1
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At the Willard Hotel
in Washington, D.C.,

2
00:00:14,990 --> 00:00:16,990
the poet Julia
Ward Howe

3
00:00:17,100 --> 00:00:19,650
awoke from a
spectacular dream.

4
00:00:20,130 --> 00:00:24,080
That day, she had heard a New
England regiment singing on parade

5
00:00:24,280 --> 00:00:27,690
and had fallen asleep with
the song "John Brown's Body"

6
00:00:27,740 --> 00:00:29,610
ringing in her head.

7
00:00:31,380 --> 00:00:33,080
Now, in the dark,
she got up

8
00:00:33,130 --> 00:00:35,830
and scribbled out the
words with a pencil stub.

9
00:00:36,500 --> 00:00:40,530
She sold her poem to the
Atlantic Monthly for $4.00.

10
00:00:41,150 --> 00:00:43,800
It became the
anthem of the Union.

11
00:00:46,290 --> 00:00:49,090
<i>Mine eyes have
seen the glory</i>

12
00:00:49,590 --> 00:00:52,190
<i>Of the coming
of The Lord</i>

13
00:00:52,900 --> 00:00:55,830
<i>He is trampling
out the vintage</i>

14
00:00:56,740 --> 00:01:00,140
<i>Where the grapes of
wrath are stored</i>

15
00:01:01,110 --> 00:01:04,310
<i>He hath loosed the
fateful lightning</i>

16
00:01:04,840 --> 00:01:07,840
<i>Of His terrible,
swift sword</i>

17
00:01:08,680 --> 00:01:10,880
<i>His truth is</i>

18
00:01:10,930 --> 00:01:14,430
<i>Marching on</i>

19
00:01:32,640 --> 00:01:36,940
By 1862, Russia had
emancipated the serfs.

20
00:01:37,310 --> 00:01:41,130
In France, Victor Hugo
published Les Miserables,

21
00:01:41,300 --> 00:01:45,190
and Jean Bernard Foucault
measured the speed of light.

22
00:01:46,700 --> 00:01:50,990
In America, the United States
passed the first national income tax

23
00:01:51,040 --> 00:01:52,800
to pay for war.

24
00:01:53,200 --> 00:01:57,500
The Gatling gun was invented,
and war itself was changing.

25
00:01:57,850 --> 00:02:01,080
The shocking casualties of
Bull Run and Wilson's Creek

26
00:02:01,140 --> 00:02:04,090
were dwarfed by
battle after battle.

27
00:02:05,020 --> 00:02:07,360
And now there were
new questions--

28
00:02:07,720 --> 00:02:10,020
would the North's
strength be offset

29
00:02:10,020 --> 00:02:12,440
by incompetence
and low morale?

30
00:02:12,490 --> 00:02:15,710
Would England side with
cotton and the South?

31
00:02:15,860 --> 00:02:18,280
Who would control
the Mississippi?

32
00:02:21,570 --> 00:02:25,960
For a year, the nation, now two
nations, had torn itself apart.

33
00:02:26,830 --> 00:02:30,690
From a bloodless duel over a man-
made island in Charleston Harbor,

34
00:02:30,740 --> 00:02:35,060
the war had spread along a 1,000-
mile line from Manassas, Virginia,

35
00:02:35,110 --> 00:02:37,730
to Shanghai, Missouri,
and beyond.

36
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As 1862 began,
over a million men

37
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were massing for war.

38
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In a fierce struggle
for Tennessee,

39
00:02:50,380 --> 00:02:52,530
the people of Clarksville
on the Cumberland

40
00:02:52,580 --> 00:02:55,460
found themselves prisoners
in their own homes.

41
00:02:58,420 --> 00:03:02,640
Far north of any fighting, the people
of Deer Isle, Maine, suffered, too--

42
00:03:02,700 --> 00:03:05,100
with sad news from
places most of them

43
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had never heard of.

44
00:03:09,640 --> 00:03:12,890
By the end of the war, the little
town of Winchester, Virginia,

45
00:03:12,940 --> 00:03:15,940
had changed hands
seventy-two times.

46
00:03:18,530 --> 00:03:22,240
Sam Watkins, a Confederate private,
would see his first big battle

47
00:03:22,290 --> 00:03:24,800
in April on the banks
of the Tennessee.

48
00:03:25,670 --> 00:03:29,100
Elisha Hunt Rhodes, a clerk
from Providence, Rhode Island,

49
00:03:29,150 --> 00:03:33,020
would celebrate his 20th
birthday in a Union camp.

50
00:03:34,780 --> 00:03:37,930
Union General George
McClellan, the idol of his troops,

51
00:03:37,980 --> 00:03:41,740
would fashion a mighty army and
lead it south towards Richmond,

52
00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:44,710
where Robert E.
Lee was waiting.

53
00:03:47,660 --> 00:03:50,490
"The struggle of today,"
Lincoln told Congress,

54
00:03:50,540 --> 00:03:52,950
"is not altogether
for today.

55
00:03:53,100 --> 00:03:55,820
"It is for a vast
future, also."

56
00:03:56,980 --> 00:03:59,190
Now, in this,
its second year,

57
00:03:59,360 --> 00:04:03,080
the war was becoming a struggle
over the future of freedom.

58
00:04:05,100 --> 00:04:07,580
It really is one
of those, um...

59
00:04:08,200 --> 00:04:11,580
one of those watershed things.
It was a huge chasm

60
00:04:11,630 --> 00:04:13,780
between the beginning
and the end of the war.

61
00:04:14,350 --> 00:04:17,450
The nation had come
face to face with a...

62
00:04:17,550 --> 00:04:21,220
a dreadful tragedy, and we
reacted the way a family would do

63
00:04:21,270 --> 00:04:22,970
with a dreadful tragedy.

64
00:04:23,380 --> 00:04:27,430
It was almost inconceivable that
anything that horrendous could happen.

65
00:04:27,650 --> 00:04:30,750
You must remember that
casualties in Civil War battles

66
00:04:30,800 --> 00:04:33,620
were so far beyond anything
we can imagine now.

67
00:04:33,690 --> 00:04:36,790
If we had 10% casualties
in a battle today,

68
00:04:36,840 --> 00:04:38,840
it would be looked on
as a bloodbath.

69
00:04:38,890 --> 00:04:41,490
They had 30% in
several battles,

70
00:04:41,760 --> 00:04:44,120
and one after
another, you see.

71
00:05:32,410 --> 00:05:35,510
"This afternoon, seeing the
General alone in the office,

72
00:05:35,560 --> 00:05:37,380
"I stepped up to
him and said,

73
00:05:37,700 --> 00:05:39,650
"General, I want
to go home.

74
00:05:39,940 --> 00:05:42,620
" 'Want to go home,
and for what?' he replied.

75
00:05:43,140 --> 00:05:45,940
"As I could not think of
an excuse, I blurted out,

76
00:05:46,140 --> 00:05:48,090
"I want to see
my mother.

77
00:05:48,900 --> 00:05:50,550
" 'Is she sick,' he asked.

78
00:05:50,850 --> 00:05:53,020
"No, I replied.
I hope not.

79
00:05:53,840 --> 00:05:56,730
"He then asked me how
long since I left home and

80
00:05:56,780 --> 00:05:59,770
"if I was ever away for
so long a time before.

81
00:06:00,140 --> 00:06:02,720
"I told him I had been in the
service seven months

82
00:06:02,770 --> 00:06:05,340
"and never been away
from home alone before.

83
00:06:05,610 --> 00:06:07,150
" 'Well,' said the General,

84
00:06:07,610 --> 00:06:09,280
" 'you have been
a good boy,

85
00:06:09,450 --> 00:06:11,980
" 'and you shall have a
furlough for ten days.' "

86
00:06:12,400 --> 00:06:14,400
Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

87
00:06:16,540 --> 00:06:18,840
"I always shot
at privates.

88
00:06:18,910 --> 00:06:21,000
"It was they that did the
shooting and killing,

89
00:06:21,050 --> 00:06:23,210
"and if I could kill
or wound a private,

90
00:06:23,260 --> 00:06:25,900
"why, my chances were
so much the better.

91
00:06:25,950 --> 00:06:29,670
"I always looked on officers
as harmless personages."

92
00:06:29,940 --> 00:06:31,550
Sam Watkins.

93
00:06:32,260 --> 00:06:35,060
The commander of Sam
Watkins' Company H

94
00:06:35,110 --> 00:06:37,510
was Captain
William R. Johnston.

95
00:06:37,670 --> 00:06:40,700
His immediate superior was Colonel George Maney

96
00:06:40,750 --> 00:06:42,400
of the 1st Tennessee.

97
00:06:42,500 --> 00:06:44,600
From there, the Confederate
chain of command

98
00:06:44,650 --> 00:06:48,450
ascended through Colonel William
H. Stephens of the 2nd Brigade

99
00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:52,490
to General Benjamin Cheatham,
Commander of the 2nd Division

100
00:06:52,660 --> 00:06:56,050
of General Leonidas
Polk's 1st Army Corps,

101
00:06:57,120 --> 00:06:59,710
then to General Albert
Sidney Johnston,

102
00:06:59,760 --> 00:07:02,040
Commander of the Army
of the Mississippi;

103
00:07:02,410 --> 00:07:06,210
above that, to War Secretary
George W. Randolph...

104
00:07:07,610 --> 00:07:09,610
finally, to Jefferson Davis,

105
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President of the Confederate
States of America.

106
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For one Union soldier,

107
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the chain of command descended
from President Lincoln,

108
00:07:21,200 --> 00:07:24,050
Secretary of War
Simon Cameron,

109
00:07:24,260 --> 00:07:27,940
and General McClellan, Commander
of the Army of the Potomac,

110
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to General Erasmus Keyes,
Commander of the Union 4th Corps,

111
00:07:32,500 --> 00:07:36,690
General Darius N. Couch
of "Couch's Brigade,"

112
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to Colonel
Frank Wheaton,

113
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Commander of the
2nd Rhode Island Volunteers.

114
00:07:43,520 --> 00:07:47,590
and finally to Private
Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

115
00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:52,080
"January 31, 1862.

116
00:07:52,350 --> 00:07:54,740
"Mud, mud, mud.

117
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"I'm thinking of starting a steamboat
line to run on Pennsylvania Avenue

118
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"between our office
and the Capitol.

119
00:08:00,680 --> 00:08:03,860
"Will the mud never dry
so the army can move?"

120
00:08:05,770 --> 00:08:10,060
"Of all detestable places,
Washington is the first.

121
00:08:10,530 --> 00:08:15,280
"Crowd, heat, bad quarters,
bad fare, bad smells,

122
00:08:15,950 --> 00:08:17,570
"mosquitoes,

123
00:08:17,820 --> 00:08:22,030
"and a plague of flies transcending
everything within my experience.

124
00:08:22,900 --> 00:08:25,630
"Beelzebub surely
reigns here,

125
00:08:25,730 --> 00:08:29,020
"and Willard's hotel
is his temple."

126
00:08:29,290 --> 00:08:31,320
George Templeton Strong.

127
00:08:34,330 --> 00:08:38,330
Throughout Lincoln's Presidency--
and this is true of most presidents--

128
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he was fairly run crazy
by office seekers,

129
00:08:41,340 --> 00:08:44,760
especially at the start, when his
campaign managers had promised jobs

130
00:08:44,810 --> 00:08:47,560
to a great many people
who came to collect them.

131
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And one man saw him one day,
and he looked particularly worried,

132
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and the man said, "What's
the matter, Mr. President?"

133
00:08:52,820 --> 00:08:55,770
and Lincoln said, "There's too
many pigs for the tits."

134
00:09:04,500 --> 00:09:08,940
Abraham Lincoln's problems were not
confined to fighting rebels alone:

135
00:09:09,750 --> 00:09:14,220
the president's unwieldy cabinet
included former Conservative Whigs,

136
00:09:14,270 --> 00:09:17,440
Free-soil Whigs, and
Union Democrats.

137
00:09:18,310 --> 00:09:22,280
Four had been his rivals for the
Republican presidential nomination.

138
00:09:22,330 --> 00:09:26,520
Nearly all were privately sure they
could do a better job than their chief.

139
00:09:28,300 --> 00:09:32,610
Secretary of State William H.
Seward hoped to replace Lincoln.

140
00:09:32,710 --> 00:09:35,340
Secretary of the Treasury
Salmon P. Chase

141
00:09:35,350 --> 00:09:37,300
wanted to
replace Seward.

142
00:09:37,880 --> 00:09:41,540
Mary Todd told her husband
to get rid of both of them.

143
00:09:42,200 --> 00:09:46,070
Instead, Lincoln fired War
Secretary Simon P. Cameron,

144
00:09:46,110 --> 00:09:49,030
a Pennsylvania boss so
corrupt, said Lincoln,

145
00:09:49,080 --> 00:09:52,810
that the only thing he wouldn't
steal was a red-hot stove.

146
00:09:53,870 --> 00:09:57,020
The new Secretary of War
was Edwin M. Stanton,

147
00:09:57,070 --> 00:09:59,970
an able, ruthless war
Democrat from Ohio

148
00:10:00,020 --> 00:10:01,970
who worried about
what he believed to be

149
00:10:01,970 --> 00:10:04,970
Lincoln's "painful imbecility."

150
00:10:07,540 --> 00:10:10,180
On one thing, the
cabinet was agreed:

151
00:10:10,230 --> 00:10:13,140
General George McClellan
was not moving fast enough

152
00:10:13,190 --> 00:10:14,800
against the Confederates.

153
00:10:15,200 --> 00:10:17,700
"The army," Secretary
of War Stanton said,

154
00:10:17,750 --> 00:10:20,170
"has got to fight
or run away.

155
00:10:20,270 --> 00:10:22,860
"The champagne and
oysters on the Potomac

156
00:10:22,910 --> 00:10:24,460
"must be stopped."

157
00:10:25,830 --> 00:10:29,700
"Dear Ellen, I can't tell you how
disgusted I am becoming

158
00:10:29,750 --> 00:10:31,840
"with these
wretched politicians.

159
00:10:31,890 --> 00:10:34,450
"They are a most
despicable set of men.

160
00:10:34,550 --> 00:10:38,250
"Seward is a meddling, officious,
incompetent little puppy.

161
00:10:38,400 --> 00:10:41,670
"The president is nothing more
than a well-meaning baboon."

162
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:43,800
George McClellan.

163
00:10:46,340 --> 00:10:50,590
The president pored over military
books, asked officers for advice,

164
00:10:50,640 --> 00:10:52,500
and in exasperation,

165
00:10:52,550 --> 00:10:55,900
"suggested that "If General McClellan
does not want to use the army,

166
00:10:55,950 --> 00:10:58,630
"I would like to borrow
it for a time."

167
00:11:00,920 --> 00:11:04,420
Finally, he ordered McClellan to
move on Manassas Junction,

168
00:11:04,470 --> 00:11:06,970
and then proceed overland
to take Richmond,

169
00:11:07,240 --> 00:11:09,250
but McClellan
would not move,

170
00:11:09,300 --> 00:11:11,350
and took to his
bed with a fever.

171
00:11:11,770 --> 00:11:13,420
McClellan did
not want to fight

172
00:11:13,470 --> 00:11:16,340
the vast Confederate army
he had convinced himself

173
00:11:16,390 --> 00:11:18,590
now occupied
Northern Virginia.

174
00:11:19,260 --> 00:11:23,000
Instead, he proposed to float
his army to Fortress Monroe

175
00:11:23,260 --> 00:11:27,320
at the tip of the finger of land between
the James and York Rivers,

176
00:11:28,430 --> 00:11:32,270
then race up the peninsula to
seize the Confederate capital.

177
00:11:37,290 --> 00:11:40,290
Impatient for any action,
Lincoln agreed.

178
00:11:40,340 --> 00:11:42,820
McClellan would
move in mid-March.

179
00:11:43,170 --> 00:11:44,830
It had been eight months

180
00:11:44,880 --> 00:11:47,680
since the norther army had
crawled back into Washington

181
00:11:47,680 --> 00:11:49,260
after Bull Run.

182
00:11:50,230 --> 00:11:52,920
"February 9th, 1862.

183
00:11:53,120 --> 00:11:54,830
"Dear Mr. President,

184
00:11:55,190 --> 00:11:57,740
"General McClellan
has almost ruined.

185
00:11:57,790 --> 00:11:59,890
your administration
and the country.

186
00:11:59,940 --> 00:12:01,440
"He is a do-nothing.

187
00:12:01,510 --> 00:12:04,510
"He is thinking of the
presidency in '64.

188
00:12:04,590 --> 00:12:06,820
"He is placating
the rebels--

189
00:12:06,920 --> 00:12:10,330
"that's what ails him.
Depend upon it."

190
00:12:10,590 --> 00:12:12,170
Joseph Medill.

191
00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:16,990
"What shall I do?

192
00:12:17,290 --> 00:12:18,990
"The people are impatient.

193
00:12:19,090 --> 00:12:22,370
"Chase has no money and tells
me he can raise no more.

194
00:12:22,740 --> 00:12:26,110
"The General of the Army,
McClellan, has typhoid fever.

195
00:12:26,880 --> 00:12:28,790
"The bottom is
out of the tub.

196
00:12:29,610 --> 00:12:31,210
"What shall I do?"

197
00:12:32,610 --> 00:12:33,980
"Washington.

198
00:12:34,080 --> 00:12:38,080
"Dear Ellen, I went to the White
House shortly after tea,

199
00:12:38,130 --> 00:12:40,330
"where I found the
original gorilla,

200
00:12:40,380 --> 00:12:42,330
"about as
intelligent as ever.

201
00:12:42,380 --> 00:12:45,380
"What a specimen to be at the
head of our affairs now."

202
00:12:45,530 --> 00:12:47,190
George McClellan.

203
00:12:48,550 --> 00:12:52,930
In the midst of all his troubles, the
president delighted in his sons.

204
00:12:53,850 --> 00:12:56,440
The oldest, Robert,
was away at Harvard,

205
00:12:56,490 --> 00:13:00,490
but Willie, eleven, and eight-year-
old Thomas, known as Tad,

206
00:13:00,540 --> 00:13:02,410
had the run of the
White House.

207
00:13:04,080 --> 00:13:06,960
Willie was studious,
liked to compose verse

208
00:13:07,010 --> 00:13:09,400
and memorize
railroad timetables.

209
00:13:09,670 --> 00:13:12,980
He'd raised a boys' battalion
from among his schoolmates

210
00:13:13,030 --> 00:13:16,370
and invaded cabinet
meeting with his "troops."

211
00:13:17,040 --> 00:13:21,000
In February, he developed what
the doctor called "bilious fever."

212
00:13:21,420 --> 00:13:24,800
His parents sat up night
after night to nurse him.

213
00:13:25,570 --> 00:13:27,320
On February 20th,

214
00:13:27,740 --> 00:13:29,290
Willie died.

215
00:13:31,880 --> 00:13:35,880
For three months, Mary Lincoln
veered between loud weeping

216
00:13:35,930 --> 00:13:37,710
and silent depression

217
00:13:37,760 --> 00:13:40,320
and sought to communicate
with her dead child

218
00:13:40,420 --> 00:13:42,240
through spiritualists.

219
00:13:43,510 --> 00:13:46,610
"If I had not felt the
spur of necessity

220
00:13:46,660 --> 00:13:49,010
"urging me to cheer
Mr. Lincoln,

221
00:13:49,160 --> 00:13:51,960
"whose grief was as
great as my own,

222
00:13:52,570 --> 00:13:55,320
"I could never
have smiled again."

223
00:13:58,590 --> 00:14:01,600
The war left Lincoln
little time to mourn.

224
00:14:01,750 --> 00:14:05,400
He was soon back working
eighteen hours a day.

225
00:14:11,350 --> 00:14:13,530
"As she came plowing
through the water,

226
00:14:13,580 --> 00:14:17,310
"she looked like a huge
half-submerged crocodile.

227
00:14:17,360 --> 00:14:21,530
"At her prow, I could see the iron
ram projecting straight forward."

228
00:14:24,030 --> 00:14:28,130
The Confederacy had begun the
war with no navy whatsoever,

229
00:14:28,180 --> 00:14:30,380
but by the fall of 1861,

230
00:14:30,480 --> 00:14:33,330
Confederate engineers
were bolting iron plates

231
00:14:33,380 --> 00:14:35,990
to the hull of the steam
frigate Merrimack,

232
00:14:36,150 --> 00:14:40,190
building a warship more powerful
than anything the Union had.

233
00:14:41,860 --> 00:14:44,740
News of the monster
quickly reached the north.

234
00:14:44,890 --> 00:14:48,470
Secretary of War Stanton feared
she would steam up the Potomac

235
00:14:48,530 --> 00:14:50,390
and shell the
White House.

236
00:14:52,300 --> 00:14:56,780
There was probably only one man in America who could stop the Merrimack,

237
00:14:56,830 --> 00:14:58,920
and he was mad
at the Navy.

238
00:14:59,940 --> 00:15:02,430
The Swedish-born
inventor John Ericsson

239
00:15:02,480 --> 00:15:04,780
was proud, vain,
and cranky,

240
00:15:04,830 --> 00:15:07,960
and felt he had been cheated out of
payment for services to the government

241
00:15:08,010 --> 00:15:09,560
years before,

242
00:15:10,430 --> 00:15:13,220
but when Secretary of the
Navy Gideon Welles

243
00:15:13,270 --> 00:15:15,800
begged him to do something
to stop the Merrimack,

244
00:15:15,850 --> 00:15:19,070
Ericsson came up with
an extraordinary design.

245
00:15:19,990 --> 00:15:23,730
His ship would have only two
guns to the Merrimack's ten,

246
00:15:23,790 --> 00:15:26,360
but they would be mounted
on a revolving turret,

247
00:15:26,460 --> 00:15:29,510
and though his vessel would
be made entirely of iron,

248
00:15:29,820 --> 00:15:31,600
Ericsson assured everybody

249
00:15:31,650 --> 00:15:36,090
that "The sea shall ride over her,
and she shall live in it like a duck."

250
00:15:38,950 --> 00:15:42,690
Professional navy men dismissed the
plan, but Lincoln overruled them,

251
00:15:42,740 --> 00:15:47,010
and just 100 days later,
on January 30th, 1862,

252
00:15:47,060 --> 00:15:50,240
Ericsson's ship slid into
Manhattan's East River.

253
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:56,020
He called her the Monitor, and there
had never been anything like her.

254
00:15:56,830 --> 00:15:59,380
The single vessel
contained forty-seven

255
00:15:59,430 --> 00:16:01,430
patentable inventions.

256
00:16:03,610 --> 00:16:06,920
"We ran first to the New York
side and then to Brooklyn,

257
00:16:06,970 --> 00:16:09,300
"and so back and forth
across the river,

258
00:16:09,350 --> 00:16:11,910
"like a drunken man
on a sidewalk.

259
00:16:12,130 --> 00:16:15,030
"We found she would not
answer her rudder at all."

260
00:16:16,900 --> 00:16:20,330
Once at sea, water spilled
in, ventilators failed,

261
00:16:20,590 --> 00:16:23,940
the ship filled with gas,
her crew began to faint,

262
00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:27,610
but the monitor
kept limping south.

263
00:16:28,900 --> 00:16:32,100
Four-hundred miles away,
off the coast of Virginia,

264
00:16:32,150 --> 00:16:34,160
the Merrimack
was waiting.

265
00:16:37,850 --> 00:16:41,170
Saturday, March 8th, was
wash day for the Union fleet

266
00:16:41,220 --> 00:16:42,960
in Hampton
Roads, Virginia.

267
00:16:43,060 --> 00:16:45,820
Laundry was drying on the
rigging of the Union warships

268
00:16:45,870 --> 00:16:47,440
when the
Confederate Merrimack

269
00:16:47,490 --> 00:16:50,030
headed straight for the
U.S.S. Cumberland.

270
00:16:53,450 --> 00:16:55,220
The Cumberland
opened fire,

271
00:16:55,270 --> 00:16:58,520
but the shots bounced harmlessly
off the Merrimack's side.

272
00:16:58,820 --> 00:17:00,970
The Confederate ship
rammed the Cumberland,

273
00:17:01,020 --> 00:17:04,180
then stood in so close, their
muzzles almost touched.

274
00:17:06,620 --> 00:17:09,410
The Cumberland sank
in shallow water.

275
00:17:10,570 --> 00:17:13,930
The Merrimack went on to set
the U.S.S. Congress afire,

276
00:17:13,980 --> 00:17:16,290
drove the U.S.S.
Minnesota aground,

277
00:17:16,340 --> 00:17:18,230
then drew back
for the night.

278
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:23,510
For one day, the Confederate
Navy ruled the sea.

279
00:17:27,680 --> 00:17:30,970
At 1:00 that morning, the crew
of the battered Minnesota

280
00:17:31,070 --> 00:17:35,530
saw a strange-looking ship draw up
alongside them in the darkness.

281
00:17:36,590 --> 00:17:38,820
"Close alongside
the Minnesota,

282
00:17:38,970 --> 00:17:41,360
"there was a craft such as
the eyes of a seaman

283
00:17:41,410 --> 00:17:43,520
"never looked
upon before--

284
00:17:43,570 --> 00:17:46,330
"an immense shingle
floating on the water

285
00:17:46,380 --> 00:17:49,560
"with a gigantic cheese
box rising from its center.

286
00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:53,440
"No sails, no wheels,
no smokestack, no guns.

287
00:17:53,490 --> 00:17:55,110
"What could it be?"

288
00:17:55,530 --> 00:17:57,890
The monitor had arrived.

289
00:18:00,020 --> 00:18:03,790
The next morning, the epic
battle of ironclads began.

290
00:18:12,700 --> 00:18:16,010
Hull to hull, the two ships
hammered away at each other,

291
00:18:16,060 --> 00:18:19,560
so close, they collided five times as the men inside,

292
00:18:19,560 --> 00:18:22,510
half-blind with smoke,
loaded and fired.

293
00:18:30,900 --> 00:18:34,350
After 4½ hours, the
Merrimack drew off.

294
00:18:35,320 --> 00:18:37,200
It was her only fight.

295
00:18:39,910 --> 00:18:42,630
Two months later, rather
than surrender their ship,

296
00:18:42,680 --> 00:18:44,380
the Confederates
blew her up

297
00:18:44,430 --> 00:18:46,530
when they were
forced out of Norfolk.

298
00:18:47,600 --> 00:18:50,600
Both sides set to work
building more ironclads

299
00:18:50,650 --> 00:18:53,970
while Europe watched
in worried fascination.

300
00:18:56,300 --> 00:18:59,760
From the moment the two ships
opened fire that Sunday morning,

301
00:18:59,930 --> 00:19:02,980
every other navy on
earth was obsolete.

302
00:19:16,100 --> 00:19:19,850
"General Grant habitually wears an
expression as if he had determined

303
00:19:19,900 --> 00:19:22,260
"to drive his head
through a brick wall,

304
00:19:22,310 --> 00:19:24,010
"and was about to do it."

305
00:19:26,350 --> 00:19:28,870
The year 1862
would introduce

306
00:19:28,920 --> 00:19:31,220
two great forces
into the war--

307
00:19:31,320 --> 00:19:34,730
unspeakable slaughter
and Ulysses S. Grant.

308
00:19:35,400 --> 00:19:38,030
While McClellan hesitated
in Washington,

309
00:19:38,080 --> 00:19:40,970
Grant, back in the field
after months of desk duty,

310
00:19:41,130 --> 00:19:43,650
won two crucial
victories out west:

311
00:19:45,510 --> 00:19:48,780
launching simultaneous
attacks by land and water,

312
00:19:48,830 --> 00:19:51,730
he took first Fort Henry
on the Tennessee River,

313
00:19:52,300 --> 00:19:54,790
then Fort Donelson
on the Cumberland,

314
00:19:54,840 --> 00:19:57,990
where he issued an ultimatum
to the Confederate commander--

315
00:19:58,040 --> 00:20:01,930
"No terms except unconditional
and immediate surrender."

316
00:20:07,380 --> 00:20:11,040
The Tennessee and Cumberland
Rivers were now in Union hands.

317
00:20:11,090 --> 00:20:13,440
The Confederates had been
driven from Kentucky.

318
00:20:13,710 --> 00:20:17,550
Dozens of southern towns were
now occupied by Union troops.

319
00:20:18,200 --> 00:20:20,660
In less than a year,
Grant had gone from clerk

320
00:20:20,710 --> 00:20:22,310
to Union hero.

321
00:20:24,750 --> 00:20:28,260
News stories described him
coolly smoking under fire,

322
00:20:28,320 --> 00:20:31,390
and admirers shipped
him barrels of cigars.

323
00:20:32,760 --> 00:20:35,530
A delighted northern public
now thought they knew

324
00:20:35,580 --> 00:20:37,950
what the initials in
his name stood for:

325
00:20:38,020 --> 00:20:41,130
they called him "Unconditional
Surrender" Grant.

326
00:20:44,900 --> 00:20:48,100
But before Grant's men
marched into Fort Donelson,

327
00:20:48,150 --> 00:20:50,600
Confederate General
Nathan Bedford Forrest

328
00:20:50,650 --> 00:20:53,300
slipped out of it
with 1,000 men.

329
00:20:53,610 --> 00:20:57,500
"I did not come here for the purpose of
surrendering my command," he said,

330
00:20:57,550 --> 00:21:01,220
and led his troops seventy-five
miles through the snow to safety.

331
00:21:01,850 --> 00:21:05,800
Grant and the Union army would
meet Bedford Forrest again.

332
00:21:08,500 --> 00:21:11,330
After the Confederate
defeat at Fort Donelson,

333
00:21:11,380 --> 00:21:15,530
the Female Academy and Stewart College
at nearby Clarksville, Tennessee,

334
00:21:15,580 --> 00:21:17,650
were converted
to hospitals.

335
00:21:18,820 --> 00:21:20,690
"Sunday the news came.

336
00:21:20,860 --> 00:21:24,540
"Such panic-stricken people
were never before seen.

337
00:21:24,590 --> 00:21:26,910
"The wounded were
being brought up.

338
00:21:26,960 --> 00:21:28,840
"The citizens
were running.

339
00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:33,230
"There were already two hospitals
here which were filled with the sick,

340
00:21:33,280 --> 00:21:37,070
"and they, poor fellas, were
crawling out from every piece--

341
00:21:37,120 --> 00:21:40,600
"walking, going on
horseback, in wagons."

342
00:21:41,200 --> 00:21:42,960
Nannie Haskins.

343
00:21:45,620 --> 00:21:48,470
The Union army was right
behind the wounded.

344
00:21:49,150 --> 00:21:51,250
They met no resistance.

345
00:21:51,480 --> 00:21:55,220
A white flag flew above tiny
Fort Defiance west of town,

346
00:21:55,270 --> 00:21:58,230
and Mayor Smith came out to
inform the Union commander

347
00:21:58,430 --> 00:22:01,810
that the Confederate army
had retreated to Nashville.

348
00:22:03,740 --> 00:22:06,250
Farmer John Barker
wrote in his diary

349
00:22:06,300 --> 00:22:09,510
that there were nothing but
Lincolnites throughout the county.

350
00:22:11,030 --> 00:22:15,270
An uneasy federal occupation
of Clarksville began.

351
00:22:19,830 --> 00:22:22,780
Early in the war, some, um--

352
00:22:22,830 --> 00:22:26,930
a Union squad closed in on a
single ragged Confederate,

353
00:22:27,300 --> 00:22:29,850
and he obviously
didn't own any slaves.

354
00:22:29,900 --> 00:22:33,740
He couldn't have much interest in--
in the constitution or anything else.

355
00:22:33,910 --> 00:22:36,660
They said, "What are you fighting
for, anyhow," they asked him,

356
00:22:36,710 --> 00:22:39,800
and he said, "I'm fighting
because you're down here,"

357
00:22:40,710 --> 00:22:43,710
which is a pretty
satisfactory answer.

358
00:22:54,250 --> 00:22:58,840
On April 4th, George McClellan at last
began to move for Richmond--

359
00:22:58,890 --> 00:23:02,540
121,500 men,

360
00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:06,740
14,592 horses
and mules,

361
00:23:06,790 --> 00:23:09,460
1,150 wagons,

362
00:23:09,510 --> 00:23:11,760
forty-four batteries
of artillery,

363
00:23:11,810 --> 00:23:13,810
ambulances, pontoon bridges,

364
00:23:13,860 --> 00:23:17,160
tons of provisions,
tents, telegraph wire.

365
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:23,700
It took 400 boats three
weeks to land it all

366
00:23:23,750 --> 00:23:26,290
at Fortress Monroe
on the Virginia coast.

367
00:23:28,310 --> 00:23:32,310
"The whole region seems
literally filled with soldiery.

368
00:23:32,360 --> 00:23:35,150
"One of the finest armies ever
marshaled on the globe

369
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:39,320
"now wakes up these long-
stagnant fields and woods.

370
00:23:39,740 --> 00:23:43,640
"General McClellan is here
and commands in person."

371
00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:46,020
Reverend A. M. Stewart.

372
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:51,440
"I am to watch over you as
a parent over his children,

373
00:23:51,890 --> 00:23:55,590
"and you know that your general loves
you from the depths of his heart.

374
00:23:55,740 --> 00:24:00,090
"It shall be my care to gain success
with the least possible loss."

375
00:24:02,570 --> 00:24:05,390
But at Yorktown, less
than twenty miles away,

376
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:07,070
the Confederates waited,

377
00:24:07,120 --> 00:24:10,120
vastly outnumbered, but
determined to defend their homes

378
00:24:10,170 --> 00:24:12,170
and hurl back
the invaders.

379
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:16,930
For the north, it
was slow going.

380
00:24:16,990 --> 00:24:20,230
Roads said to be
bone dry were bogs.

381
00:24:20,800 --> 00:24:24,430
Union officers, forced to rely on store-bought maps,

382
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:26,200
lost their way.

383
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:31,050
Finally, on April 5th, the advance
guard reached Yorktown,

384
00:24:31,620 --> 00:24:33,830
where the Confederates
had taken over the building

385
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:36,340
used by Lord Cornwallis
as headquarters

386
00:24:36,390 --> 00:24:38,740
during the
Revolutionary War.

387
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:43,540
There were just 11,000
southern troops dug in--

388
00:24:43,590 --> 00:24:46,130
not even 1/10 of
McClellan's force...

389
00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:53,580
but the Confederate commander
was John Bankhead Magruder,

390
00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:57,680
a showy Virginian who loved
amateur theatricals.

391
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,700
He now outdid
even himself.

392
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:04,790
To fool McClellan into believing
that his small force was enormous,

393
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:09,040
Magruder kept up a sporadic,
widely scattered artillery barrage

394
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:13,060
and paraded one battalion
in and out of a clearing

395
00:25:13,110 --> 00:25:17,060
in an endless circle until it
seemed to Union observers,

396
00:25:17,060 --> 00:25:18,960
a mighty host.

397
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:30,450
Corporal Edmund
Patterson, 9th Alabama.

398
00:25:30,550 --> 00:25:33,160
"This morning, we were
called out by the long roll,

399
00:25:33,210 --> 00:25:35,150
"and have been traveling
most of the day,

400
00:25:35,210 --> 00:25:37,970
"seeming with no other view than
to show ourselves to the enemy

401
00:25:38,020 --> 00:25:41,190
"at as many different points
of the line as possible.

402
00:25:41,910 --> 00:25:43,690
"I'm pretty tired."

403
00:25:44,870 --> 00:25:48,980
"It seems clear that I shall have the
whole force of the enemy on my hands,"

404
00:25:49,030 --> 00:25:51,030
McClellan
telegraphed Lincoln,

405
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:53,460
"probably not less
than 100,000 men,

406
00:25:53,510 --> 00:25:55,240
"and possibly more."

407
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,590
McClellan called
for reinforcements.

408
00:25:59,610 --> 00:26:03,430
General Joseph E. Johnston, the overall Confederate Commander,

409
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:05,380
could not
believe his luck.

410
00:26:05,530 --> 00:26:09,670
"Nobody but McClellan," he said,
"could have hesitated to attack."

411
00:26:11,220 --> 00:26:13,480
"Once more,
let me tell you,

412
00:26:13,530 --> 00:26:16,960
"it is indispensable to you
that you strike a blow.

413
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:20,430
"I have never written
to you or spoken to you

414
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:23,080
"in greater
kindness than now,

415
00:26:23,230 --> 00:26:26,090
"nor with fuller
purpose to sustain you,

416
00:26:26,460 --> 00:26:29,360
"but you must act."

417
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:32,750
"The president very
coolly telegraphed me

418
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:36,230
"that he thought I had better
break the enemy's lines at once.

419
00:26:36,630 --> 00:26:40,430
"I was much tempted to reply that
he'd better come and do it himself."

420
00:26:40,580 --> 00:26:42,210
George McClellan.

421
00:26:44,230 --> 00:26:47,980
"I don't see the sense of piling
up earth to keep us apart.

422
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:51,870
"If we don't get at each other
sometime, when will the war end?

423
00:26:52,900 --> 00:26:56,040
"My plan would be to quit
ditching and go to fighting."

424
00:26:56,850 --> 00:26:59,680
But McClellan
chose to dig in.

425
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:07,160
As he settled in for
a siege of Yorktown,

426
00:27:07,210 --> 00:27:11,010
Union General Phil Kearney
took to calling his commander

427
00:27:11,060 --> 00:27:12,830
"the Virginia creeper."

428
00:27:15,180 --> 00:27:18,820
During the Peninsula Campaign,
McClellan's working his way

429
00:27:18,870 --> 00:27:22,070
up the York/James peninsula,
and he came to a stream.

430
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,510
and he and his staff were sitting
there wondering how deep it was

431
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:27,280
if they had to
march across it,

432
00:27:27,550 --> 00:27:30,430
and Custer, who was
a junior officer on his staff--

433
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:33,370
just graduated from West
Point, a captain, I think--

434
00:27:33,420 --> 00:27:36,960
rode out into midstream, sat on his
horse, and turned around in the saddle

435
00:27:37,010 --> 00:27:39,600
and said to McClellan,
"This is how deep it is, General."

436
00:27:43,570 --> 00:27:47,160
<i>I have seen Him
in the watch-fires</i>

437
00:27:47,210 --> 00:27:50,630
<i>Of a hundred
circling camps</i>

438
00:27:50,810 --> 00:27:54,310
<i>They have builded
Him an altar</i>

439
00:27:54,310 --> 00:27:57,510
<i>In the evening
dews and damps</i>

440
00:27:57,790 --> 00:28:01,110
<i>I can read His
righteous sentence</i>

441
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:04,540
<i>By the dim and
flaring lamps</i>

442
00:28:04,860 --> 00:28:07,650
<i>His day is</i>

443
00:28:07,700 --> 00:28:11,700
<i>Marching on</i>

444
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:16,850
"A man's conceit
dwindles

445
00:28:16,910 --> 00:28:19,300
"when he crawls into
an unteasled shirt,

446
00:28:19,350 --> 00:28:22,580
"trousers too short
and baggy behind,

447
00:28:22,630 --> 00:28:27,050
"coat too long at both ends, and a
cap as shapeless as a feedbag.

448
00:28:27,250 --> 00:28:29,500
"A photograph of
any one of them,

449
00:28:29,550 --> 00:28:33,040
"covered with yellow dust
or mosaics of mud,

450
00:28:33,090 --> 00:28:36,390
"could ornament any
mantel, north or south,

451
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:39,340
"as a true picture
of our boy."

452
00:28:41,660 --> 00:28:45,420
North and south, the
average soldier was 5'8 tall

453
00:28:45,470 --> 00:28:47,920
and weighed
143 pounds.

454
00:28:48,020 --> 00:28:51,770
His chance of dying
in combat was 1-in-65;

455
00:28:51,870 --> 00:28:54,340
of being wounded,
1-in-10.

456
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:58,420
One in thirteen
would die of disease.

457
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,440
The average age of a
soldier was twenty-five.

458
00:29:03,590 --> 00:29:06,120
The minimum age for
enlistment was eighteen,

459
00:29:06,170 --> 00:29:09,240
but recruiting officers
were not particular.

460
00:29:09,540 --> 00:29:12,550
Drummer boys as young
as nine signed on.

461
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:18,340
There were more than 100,000
soldiers in the Union army

462
00:29:18,390 --> 00:29:20,710
who were not yet
fifteen-years-old.

463
00:29:20,810 --> 00:29:24,240
William Black was not yet
twelve when he enlisted.

464
00:29:24,810 --> 00:29:27,050
Shot in the left arm
during battle,

465
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:29,620
he was thought to be the
youngest combat soldier

466
00:29:29,670 --> 00:29:31,370
wounded in the war.

467
00:29:35,020 --> 00:29:38,160
"Almost every known trade, profession, or calling

468
00:29:38,210 --> 00:29:40,620
"has its representatives
in our regiment:

469
00:29:41,100 --> 00:29:44,030
"tailors, carpenters,
masons, and plasterers,

470
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:45,910
"and molders
and glassblowers,

471
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:49,240
"puddlers and rollers, and
machinists and architects,

472
00:29:49,290 --> 00:29:51,790
"printers, bookbinders
and publishers,

473
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:53,440
"gentlemen of leisure,

474
00:29:53,490 --> 00:29:55,320
"politicians, merchants,

475
00:29:55,370 --> 00:29:59,370
"legislators, judges, lawyers,
doctors, preachers.

476
00:29:59,690 --> 00:30:03,600
"Some malicious fellow might ask the
privilege of completing the catalog

477
00:30:03,750 --> 00:30:06,480
"by naming jailbirds,
idlers, loafers,

478
00:30:06,530 --> 00:30:08,430
"drunkards and gamblers...

479
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:11,800
"but we beg his pardon
and refuse the license.

480
00:30:15,850 --> 00:30:19,200
"All the appliances of home
life which are possible

481
00:30:19,250 --> 00:30:22,020
"are being introduced
into our encampment:

482
00:30:22,070 --> 00:30:25,630
"a weekly newspaper, a
photographic establishment,

483
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:29,040
"a temperance league, and
a Christian association.

484
00:30:29,460 --> 00:30:31,900
"We have a post
office, letter box,

485
00:30:31,950 --> 00:30:34,250
"postmaster and
mail carrier.

486
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:38,820
"Our boys write vastly more
letters than they receive.

487
00:30:39,140 --> 00:30:41,490
"You can hardly imagine
the eagerness

488
00:30:41,540 --> 00:30:43,880
"with which the
mailman is looked for.

489
00:30:43,930 --> 00:30:46,850
"the delight on the
reception of a letter,

490
00:30:47,320 --> 00:30:50,320
"the sadness, sometimes
even to tears,

491
00:30:50,370 --> 00:30:52,870
"with which those
who are disappointed

492
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:54,360
"turn away."

493
00:30:54,610 --> 00:30:56,860
Reverend
A. M. Stewart.

494
00:30:57,930 --> 00:31:01,780
For the enlisted man, army
life meant periods of tedium

495
00:31:01,830 --> 00:31:04,940
punctuated by moments
of extreme terror.

496
00:31:06,650 --> 00:31:10,410
It also meant long absences
from family and home.

497
00:31:10,830 --> 00:31:15,070
"July 1862.
Tupelo, Mississippi.

498
00:31:15,290 --> 00:31:16,940
"Dear sisters,

499
00:31:17,090 --> 00:31:21,150
"I would be the gladdest person in the
world to see you and talk with you awhile,

500
00:31:21,250 --> 00:31:25,340
"for I see nobody here but men, and
they appear to be very sorry company.

501
00:31:26,100 --> 00:31:30,400
"I think that I could enjoy myself at home
better than anywhere else in the world."

502
00:31:30,500 --> 00:31:32,300
Benjamin Stubbs.

503
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:37,770
For those officers who took their
families with them to camp,

504
00:31:37,870 --> 00:31:40,080
life was
somewhat better.

505
00:31:53,060 --> 00:31:56,110
"There has been a great battle
indeed in the southwest,

506
00:31:56,210 --> 00:31:58,240
"a conflict of two days,

507
00:31:58,300 --> 00:32:01,720
"closely fought and with varying
fortune and by great armies.

508
00:32:03,130 --> 00:32:07,380
"It seems entitled to a place among
the first-class battles of history."

509
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:09,680
George Templeton Strong.

510
00:32:15,410 --> 00:32:19,230
It was fought in early April.
The trees were leafed out,

511
00:32:19,500 --> 00:32:23,070
and the roads were
meandering cow paths.

512
00:32:23,410 --> 00:32:26,480
Nobody knew north from
south, east from west.

513
00:32:26,530 --> 00:32:29,430
They'd never been in combat
before, most of them,

514
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:31,480
especially on the
southern side.

515
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:36,140
So it was just a disorganized,
murderous fistfight,

516
00:32:36,190 --> 00:32:39,530
100,000 men slamming
away at each other.

517
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:44,930
In early April, as McClellan
continued to sit in front of Yorktown,

518
00:32:44,980 --> 00:32:48,940
42,000 union troops under
General Ulysses S. Grant

519
00:32:48,990 --> 00:32:53,240
were encamped on the west side of the
Tennessee River near Pittsburgh Landing.

520
00:32:53,900 --> 00:32:57,720
Grant's invasion of Tennessee had
practically cut the state in two,

521
00:32:57,750 --> 00:33:00,330
and now he was waiting
for Don Carlos Buell's

522
00:33:00,380 --> 00:33:02,510
Army of the Ohio
to join him.

523
00:33:02,620 --> 00:33:04,230
Their combined forces

524
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,400
were then to plunge into
the heart of Mississippi.

525
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:13,800
But Buell was late, and at Corinth,
Mississippi, twenty-two miles away,

526
00:33:13,850 --> 00:33:16,790
the commander of the western
Department of the Confederate army,

527
00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:18,630
Albert Sidney Johnston,

528
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:20,730
saw no reason to wait.

529
00:33:20,780 --> 00:33:23,210
Their armies were still
evenly matched,

530
00:33:23,310 --> 00:33:26,780
and he would attack and
end Grant's invasion.

531
00:33:27,950 --> 00:33:30,800
"Tonight we will water our
horses in the Tennessee,"

532
00:33:30,850 --> 00:33:34,540
Johnston told his staff officers
on the morning of April 6.

533
00:33:34,790 --> 00:33:38,540
The Confederates quietly
moved toward the Union lines.

534
00:33:41,140 --> 00:33:43,090
"It was a most
beautiful morning.

535
00:33:43,140 --> 00:33:46,240
"It really seemed like Sunday
in the country at home.

536
00:33:46,260 --> 00:33:48,720
"The boys were scattered
around camp,

537
00:33:48,770 --> 00:33:51,550
"polishing and brightening
their muskets and

538
00:33:51,820 --> 00:33:54,970
"brushing up and cleaning
their shoes, jackets,

539
00:33:55,020 --> 00:33:57,590
"and trousers for inspection."

540
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:00,030
Private Leander Stilwell.

541
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:04,720
At the head of one Union division
was William Tecumseh Sherman,

542
00:34:04,770 --> 00:34:09,180
who had shaken off the melancholy that
had sent him home the previous year.

543
00:34:09,730 --> 00:34:12,530
His Ohioans were
encamped on a hill not far

544
00:34:12,580 --> 00:34:16,050
from a little log-built Methodist
church called Shiloh

545
00:34:16,100 --> 00:34:18,760
when the 6th
Mississippi attacked.

546
00:34:21,530 --> 00:34:24,420
"I saw men in gray
and brown clothes

547
00:34:24,570 --> 00:34:26,380
"running through the camp.

548
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:30,370
"And I saw something else, too,
something I had never seen before--

549
00:34:30,420 --> 00:34:32,960
"a gaudy sort of thing
with red bars...

550
00:34:33,210 --> 00:34:34,970
"a rebel flag."

551
00:34:38,110 --> 00:34:42,060
"We were crowding them. One more
charge, and their lines waver and break.

552
00:34:42,210 --> 00:34:45,310
"They retreat in wild
confusion. We were jubilant,

553
00:34:45,630 --> 00:34:49,140
"and the officers could not curb
the men to keep them in line."

554
00:34:49,750 --> 00:34:51,350
Sam Watkins.

555
00:34:53,790 --> 00:34:56,790
The battle extended
along a three-mile front.

556
00:34:56,890 --> 00:34:58,820
The worst fighting
was in the center,

557
00:34:58,870 --> 00:35:00,770
where the rebels
came on and on

558
00:35:00,820 --> 00:35:03,870
like "maddened demons,"
a Union soldier said.

559
00:35:05,190 --> 00:35:08,880
The generals didn't know their jobs.
The soldiers didn't know their jobs.

560
00:35:08,930 --> 00:35:11,460
It was just pure
determination to

561
00:35:11,510 --> 00:35:14,110
stand and fight
and not retreat,

562
00:35:14,270 --> 00:35:18,470
and the bloodiness of it was
just astounding to everyone.

563
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:21,680
It also corrected a southern
misconception which had said,

564
00:35:21,730 --> 00:35:25,110
"one good southern soldier is
worth ten Yankee hirelings."

565
00:35:25,210 --> 00:35:27,890
They found out that wasn't
true by a long shot.

566
00:35:28,550 --> 00:35:32,820
In a peach orchard, the federals lay
flat beneath the blossoming trees,

567
00:35:32,870 --> 00:35:34,830
firing as the rebels came,

568
00:35:35,100 --> 00:35:39,350
soft pink petals raining down
on the living and the dead.

569
00:35:42,090 --> 00:35:46,420
By late morning, thousands of untried
federal troops had seen enough.

570
00:35:46,780 --> 00:35:49,620
Most did not stop running until
they reached the river,

571
00:35:49,690 --> 00:35:53,810
where almost 5,000 men
cowered beneath the bluff.

572
00:35:54,530 --> 00:35:56,960
"We are sweeping the
field, General Johnston

573
00:35:57,010 --> 00:35:59,410
told his second in
command, Beauregard,

574
00:35:59,460 --> 00:36:02,310
"and I think we shall
press them to the river."

575
00:36:04,610 --> 00:36:06,840
Grant's back was
to the Tennessee.

576
00:36:06,890 --> 00:36:10,000
There was no sign of Buell
and nowhere else to go,

577
00:36:10,210 --> 00:36:12,830
but a thin federal line
held in the center,

578
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:15,370
Illinois and Iowa
farm boys mostly,

579
00:36:15,420 --> 00:36:17,420
prone along a
sunken road.

580
00:36:17,700 --> 00:36:19,790
Their commander,
Benjamin Prentiss,

581
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:22,730
understood the deadly
seriousness of Grant's order

582
00:36:22,780 --> 00:36:25,980
"to maintain that
position at all costs."

583
00:36:27,450 --> 00:36:30,400
The Confederates launched
a dozen massive assaults

584
00:36:30,450 --> 00:36:33,450
against what became known
as the "hornet's nest."

585
00:36:34,190 --> 00:36:38,440
Albert Sidney Johnston
himself led the last charge.

586
00:36:38,810 --> 00:36:43,220
He came out of it with bits
of his clothing nicked all up.

587
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:46,620
One boot sole was shot in
half and he flapped his--

588
00:36:46,720 --> 00:36:50,250
on--on horseback there, and said,
"they didn't trip me up that time."

589
00:36:50,450 --> 00:36:53,560
And very soon after that, they
saw him reel in the saddle

590
00:36:53,610 --> 00:36:55,690
and realized he was hurt,
and someone said,

591
00:36:55,740 --> 00:36:58,860
"General, are you wounded," and he said, "Yes, and I fear seriously,"

592
00:36:58,910 --> 00:37:01,480
And he was shot
behind the knee--

593
00:37:01,580 --> 00:37:03,730
in the femoral artery,
I suppose--

594
00:37:03,780 --> 00:37:06,790
and bled to death. They saw
blood coming out of his boot,

595
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:10,580
and he could have been easily saved
with a tourniquet, but he had sent his--

596
00:37:10,630 --> 00:37:14,830
his surgeon off to take care
of some federal prisoners.

597
00:37:19,100 --> 00:37:22,700
"Advancing a little further, we saw
General Albert Sidney Johnston

598
00:37:22,750 --> 00:37:24,630
"surrounded by his staff.

599
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:27,640
"We saw some little commotion
among those who surrounded him,

600
00:37:27,690 --> 00:37:30,850
"but we did not know at the
time that he was dead.

601
00:37:30,950 --> 00:37:33,350
"The fact was kept
from the troops."

602
00:37:33,650 --> 00:37:35,220
Sam Watkins.

603
00:37:35,570 --> 00:37:39,800
The command of the Western army
now passed to General Beauregard.

604
00:37:40,300 --> 00:37:43,420
Albert Sidney Johnston was
looked on by many people

605
00:37:43,470 --> 00:37:45,270
at the time of Shiloh,

606
00:37:45,370 --> 00:37:48,870
and especially before Shiloh, while he
was holding that line up in Kentucky,

607
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:51,510
as the South's number-
one field soldier.

608
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:55,060
Jefferson Davis viewed him as that, and when he lost Albert Sidney Johnston,

609
00:37:55,110 --> 00:37:58,460
he said, "I realized our strongest
pillar had been broken."

610
00:37:59,700 --> 00:38:03,520
Meanwhile, the center of the
Union line bent back on itself

611
00:38:03,570 --> 00:38:05,160
but would not break.

612
00:38:05,510 --> 00:38:09,010
Confederates trained sixty-two cannon at point-blank range

613
00:38:09,060 --> 00:38:10,490
and opened fire.

614
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:15,520
The hornet's nest exploded in a hail of splintered trees

615
00:38:15,620 --> 00:38:17,090
and shattered men.

616
00:38:17,610 --> 00:38:20,930
At 5:30, Prentiss and
the 2,200 survivors

617
00:38:20,980 --> 00:38:22,950
of his division surrendered.

618
00:38:24,110 --> 00:38:27,580
They had held up the Southern
advance for nearly six hours,

619
00:38:27,630 --> 00:38:29,190
and it was growing dark.

620
00:38:30,500 --> 00:38:34,600
Beauregard wired Jefferson Davis
that he had won a complete victory.

621
00:38:34,850 --> 00:38:37,800
"I had General Grant just
where I wanted him," he said,

622
00:38:37,900 --> 00:38:40,180
"and could finish him
up in the morning."

623
00:38:46,700 --> 00:38:49,900
Everywhere, wounded
men lay in agony.

624
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:52,240
Neither army had yet
devised a system

625
00:38:52,290 --> 00:38:55,030
for gathering or caring
for them on the field.

626
00:38:55,130 --> 00:38:58,630
Scores of wounded collapsed and died drinking from a mud hole

627
00:38:58,680 --> 00:39:02,200
near the peach orchard, staining the water red.

628
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:05,800
It began to rain,

629
00:39:05,850 --> 00:39:10,330
and flashes of lightning showed hogs
feeding on the un-gathered dead.

630
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:15,060
"Some cried for water,

631
00:39:15,420 --> 00:39:18,130
"others for someone to
come and help them.

632
00:39:18,300 --> 00:39:21,940
"I can hear those poor
fellows crying for water.

633
00:39:23,060 --> 00:39:27,180
"God heard them, for the heavens
opened and the rain came."

634
00:39:29,400 --> 00:39:32,140
Grant spent that night
beneath a tree

635
00:39:32,190 --> 00:39:36,130
rather than listen to the screams of the
wounded men in his headquarters.

636
00:39:36,240 --> 00:39:38,660
It was there that
Sherman found him.

637
00:39:39,300 --> 00:39:43,120
"Well, Grant," he said, "we've had
the devil's own day, haven't we?"

638
00:39:44,050 --> 00:39:45,650
"Yes," said Grant.

639
00:39:46,030 --> 00:39:48,130
"Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

640
00:39:50,850 --> 00:39:54,760
"Never to me was the sight of
reinforcing legions so welcome

641
00:39:54,860 --> 00:39:56,690
"as on that
Sunday evening

642
00:39:56,740 --> 00:39:58,770
"when Buell's
advance column

643
00:39:58,820 --> 00:40:02,280
"deployed on the bluffs
of Pittsburgh landing."

644
00:40:03,100 --> 00:40:06,300
During the night, Buell's
army finally arrived.

645
00:40:06,350 --> 00:40:09,970
The Union men marched ashore
as a band played "Dixie."

646
00:40:12,870 --> 00:40:16,290
At dawn, the union force,
now 70,000 strong,

647
00:40:16,340 --> 00:40:18,850
drove into
Beauregard's 30,000.

648
00:40:19,820 --> 00:40:22,520
The Confederates fell
back, counterattacked,

649
00:40:22,570 --> 00:40:25,690
fell back again, and
began to withdraw.

650
00:40:28,550 --> 00:40:30,750
The Union held the field.

651
00:40:33,830 --> 00:40:37,580
Covering the Confederate retreat
was Nathan Bedford Forrest,

652
00:40:37,630 --> 00:40:40,730
who now turned to lead
one last cavalry charge

653
00:40:40,780 --> 00:40:43,510
headlong into the
pursuing northern army.

654
00:40:44,110 --> 00:40:47,900
And he landed square in the
main body of the Union troops.

655
00:40:47,950 --> 00:40:51,900
He was surrounded by--one
Gray uniform in a sea of blue,

656
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:54,440
and, uh... they
began to holler,

657
00:40:54,490 --> 00:40:57,280
"Kill him! Kill the goddamn rebel.
Knock him off his horse,"

658
00:40:57,330 --> 00:41:00,630
and one soldier
did, stick his

659
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:03,550
rifle out into Forrest's side
and pulled the trigger

660
00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:07,450
and lifted Forrest clear of the saddle
with the impact of the bullet,

661
00:41:07,500 --> 00:41:09,840
and Forrest, meantime,
was slashing with his saber.

662
00:41:09,940 --> 00:41:11,950
his horse was
kicking and turning,

663
00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:14,180
and Forrest sawed him
around and got him

664
00:41:14,230 --> 00:41:16,370
clear and took off, and they were shooting after him,

665
00:41:16,420 --> 00:41:18,390
so he reached down and
grabbed one Union soldier

666
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:19,960
and swung him
up behind him

667
00:41:20,010 --> 00:41:22,710
on the crupper of the
horse to use as a shield,

668
00:41:22,810 --> 00:41:25,080
and when he got out of range,
he threw the man off

669
00:41:25,130 --> 00:41:27,180
and rode back to
join his command.

670
00:41:27,250 --> 00:41:30,380
That was the last shot fired
in the battle of Shiloh.

671
00:41:34,250 --> 00:41:37,110
The ground, Grant said,
was so covered with dead

672
00:41:37,160 --> 00:41:40,760
that it would have been possible to walk
across the clearing in any direction,

673
00:41:40,860 --> 00:41:44,510
stepping on dead bodies without
a foot touching the ground.

674
00:41:50,260 --> 00:41:51,880
"When the grave
was ready,

675
00:41:51,930 --> 00:41:55,090
"we placed the bodies
therein, two deep.

676
00:41:55,410 --> 00:41:58,940
"All the monument reared to
those brave men was a board

677
00:41:58,990 --> 00:42:01,570
"upon which I cut
with my pocket knife

678
00:42:01,770 --> 00:42:05,540
"the words '125 rebels.' "

679
00:42:11,710 --> 00:42:15,000
Two-thousand, four-hundred,
and seventy-seven men

680
00:42:15,050 --> 00:42:16,770
were killed at Shiloh.

681
00:42:17,050 --> 00:42:20,400
There were 23,000
casualties overall--

682
00:42:20,450 --> 00:42:22,590
more than all the
American casualties

683
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:25,740
in all previous American
wars combined...

684
00:42:28,180 --> 00:42:30,550
and it was only
the beginning.

685
00:42:32,910 --> 00:42:36,960
Shiloh had the same number
of casualties as Waterloo,

686
00:42:37,380 --> 00:42:41,200
and yet, when it was fought, there were
another twenty Waterloos to follow.

687
00:42:42,380 --> 00:42:44,750
And Grant, shortly
before Shiloh, said,

688
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:48,000
"I consider this war practically over.
They're ready to give up,"

689
00:42:48,950 --> 00:42:50,900
and the day after
Shiloh, he said,

690
00:42:50,950 --> 00:42:54,730
"I saw that it was going to have to be
a war of conquest if we were to win."

691
00:42:55,200 --> 00:42:56,980
Shiloh did that,

692
00:42:57,350 --> 00:42:59,970
and it sobered the nation
up something awful,

693
00:43:00,020 --> 00:43:03,820
to the realization that they had a
very bloody affair on their hands,

694
00:43:03,870 --> 00:43:06,000
and it called for a
huge reassessment

695
00:43:06,050 --> 00:43:08,160
of what this thing
was going to be.

696
00:43:09,230 --> 00:43:11,800
Years afterward, a
Union veteran said,

697
00:43:11,850 --> 00:43:14,730
the most a soldier could
say of any fight was,

698
00:43:15,030 --> 00:43:18,160
"I was worse scared
than I was at Shiloh."

699
00:43:20,570 --> 00:43:22,460
"Shiloh" is a Hebrew word

700
00:43:22,530 --> 00:43:25,160
meaning "place of peace."

701
00:43:31,730 --> 00:43:34,460
"April 11th, 1862.

702
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:38,840
"I firmly believe that before
many centuries more,

703
00:43:39,100 --> 00:43:42,100
"science will be
the master of man.

704
00:43:43,100 --> 00:43:45,440
"The engines he
will have invented

705
00:43:45,490 --> 00:43:48,160
"will be beyond his
strength to control.

706
00:43:49,230 --> 00:43:50,880
"Someday, science

707
00:43:50,930 --> 00:43:54,400
"shall have the existence
of mankind in its power,

708
00:43:54,550 --> 00:43:57,920
"and the human race
commit suicide

709
00:43:57,970 --> 00:43:59,920
"by blowing up the world."

710
00:44:00,570 --> 00:44:02,130
Henry Adams.

711
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:22,990
The armies that U. S. Grant
and George McClellan led

712
00:44:23,040 --> 00:44:25,280
were the best-
equipped In history.

713
00:44:25,950 --> 00:44:29,470
The productive capacity and
technical ingenuity of the North

714
00:44:29,520 --> 00:44:31,770
were now focused
on weapons...

715
00:44:33,310 --> 00:44:36,560
and the Civil War would see
the first railroad artillery,

716
00:44:36,660 --> 00:44:39,670
the first land mines
and telescopic sights,

717
00:44:39,870 --> 00:44:42,310
the first military telegraphs.

718
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:45,210
In 1862 alone,

719
00:44:45,260 --> 00:44:48,950
240 patents were issued
for military weapons.

720
00:44:50,620 --> 00:44:53,720
Lincoln was fascinated
by new weaponry.

721
00:44:53,770 --> 00:44:56,060
He personally tested
new rifles and

722
00:44:56,110 --> 00:44:58,630
ordered up ten Union
repeating guns,

723
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:00,880
forerunners of
the machine gun,

724
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:04,300
but he passed up a
scheme to manufacture

725
00:45:04,350 --> 00:45:07,150
canoe-shaped footwear
for walking on water,

726
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:10,420
and tactfully declined
a herd of war elephants

727
00:45:10,470 --> 00:45:12,590
offered by the
King of Siam.

728
00:45:13,060 --> 00:45:16,920
Oh, they had many crazy ideas,
along with some good ones.

729
00:45:17,090 --> 00:45:20,400
There was one plan
to use two cannon,

730
00:45:20,570 --> 00:45:24,880
each with a cannonball and the two
cannonballs connected by a chain,

731
00:45:24,930 --> 00:45:29,340
and you would fire the two cannons at the
same time, and the balls would go out,

732
00:45:29,390 --> 00:45:33,430
and the chain between them would just
cut a swath through everything in the way.

733
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:36,530
The trouble was, one cannon, of course,
went off before the other one did

734
00:45:36,580 --> 00:45:40,680
with the result that the ball went around
in a circle from the other cannon.

735
00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:47,460
The most important innovation of the whole war was the rifled musket,

736
00:45:47,510 --> 00:45:49,440
along with a
French refinement--

737
00:45:49,490 --> 00:45:52,250
Captain Claude
Minie's new bullet,

738
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:54,320
an inch-long lead slug

739
00:45:54,370 --> 00:45:57,150
that expanded into the
barrel's rifled grooves

740
00:45:57,200 --> 00:45:59,400
and spun as it left the muzzle.

741
00:46:00,290 --> 00:46:02,780
The Minie ball could
kill at half a mile

742
00:46:02,830 --> 00:46:05,500
and was accurate
at 250 yards--

743
00:46:05,550 --> 00:46:09,050
five-times as far as any
other one-man weapon.

744
00:46:09,850 --> 00:46:12,730
The age of the bayonet
charge had ended,

745
00:46:12,780 --> 00:46:16,430
though most officers did not yet
know it when the war began,

746
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:19,100
and some had still
not learned it

747
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:20,960
when the war was over.

748
00:46:21,820 --> 00:46:26,480
It was brutal stuff. The reason for the
high casualties is really quite simple--

749
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:29,600
the weapons were way
ahead of the tactics.

750
00:46:29,770 --> 00:46:31,550
The rifle itself--

751
00:46:31,650 --> 00:46:36,300
it threw a .53 caliber soft lead
bullet at a low muzzle velocity,

752
00:46:36,350 --> 00:46:37,660
and when it hit--

753
00:46:37,870 --> 00:46:41,650
the reason there were so many
amputations--if you got hit here,

754
00:46:41,850 --> 00:46:46,230
it didn't clip your bone the way the
modern steel-jacketed bullet does.

755
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:48,480
You didn't have any
bone from here to here.

756
00:46:48,530 --> 00:46:50,480
They had no choice
but to take the arm off,

757
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:54,440
and you'll see pictures of the dead on the
battlefield with their clothes in disarray

758
00:46:54,490 --> 00:46:57,750
as if someone had been
going--rifling their bodies.

759
00:46:58,270 --> 00:47:01,920
That was the men themselves tearing their
clothes up to see where the wound was,

760
00:47:01,970 --> 00:47:05,030
and they knew perfectly well if
they were gut shot, they'd die.

761
00:47:12,130 --> 00:47:14,950
"April 25th, 1862,

762
00:47:15,050 --> 00:47:17,260
"Pittsburgh Landing,
Tennessee.

763
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:18,950
"Dear Julia...

764
00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:22,380
"I'm no longer boss.

765
00:47:23,290 --> 00:47:26,140
"General Halleck is here,
and I'm truly glad of it.

766
00:47:26,610 --> 00:47:29,800
"I hope the papers will let
me alone in the future.

767
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:32,950
"If the papers only knew
how little ambition I have

768
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:35,340
"outside of putting
down this rebellion

769
00:47:35,390 --> 00:47:38,140
"and getting back once
more to live quietly

770
00:47:38,190 --> 00:47:40,590
"and unobtrusively
with my family,

771
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:43,350
"I think they would say
fewer falsehoods."

772
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:45,330
Ulysses S. Grant.

773
00:47:47,680 --> 00:47:51,680
Ulysses S. Grant's reward for the
costly Union victory at Shiloh

774
00:47:51,730 --> 00:47:54,230
was to be removed
from field command.

775
00:47:55,020 --> 00:47:58,340
Grant's superior was
General Henry Wager Halleck,

776
00:47:58,390 --> 00:48:02,160
a calculating administrator who
was jealous of Grant's success

777
00:48:02,210 --> 00:48:04,980
and anxious to get
rid of his chief rival.

778
00:48:07,500 --> 00:48:11,580
After the battle of Fort Donelson, he
spread rumors Grant was drinking.

779
00:48:12,740 --> 00:48:14,970
After the fearful
losses at Shiloh,

780
00:48:15,170 --> 00:48:17,170
he had Grant reassigned.

781
00:48:21,340 --> 00:48:23,180
Grant decided to quit,

782
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:26,960
but his friend William Tecumseh
Sherman talked him out of it.

783
00:48:27,260 --> 00:48:29,750
"You could not be quiet
at home for a week," he said,

784
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:31,490
"when armies are moving."

785
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:35,410
Grant and Sherman
were both Ohio boys

786
00:48:35,460 --> 00:48:39,850
and West Pointers who were fond
of cigars, scorned pomp and politics,

787
00:48:39,900 --> 00:48:42,260
and had fared poorly
in civilian life.

788
00:48:42,770 --> 00:48:45,690
Grant enjoyed Sherman's
rapid-fire brilliance

789
00:48:45,790 --> 00:48:49,720
and was grateful for the dispatch with
which he carried out every order.

790
00:48:51,390 --> 00:48:54,140
Sherman admired his
friend's cool temper,

791
00:48:54,190 --> 00:48:56,520
his steadiness in
the midst of crisis,

792
00:48:56,570 --> 00:49:00,180
and what he called Grant's
"simple faith in success."

793
00:49:01,040 --> 00:49:03,040
They trusted each other.

794
00:49:04,330 --> 00:49:07,240
"I'm a damned sight
smarter than Grant.

795
00:49:07,240 --> 00:49:10,640
"I know more about organization,
supply, and administration,

796
00:49:10,690 --> 00:49:13,060
"and about everything
else than he does,

797
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:16,820
"but I'll tell you where he beats me
and where he beats the world--

798
00:49:17,030 --> 00:49:21,330
"he don't care a damn for what
the enemy does out of his sight,

799
00:49:21,620 --> 00:49:24,250
"but it scares me like hell."

800
00:49:24,520 --> 00:49:26,720
William Tecumseh Sherman.

801
00:49:32,730 --> 00:49:36,140
"Any attempt now to separate
the freedom of the slave

802
00:49:36,300 --> 00:49:38,300
"from the victory
of the government,

803
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:41,900
"any attempt to secure
peace to the whites

804
00:49:41,950 --> 00:49:44,390
"while leaving the
blacks in chains,

805
00:49:45,050 --> 00:49:47,150
"will be labor lost.

806
00:49:48,510 --> 00:49:51,410
"The American people and the government at Washington

807
00:49:51,460 --> 00:49:54,360
"may refuse to
recognize it for a time,

808
00:49:55,170 --> 00:49:59,930
"but the inexorable logic of events
will force it upon them in the end--

809
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:04,620
"that the war now being
waged in this land

810
00:50:05,040 --> 00:50:09,420
"is a war for and
against slavery."

811
00:50:10,390 --> 00:50:12,310
Frederick Douglass.

812
00:50:13,380 --> 00:50:17,880
Letter by letter, speech by
speech, month after month,

813
00:50:17,930 --> 00:50:21,470
Frederick Douglass tirelessly lobbied
the government in Washington,

814
00:50:21,620 --> 00:50:24,640
urging Lincoln to
emancipate the slaves...

815
00:50:27,450 --> 00:50:32,020
but the president still insisted the
war was being fought for union

816
00:50:33,050 --> 00:50:36,280
and publicly avoided
Douglass and the debate.

817
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:43,850
"Our southern friend tell us the
North is fighting for Negroes.

818
00:50:44,410 --> 00:50:46,460
"Our Union friend says,

819
00:50:46,510 --> 00:50:49,870
"they're not fighting to free the
Negroes, but for the Union.

820
00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:51,790
"Very well:

821
00:50:52,270 --> 00:50:54,560
"let the whites fight
for what they want;

822
00:50:54,660 --> 00:50:57,290
"we Negroes fight
for what we want.

823
00:50:57,860 --> 00:51:00,760
"Liberty must take the day,

824
00:51:01,300 --> 00:51:02,910
"nothing shorter.

825
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:07,390
"We care nothing
about the Union;

826
00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:12,360
"we've been in it
slaves over 250 years."

827
00:51:19,050 --> 00:51:22,050
"Whatever nation gets
the control of the Ohio,

828
00:51:22,100 --> 00:51:24,040
"Mississippi, and
Missouri Rivers

829
00:51:24,090 --> 00:51:25,930
"will control the continent."

830
00:51:26,260 --> 00:51:28,480
William Tecumseh Sherman.

831
00:51:31,940 --> 00:51:35,450
Out west, Union naval
strategy was straightforward:

832
00:51:35,500 --> 00:51:39,350
seize control of the Mississippi
and cut the Confederacy in two.

833
00:51:41,720 --> 00:51:45,230
On April 7th, Union
gunboats and 2,000 troops

834
00:51:45,280 --> 00:51:48,030
took the Confederate
fortress at Island Number 10

835
00:51:48,130 --> 00:51:50,030
near New Madrid, Missouri,

836
00:51:50,130 --> 00:51:53,220
leaving the river open as
far south as Memphis.

837
00:51:59,650 --> 00:52:02,060
Two months later,
Memphis fell.

838
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:17,970
On the night of April 24th,

839
00:52:18,020 --> 00:52:21,410
a 60-year-old flag officer,
David G. Farragut,

840
00:52:21,460 --> 00:52:23,770
started north up
the Mississippi

841
00:52:23,970 --> 00:52:26,580
intent on capturing
New Orleans.

842
00:52:27,300 --> 00:52:29,630
But first, he had to get
by the heavy guns

843
00:52:29,680 --> 00:52:31,890
at Forts Jackson
and St. Phillips,

844
00:52:31,940 --> 00:52:34,060
seventy miles
below the city.

845
00:52:36,540 --> 00:52:39,540
When the moon rose, the
Confederates opened fire

846
00:52:39,590 --> 00:52:43,010
and sent blazing rafts
drifting into the Union fleet.

847
00:52:53,100 --> 00:52:56,100
The first vessel was
hit forty-two times.

848
00:52:56,750 --> 00:52:59,800
Farragut's own flagship
was set on fire,

849
00:53:01,930 --> 00:53:05,450
but somehow the entire
fleet made it past the forts.

850
00:53:06,420 --> 00:53:09,020
New Orleans surrendered
the next day.

851
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:17,650
Farragut had the American
flag raised over city hall.

852
00:53:19,220 --> 00:53:21,320
"New Orleans gone--

853
00:53:21,800 --> 00:53:24,130
"and with it, the
Confederacy?

854
00:53:24,700 --> 00:53:26,960
"Are we not cut in two?

855
00:53:27,120 --> 00:53:30,640
"That Mississippi
ruins us, if lost."

856
00:53:30,940 --> 00:53:32,750
Mary Chesnut.

857
00:53:34,420 --> 00:53:36,250
"Tupelo, Mississippi.

858
00:53:36,800 --> 00:53:38,850
"I don't know how the
war will be decided

859
00:53:38,900 --> 00:53:42,080
"if England and France don't
interfere and stop the war,

860
00:53:42,130 --> 00:53:45,430
"and if the Confederacy has to
gain her independence by fighting,

861
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:47,900
"I am afraid she will
have to give it up,

862
00:53:47,970 --> 00:53:51,410
"for there are so few provisions in
this portion of the Confederacy."

863
00:53:51,820 --> 00:53:53,390
James Jackson.

864
00:53:55,050 --> 00:53:59,030
In the following months, Farragut's fleet
gained control of the southern Mississippi

865
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:01,960
as far north as Baton
Rouge and Natchez.

866
00:54:03,230 --> 00:54:06,130
But the North did not
possess the whole river:

867
00:54:06,180 --> 00:54:09,800
the Confederate stronghold
at Vicksburg still held.

868
00:54:20,550 --> 00:54:23,210
"Republics--
everybody jawing,

869
00:54:23,310 --> 00:54:26,130
"everybody putting their
mouths in, nothing sacred,

870
00:54:26,180 --> 00:54:28,100
"all confusion of babble.

871
00:54:28,150 --> 00:54:30,250
"Republics can't
carry on war.

872
00:54:30,300 --> 00:54:34,130
"Hurrah for a strong
one-man government!"

873
00:54:34,330 --> 00:54:36,140
Mary Chesnut.

874
00:54:44,620 --> 00:54:46,740
From the southern
White House in Richmond,

875
00:54:46,790 --> 00:54:50,260
Jefferson Davis struggled to
keep the war effort on track.

876
00:54:50,890 --> 00:54:53,910
Southern industry grew,
driven by necessity,

877
00:54:53,960 --> 00:54:57,990
and the Confederate Government,
founded on the principle of decentralization,

878
00:54:58,040 --> 00:55:00,280
found itself
controlling everything...

879
00:55:00,800 --> 00:55:04,800
from the forging of cannon at the big
Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond

880
00:55:05,450 --> 00:55:07,260
to the daily output
of the women

881
00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:10,510
who spun cloth for
uniforms in their parlors.

882
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:14,190
In Charleston,
Mary Chesnut's circle

883
00:55:14,240 --> 00:55:17,880
knit socks for Stonewall
Jackson's entire brigade.

884
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:21,530
Women wove boots
from palmetto fronds,

885
00:55:21,580 --> 00:55:25,410
and saved their urine from which
to distill niter for gunpowder.

886
00:55:26,780 --> 00:55:29,490
Southerners grew
poppies to yield opium,

887
00:55:29,540 --> 00:55:32,290
and made coffee
from corn and peas,

888
00:55:32,340 --> 00:55:34,670
hypodermic needles
from thorns,

889
00:55:34,940 --> 00:55:37,210
rope from Spanish Moss...

890
00:55:39,900 --> 00:55:42,440
but the Confederate
army was shrinking.

891
00:55:42,590 --> 00:55:46,490
The term of enlistment for the earliest
volunteers was up in the spring.

892
00:55:46,540 --> 00:55:48,670
Most men planned
to go home.

893
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:52,390
In April, at the insistence
of Jefferson Davis,

894
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:55,050
the Confederate Congress
passed two laws:

895
00:55:55,110 --> 00:55:58,410
one extended all
enlistments for the duration;

896
00:55:59,830 --> 00:56:03,180
the other required all able-
bodied white men between

897
00:56:03,230 --> 00:56:06,430
eighteen and thirty-five
to serve for three years.

898
00:56:08,310 --> 00:56:11,850
It was the first national
draft in American history.

899
00:56:13,520 --> 00:56:16,140
"The Conscription Act,
at one fell swoop,

900
00:56:16,190 --> 00:56:18,750
"strikes down the
sovereignty of the states,

901
00:56:18,850 --> 00:56:23,220
"tramples upon the constitutional rights
and personal liberty of the citizens,

902
00:56:23,470 --> 00:56:26,660
"and arms the president
with imperial powers."

903
00:56:27,000 --> 00:56:29,420
Governor Joseph E.
Brown of Georgia.

904
00:56:30,100 --> 00:56:33,590
"Mrs. Davis is
being utterly upset.

905
00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:36,660
"She is beginning to hear the carping and faultfinding

906
00:56:36,710 --> 00:56:39,030
"to which the president
is subjected.

907
00:56:39,130 --> 00:56:42,240
"There must be an
opposition in a free country,

908
00:56:42,610 --> 00:56:45,140
"but it is very uncomfortable."

909
00:56:45,660 --> 00:56:47,540
Mary Chesnut.

910
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:52,980
Veterans were especially resentful
because potential draftees

911
00:56:53,080 --> 00:56:54,960
who owned twenty
slaves or more

912
00:56:55,010 --> 00:56:56,470
could be exempted.

913
00:56:57,730 --> 00:57:02,130
"A law was made allowing every person
who owned twenty Negroes to go home.

914
00:57:02,230 --> 00:57:05,610
"It gave us the blues.
We wanted twenty Negroes!

915
00:57:05,660 --> 00:57:09,860
"There was raised the howl of
'rich man's war, poor man's fight!' "

916
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:12,830
"From this time on
till the end of the war,

917
00:57:12,880 --> 00:57:16,080
"a soldier was simply
a machine, a conscript.

918
00:57:16,130 --> 00:57:18,240
"All our pride and
valor had gone,

919
00:57:18,290 --> 00:57:22,020
"and we were sick of war and
cursed the southern Confederacy."

920
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:23,730
Sam Watkins.

921
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:29,110
Nearly half the southerners
eligible for the new draft

922
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:30,740
failed to sign up.

923
00:57:40,690 --> 00:57:42,370
"April 21st.

924
00:57:42,420 --> 00:57:45,910
"Sixteen days have now
been spent in this place.

925
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:49,060
"Our grand army has
again come to a halt.

926
00:57:49,110 --> 00:57:52,350
"Under the dry pine leaves
where we encamp,

927
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:56,350
"a great secesh army of
wood ticks have wintered.

928
00:57:56,400 --> 00:57:58,270
"Few are so happy

929
00:57:58,320 --> 00:58:01,300
"as not to find half a dozen of
these villainous bloodsuckers

930
00:58:01,350 --> 00:58:04,420
"sticking in his flesh
every morning."

931
00:58:04,520 --> 00:58:06,670
Chaplain A. M. Stewart.

932
00:58:09,100 --> 00:58:12,640
"The firing from the Confederate
lines was of little consequence,

933
00:58:12,690 --> 00:58:16,040
"not amounting to over ten or
twelve artillery shots each day,

934
00:58:16,240 --> 00:58:18,930
"a number of these being
directed at the huge balloon

935
00:58:18,980 --> 00:58:22,420
"which went up daily from General
Fitz John's headquarters."

936
00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:30,370
"When about 100 feet above
the ground, the rope broke,

937
00:58:30,420 --> 00:58:32,830
"and the General sailed
off toward Richmond

938
00:58:32,880 --> 00:58:36,250
"at a greater speed than the
army of the Potomac is moving.

939
00:58:37,370 --> 00:58:40,210
"He had sufficient calmness
to pull the valve rope,

940
00:58:40,260 --> 00:58:43,750
"and gradually descended
about three miles from camp."

941
00:58:54,300 --> 00:58:57,630
On the peninsula, General
George McClellan's huge army

942
00:58:57,680 --> 00:59:00,670
sat in front of the smaller
rebel force at Yorktown

943
00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:02,440
for almost a month.

944
00:59:05,700 --> 00:59:08,440
It rained two out of
every three days.

945
00:59:08,490 --> 00:59:10,270
Hundreds fell ill.

946
00:59:12,480 --> 00:59:15,830
"I feel that the fate of a
nation depends on me,

947
00:59:15,880 --> 00:59:19,590
"and that I have not one single
friend at the seat of government."

948
00:59:19,810 --> 00:59:21,440
George McClellan.

949
00:59:24,650 --> 00:59:29,300
McClellan had moved more than ninety
federal guns to Yorktown by May 3rd,

950
00:59:30,320 --> 00:59:34,490
some so massive that it took 100
horses to haul them up along

951
00:59:34,540 --> 00:59:36,890
hastily constructed
timber highways

952
00:59:36,940 --> 00:59:39,290
called "cor-du-roi" roads.

953
00:59:41,600 --> 00:59:44,130
McClellan finally
decided to act

954
00:59:44,180 --> 00:59:47,420
and carefully planned a massive
bombardment for May 5th.

955
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:52,230
But on the night of the 3rd, General
Magruder's Confederate batteries

956
00:59:52,280 --> 00:59:54,830
suddenly intensified their fire.

957
00:59:56,240 --> 00:59:58,540
McClellan braced
for an attack,

958
01:00:00,010 --> 01:00:03,060
but the next morning, the
Confederates had vanished.

959
01:00:05,660 --> 01:00:07,660
Disbelieving federal troops

960
01:00:07,710 --> 01:00:10,460
edged into the deserted
Southern camps.

961
01:00:12,060 --> 01:00:15,570
Magruder had packed up
his show and moved on,

962
01:00:16,440 --> 01:00:19,910
but McClellan declared
it a Union victory.

963
01:00:20,330 --> 01:00:22,570
"The success is brilliant,

964
01:00:22,770 --> 01:00:26,870
"and you may rest assured that its
effects will be of the greatest importance.

965
01:00:27,230 --> 01:00:30,480
"There shall be no delay in
following up the rebels."

966
01:00:35,330 --> 01:00:38,430
The Union men now cautiously
followed the rebel army

967
01:00:38,480 --> 01:00:40,410
west towards Richmond.

968
01:00:43,940 --> 01:00:47,810
"May 20. Richmond is
just nine miles off.

969
01:00:48,050 --> 01:00:50,450
"The Negroes are
delighted to see us,

970
01:00:50,500 --> 01:00:53,300
"but the whites look as if
they would like to kill us."

971
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:56,140
Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

972
01:01:05,000 --> 01:01:09,300
From McClellan's lines, you could
hear the bells of Richmond tolling.

973
01:01:09,350 --> 01:01:12,280
You could hear the church
bells in the public clock striking,

974
01:01:12,330 --> 01:01:13,810
He was that close.

975
01:01:15,890 --> 01:01:19,890
A worried Jefferson Davis now
prepared for a siege of Richmond,

976
01:01:20,190 --> 01:01:23,960
relying more and more on the
advice of his close military advisor,

977
01:01:24,010 --> 01:01:25,420
Robert E. Lee.

978
01:01:26,140 --> 01:01:28,600
When Davis asked where
Lee thought the South's

979
01:01:28,650 --> 01:01:30,870
next defensive line
should be drawn

980
01:01:30,920 --> 01:01:33,720
once Richmond
fell, Lee said,

981
01:01:33,880 --> 01:01:35,920
"Richmond must not fall.

982
01:01:36,420 --> 01:01:38,520
"It shall not be given up."

983
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:44,480
Still, George McClellan
refused to attack.

984
01:01:44,630 --> 01:01:46,860
Though his army still
outnumbered the rebels,

985
01:01:46,910 --> 01:01:49,620
he remained convinced
the opposite was true.

986
01:01:50,410 --> 01:01:54,180
One observer noted that
McClellan had a particular faculty

987
01:01:54,280 --> 01:01:56,980
for "realizing hallucinations."

988
01:01:58,970 --> 01:02:02,310
He demanded
another 40,000 men.

989
01:02:02,920 --> 01:02:06,560
"If he had a million men, he would
swear the enemy had two millions,

990
01:02:06,610 --> 01:02:09,940
"and then he would sit down in
the mud and yell for three."

991
01:02:10,210 --> 01:02:11,980
Edwin M. Stanton.

992
01:02:21,780 --> 01:02:26,360
With the year half gone, the Union's
grand strategy had stalled.

993
01:02:28,300 --> 01:02:31,170
The Western Campaign
begun by U. S. Grant

994
01:02:31,220 --> 01:02:34,270
had ground to a halt
in north Mississippi,

995
01:02:35,740 --> 01:02:40,110
and McClellan's mighty forces were
paralyzed in front of Richmond.

996
01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:43,430
There was worse to come:

997
01:02:43,580 --> 01:02:47,820
the killing that would soon break out
in Virginia would continue all year

998
01:02:47,920 --> 01:02:49,720
and come to a climax

999
01:02:49,770 --> 01:02:52,470
along a tiny creek
in western Maryland

1000
01:02:52,520 --> 01:02:54,390
called The Antietam.

1001
01:03:01,760 --> 01:03:04,450
"We talk of the
irrepressible conflict

1002
01:03:04,500 --> 01:03:07,320
"and practically give
the lie to our talk.

1003
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:10,960
"We wage war against
slaveholding rebels

1004
01:03:11,060 --> 01:03:13,160
"and yet protect and
augment the motive

1005
01:03:13,210 --> 01:03:15,770
"which has moved the
slaveholders to rebellion.

1006
01:03:16,120 --> 01:03:18,090
"We strike at the effect

1007
01:03:18,260 --> 01:03:20,790
"and leave the
cause unharmed.

1008
01:03:21,860 --> 01:03:24,080
"Fire will not
burn it out of us,

1009
01:03:24,300 --> 01:03:26,600
"water cannot
wash it out of us,

1010
01:03:26,650 --> 01:03:29,650
"that this war with the
slaveholders can never be brought

1011
01:03:29,700 --> 01:03:32,580
"to a desirable
termination until slavery...

1012
01:03:32,780 --> 01:03:35,900
"the guilty cause of all
our national troubles,

1013
01:03:36,270 --> 01:03:37,820
"has been totally

1014
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:40,220
"and forever abolished."

1015
01:03:41,030 --> 01:03:42,780
Frederick Douglass.