Original subtitles

I'm At Shenandoah. I play Doctor Matthew Freeman.

Matthew Freeman, who's a freed black slave, is a self-taught doctor.

In my research of Matthew Freeman, I ran across a doctor...

...named James McClure Smith.

He was the first African American doctor.

And he lived in New York around the time that our story occurs.

What he had to overcome to be an African American medical professional...

...it, pretty much, was not allowed.

So when I think about what I'm trying to embody with Matthew Freeman...

...this is a person that has to work 100 percent harder than everybody else...

...to just be recognized.

Your little demonstration doesn't prove Garland is innocent.

It proves that this rag isn't evidence.

You still have no case, detective.

Matthew Freeman went to war, and through the course of the war...

...Studied under one of the doctors and learned how to be a surgeon.

And it was there that he forged this relationship with Kevin Cormorant.

-That man, Cormorant, is evil. -No. He's our friend.

Matthew Freeman returns from the war and finds his wife traumatized...

...by the events of the draft riots. She suffered personal losses with her family.

The lynchings happened right in front of our window.

So she was looking out of the window while her brothers were being hanged.

Her character is dealing with the post-traumatic stress syndrome of that event.

We left Five Points so you wouldn't be afraid to go outside.

We're starting off at a bad emotional point when the show starts.

He's a man who lives in danger, but is unafraid of it.

His character has to do all of his experiments in secret...

...because of the rest of the people found out that this was what he was doing...

...he risks death.

There were people that were born in America and before the Emancipation Proclamation...

...believed that we were created as all men...

...and shouldn't be held captive by anybody because of the color of our skin.

The dream of the Founding Fathers was to have one nation.

That's what Freeman represents. The opportunity and the potential...

...for America.