Original subtitles

‐ Ulysses S. Grant.

This man's name is U. S. Grant.

‐ A military life had no charms for me.

‐ Grant, you know the rules about drink.

Resign or court‐martial.

‐ I'm not asking you to speak.

I'm asking you to lead.

‐ There were but two parties now,

traitors and patriots.

I believe if I can take both forts,

we can advance as far as Nashville.

‐ When I wish to consult you on the subject,

I will notify you.

‐ General Buell's men?

‐ They're three days out.

‐ We'll move on Corinth when he gets here.

There is little doubt that Corinth will fall easily.

‐ Fire!

‐ Come on, now, boys, pitch in.

I'm right behind you.

Fire the cannon!

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

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

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

‐ The greatest general of his time.

‐ A military genius.

‐ A bloody butcher.

‐ A corrupt president.

‐ A belligerent drunk who got lucky.

He didn't get lucky.

‐ Ulysses S. Grant is this perfectly average,

humble individual from a poor, hardscrabble background.

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

‐ But he's got this dogged determination,

this bulldog mentality.

‐ This guy comes from nothing,

rises to the highest ranks

of the Union army.

‐ Fights bloody, terrible battles.

‐ With indomitable will.

‐ To save the Union.

‐ To heal his country.

‐ To lead the nation towards justice for everybody.

‐ He's the unheroic hero

of our greatest national epic, the American Civil War.

‐ It's truly an American story

not only of patriotism to the nation

but for the values, who we are,

and who we aspire to be.

‐ Dear Julia...

the battle at this place was the most desperate

that has ever taken place on the continent,

and I don't look for another like it.

‐ The battle of Shiloh is the bloodiest battle

in American history up to that time.

The nation is shocked

when the casualty reports come out.

‐ Grant doesn't come out of Shiloh looking very good.

You know, he was "Unconditional Surrender" Grant

at Fort Donelson,

became a hero.

And now all of a sudden, people are asking,

"What happened?"

‐ The casualty list and the fact that Grant

was surprised on the first day

overshadow the fact of the victory.

‐ Rumors start reaching Washington

that explain that surprise as Grant must be

on the bottle once again.

But the president answered

those critical of Grant by saying,

"I can't spare this man.

He fights."

‐ After the bloodbath of Shiloh...

Grant's superior,

Henry W. Halleck,

removes Grant from his army command...

with no duties,

no real authority, nothing.

‐ Grant is so frustrated by this.

Halleck is not aggressive,

and then you have someone like Grant,

who is very go‐get‐'em.

He's ready to jump in, grab the initiative.

Grant wants to finish off

what's left of the Confederate army

that attacked him at Shiloh

but are having time to reorganize themselves

as they fall back into Corinth.

‐ They're well defended.

I would say quite active.

They're preparing for battle.

‐ Respectfully, General Halleck, that smoke?

It's plain. They're burning supplies.

It suggests they're preparing to retreat, sir.

‐ Hear that?

I knew it.

Trains coming in every day.

They're reinforcing.

‐ Again, sir, I differ. This is a retreat.

Our railroad men have ears on the tracks.

They say it's empty trains coming in

and loaded ones going out.

They're withdrawing.

Let's move on them now‐‐

‐ Enough, Grant.

After Shiloh, I'd have thought you'd have learned your lesson.

‐ Grant is like, "Speed, tempo‐‐these are weapons

that can be used for an adversary that's on the run."

Grant recognizes there's an opportunity,

but he also knows the windows of opportunity

are very small,

and if you don't take advantage of them,

they'll pass you by.

And Grant sees this as a missed opportunity.

‐ General.

‐ Rebs are gone.

Nothing but a bunch of scarecrows.

‐ Send a telegraph to the president.

Corinth is ours.

It's a great Union victory.

‐ The possession of Corinth was of strategic importance,

but the victory was barren in every other particular.

Corinth had already been evacuated.

A well‐directed attack would at least have partially

destroyed the defending army.

‐ Corinth has fallen. Grant is like,

"Great, this is an opportunity to strike out.

We should go to Atlanta. We should go to Vicksburg."

And what happens? Halleck sits tight.

He disperses the army,

and things slow down in the western theater.

‐ Keep in mind that in the early years of the war,

there are really two distinct theaters.

The west is where Grant is.

And there's the eastern theater,

and this is the fights of the Union army

against essentially the Army of Northern Virginia of Lee.

‐ So while Grant has been demoted out west,

in the east, Robert E. Lee

has taken over the Army of Northern Virginia.

And the average result in the eastern theater

is that the Union army loses

to an undermanned Confederate army.

‐ In the east, Lincoln's experience with his generals

had been bad, trending to worse.

‐ Abraham Lincoln had seen Robert E. Lee defeat

an entire bench of Union commanders.

‐ By this time, Grant is in a bad situation too.

That second year of the war is just not very good for him.

In fact, he calls it, of course,

the darkest days of the war.

‐ Dear Julia, I am no longer boss.

What the next move is or the part I am to take,

I do not know.

‐ What's going on?

‐ I've had enough.

I'm resigning.

‐ Oh, for God's sake.

‐ Look, I want to fight and win this war,

but if Halleck has me sit it out,

I might as well sit it out at home.

‐ You're not resigning.

‐ If I can't fight, well, then I'm useless.

‐ Sam, you're the most useful man we have.

I know it. You know‐‐ By God, Lincoln?

He knows it.

‐ Look at this.

It says I was drunk at Shiloh.

‐ Oh, hell.

Forget the papers.

Listen.

You know the next move is Vicksburg.

You can take Vicksburg.

Who else can do it?

Halleck?

‐ Vicksburg.

Lincoln was right.

Vicksburg is the key.

‐ Controlling Vicksburg allowed food and other goods

to move freely across the Mississippi

and get onto railcars

and feed the Confederacy in the east.

Without it, the Confederacy can be cut in two.

But for any army in history,

capturing Vicksburg would be a daunting task.

‐ The city of Vicksburg is on the east bank

of the Mississippi River.

And it is nestled among bluffs that tower 300 feet

above a horseshoe‐shaped bend of the Mississippi.

The line of defense consisted of nine major forts

connected by a continuous line of trenches and rifle pits

that stretched for more than eight miles

and then 172 big guns.

‐ Back east, Abraham Lincoln was at that moment

about to rid himself of his general and chief

George McClellan,

and the replacement that he pitches upon

is Henry Wager Halleck.

He brings Halleck east.

‐ And so finally, the clouds part,

and Halleck gives Grant the authority

to command as Grant sees fit,

and the interesting thing is, it takes Grant

all of one day

to start organizing an offensive against Vicksburg.

‐ I would call Grant's Vicksburg campaign

his masterpiece.

It's the centerpiece of the war.

But Vicksburg was incredibly difficult to get at.

‐ When Grant starts this campaign,

Grant is on the western side of the river.

Vicksburg, of course, is on the eastern side of the river.

‐ North of Vicksburg was a great, gigantic swamp.

He needs to put his troops on open ground,

but the only open ground is below Vicksburg

on the eastern side of the river.

Well, how are you going to get troops below Vicksburg?

You just can't send transports and gunboats

because they would have to run the batteries at Vicksburg

to get past the defenses.

‐ Now, throughout the winter, Grant will orchestrate

a series of bayou campaigns, as they were called.

‐ Grant makes seven attempts to get at Vicksburg.

All of these are efforts to get around the city

without having to run those batteries,

which is their great fear.

‐ Among the operations is excavation of a canal.

It enthralls Abraham Lincoln, who almost on a daily basis

would send Grant a telegraph asking,

"How's work on the canal coming along?"

And Grant would send back these very rosy reports.

But Sherman was far more candid when he said,

"The canal don't amount to much."

And by late March, even Grant would realize

that this canal was a bust.

And at this point in time,

it's the rainy season in Mississippi.

‐ The whole country was covered with water.

Troops could scarcely find dry ground

on which to pitch their tents.

Malarial fevers broke out among the men.

‐ Vicksburg shows a number of qualities of Grant.

There's again a degree of determination.

He tries every which way to come at Vicksburg,

but on any battlefield or in any campaign,

results do matter.

‐ Now, at this point in time,

Lincoln changed his generals

almost as frequently as he changed his shirts.

So Grant realized that his time and his options

were running out.

‐ General.

‐ Have you heard?

I'm stuck in the mud in northern Mississippi.

Vicksburg.

We need to get out of this mud and into the water.

‐ What do you mean?

‐ Use the river to advance.

Move our men south.

Ferry them across here.

‐ But we'll need to get ships south to transport our men.

‐ If we move those ships past the Vicksburg guns,

they'll blow us out of the water.

‐ It's too risky.

‐ There's no other way.

It's time to take a risk.

Gentlemen...

I'm gonna run their guns.

‐ This is thought to be suicidal.

Everybody believes this is a losing proposition.

‐ The gunboats of the Mississippi squadron,

although they are ironclad,

the roofs of these gunboats

are vulnerable to a plunging fire.

‐ Sherman cautions him against it.

Sherman says, "I want this on paper

that I'm against this."

And Grant can live with that.

‐ Grant had something to prove during the Civil War.

He must have known that this was his chance to show

what he had inside him.

‐ The plan is, while the boats will run the batteries,

Grant will march his men down the western side of the river.

Ironclads provide protection for his transports.

The transports are there because they are

gonna move his troops from one side

of the river to the other

and then run a land campaign

to come in from the eastern side.

‐ In preparation, all the gunboats

are painted black.

Bales of cotton, bales of hay are stacked

around the engines to muffle the sounds,

as well as out on the gun decks,

to absorb incoming rounds of Confederate ammunition.

Around 11:00 at night,

the gunboats and transport vessels,

in single‐file line, will slowly drift

with the current.

‐ Sir, they've set fire to the opposite shore

so they can see us coming.

‐ There they go.

‐ The enemy were evidently expecting our fleet.

The sight was magnificent...

but terrible.

‐ Now, on the night of April the 16th,

Admiral David Porter pays very close attention

as to where the shot and shell are hitting his vessels.

They are hitting his smokestacks,

but almost none are getting any lower to where the vital parts

of your boats are situated.

And he realizes the Confederates can't fire

against the near bank of the Mississippi.

And so Porter orders all his gunboats to hug the shoreline.

So close did they come that almost all

the Confederate shots are now flying harmlessly overhead.

‐ They're getting through, Rawlins.

They're getting through.

We're gonna take Vicksburg in a few days.

By God, at last.

‐ We'll end this war now.

‐ I think so too, John.

Let's see where we stand when the sun comes up.

Get a message to Admiral Porter,

see what condition the boats and the men are in.

‐ Sir.

‐ Due to the success of the passage

on the night of April the 16th,

Grant would transport 24,000 soldiers

across the mighty river.

‐ I think what we see in Vicksburg

is the maturity of Grant

and the decisions that he makes.

It's an extraordinary campaign at the operational level.

How do armies move from point to point?

How do they sustain themselves?

And that's all separate from battle itself.

‐ Grant's decision to run those batteries,

the determination, the grit,

this is utterly part of his makeup.

And the loss of ships running Vicksburg batteries is one.

‐ All the labors, hardships,

and exposures were for the accomplishment

of this one object.

I was on dry ground

on the same side of the river with the enemy.

‐ So he's now run the batteries,

he's crossed over the Mississippi River,

and Grant is now making progress in the west.

Meanwhile in the eastern theater,

it's not going well.

‐ At one point, the Union army

is losing something like 200 men a day

to desertion in early 1863.

So the army is literally leaving the field.

And then in May of 1863,

you get Lee's greatest victory of the war

at Chancellorsville.

‐ This is Robert E. Lee's high point.

Outnumbered two to one, this is the whole idea

of one Confederate could fight three Union soldiers.

Here he proves it.

The Union public is starting to feel like

this is unwinnable.

And so there is a ticking clock politically,

and everyone is watching to see

if Grant will be successful.

‐ In May of 1863,

Grant's on that open ground below Vicksburg.

Now that, mind you, is only the beginning

of his campaign, though.

'Cause now, once on the ground,

that's when the campaign really

has to move into high gear.

‐ Once on the Vicksburg side of the river,

most people would have expected Grant

to march north toward Vicksburg.

And yet he doesn't do anything like that.

First of all, you don't attack

where the enemy expects you to attack,

from the south.

Second of all, in command

of the roughly 30,000 troops of Vicksburg

is John C. Pemberton.

And Pemberton's fortifications are wildly strong.

‐ Rather than take the direct road to Vicksburg,

Grant opts to move in a northeasterly direction,

cut Pemberton's line of supply and communication,

isolate his opponent in Vicksburg,

and then move in for the kill.

Over the next 17 days, Grant's army will push deep

into the interior of the state of Mississippi.

‐ However, in the state capital of Jackson,

another Confederate force was beginning to organize

under the command of Joseph Johnston.

So Grant was really facing two separate Confederate armies

deep in enemy territory

with a extraordinarily limited supply line.

‐ There is actually great risk for that moment.

He turns his back on Pemberton's army,

nearly the same size of his own.

A commander always needs to know himself,

know the environment, know the enemy.

He knows John Pemberton.

He knows he's not aggressive,

and he thinks,

"If I strike quickly, I can defeat them

"in piecemeal before they join,

"and therefore, it's an advantage

to have this central position."

And that's exactly what he does.

He accepts risk by leaving Pemberton in his rear,

and he's gonna go ahead and turn and attack Jackson.

‐ And on May the 14th,

Grant's armies will drive Confederate forces

out of Jackson

and destroy Pemberton's line of supply and communication.

With Johnston's forces scattered to the winds,

Grant will turn west toward Vicksburg.

‐ Pemberton all of a sudden

realizes Grant has turned west.

And this is when Pemberton decides,

"I gotta stop and give battle."

The numbers are largely equal,

somewhere less than 30,000 on each side.

‐ If Ulysses S. Grant loses a stand‐up fight,

his army is in trouble.

They have cast off most of their logistics.

They are in Confederate territory.

But if there is a way he can beat the Confederate army

without having to storm Vicksburg,

he is more than willing to do it.

‐ Champion Hill, where Pemberton had chosen

to receive us,

was well selected.

It is one of the highest points

and commanded all the ground.

Tell General McClernand to have his men advance quickly.

Osterhaus and Carr to push the center.

Blair and Smith should advance quickly on the left.

‐ Grant could feel a battlefield.

He could see it in his mind,

not just in space, because keep in mind

it's not just who's on the left, the right,

the center, but in time...

because it's sequencing the different activities.

And that is really just short of genius.

‐ I see a break in Pemberton's line.

Tell McPherson to flank to the left

and press them hard.

‐ The rebs are running, sir.

‐ Hell, they're running all the way to Vicksburg.

‐ Send General Osterhaus to follow them.

I want to thin them out before we face them again

at Vicksburg.

‐ An army on the move is an army to be destroyed.

And therefore, he's gonna continue

to push Pemberton's army.

And this is gonna drive the Confederates back

into the defenses of Vicksburg.

‐ Grant took enormous risk when he went east

rather than immediately to Vicksburg.

But he very deftly defeats piecemeal

the different Confederate forces

that are trying to come to reinforce Vicksburg,

and essentially, it's a siege from there on out.

‐ As long as we could hold our position,

the enemy was limited in supplies of food,

men, and ammunition.

‐ Keep these men digging, Captain.

Let's be done with this by nightfall.

‐ Yes, sir.

‐ Ulysses S. Grant has now

gone down the Mississippi River.

He's in the midst of the Vicksburg Campaign.

In 17 days, Grant's army marched

200 miles and won five battles.

And now we are talking about a siege.

‐ When Grant first settles into siege operations,

he digs a line opposite the Confederate ones,

so you can cut off the key routes of supply to the city.

And then in case a Confederate force

came from his rear, he then dug another

series of entrenchments facing the other way.

And now he's gonna ring Vicksburg with artillery.

In fact, he's even gonna bring

naval artillery off naval ships

to bombard Vicksburg.

We want to put them under the maximum pressure

so that they recognize this sacrifice

is no longer worth it.

‐ And Grant ordered his soldiers to begin sinking

approaches toward the Confederate works.

And so you have Union engineers,

and they'd be working behind the protection

of what was called a sap roller,

normally a bundle of cane and vine

packed with dirt or cotton,

anything that'll stop a bullet.

And the whole object is to get all the way

up to the Confederate line.

‐ Sharpshooters! Get down!

Sharpshooters!

‐ Sharpshooters!

‐ Get down! Get down!

‐ See them?

Where are they?

‐ Get down! Everybody get down!

‐ We gotta move!

‐ Cease fire!

Hold your fire!

‐ Hold fire!

‐ They're gone!

‐ Hold fire!

‐ I'll take that.

All right, everyone!

All right, get back to work!

Now!

Get back to work!

‐ When it has been made clear that the Negro,

as an independent laborer,

can do these things well,

it would be very easy to put a musket in his hands

and make a soldier of him.

‐ Throughout the Civil War, African‐Americans

start to flee to Union army encampments

in hopes of finding some mechanism for freedom.

Essentially, what these African‐Americans do

is, they appeal to the Union army and say,

"Make use of me in this conflict."

‐ If the logic of war is any resources,

whether it be guns, you know, cannon, fortifications,

if the enemy is using something to support their war effort,

it can be legitimately taken away.

So by the end of the first year of the war,

Lincoln has come to the conclusion

that emancipation is a necessary war angle.

‐ In Grant's own personal life,

the fact that he married into a family

that was dependent on the system of slavery...

his decision to grant freedom to a slave...

the fact that during his time in Missouri,

he's tilling the soil with enslaved people,

I think illustrates how

Grant's life is actually an object lesson

in the ways that a person has to grapple

with their position on equality.

‐ And then Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.

This goes into effect as both civil and military law

on the 1st of January, 1863.

‐ When Lincoln put out the Emancipation Proclamation,

it was an amazing thing.

One out of every four enslaved African‐Americans

made their way to freedom.

‐ The most important part

of the Emancipation Proclamation

is, that's the moment where Lincoln first,

you know, calls up black people to fight in the armies

of the country.

That is significant.

That is actually a huge, huge deal

and has, you know, great implications on the North

actually winning the war.

‐ And so beginning in 1863,

you have your first appearance

of black soldiers in blue uniforms.

Their first engagement, in fact,

occurs during the Vicksburg campaign.

‐ During the course of the siege of Vicksburg,

Grant had established supply enclaves

at places such as Milliken's Bend.

And most of these supply enclaves

were defended by recently recruited black troops

in Union blue.

But at the same time, Confederates west of Vicksburg

were ordered to do

"something on behalf of the garrison of Vicksburg."

And so on June the 7th, a Confederate brigade

would attack the supply enclave at Milliken's Bend.

‐ And it is at this moment that two things

become very clear:

that they have not been given

the best training,

nor have they been given the best weaponry

to protect themselves.

‐ The thing to recognize about the colored troops

is, expectations were so low.

I mean, the idea that black people

would fight as soldiers...

I mean, this was like a man going to the moon.

‐ This was the first important engagement of the war

in which colored troops were under fire.

These men were very raw,

having all been enlisted since the beginning of the siege,

but they were most gallant, and I doubt not

they will make good troops.

‐ There were 1,500 Confederates pitted against

a little more than 1,000 Union troops.

The Confederates would drive them back

from their fortifications,

through their encampment,

and all the way to the Mississippi River.

Black soldiers would lose 70% of their numbers,

but they would successfully hold on to the supply enclave

at Milliken's Bend.

‐ Lincoln says he can no longer consider an idea

of going back to things being the way they were

after black people have actually died for the country.

You can't restore those people to slavery again.

‐ And in fact, by the end of the Civil War,

almost 200,000 African‐Americans,

you know, fight on the Union side.

‐ To His Excellency A. Lincoln:

Sir, by arming the Negro, we have added a powerful ally.

This, with the emancipation of the Negro,

is the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy.

‐ The primary strategy of any siege

is isolating the people you are besieging inside,

causing them to use up both their military resources

but especially their food

to force them to capitulate.

So the consequence of this is, Grant's army will grow

to over 70,000 troops over time...

and it's a ratcheting up of military pressure.

‐ Now, the Confederate government in Richmond

is rather concerned about the situation at Vicksburg.

And there has emerged a group that believes

that less focus needs to be placed on the east,

where things are going well,

and more focus needs to be put on the west,

where things are not going well.

Robert E. Lee's response is,

"Even if I send troops to Vicksburg,

"by the time they got there,

it might be over."

And Lee decides to go north

and try to seek a decisive engagement

with the federals north of Pennsylvania.

At the same time, Grant keeps the pressure up

at Vicksburg to end the siege.

‐ By the end of June,

the Confederate Army of Vicksburg

was subsisting on a handful of peas and rice

issued once a day per man.

Even their water would be rationed

to one cup per man per day.

‐ So now as the temperature of the summer

continues to get hotter and hotter,

Grant will dam up

all the creeks that are going in there.

Confederates are being shelled by Union gunboats

as well as Union batteries.

‐ But also, throughout the siege,

you have a civilian population trapped in the city,

estimated at about 2,000.

And the citizens lived underground

in man‐made caves to escape the constant bombardment

of Union cannon and heavy mortar.

And about the only time they came out of these caves

is when the Union artillerymen

ate their morning, noon, and evening meals.

‐ Grant knows full well

the suffering of the civilians in Vicksburg.

He doesn't relish any of it,

but I think he does believe

without breaking the will of the Southern people

that this war is not gonna come to an end.

‐ These civilians at Vicksburg,

who weeks earlier were able to get

all the food they needed, were clearly starving.

And they started eating anything that moved,

rats included.

And by early July, it was clear

that the Confederates were near the end of their rope.

‐ On July 3rd, two persons were seen

coming towards our lines bearing a white flag.

It was a glorious sight to soldiers on the line.

‐ On the hot afternoon of July 3rd,

at the very same time Pickett's legions

were storming over the stone wall at Gettysburg,

the Confederate commander John Pemberton

would ask Grant on what terms

he would receive the surrender of the city.

‐ General Pemberton.

‐ Your terms, General?

Surprise me.

I propose‐‐ ‐ No proposals.

Terms won't change.

Unconditional surrender.

‐ Sir.

Listen, we need to offer terms.

‐ No.

‐ Be practical.

What are we gonna do with 30,000 prisoners?

Better offer terms, don't you think?

General.

‐ I'm prepared to accept the parole

but only if my men walk away

with all of their personal property.

‐ By personal property, do you mean to include slaves?

Sidearms, horses...

no slaves.

No slaves leave with you.

You have until 10:00 tonight.

Then we attack the city.

‐ Up to this point, Grant's reputation

is "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.

And yet here, he paroles the men that are there,

and it shows what flexibility of mind he had.

I think he makes the calculus

of, "What if we send these 30,000 scarecrows

"back to their towns?

"What are they gonna tell them?

We just got whipped."

‐ See the corporal. He'll sign your parole card.

‐ General Grant.

‐ Retain your sidearms, General.

The enemy had been suffering,

particularly towards the last.

I saw our men taking bread from their haversacks

and giving it to the enemy they had so recently

been engaged in starving out.

‐ Grant doesn't have a hatred of Southern people.

He sees them as Americans that have gone astray.

He doesn't agree with their cause,

but he cares for the people themselves.

That really colors the way he deals with the Confederates

throughout the Civil War.

‐ Vicksburg surrenders, and the Mississippi is open.

And as Lincoln says,

"The father of waters flows again, unvexed, to the sea."

And the great thing is that the news comes to him

the same weekend as the news of the victory at Gettysburg.

‐ My dear General, when you first reached

the vicinity of Vicksburg, I never had any faith,

except a general hope that the expedition could succeed.

I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment

that you were right and I was wrong.

Yours very truly, A. Lincoln.

‐ Grant and Lincoln first meet as correspondents.

And their correspondence is quite wonderful.

They are both men of the west,

and I think they share a certain philosophy

and perhaps a certain attitude.

And I think it really set the terms

for their future relationship.

This victory was a culmination of a very long campaign

full of trial and error,

full of Grant figuring out, "How do I capture

what seemed an impregnable fort?"

‐ The Vicksburg campaign has been studied

by military professionals ever since July of 1863.

In fact, in the army's war‐fighting manual,

it highlights the Vicksburg campaign

as the most brilliant campaign

ever waged on American soil.

And so whereas the Civil War is often

referred to as the last of the old wars,

first of the modern wars,

Grant can be termed the first modern American warrior.

‐ With the success at Vicksburg,

there's no question that Grant

is one of the top generals in the war.

Lincoln said, "He'll be my man

and I'll be his the rest of the war."

And so Grant is given command of the entire western theater.

Well, part of that new command was Chattanooga.

And in Chattanooga, there was a Union army

that was essentially trapped.

‐ It's at this point that Lincoln decides

that he must call Grant in for the situation.

‐ The art of war is simple enough.

Find out where your enemy is,

get at him as soon as you can,

strike him as hard as you can,

and keep moving on.

‐ By the summer of 1863,

the Union army had moved all the way through Tennessee

and captured Chattanooga.

The Union army then moved into Georgia,

but the Confederates lashed back and won a huge victory.

The Union army retreated back into Chattanooga.

The Confederates followed, occupying the heights

around the city.

And U. S. Grant is brought into Chattanooga

to do what he does best...

win.

‐ He's essentially being brought in as a kind of fixer.

Here's the guy who won the campaign at Vicksburg,

and he's being asked to do it again.

The Union Army of the Cumberland is stuck

down in this valley,

trapped in a siege, and starving.

The Confederate army has set up

a ring around the city

that gives them a commanding artillery position.

It's incredibly high stakes.

By holding Chattanooga, you hold one of the most

important rail networks in Tennessee.

Grant knew if you can hold that rail hub,

you can build up a massive effort

to invade the Deep South.

The loss of Chattanooga would've set

the Union war effort back months,

if not years.

‐ His first concern is to feed his troops

by winning a small engagement on the Confederate side

of the Tennessee River

to open up his new supply line.

Then, like any boss that comes into a new company,

Grant wants his people.

And he immediately calls the four divisions

of William Tecumseh Sherman to come to Chattanooga.

‐ The intention then is to seize the initiative

and make an attack against the Confederates

and drive them away from Chattanooga.

‐ During the battle of Chattanooga,

Grant is commanding multiple armies.

He's got Sherman with the Army of the Tennessee.

He has George Thomas with the Army of the Cumberland.

He also has Joseph Hooker,

who's coming in from the eastern theater.

‐ The idea was that Hooker would flank

the Confederate position from the south,

Sherman would bring his army

to the northern flank,

and George Thomas would assault the center.

Three separate assaults of one position.

‐ Sir.

From General Sherman on Missionary Ridge.

‐ At Chattanooga, his battle plan doesn't work

the way he expected it to,

but he's got the presence of mind

to process it and make decisions

and adapt to things that he didn't expect to happen.

‐ Sherman's stuck.

Send in Thomas' men.

Order them to attack the rifle pits below Missionary Ridge.

Sherman needs our help‐‐ now.

‐ George Thomas' army had been much maligned

for having been trapped in a siege,

and I think those men were spoiling for a fight

as a result.

‐ Grant gives the order with the hope that that will

force the Confederates to start moving troops

away from Sherman's path.

The order was that once they seized the rifle pits,

they should stop, reorganize,

and then attack the top of Missionary Ridge.

But they don't stop.

‐ Without awaiting further orders,

on our troops went for the crest.

The fire along the rebel line was terrific.

Cannon and musket balls filled the air.

The pursuit continued until the crest was reached.

‐ It was a fantastic victory for Grant.

This is the battle that really, I think, makes

the Republic respect Grant as the possible savior.

‐ News of this goes through the North as a great triumph.

Grant is now clearly and unambiguously

the general who looks like

finally the man who can win this war.

‐ Grant has eliminated two Confederate armies via siege,

Fort Donelson and Vicksburg.

At Chattanooga, he combined three disparate armies

into a single effort,

so his technical competencies were beyond reproach.

‐ At Chattanooga, he reverses another

very desperate situation for the Union forces.

That's what ultimately then leads Lincoln

to bring Grant east.

‐ By March of 1864,

Lincoln has found his man,

and Congress raises Grant to the rank

of full lieutenant general,

the first general since Washington

to hold the full rank of lieutenant general.

‐ He is to be in command of all the Union armies.

This is novel.

‐ The bill restoring the grade of lieutenant general

of the army had passed.

I was ordered to Washington to receive my commission.

‐ Grant and Lincoln never meet each other face‐to‐face

until Grant shows up in Washington

to be promoted to lieutenant general...

but his ability to advise Lincoln

and to guide the whole nation's effort

to win the war...

that was a question mark.

‐ Mr. President.

‐ General Grant.

Come in.

Come in.

I do not profess to be a military man,

and I certainly would never interfere, but...

Here it is.

I've marked our current placements.

Now...

if we move into Virginia

between the course of these two rivers,

we can not only use them to bring in supplies.

We might also protect our flanks.

‐ I'll consider it, sir.

‐ Of course.

But tell me...

You'll go after Lee?

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

It all depends on you.

‐ The president told me that all he had ever wanted

was someone who would take responsibility

and act.

‐ Lincoln had gone through about every other

senior general in the Union army

at this point in time.

And finally, Lincoln finds his general,

a general who will actually fight.

And Grant is truly one of the great

battle captains of all time.

He is someone who achieved brilliance,

tactically, operationally, and strategically.

At the tactical level, this would be commanding

multiple brigades like Fort Henry and Fort Donelson

in the early stages of the war in the west.

Operationally, this is multiple divisions now.

And, of course, Vicksburg is an extraordinary

example of that.

And then strategically,

when he comes east,

he for the first time then develops

a true strategic campaign for all of the Union forces.

‐ Grant's idea when he becomes commanding general

is to get all of the Union forces to act in harmony.

He wants to move on Mobile Bay,

one of the last Confederate ports.

He wants Sherman to advance on Atlanta.

He wants Franz Sigel to go down the Shenandoah Valley,

the breadbasket of the Confederacy in the east.

Benjamin Butler will come up the James River

and get at Richmond from the south,

hopefully dividing some of Lee's attention.

And then finally, the Army of the Potomac

will head at Robert E. Lee in Richmond.

It's those five pieces acting in concert

that is his original vision for how this war

should come to a close.

‐ The South had become very good,

with the smaller population,

at moving troops from one place to another.

What Grant realized was that

if you simultaneously attack many Confederate positions,

they would not be able to play this game.

‐ Grant's strategic genius was the ability to move

five different armies simultaneously...

but also, Grant recognized,

the destruction of Robert E. Lee's army,

the symbol of Confederate nationalism,

was fundamental to winning the war.

‐ Robert E. Lee's army had countless times

defeated Union armies on the battlefield

with brilliant tactical maneuvers,

so there was a confidence.

There was an esprit de corps

that bound that army together,

and spirits are high and ready for an engagement.

Robert E. Lee is born the scion

to two of the oldest elite families

of the state of Virginia.

And in many ways, Robert E. Lee becomes

the general most connected

with the institution of slavery

and protecting that institution.

‐ Grant had none of that mystique.

There was no illusion of a guy,

you know, who was highborn in the way that Lee was.

But, you know, when I see you on the battlefield,

none of that matters.

It's just me and you.

‐ But all of Grant's success had been

in the western theater.

And everybody would argue...

you're not out in the western theater anymore.

You're fighting Robert E. Lee.

Of course, we could flip that coin and say

Robert E. Lee is now fighting Ulysses S. Grant.

‐ Grant is gonna personally attach himself

to George Gordon Meade's Army the of Potomac,

which is gonna latch on like a bulldog

to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

‐ When Grant comes down to Brandy Station

to visit the headquarters of George Gordon Meade,

Meade's staff are surprised.

This was a slightly ordinary figure

who looked like a merchant who'd just come from a store.

But then you met his eye,

that icy cold eye that Grant could somehow have,

and suddenly you knew this man

was totally in charge of things.

One clerk was advised,

"When Grant gives you a straight order, obey it.

"When you have information for Grant,

"give it to him straight.

"And above all, don't say 'sir' too much.

Grant's not interested in that."

‐ Through most of the winter of 1863 and 1864,

the Union army and the Confederates

have been glaring at each other,

waiting for the spring to come

so that the new campaign can begin.

Grant wants to get south so he can engage

Confederates in more open ground.

But before he does that, he has to go across

the Rapidan River and go through an area

deemed as almost Lee's hunting ground for Union armies...

"The Wilderness."

‐ Gentlemen?

‐ Grant may have won some victories in the west,

but this is Virginia.

‐ We're strong here, sir.

And if he attacks,

we can make a play for Washington.

‐ And if he crosses the Rapidan,

he'd have to cut through the Wilderness.

I can't imagine he'd be fool enough.

We'd whip him but good.

‐ General Longstreet?

‐ I know Grant from West Point and Mexico.

Do not underestimate him.

He will fight us every day and every hour

till the end of this war.

‐ There's sort of a sense that, "Okay,

Robert E. Lee is the champion of the eastern theater."

"And we've tried challenger after challenger

"after challenger.

But now we're bringing in our best guy from the west."

There's huge expectations.

‐ I know Lee as well as he knows himself.

I intend to attack his weak points

and flank his strong ones.

‐ We have two choices:

flank Lee and get to Richmond from the west,

which leaves Washington exposed,

or head south,

get to Lee by going through the Wilderness.

‐ The rebs know those woods.

Could be deadly for us to go through there.

‐ We have to move quickly, get out the other side,

meet him in the open. ‐ It's a trap.

We'd be leaving Washington undefended.

‐ General Meade?

‐ I beat Lee at Gettysburg.

I'd like to finish the job.

‐ Then wherever he goes, you'll follow.

We'll cross the Rapidan into the Wilderness.

‐ General, our scouts report he crossed

the Rapidan last night.

His army is twice ours, sir.

‐ We'll just have to even the odds.

Catch them before they get through the Wilderness.

Have General Hill advance on the Orange Plank Road.

General Ewell, on the turnpike.

‐ Yes, sir.

‐ The wilderness of Spotsylvania

was 70 square miles of dense forest.

It was difficult for mass groups

of soldiers to move through

this particular area of Virginia.

‐ A little further south is Spotsylvania Courthouse.

The land around that area is a lot more wide open.

So Grant says, "We need to cross the Rapidan River

"and move through the Wilderness,

"get to this wide‐open ground closer to Richmond,

"and in doing so,

"Lee's gonna have to come out and fight us

and on ground of our choosing."

‐ Lee knew this ground. He knew it well.

He was going to use every tree

and every bush to try to delay Grant's actions.

‐ The great advantage of the Union army

against the Army of Northern Virginia

is in numbers and artillery.

In that choked vine forest,

numbers matter less,

and you cannot bring your artillery to bear.

In fact, the Army of the Potomac

fought there against Robert E. Lee

at the battle of Chancellorsville

earlier in the war and had lost.

The battle of Chancellorsville

is Robert E. Lee's high point.

Lee is gonna violate all kind of military principles,

divide his army in the face of a larger enemy,

and, though outnumbered two to one,

he will drive the Union army back across the river.

This is the magic of Robert E. Lee.

‐ The Chancellorsville battlefield

and the Wilderness battlefield

are pretty much right on top of each other.

And during the initial phase of the Wilderness campaign,

when Grant and the Army of the Potomac

cross the river, they see the remains

of the battle of the year before.

‐ When Grant was traveling with the Army of the Potomac,

he realized the extent to which Lee

had gotten into the mind of all of the officers.

And he knew that he had to deal with the Lee mystique.

That was really one of his major objectives.

‐ The natural disposition of most people

is to clothe the commander of a large army

whom they do not know

with almost superhuman abilities.

But I had known General Lee personally

and knew that he was mortal.

‐ The Army of the Potomac numbers about 120,000 men.

The Confederate army numbers approximately 62,000.

Lee knows he's outnumbered,

but he knows if he can bottle him up somewhere,

those superior numbers won't account for anything.

Both sides are confident.

The Confederates, they've rebounded

since their defeat from Gettysburg.

And also, the Union Army of the Potomac,

coming off that victory at Gettysburg,

they're ready to keep following up that success.

That mentality, I think, explains the ferocity

of the fighting that follows.

‐ We had to have hard fighting.

The two armies now confronting each other

had been in deadly conflict for so long

without any decisive result,

they hardly knew which could whip the other.

‐ So the first time that Grant and Lee go into battle,

the two headliners of the war,

at the Battle of the Wilderness,

May of 1864, Grant crosses into territory

where Lee has his army deployed,

and it's a pretty brutal fight.

‐ Lee was actually moving very aggressively.

He wanted to attack Grant.

He wanted to push Grant out of Virginia.

‐ Once Grant crosses the river,

you see two steely‐eyed killers who go at each other.

It's relentless. It's brutal.

It's nonstop. It's exhausting.

‐ General Grant,

Rebel forces are at the Orange Turnpike

on the Plank Road.

‐ Pitch into them at the first‐‐

Pitch into them at the first opportunity.

Call the battery and gun crews.

We'll hold this position.

‐ Grant is going to tell Meade,

"You do not wait for them to attack you.

You attack them."

‐ Why does he do this?

Because his object is to go ahead and fight

Robert E. Lee.

He takes tactical risk fighting in the Wilderness

because there is a opportunity

to destroy parts of Lee's army.

‐ It throws Lee for a loop,

because Lee thought he had Grant pegged.

Lee's going off the old rule book here,

Union army is not gonna act aggressively,

and at the Wilderness,

that preconceived notion that he had

really gets destroyed.

‐ Grant firmly believes that if he can retain the initiative,

he can force the other army to react to him.

He believes the Confederate army

should march to a Union drum.

Therefore, he's gonna continue to push

and drive those Confederates.

This is not one of those wide‐open battlefields

that you can see long lines of clashing troops.

Visibility is less than 20 yards.

Throw in the smoke and noise of battle,

and now it's even more confusing.

‐ It had been a very dry spring.

Now, if you think of men firing their muskets,

there's gonna be a flash of fire,

and all it takes is one spark.

And the real horrors of the Wilderness begin.

The fires are gonna grow in intensity.

For the men who are wounded,

they can either crawl to the enemy lines,

or they can always kill themselves with a revolver.

For the living soldiers, at the end of this fight,

they have to now listen to men scream to death

as they're burned alive in this fire,

and they now have to smell their bodies

as its roasted in the conflagration,

and that is something that truly sticks with them

for the rest of their lives.

‐ The Wilderness was a brutal, bloody battle,

similar to the battle they'd fought

at Chancellorsville the year before,

almost in the exact same location.

And that battle had ended with the Union army

pulling back from the field

and trying to regenerate itself

and get itself back into condition.

‐ Grant might have been, like the other generals,

justified in breaking off and pulling back to regroup.

‐ General Grant.

Do you want the casualty numbers?

‐ We'll be the first to attack in the morning.

‐ Our men are exhausted.

‐ So are his.

We go forward.

Lee's still waiting for reinforcements.

So if we're the first to attack,

we have our advantage.

‐ General.

‐ General Meade.

Don't forget.

We possess strengths they do not have.

Our numbers...

and our purpose, Meade.

Our purpose.

‐ Right, sir.

‐ I was anxious that the rebels should not take

the initiative in the morning

and therefore ordered an assault.

‐ Union forces were successful initially in the morning.

They catch the Confederate 3rd Corps

under A. P. Hill by surprise,

they push them a good mile,

and it looks like Lee's right flank is about to cave in.

‐ General. ‐ We're losing ground.

‐ But Longstreet's moving in from the west...

With the Texas boys.

‐ And I'm glad of it.

Those Texas boys will stand and fight all day.

‐ Longstreet has arrived with reinforcements.

Lee may counterattack.

‐ Let him.

We'll stick it out.

‐ Let's taken our land, forced us out.

He's gonna advance.

‐ I'm tired of hearing about what Lee is gonna do.

Some of you think he's gonna turn a double somersault

and land in our rear and both flanks at the same time.

Go back to your commands.

Think about what we're gonna do.

‐ Longstreet arrives to save the day in the nick of time.

James Longstreet had actually attended

Ulysses S. Grant's wedding.

And he is Lee's most trusted subordinate.

He is the old warhorse.

‐ The Confederates slam into Union lines...

but the Union had bolstered their defenses.

Ultimately, the series of assaults fail.

‐ And James Longstreet will be accidentally wounded

by his own men, shot in the neck,

nearly choking to death on his own blood

before he can be moved from the field.

The Wilderness is on fire.

One soldier describes it

as a battle of invisibles versus invisibles.

They could not see the enemy army.

Soldiers are trapped.

They cannot find their way out.

‐ The woods were set on fire by the bursting shells.

The wounded, who had not strength to move,

were either suffocated or burned to death.

‐ By the end of two days of combat,

the Union army has sustained about 17,000 men

killed, captured, wounded, or missing.

Confederates are about 11,000.

Grant has lost now more men in the two days at Wilderness

than he did in the two days at Shiloh.

‐ This was a particularly horrifying battle...

not only because of the number of casualties,

but the forest is burning.

What that meant was, Grant went into his tent,

flung himself down on the cot.

There was a need for some

emotional release or catharsis,

and Grant had never shown that side

of his character before.

‐ Our losses in the Wilderness were severe.

We could claim no victory over the enemy,

neither did they gain a single advantage.

‐ We have 'em hell, General Lee.

‐ They gave us the same.

‐ I'm told Longstreet will survive.

Scouts say Grant's packing up.

Finally retreating, sir.

We won't see him here again.

‐ Tell me, Colonel...

have you ever met Grant?

‐ No, sir.

‐ No.

I didn't think so.

If you had, you know he's not retreating.

He's not a retreating man.

‐ I now felt the full weight

of responsibility on my shoulders.

‐ You will go after Lee.

You will go after him until he's finished.

‐ It all depends on you.

‐ Gentlemen.

‐ Come on, boys! Let's move out!

‐ After two days of the most brutal,

vicious fighting in the Wilderness of Virginia,

soldiers of the Army of the Potomac

and their opposite numbers

in the Army of Northern Virginia

had fought themselves to a standstill.

Usually when a standstill like that happened,

the result was that the Union army

would pack its bags and go back across the Rapidan River,

as it had happened literally one year before

at the battle of Chancellorsville.

The question in the minds of these soldiers was,

"What direction is Ulysses Grant

going to take us?"

‐ In war, anything is better than indecision.

We must decide.

If I am wrong, we shall soon find out

and can do the other thing.

Not to decide may ruin everything.

‐ And so Grant arrives at the critical intersection

in the Wilderness if he was going to move farther south

around Lee's flank,

seizing the strategic initiative

to threaten the Confederate capital, Richmond.

‐ The soldiers were waiting to see,

"What direction is he going to take?

"If he turns to the left,

"we're gonna be retreating back across the river.

"If he turns right,

that means we're heading south."

‐ We're going south!

‐ Heading south? ‐ To Richmond.

‐ Richmond? ‐ To Richmond.

‐ We're heading south. ‐ We're headed south!

‐ Suddenly, to their astonishment,

they're all wheeling around to the south.

And it took tremendous courage and tremendous

personal fortitude on Grant's part

because Union casualties were higher at the Wilderness

than Confederate casualties...

but Grant always had this ultimate faith in victory.

And I think that there are certain generals in history,

when they have that faith in victory,

it's something that communicates itself

to the troops.

‐ At Wilderness, that is a tactical loss,

and yet Grant stands at those crossroads

and goes, "This is not a loss.

This is the first step to the end of the war."

So as he heads south, Grant will fight

in a scope and scale beyond anybody's experience.

We actually see the changing character of war here.

Technology starts to be a big part of it:

steam engines, ironclads,

railroads, telegraph.

However, there is this unchanging nature of war.

It's still a clash of wills.

There's still fear and interest.

There's still hope about what might happen.

When you think about the Civil War,

we say that Confederates are fighting

for hearth and home

and for this cause of a Southern way of life.

Well, look at what the Northerners

are fighting for.

Think about all those people.

They're fighting for this idea.

The nation is new.

We're largely made up of immigrants.

They have come here because they've seen

what it's like in the Old World.

And that idea that all men are created equal...

if it doesn't exist here, it doesn't exist anywhere.

And therefore, they're willing to fight.

‐ The greatest enthusiasm was inspired by the fact

that the movement was south.

‐ Headed to Richmond!

‐ We're going south, boys!

‐ It indicated to the men that they had passed through

the beginning of the end.

There would be no turning back.

‐ Advance!

‐ Hold on with a bulldog grip.

Chew and choke as much as possible.

‐ We've got Lee in a box, General.

‐ Go after him.

I regard it as my duty

by asking of you the surrender

of the Confederate States Army.

President Lincoln has been shot.

‐ The country having just emerged

from a great rebellion,

I ask patient forbearance,

one toward another, cementing a happy union.