen.

All seem to feel as though they had lost a personal

friend, and tears flow plenteously.

How soon has sorrow followed upon the heels of joy!

One week ago to-night we were celebrating our victories with

loud acclamations of mirth and good cheer.

Now every one is silent and sad and the earth and heavens

seem clothed in sack-cloth.

The bells have been tolling this afternoon.

The flags are all at half mast,

draped with mourning, and on every store and dwelling-house

some sign of the nation's loss is visible.

Kate Stone of Louisiana,

whose family had fled to Texas during the war,

had a very different response. On April 28, she writes:

We hear that Lincoln is dead...

All honor to J. Wilkes Booth, who has rid the world

of a tyrant and made himself famous for generations...

Then on May 15th she adds:

Poor Booth, to think he fell at last.

Many a true heart at the South weeps for his death...

Lincoln's fate overtook him in the flush of his triumph,

on the pinnacle of his fame, or rather infamy.

We are glad he is not alive to rejoice in our humiliation

and insult us by his jokes...

Certainly not all Southerners

had quite that reaction.

Sarah Morgan of Louisiana wrote:

"Vengeance is mine;

I will repay, saith the Lord." This is murder!

God have mercy on those who did it!...

And because I know that they would have apotheosized any

man who had crucified Jeff Davis,

I abhor this, and call it foul murder,

unworthy of our cause - and God grant it was only the

temporary insanity of a desperate man

that committed this crime!

Let not his blood be visited on our nation, Lord!

Though Southerners such as Kate Stone might

record private celebrations at Lincoln's death,

those living in areas occupied by Union troops decided that

they should at least appear to be in mourning.

Sarah Morgan noted that the more thankful her neighbors

seemed to be about Lincoln's death,

the more ostentatiously they draped their homes in black.

And many Southerners recognized that the

assassination of Lincoln could mean disaster for former

Confederates, now that the Union victory

seemed inevitable.

One such Southerner was the President of the Confederacy.

Jefferson Davis had fled to Charlotte,

North Carolina, which would for a short time be the final

capital of the Confederacy.

When told of Lincoln's assassination, Davis said:

I certainly had no special regard

for Mr. Lincoln; but there are a great many men

of whose end I would much rather have heard than his.

I fear it will be disastrous for our people

and I regret it deeply.

Davis was right to be concerned,

for the people of the North felt as much rage

as they did sorrow at Lincoln's murder.

The desire for retribution, to punish the South, was strong.

After Lincoln's death, Writer Herman Melville captured the

anger and sorrow of the North and the trepidations of the

South in his poem, The Martyr.

GOOD Friday was the day of the

prodigy and crime, When they killed him in his pity,

When they killed him in his prime Of clemency and calm -

When with yearning he was filled To redeem

the evil-willed, And, though conqueror, be kind;

But they killed him in his kindness,

In their madness and their blindness,

And they killed him from behind.

There is sobbing of the strong,

And a pall upon the land; But the People in their weeping

Bare the iron hand: Beware the People weeping When they bare

the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood - The father in his face;

They have killed him, the Forgiver -

The Avenger takes his place, The Avenger wisely stern,

Who in righteousness shall do What the heavens call him to,

And the parricides remand; For they killed him in his

kindness, In their madness and their blindness,

And his blood is on their hand.

There is sobbing of the strong,

And a pall upon the land; But the People in their weeping

Bare the iron hand:

Jefferson Davis would soon get

a sense of the people's anger, as the war came to its end.

Though it is common to think of Lee's surrender

at Appomattox as the end of the Civil War,

in truth the largest Confederate army,

with almost ninety thousand men,

was still in the field, under Joseph E. Johnston.

On April 17, two days after Lincoln's death,

Union General William Tecumseh Sherman met with General

Johnston to discuss Johnston's surrender.

Sherman received word of Lincoln's death only moments

before meeting with Johnston. He later wrote:

As soon as we were alone together

I showed him the dispatch announcing Mr. Lincoln's

assassination, and watched him closely.

The perspiration came out in large drops on his forehead,

and he did not attempt to conceal his distress.

He denounced the act as a disgrace to the age,

and hoped I did not charge it to the Confederate Government.

I told him I could not believe that he or General Lee,

or the officers of the Confederate army,

could possibly be privy to acts of assassination;

but I would not say as much for Jeff Davis...

I then told him that I had recently had an interview with

General Grant and President Lincoln,

and that I was possessed of their views;

that with them and the people North there seemed to be no

vindictive feeling against the Confederate armies,

but there was against Davis and his political adherents...

Sherman sought an agreement similar to Grant's

and Lee's, pertaining strictly to the military.

But President Davis pushed for Johnston to get more of a

treaty than simply terms of military surrender.

He wanted political promises, such as agreements to

recognize existing state governments,

and guarantees of property, while making no mention of

accepting the end of slavery.

Sherman, in keeping with what he believed Lincoln would have

wanted, agreed to the terms, though he acknowledged that he

did not have final authority.

When the terms were sent to Washington,

he discovered that the mood at the White House was now very

different than a week earlier, before a man calling himself a

southern patriot murdered the President.

The new President, formerly Vice President Andrew Johnson,

ordered Sherman to agree only to purely military terms of

surrender, which Johnston accepted.

Jefferson Davis did not want to give up the fight.

Brigadier General Basil Duke wrote about a meeting between

Davis and a handful of brigadier generals,

days after Johnston's surrender.

After some conversation of a general

nature, he said: "It is time that we adopt some definite

plan upon which the further prosecution of our struggle

shall be conducted.

I have summoned you for consultation..."

After we had each given, at his request,

a statement of the equipment and condition of our

respective commands, Mr. Davis proceeded to declare his

conviction that the cause was not lost any more than Hope of

American liberty was gone amid the sorest trials and most

disheartening reverses of the Revolutionary struggle;

but that energy, courage, and consistency

might yet save all.

"Even," he said, "if the troops now with me be all that

I can for the present rely on, three thousand brave men are

enough for a nucleus around which the whole people will

rally when the panic which now afflicts them

has passed away."

He then asked that I should make suggestions in regard

to the future conduct of the war.

We looked at each other in amazement and with a feeling a

little akin to trepidation, for we hardly knew how we

should give expression to views diametrically opposed

to those he had uttered.

Davis' generals knew that the war was over.

Soon Davis would realize it as well.

On May 10, 1865, Jefferson Davis was captured in

Irwin County, Georgia.

He would remain in prison for two years.

He was released on bail, and the federal government

eventually dropped its case.

With the war over, and Lincoln dead,

what was to happen with reconstruction?

Lincoln and the Radical Republicans in Congress had

struggled with each other over Reconstruction.

Lincoln wanted it done quickly.

He was adamant that states must accept the effects of the

Emancipation Proclamation, and outlaw slavery

in their constitutions.

But he wanted their return into the federal fold to be

otherwise as smooth as possible.

The Radical Republicans had a much harsher view of how the

rebellious states might be reconstructed.

Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts,

who before the war had been brutally beaten on the senate

floor by a southern congressman,

believed that they had committed "state suicide",

and should be treated as conquered land.

He strongly objected to Lincoln's lenient policy.

But if he found Lincoln's plan too lenient,

Johnson's policies completely outraged him.

Under Johnson, the Southern states quickly set up new

"Johnson" governments, recognized by

the federal government.

The states quickly passed Black Codes,

which denied freedmen the right to vote,

serve on juries, or testify against whites in court.

They could not overturn the Thirteenth Amendment,

but they could resist it in spirit.

Major General William Tecumseh Sherman,

in January 1865, had issued Special Field Order Number 15,

which provided land to former slaves.

Heads of households would get forty acres of land which had

once been part of a plantation.

Some would also get the use of a Union Army mule, for plowing.

About 40,000 slaves were settled on land under this

order, but it did not last.

Sherman's order had been made as a wartime measure,

and for the policy to continue,

the civil government would need to take similar action.

Instead, in the fall of 1865, President Johnson

rescinded Sherman's order.

We can never know how Lincoln might have handled

Reconstruction after the war, or how he would have managed

the relationship with Congress.

But we do know that Andrew Johnson's inability to work

with Congress, his patent racism,

and his clear unwillingness to support the rights of four

million freed slaves, meant that the Executive Branch lost

all control over Reconstruction.

Throughout Johnson's presidency,

Congress would take action - such as creating the

Freedmen's Bureau - Johnson would veto the Act,

and then Congress would override his veto.

So how did these former slaves survive in the

early years after the war?

Their individual stories can help bring to light some of

the issues they - and the nation - faced.

In the 1930s, as part of the Works Progress Administration,

twenty-three hundred former slaves were interviewed about

their lives before and after slavery.

Here, Fannie Berry and Dora Roberts

share their personal stories.

I was free a long time 'fore I knew it.

My Mistess still hired me out, 'til one day in talkin' to the

woman she hired me to...

"God bless her soul", she told me,

"Fannie you are free, and I don't have to pay

your Master for you now. You stay with me."

She didn't give me no money, but let me stay there an' work

for vitals an' clothes 'cause I ain't got nowhere to go.

After the war broke out we was all carried

up to the plantation in Early County to stay

'til after the war.

The day the 'mancipation was read

there was sadness an' gladness.

The ole Massa he call us all together an' with tears in his

eyes he say, 'You is all free an' now you can go

just where you please.

I have no more jurisdiction over you.

All who stay will be well cared for.

But the most of us, we wanted to come back to be the place

where we lived before, Liberty County.

So he outfitted the wagons with horses an' mules an' give

us what there was of provisions on the plantation

an' sent us on our way to the ole plantation

in Liberty County.

We get in such a bad fix some of the people died.

It seem like the ole Lord musta heard the prayers of his

chillun for 'long way down the road we seed our ole Massa

comin' an' he brung men an' horses to get us safely

to the ole home.

An' when we got up there, I never see him no more 'cause

he went back up in Early County...

Every freedmen's story is unique,

but they all tell of the hardships faced by a people

moving from slavery to freedom.

Some slaves fared better than others,

due to their own skills or luck, or due to a sense

of responsibility to their own former masters.

But it was clear that the nation could not rely on all

former masters to demonstrate such compassion.

During the Reconstruction Era,

the federal government dissolved the governments of

most of the former Confederate states,

and managed the states through the Freedmen's Bureau,

which was a branch of the military.

The Freedmen's Bureau was established to help former

slaves obtain food, medicine, housing, education, and land,

to aid in the difficult transition

from slavery to freedom.

Initially, the Bureau's focus was on providing the basic

necessities for survival.

Emergency food, housing, and medical aid.

But its larger role was to help freed slaves get an

education and find work, and to try to ensure

fairness in labor contracts.

Prior to the Civil War, none of the southern states had any

kind of universal public school system.

The Freedmen's Bureau took on the task of establishing

southern schools for former slaves,

to teach basic literacy.

By 1870, over a thousand of these schools were operating

across the south.

They also established two dozen colleges and institutes

of higher learning for African-American youth.

Many of these historically black colleges and

universities are still operating today.

Another issue was that since these freedmen were no longer

slaves, they would count as full citizens in the

determination of representation in Congress,

rather than the three-fifths of a person.

But would they be allowed to vote?

If they were not, then the voting power and

representation of white southerners would be even more

disproportionate to northern voters than it was

before the war.

Yet few in the south were willing to give

African-Americans the right to vote.

Southern Democrats were angered by the federal

control of their states.

Many took their anger out on the freedmen.

Some whites formed secret societies to resist

and disrupt the new order.

These vigilante groups - the most infamous being the

Ku Klux Klan - included former Confederate soldiers,

and were essentially insurgent forces in opposition

to the federal government.

They used terrorist tactics of violence and intimidation to

keep blacks - and white Republicans - from voting.

The Ku Klux Klan would attack at night,

wearing masks and robes to hide their identities.

They intimidated workers for the Freedmen's Bureau.

Across the south, thousands of African Americans and white

Republicans were killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan

and similar organizations.

Former general, now Senator, Benjamin Butler drafted

legislation referred to as the Ku Klux Klan Act.

Another former general, President Ulysses S. Grant,

signed it into law.

The act authorized the use of federal troops rather than

state militias to enforce the law in the south.

It also empowered the federal courts to try Klan cases,

and authorized the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.

Grant took full advantage of these powers,

and dismantled the Klan.

It would be several decades before the organization

would rise again.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted citizenship

to all persons born in the United States,

with equal rights regardless of color.

This act was passed over the veto of President Johnson,

and the policy was further cemented into law by

constitutional amendments.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments clarified that the

blacks were expected to have the same rights

as white citizens.

The Fourteenth amendment, ratified in 1868,

stated that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens

of the country and of the state in which they live.

It further required states to provide equal protection under

the law to all their citizens, and prohibited states from

depriving any person of life, liberty,

or property without due process.

The Fifteenth amendment, ratified in 1870,

prohibited any state or local government from denying

citizens the right to vote based on race,

color, or having been a slave.

It is certainly true that governments stretched and

broke these restrictions over the following decades.

But the amendments gave African-Americans - and others -

the tools needed to eventually force state and

local governments into compliance.

Therefore, blacks gained the vote across the southern

states, and began putting African-Americans

into elected office.

During this period, hundreds of African-Americans

were elected to state legislatures.

Twenty-one were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives -

including ten former slaves - and two were sent to the

U.S. Senate, one of them a former slave.

But these gains did not last.

Once southern states were "redeemed,

and freed from federal oversight,

they began finding ways to restrict the new rights

of black citizens.

The KKK and similar organizations had suppressed

the black vote in the late 1860s and 1870s.

In the 1890s, states created new constitutions that changed

voter registration in ways that effectively stripped the

right to vote from most blacks and many poor whites.

Most prominent were literacy tests and poll taxes.

Literacy tests should not have kept most blacks from voting,

since the schools created by the Freedmen's Bureau had

succeeded in driving down the illiteracy rate

amongst the blacks.

But somehow literate blacks were often unable to pass

literacy tests administered by white voter registrars.

In some cases, grandfather clauses were added to the

voting requirements, allowing a man to register to vote if

his grandfather had possessed the right to vote.

This allowed illiterate whites to skip the tests,

but could not help black citizens whose grandfathers

had been slaves.

African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington

worked to have such practices challenged in court.

But in the first years of the twentieth century,

the courts - as well as Congress - were not willing to

fight southern power on this issue.

Successful challenges occurred in 1915,

1939, and 1944, throwing out pieces of the voting barriers

that states had erected.

But these states would then find new ways

to reach the same goals.

It would not be until the Civil Rights movement,

culminating in the Voting Rights Act of 1965,

that these barriers would be swept aside,

and the intended goal of the Fifteenth Amendment

would be realized.

Though the Civil War ended in 1865,

it has never been far from our memory.

And that memory itself quickly became a new kind of

battleground, as interested parties sought to control the

memories of what happened and why.

Proponents of the Lost Cause movement - including Jefferson

Davis himself - emphasized the noble character of southern

resistance to federal oppression.

They minimized the importance of slavery,

insisting that the war was only ever really

about state's rights.

Others focused on the emancipation of four million

slaves, and remember the war as being the only way -

in hindsight - to free the slaves from their bondage,

and free the nation from its dependence on slavery.

And still others looked past the arguments of who was

right, and sought to bind up the nations wounds through a

shared mourning for the over six hundred thousand

killed in the war.

Many Americans love and respect Abraham Lincoln

as they do no other president.

And many others feel that same love and pride when they look

on an image of General Robert E. Lee.

And odd as it may seem, many Americans

love and honor both men.

Thousands of Civil War landmarks and memorials,

large and small, dot the country roads,

and rivers, and bridges, and towns of modern America.

Every year, thousands of reenactors don Union and

Confederate uniforms, and replay the great and terrible

battles of that war.

Americans may never completely reconcile their feelings

toward the Civil War and its participants.

But they will never forget.