All language subtitles for Civil War, The, 01 (1990)

"We have shared the incommunicable
experience of war.

"We have felt,
we still feel,

"the passion of
life to its top.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

By the summer of 1861,
Wilmer McLean had had enough.

Two great armies were
converging on his farm,

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

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

would soon rage across
the aging Virginian’s farm,

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

Now McLean moved his family
away from Manassas,

far south and west
of Richmond,

out of harm's way,
he prayed,

to a dusty little
crossroads called

Appomattox Courthouse,

and it was there in his living
room, 3½ years later,

that Lee surrendered
to Grant.

and Wilmer McLean
could rightfully say

that "the war began
in my front yard

"and ended in
my front parlor."

The Civil War was fought
in 10,000 places

from Valverde, New Mexico,
and Tullahoma, Tennessee,

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

More than three million
Americans fought in it,

and over 600,000 men,
2% of the population,

died in it.

American homes
became headquarters.

American churches
and schoolhouses

sheltered the dying,

and huge foraging armies
swept across American farms

and burned American towns.

Americans slaughtered one another
wholesale here, in America,

in their own corn fields
and peach orchards,

along familiar roads,
and by waters

with old American names.

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

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

At Cold Harbor,

7,000 Americans fell
in twenty minutes.

Men who had never strayed twenty
miles from their own front doors

now found themselves
soldiers in great armies,

fighting epic battles hundreds
of miles from home.

They knew they were
making history,

and it was the greatest
adventure of their lives.

The war made some
rich, ruined others,

and changed forever the lives
of all who lived through it:

a lackluster clerk
from Galena, Illinois,

a failure in everything
except marriage and war,

who, in three years, would
be head of the Union army,

and in seven, President
of the United States;

an eccentric student of
theology and military tactics,

a hypochondriac who rode into
battle with one hand raised

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

a college professor
from Maine,

who, on a little hill
in Pennsylvania,

ordered an unlikely
textbook maneuver

that saved the Union army
and possibly the Union itself.

Two ordinary soldiers--

one from Providence,
Rhode Island,

the other from
Columbia, Tennessee,

who each served
four years

and together seemed to have
been everywhere during the war

and lived to
tell the tale;

the courtly,
unknowable aristocrat,

who disapproved of
secession and slavery,

yet went on to
defend them both

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

the runaway boy who
"stole himself" from slavery,

recruited two regiments
of black soldiers,

and helped transform
the Civil War

into a struggle for the
freedom of all Americans;

and then there was the
rough man from Illinois,

who would rise to be
the greatest president

the country has ever seen.

Between 1861 and 1865,

Americans made
war on each other

and killed each other
in great numbers,

if only to become
the kind of country

that could no longer conceive
how that was possible.

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

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

At Gettysburg in 1863,

Abraham Lincoln said
perhaps more than he knew:

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

1938--75th anniversary of
the Battle of Gettysburg.

President Roosevelt spoke to the
remaining few Civil War veterans.

“Veterans of the
blue and the gray:

“On behalf of the people
of the United States,

“I accept this monument

“in the spirit of
brotherhood and peace.”

Year after year, the
nation remembered.

In 1930, veterans
of the Union army

marched in
Cincinnati, Ohio;

four years later,
in New York City.

They and the surviving
veterans of the Confederacy

were the last link

with a terrible conflict
that tore America apart

from 1861 to 1865.

The last Civil War veteran
would die in 1959,

and no longer would there be living
memories of long-ago battles,

only history and legends.

Any understanding
of this nation

has to be based, and
I mean really based,

on an understanding
of the Civil War.

I believe that firmly.
It defined us.

The revolution
did what it did.

Our involvement
in European wars,

beginning with the First
World War, did what it did,

but the Civil War defined
us as what we are,

and it opened us to being
what we became,

good and bad things.

And it--
it is very necessary

if you're going to understand
the American character

in the twentieth century

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

It was the--the-- the
crossroads of our being,

and it was a hell
of a crossroads.

For me, the picture

of the Civil War as a

historic phenomenon

is not on the battlefield.
It's not about weapons.

It's not about soldiers,

except to the extent that
weapons and soldiers

at that crucial moment

joined a discussion
about something higher,

about humanity,
about human dignity,

about human freedom.

"Whence shall we expect
the approach of danger?

"Shall some transatlantic giant step
the earth and crush us at a blow?

"Never.

"All the armies
of Europe and Asia

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

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

"If destruction be our lot,
we must ourselves

"be its author and finisher.

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

"or die by suicide."

Abraham Lincoln, 1837.

In 1861, most of nation's
thirty-one million people

lived peaceably on farms
and in small towns.

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

made their home in a
sea of wheat and corn.

In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,
population 2,400,

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

Steamboats filled with cotton

came and went at Vicksburg
on the Mississippi.

In Washington, D.C,
Senator Jefferson Davis

reviewed plans for
remodeling the capitol.

In Richmond, the 900 employees
of the Tredegar Iron Works

turned out gun
carriages and cannon

for the U.S. Government.

At West Point on the
Hudson, officers trained,

and friendships were formed they
thought would last a lifetime.

"In thinking of America,

"I sometimes find myself
admiring her bright blue sky

"her grand old woods,

"her fertile fields,
her beautiful rivers,

"her mighty lakes and star-
crowned mountains,

"but my rapture
is soon checked

"when I remember that all is
cursed with the infernal spirit

"of slave-holding
and wrong;

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

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

"disregarded and forgotten,

"that her most fertile
fields drink daily

of the warm blood of
my outraged sisters,

"I am filled with
unutterable loathing."

Frederick Douglass.

We are (we are)

Climbing (climbing)

Jacob's (Jacob's)

Ladder (ladder)

We are (we are)

Climbing (climbing)

Jacob's (Jacob's)

Ladder (ladder)

We are (we are)

Climbing (climbing)

Jacobs

Ladder

Soldiers

Of the

Cross

Keep on (keep on)

Climbing (climbing,)

We will (we will)

Make it (make it)

Keep on (keep on)

Climbing (climbing,)

We will (we will)

Make it (make it)

Keep on (keep on)

Climbing (climbing,)

We will (we will)

Make it (make it)

Soldiers

Of the

Cross

"No day ever dawns
for the slave,"

a freed black
man wrote,

"nor is it looked for.

"For the slave,
it is all night;

"all night forever."

One white Mississippian
was more blunt--

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

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

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

drafty in winter,
reeking in summer,

slave cabins bred
pneumonia, typhus, cholera,

lockjaw, tuberculosis.

The child who survived to be
sent to the fields at twelve

was likely to have
rotten teeth,

worms, dysentery, malaria.

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

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

fourteen hours sometimes,

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

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

to demonstrate
their sprightliness

and stripped to show how
little whipping they needed.

Buyers poked
and prodded them,

examined their feet,
eyes, and teeth,

"precisely," one
ex-slave recalled,

"as a jockey
examines a horse."

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

maybe two times,
maybe more.

Since slave marriages
had no legal status,

preachers changed the
wedding vows to read,

"until death or distance
do you part."

“You know what
I'd rather do?

"if I thought

"that I'd ever be
a slave again,

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

"because you're
nothing but a dog.

"You're not a thing
but a dog."

Some slaves
refused to work.

Some ran away.

Still, blacks struggled to
hold their families together,

created their own culture
under the worst of conditions,

and yearned to be free.

If there was a single event
that caused the war,

it was the establishment
of the United States

in independence
from Great Britain

with slavery still a
part of its heritage.

It was because we
failed to do the thing we

really have a genius for,
which is compromise.

Americans like to think of
themselves as uncompromising.

Our true genius is for compromise.
Our whole government's founded on it,

and it failed.

"There was never a moment in
our history when slavery

"was not a
sleeping serpent:

"it lay coiled up under
the table during the

deliberations of the
Constitutional Convention,

"Owing to the cotton gin,

"it was more
than half awake.

"Thereafter, slavery was
on everyone's mind,

"though not always
on his tongue."

John Jay Chapman.

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

There were doubts
in the south, too,

but few could conceive
of any alternative.

Thomas Jefferson of Virginia
said maintaining slavery

was like holding
a wolf by the ears:

you didn't like it, but you
didn't dare let it go.

Then in 1793, a
northerner, Eli Whitney,

taught the south how
to make slavery pay.

Whitney's engine, or gin,

made it easier to separate
cotton from its seed.

Where before it had taken
one slave ten hours

to produce a single
pound of lint,

the cotton gin could crank out
a thousand pounds a day.

Production soared, and with
it, the demand for slaves.

By 1860, the last
year of peace,

one out of every
seven Americans

belonged to
another American.

Four million men, women,
and children were slaves.

In Boston in 1831,

claiming, "that which
is not just is not law,"

William Lloyd Garrison
began publishing a militant

antislavery newspaper,
The Liberator.

He called for complete
and immediate abolition.

"I am in earnest.

"I will not equivocate.

"I will not excuse.

"I will not retreat
a single inch,

"and I will be heard."

He was heard,

and his message
was clear:

slavery was sin,

and those who
maintained it, criminals.

The abolition movement grew,
inspired by passionate leaders--

Harriet Tubman, called
"Moses" by the slaves

who followed her
north to freedom.

Wendell Phillips, named
"The Golden Trumpet of Abolitionism"

for his oratory;

and Frederick Douglass,

the son of a slave
and a white man.

"I appear this evening
as a thief and robber;

"I stole this head,
these limbs,

"this body from my master,
and ran off with them."

Douglass was so eloquent
that skeptics charged

he could never
have been a slave.

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

purchased his freedom with $600
obtained from English admirers,

and returned
to the struggle.

“The abolitionists would
raise the Negroes

"to a social and political
equality with the whites.

"and, that being affected,
we would soon see

"the present condition of
the two races reversed.

"they and their northern
allies would be the masters

"and we the slaves."

John C. Calhoun.

More and more, Southerners
worried about the growing political

as well as economic
power of the north.

Northerners were increasingly
hostile to slavery.

Still, most southerners
refused to acknowledge

even the possibility of
changing their way of life.

"On the north bank
of the Ohio,

"everything is
activity, industry.

"Labor is honored.
there are no slaves.

"Pass to the south bank and the
scene changes so suddenly

"that you think yourself on
the other side of the world.

"The enterprising
spirit is gone."

Alexis de Tocqueville.

"We are separated because
of incompatibility of temper.

"We are divorced
north from south

"because we hated
each other so."

Mary Chesnut.

On the clear, moonlit night
of November 7th, 1837,

a mob surrounded a
warehouse at Alton, Illinois,

intent on destroying an
antislavery newspaper

run by the reverend
Elijah P. Lovejoy.

When one of the mob moved
to set the building on fire,

Lovejoy, armed with a pistol,
came out to stop him.

The slavery men
shot him dead

and dumped his printing
press into the Mississippi.

The news stunned
the nation--

a white man had been
killed over black slavery.

Protest meetings were
held throughout the north.

One abolitionist wrote that,
"thousands of our citizens

"who lately believed that they
had nothing to do with slavery

"now begin to
discover their error."

In Hudson, Ohio,

a clergyman told a
church gathering,

"the question now
before us is no longer,

"can slaves be
made free,

"but, are we free, or are we
slaves under mob law?"

In the back of the church,
a strange, gaunt man

rose to his feet and
raised his right hand.

"Here, before God, in the
presence of these witnesses,

"I consecrate my life to the
destruction of slavery."

John Brown.

In 1846, a lawyer from
Springfield, Illinois,

was elected to Congress.

He was born in Kentucky,
the son of a farmer

who could barely
sign his name.

He became a legislator at twenty-
four, a prosperous attorney,

and after a
turbulent courtship,

the husband of
Miss Mary Todd,

the daughter of a slave-
holding Kentucky banker.

For Abraham Lincoln,

the Declaration of Independence
was to be taken literally--

all men had the right to rise as
far as talent would take them,

just as he had.

He detested slavery, but he
called for its restriction,

not immediate abolition.

By mid-century, the country
was deeply divided.

Southerners feared the
north might forbid slavery.

Northerners feared slavery
might move west.

As each new state was
added to the Union,

it threatened to upset the
delicate equilibrium of power.

"There are grave doubts at
the hugeness of the land,

"and whether
one government

"can comprehend
the whole."

Henry Adams.

Now events accelerated.

In 1852, Harriet
Beecher Stowe

published Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Its portrayal of slavery's cruelty
moved readers as nothing else had.

Queen Victoria wept
over it, and within a year,

more than 1.5 million copies
were in print worldwide.

In 1854, Congress
allowed settlers

in the Kansas and
Nebraska territories

to decide for themselves
whether or not to permit slavery.

Kansas exploded,

and 5,000 pro-slavery
men invaded the territory.

In the next three months, 200 men
died in "bleeding Kansas."

The killing would not
stop for ten years.

In 1857, the supreme court
refused to free a slave, Dred Scott,

even though he had lived
for many years on free soil.

Chief justice
Roger B. Taney

said, “a black man had no rights a white man

was bound to respect.

"As a nation, we
began by declaring

"that all men are
created equal.

"We now practically
read it--

"all men are created
equal, except Negroes.

"Soon it will read-- all men are
created equal, except Negroes

"and foreigners
and Catholics.

"When it comes to this, I should
prefer emigrating to some country

"where they make no
pretense of loving liberty--

"to Russia,
for instance,

"where despotism
can be taken pure

"and without the base
alloy of hypocrisy."

Abraham Lincoln.

Violence reached the floor of
the United States senate,

where Congressman Preston
Brooks of south Carolina

savagely beat abolitionist Senator
Charles Sumner with his cane.

Southern sympathizers
sent Brooks new canes.

Members began carrying knives
and pistols into the chamber.

Meanwhile, the nation's chief
executive, James Buchanan,

did nothing.

"A house divided against
itself cannot stand.

"I believe this government
cannot endure,

"permanently half
slave and half free.

"I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved.

"I do not expect
the house to fall,

"but I do expect it will
cease to be divided.

"It will become
all one thing

"or all the other."

On Sunday evening,
October 16th, 1859,

the radical abolitionist
John Brown

led five blacks and thirteen whites
into Harper's Ferry, Virginia.

He brought along a wagon-
load of guns to arm the slaves

he was sure
would rally to him.

Once they had, he planned
to lead them southward

along the crest
of the Appalachians

and destroy slavery.

Brown was an inept businessman
who had failed twenty times

in six states and
defaulted on his debts.

Yet he believed himself
God's agent on earth.

In 1856, at Pottawatomie
Creek in Kansas,

he and his sons

had hacked five pro-slavery men
to death with broadswords,

all in the name of defeating
Satan and his legions.

Brown and his men quietly
seized the armory,

arsenal, and engine house,
and took up hostages,

including George Washington's
great-grandnephew.

After that, nothing
went right.

The first person killed was
the town baggage master,

a free black.

The slaves did not rise up;
angry townspeople did.

The first of Brown's
followers to fall

was Dangerfield Newby,
a former slave.

Someone in the crowd cut
off his ears as souvenirs.

On Tuesday morning, federal
troops arrived from Washington,

led by a U.S. Army Colonel,

Robert E. Lee.

Lee's men stormed
the engine house,

and nine more of
Brown's men were killed,

including two of his sons.

Brown, severely wounded,

was turned over to Virginia
to be tried for treason.

"In firing his gun,

"John Brown has merely
told what time of day it is.

"It is high noon,
thank God."

William Lloyd Garrison.

"An undivided south
says, let him hang."

Albany, Georgia Patriot.

Virginia found Brown guilty
and sentenced him to death.

Among the troops at the
scene of his hanging

were cadets from the
Virginia Military Institute

led by an
eccentric professor,

Thomas J. Jackson.

Also there was a private
in the Richmond Grays,

a young actor named
John Wilkes Booth.

"December 2nd,1859:

"Old John Brown
has been executed

for treason
against a state.

"We cannot object, even
though he agreed with us

"in thinking
slavery wrong.

"That cannot excuse violence,
bloodshed, and treason.

"It could avail him nothing that
he might think himself right."

Abraham Lincoln.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
likened Brown to Christ.

Nathaniel Hawthorne declared,

"No man ever more
justly hanged,"

and Herman Melville
called him,

"The meteor of the war."

Brown had said nothing
from the gallows,

but he did hand one
of his guards a note:

"I, John Brown, am
now quite certain

"that the crimes
of this guilty land

"will never be purged
away but with blood."

"His zeal in the cause of freedom
was infinitely superior to mine;

"mine was as
the taper light;

"his was as
the burning sun.

"I could live
for the slave;

"John Brown could
die for him."

John Brown...
John Brown...

very important
person in history;

important, though, for only one
episode: failure in everything in life,

except, he becomes the

single most importing factor, in my
opinion, in bringing on the war.

The militia system in the south,
which had been a joke before this,

before then, becomes
a viable instrument,

as the southern militias
begin to take a true form

and the south begins to
worry about northerners

agitating the blacks to
murder them in their beds.

It was the beginning of
the Confederate army.

"The feeling among the southern
members for dissolution of the Union

"is becoming more general.

"Men are now beginning
to talk of it seriously

"who twelve months ago hardly
permitted themselves to think of it.

"The crisis is
not far ahead."

Alexander Stephens.

The country was
coming apart.

In the presidential
election of 1860,

Buchanan happily
stepped aside,

but not before his ruling
Democratic party

was fatally split over
the issue of slavery.

The republicans, a new
party, saw their chance

and nominated Abraham
Lincoln, a moderate.

His platform pledged only to
halt slavery's further spread.

"On that point, hold firm
as with a chain of steel.

"Those who deny freedom to others
deserve it not for themselves,

"and under a just God
cannot long retain it."

Radical abolitionists in
the north complained

that Lincoln’s opposition to
slavery did not go far enough.

But to most people
in the south,

the prospect of Lincoln’s
election posed a lethal threat.

The 1860 campaign had
become a referendum

on the southern
way of life.

On November 6th,1860,

Abraham Lincoln won the presidency
with only 40% of the vote.

He did not even appear on the
ballot in ten southern states.

"The election of Mr. Lincoln is
undoubtedly the greatest evil

"that has ever
befallen this country,

"but the mischief
is done.

"and the only relief for the American
people is to shorten sail,

"send down the top masts, and
prepare for a hurricane."

Richmond Whig.

In the South, Lincoln
was burned in effigy,

and now the South
Carolina legislature

called for a convention to consider
seceding from the Union.

Southerners would have told you they
were fighting for self-government.

They believed the gathering
of power in Washington

was against them.

When they entered
into that federation,

they certainly would never
have entered into it

if they hadn't believed it
would be possible to get out,

and when the time came
that they wanted to get out,

they thought they
had every right.

Southerners saw the
election of Lincoln

as a sign that the Union was
about to be radicalized

and that they were about
to be taken in directions

they did not care to go.

The abolitionist aspect
of it was very strong,

and, they figured they
were about to lose

what they called their
property and faced ruin.

Yet many southerners thought
secession was madness.

"South Carolina," one
southern politician wrote,

"is too small for a republic

"and too large for an
insane asylum."

"November 19th, 1860:

"A most gloomy day
in Wall Street:

"everything at a deadlock, first-
class paper not negotiable;

"stocks falling."

George Templeton Strong.

In New York, emotions
were no less explosive,

and George
Templeton Strong,

a conservative lawyer
who distrusted Lincoln,

began to keep track
of events in his diary.

"The bird of our country
is a debilitated chicken,

"disguised in eagle feathers.

"We have never
been a nation;

we are only an aggregate
of communities,

"ready to fall apart at the
first serious shock."

When Abraham Lincoln
was elected president,

there were thirty-three
states in the Union,

and a thirty-fourth, free
Kansas, was about to join.

By the time of his inauguration
five months later,

just twenty-seven states
would remain.

The suddenness of secession
took everyone by surprise.

South Carolina led the
way on December 20th.

A bell in Charleston tolled the
succession of departing states--

Mississippi on January 9th;

Florida on the 10th;

then Alabama,

Georgia, Louisiana.

In Texas, Governor Sam
Houston was deposed

when he tried to stop his state
from joining the Confederacy.

"Let me tell you
what is coming:

"after the sacrifice of
countless millions of treasure

"and hundreds of
thousands of lives,

"you may win Southern
independence,

"but I doubt it.

"The north is determined
to preserve this Union.

"They are not a fiery,
impulsive people as you are,

for they live in
colder climates,

"but when they begin to
move in a given direction,

"they move with the steady
momentum and perseverance

"of a mighty avalanche."

Texas left anyway.

Even Virginia, the most
populous southern state,

birthplace of
seven presidents,

seemed sure to follow.

"All the indications are that this
treasonable inflammation,

"secessionitis,

"keeps on making steady
progress, week by week.

"If disunion becomes
an established fact,

"we have one
consolation--

"the self-amputated
members

"were diseased beyond
immediate cure,

"and their virus will infect
our system no longer."

George Templeton Strong.

The Charleston Mercury:

"The tea has been
thrown overboard;

"the revolution of 1860
has been initiated."

After South Carolina seceded,

the handful of federal troops
still stationed in Charleston

withdrew to Fort Sumter,
far out in the harbor.

Their commander,
Major Robert Anderson,

said he had moved his men in order
to prevent the effusion of blood.

They were quickly surrounded
by rebel batteries.

"Thank God we have
a country at last,

"to live for,
to pray for,

"and, if need
be, to die for."

Lucius Quintus Lamar.

On February 18th, a few
minutes after noon,

Jefferson Davis stood on the steps of
the Alabama statehouse at Montgomery

and took the oath of office
as president of the

Provisional Confederate
States of America.

The crowds cheered,
wept, sang

Farewell to the Star
Spangled Banner, and Dixie,

a minstrel tune written
by a northerner.

He was brittle, nervous,
often unable to sleep,

and partly blind
in one eye.

Accustomed to being obeyed,
he scorned the bargaining

that made democratic
government work.

Sam Houston said he
was as cold as a lizard

and ambitious
as Lucifer.

Like Lincoln, he was
a Kentuckian,

the son of an
itinerant farmer,

but he had been educated at
West Point, fought in Mexico,

and served as
Secretary of War.

As senator from Mississippi,
he resisted secession

as long as he could,

but when his state
withdrew from the Union,

he headed home to his
plantation, Brierfield,

south of Vicksburg.

He and his wife
Varina were there,

clipping roses
in the garden,

when word came that he
had been elected president.

"Reading that telegram,
he looked so grieved

"that I feared some evil
had befallen our family.

"After a few minutes,
he told me,

"as a man might speak
of a sentence of death."

"Upon my head were
showered smiles,

"plaudits, and flowers,

"but beyond them, I saw
troubles innumerable."

Jefferson Davis.

The Confederate constitution
was almost identical

to the United States
constitution,

but it gave the president
a line-item veto,

a six-year term,

and it outlawed
international slave trading.

The Confederate cabinet met for
the first time in a hotel room.

A sheet of stationery pinned to the
door marked the president's office.

"Where will I find the state department,"
a visitor asked Robert Toombs,

Secretary of State.

"In my hat, sir, and the
archives in my coat pocket."

"Our new government is
founded upon the great truth

"that the negro is not
equal to the white man."

Vice President
Alexander Stephens.

"God forgive us,

"but ours is a
monstrous system.

"Like the patriarchs of old, our men
live all in one house with their wives

"and their concubines,

"and the mulattoes one
sees in every family

"exactly resemble
the white children.

"All the time, they seem to
think themselves patterns,

"models of husbands
and fathers."

Mary Chesnut.

Mary Chesnut and
her husband James,

a former United States
Senator from South Carolina,

moved among the highest
circles of the Confederacy

and were close to Jefferson
Davis and his wife.

Mary was subject to
depressions and nightmares,

for which she
sometimes took opium.

Now she, too, began
to keep a diary.

"This journal is intended
to be entirely objective.

"My subjective
days are over."

"The impression produced by
the size of his extremities

"and by his flapping and
wide-projecting ears

"may be removed by the
appearance of kindliness, sagacity.

"The nose itself,
a prominent organ,

"stands out from the face with
an inquiring, anxious air,

"as though it were sniffing for
some good thing in the wind.

"The eyes--dark, full,

"and deeply set--
are penetrating,

"but full of an
expression which

"almost amounts
to tenderness."

William Russell,
The London Times.

Two days after Jefferson
Davis left home,

Abraham Lincoln set out
from Springfield, Illinois,

for his capital.

"Here I have lived
a quarter of a century

"and passed from a
young to an old man.

"Here my children have been
born and one is buried.

"I now leave,
not knowing when

"or whether ever,
I may return,

"with the task before me greater than
that which rested upon Washington.

"Without the assistance of that
divine being whoever attended him,

"I cannot succeed.

"With that assistance,
I cannot fail.

"To his care
commending you,

"as I hope in your prayers
you will commend me,

"I bid you an
affectionate farewell."

En route to Washington, the
President's train stopped at Cleveland,

Buffalo, Albany,
and New York.

In Philadelphia, warned
of plots to kill him,

Lincoln declared he would
rather be assassinated

than see a single star removed
from the American flag.

Two days later, he
reluctantly canceled plans

for a grand arrival
in Washington

and slipped into the
capital by train at dawn,

wrapped in a shawl and
protected by two armed guards.

Inauguration day in Washington
was cloudy and cold.

A large, tense crowd gathered
beneath the unfinished dome.

Cannon guarded
the capitol grounds.

Sharpshooters
lined the roof.

Lincoln promised not
to interfere with slavery,

but he denied the right
of any state to secede,

vowed to defend
federal installations,

and spoke directly
to the South.

"In your hands, my
dissatisfied countrymen,

"and not in mine,

"is the momentous
issue of civil war.

"The government
will not assail you.

"You can have no conflict without
being yourselves the aggressors.

"We are not enemies,
but friends.

"We must not be enemies.

"Though passion may have
strained, it must not break,

"our bonds of affection.

"The mystic chords
of memory,

"stretching from every
battlefield and patriot grave

"to every living heart
and hearthstone

"all over this
broad land

"will yet swell the
chorus of the Union,

"when again touched,
as surely they will be,

"by the better angels
of our nature."

"I do not pretend to go
to sleep. How can I?

"If Anderson does not
accept terms at 4:00,

"the orders are he
shall be fired upon.

"I count

"four St. Michael chimes.

"I begin to hope.

"The heavy booming of a
cannon--I sprang out of bed

"and on my
knees, prostrate,

"I prayed as I have
never prayed before."

The Civil War
began at 4:30 a.m.

on the 12th of
April, 1861.

General Pierre Gustave
Toutant-Beauregard

ordered his Confederate gunners
to open fire on Fort Sumter,

at that hour, only a dark shape
out in Charleston Harbor.

Confederate commander
Beauregard was a gunner,

so skilled as an artillery
student at West Point

that his instructor kept him on as
an assistant for another year.

That instructor was
Major Robert Anderson,

Union Commander
inside Fort Sumter.

"All the pent-up hatred of
the past months and years

"is voiced in the thunder
of these cannon,

"and the people seem
almost beside themselves

"in the exultation of a freedom
they deem already won."

The signal to fire the first shot was
given by a civilian, Edmund Ruffin,

a Virginia farmer and editor

who had preached
secession for twenty years.

"Of course," he said,

"I was delighted to
perform the service."

Thirty-four hours later,
a white flag over the fort

ended the bombardment.

The only casualty had been
a Confederate horse.

It was a bloodless opening

to the bloodiest war
in American history.

"The first gun that was
fired at Fort Sumter

"sounded the death
knell of slavery.

"They who fired it

"were the greatest practical abolitionists
this nation has produced."

April 13th:

"So civil war is
inaugurated at last.

"God defend the right."

Fourteen April, Montgomery
Daily Advertiser:

"The intelligence that
Fort Sumter has surrendered

"to the Confederate
forces yesterday

"sent a thrill of joy to the heart of
every true friend of the south.

"The face of every Southern man
was brighter, his step lighter,

"and his bearing prouder
than it had been before."

In Boston,
jubilant volunteers

marched past Faneuil Hall,
eager to avenge Fort Sumter.

In Baltimore, anti-Lincoln men
rampaged through the streets.

In Richmond, a mob marched
on the statehouse,

tore down the
Stars and Stripes,

and raised the
Stars and Bars.

There was no longer any doubt
that Virginia would secede.

And in New York, 100,000
people crowded Union Square,

where the Sumter
flag now flew.

Walt Whitman, sometime poet and
journalist for the Brooklyn Standard,

was stunned by the news.

"All the past we leave behind
with Sumter," he said.

"Woe to those who
began this war

“if they were not
in bitter earnest."

Mary Chesnut.

"Father and I were
husking out corn

"when William Corry came across
the field. He was excited and said,

" 'Jonathan, the rebels have
fired upon Fort Sumter!'

"Father got white and
couldn't say a word."

Theodore F. Upson.

"April 15th.
Events multiply.

"The President is out with a proclamation
calling for 75,000 volunteers.

"It is said 200,000 more will be
called within a few days."

On the day Sumter fell, the
regular army of the United States

consisted of fewer
than 17,000 men,

most of whom were
stationed in the far west.

Only two of its generals had ever
commanded an army in the field,

and both were long
past their prime.

Winfield Scott, the hero
of the Mexican War,

"old fuss and feathers",

was too fat even
to mount a horse.

"We was treated as good as a
company could be at every station.

"We got kisses from the girls
at a good many places,

"and we returned
the same to them."

Hercules Standard.

"I've got the best suit of
clothes I ever had in my life."

In the north, they came by
hundreds and by thousands...

from Boston, Massachusetts...

from Detroit and
Ann Arbor, Michigan...

and Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, in the rain.

Whole towns signed up.

The 10th Michigan
Volunteer Infantry

was made up
of Flint boys.

Their commander was the
mayor, their regimental doctor,

the man who had been taking care
of them since they were young.

The 6th New York contained
so many Bowery toughs,

it was said a man had to
have done time in prison

just to get into
the regiment.

The elite 7th, on
the other hand,

set out for Washington with
sandwiches from Delmonico's

and 1,000 velvet-
covered camp stools

on which to sit
and eat them.

On his way to war, Lieutenant
George Armstrong Custer,

just twenty-two and less than a
month out of West Point,

where he graduated at
the bottom of his class,

stopped in New York to
have himself fitted out

with a splendid new uniform,

then went to a photographer.

In Pawtuxet, Rhode Island, nineteen-
year-old Elisha Hunt Rhodes

left his job as a
harness maker's clerk

and signed on as a private

in the 2nd Rhode
Island Volunteers.

He would have joined earlier,
but his widowed mother

begged him to
stay home.

"We drilled all
day and night.

"Standing before a long mirror,
I put many hours of weary work

"and soon thought
myself quite a soldier.

"l was elected First Sergeant,
much to my surprise.

"Just what a First Sergeant's
duties might be,

“I had no idea."

After two weeks of drilling,
the 2nd Rhode Island moved out.

"Today we have orders to
pack up and be ready to leave

"for Washington.

"My knapsack was so heavy that I
could scarcely stagger under the load.

"At the wharf, an immense
crowd had gathered,

"and we went on board our
steamer with mingled feelings

"of joy and sorrow."

In Baton Rouge, William Tecumseh
Sherman resigned as superintendent

of the Louisiana Military
Academy and headed north.

"You politicians," he told his brother,
Senator John Sherman of Ohio,

"have got things
in a hell of a fix,

"and you may get them
out as best you can.

"I will have no more
to do with it."

But when Sumter fell, he
put his uniform back on

and reluctantly
went to war.

"You might as well attempt
to put out the flames

"of a burning house
with a squirt gun.

"I think this is to be
a long war, very long,

"much longer than any
politician thinks."

"There are but
two parties now:

"traitors and patriots,

"and I want hereafter to
be ranked with the latter."

Ulysses S. Grant.

In Galena, Illinois, thirty-nine-
year-old Ulysses S. Grant

was working in his
father's harness shop,

having failed as a
peacetime soldier

and considered
by some a drunk.

Now he signed on as
a mustering officer,

handling the flood
of volunteers

at $4.20 a day.

"New Orleans, 1861.

"I feel that I would like
to shoot a Yankee,

"and yet I know that this
would not be in harmony

"with the spirit
of Christianity."

William Nugent.

"So impatient did I
become for starting

"that I felt like 1,000 pins were pricking
me in every part of my body,

"and I started off a week in
advance of my brothers."

"I found Mobile boiling
over with enthusiasm.

"The young merchants had dropped
their ledgers and were forming

"and drilling companies
by night and day."

"Every day, regiments
marched by.

"Charleston is crowded
with soldiers.

"These new ones
are running in fairly.

"They fear the war will be over
before they get sight of the fun.

"Every man from every
little country precinct

“wants a place
in the picture."

The Confederate government,
its capital now in Richmond,

called for 100,000 volunteers.

So many southerners
volunteered that a third of them

had to be sent home.

They came from Catahoula and
Baton Rouge, Louisiana...

Greenville, Mississippi,
Moonsville, Alabama,

and Chattanooga,
Tennessee.

Tennessee joined
the Confederacy.

So did Arkansas
and North Carolina.

In Memphis, Nathan
Bedford Forrest,

a blacksmith's son who had
made himself a millionaire

selling land,
cotton, and slaves,

put up posters calling on anyone
who wanted to kill Yankees

to come and ride with him.

The Clinch Rifles
from Augusta, Georgia,

started out in May 1861.

Only the drummer boy
would survive.

The odds against a Southern
victory were long.

There were nearly twenty-one
million people in the north,

just nine million in
the Confederacy,

and four million of
them were slaves,

whom their masters
did not dare arm.

The value of all the
manufactured goods produced

in all the
Confederate States

added up to less than
one-quarter of those produced

in New York state alone.

But none of this mattered to the men
who joined the Tallapoosa Thrashers

and Chickasaw Desperados

and Cherokee
Lincoln Killers.

"The histories of the lost cause
are all written out by big bugs--

"generals and
renowned historians.

"Well, I have as much right as
any man to write a history."

Sam Watkins.

One of the first to answer the southern
call was twenty-one-year-old

Sam Watkins of
Columbia, Tennessee.

He joined Company H of the
1st Tennessee at Nashville.

Like most rebel soldiers,
he owned no slaves.

"The bugle sounded to strike tents and
place everything aboard the cars.

"We went bowling along
at thirty miles an hour

"as fast as steam
could carry us.

"At every town and station, citizens and
ladies were waving their handkerchiefs

"and hurrahing for Jeff Davis and
the southern Confederacy.

"It's worth soldiering to receive
such a welcome as this."

"If the president of the
United States would tell me

"that a great battle
was to be fought

"for the liberty or
slavery of the country,

"and asked my judgment as to
the ability of a commander,

"I would say with
my dying breath:

'Let it be Robert E. Lee.' "

General Winfield Scott.

"l can anticipate no greater
calamity for the country

"than a dissolution
of the Union.

"It would be an accumulation of
all the evils we complain of,

"and I am willing to sacrifice
everything but honor

"for its preservation."

Robert E. Lee.

The most promising officer
in the regular army

was Robert E. Lee
of Virginia.

On April 18th, four
days after Sumter,

Lee was summoned to Blair
House at Lincoln's behest

and offered field command
of the entire Union army.

Lee said he would
think about it.

Virginia had voted to
secede the day before.

That night, he paced anxiously in the
gardens around his Arlington mansion

across the Potomac.

At midnight,
Saturday the 20th,

Lee wrote his letter of resignation
from the United States Army.

On the 21st, the
Governor of Virginia

asked Lee to take command
of the state militia.

When Lee had to choose

between the nation and Virginia,
there was never any choice...

any doubt about what
his choice would be.

He went with his state, and
he said, "I can't draw my

"sword against my native state,"
or, as he often said, "my country."

Lincoln had lost
his best soldier.

"Not by one word or look
can we detect any change

"in the demeanor
of the negro servants.

"They make no sign.

"Are they stupid, or
wiser than we are,

“silent and strong,
biding their time?"

Mary Chesnut.

Both sides thought it
would be a ninety-day war,

and both sides agreed it was
to be a white man's fight.

Blacks who tried to sign
up were turned away.

"April 19th.

"There has been a serious
disturbance in Baltimore.

"Regiments from Massachusetts assailed
by a mob that was repulsed by

"shot and steel.

"It's a notable coincidence that the
first blood in this great struggle

"is drawn by Massachusetts men
on the anniversary of Lexington."

"We are in Washington,
and what a city:

"mud, pigs, Negroes, palaces,
shanties everywhere.

"As we passed the White House, I had
my first view of Abraham Lincoln.

"He looks like a
good, honest man,

"and I trust that, with God's help,
he can bring our country

"safely out of its peril."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

The Rhode Islanders set up
their bunks at the patent office;

New Yorkers slept on the carpeted
floor of the house chamber;

Massachusetts men
camped in the rotunda

and cooked their bacon on
furnaces in the basement.

Overhead, the capitol dome
remained incomplete.

Despite the war, Lincoln
insisted that the work go on.

"I take it as a sign,"
he said,

"that the Union
will continue."

"The first thing in
the morning is drill,

"then drill,

"then drill again,

"then drill, drill, a little
more drill, then drill,

"then lastly, drill.

"Between drills, we drill and
sometimes stop to eat a little

"and have a roll call."

"Outskirts of Baltimore:
My dear William,

"I can now march twenty and
twenty-five miles a day,

"live on short rations of
hardtack, raw, rancid bacon,

"green roasting ears
and cold water,

"sleep out in the rain and heavy dew
with nothing but an army coat over me,

“and enjoy myself capitally."

Edward Hastings Ripley.

Early in the war, there was
a Confederate veteran,

a young country boy,

on guard duty. He's walking
his post in the woods,

and there was an owl,

unknown to him
in a tree nearby

and the owl said,
"hooo."

And the boy, trembling
with fear, said,

"It's me, sir, John Albert,
a friend of yours."

In May, Union troops crossed
the Potomac by torchlight

and took the heights
of Arlington.

Robert E. Lee's house would
be occupied by Union troops

for the rest of the war.

In late June, the new general in charge
of the Union army, Irvin McDowell,

outlined plans for attacking the
Confederates in Virginia,

but he did not yet
want to fight.

"This is not an army,"
he warned the president.

"You are green, it is true,"
Lincoln answered,

"but they are green also.

“You are all green alike."

To preserve the Constitution, Lincoln had,
for three months, gone beyond it--

waging war without
Congressional consent,

seizing northern
telegraph offices,

suspending habeas corpus.

To keep the border
states from seceding,

Lincoln sent troops
to occupy Baltimore,

and clapped the mayor and
nineteen secessionist legislators

in jail without trial.

Chief Justice Taney ruled that the
president had exceeded his power.

Lincoln simply ignored him.

"More rogues than honest men find
shelter under habeas corpus," he said,

and even contemplated
arresting the Chief Justice.

A very mysterious man,

he's got so many
sides to him.

The curious thing
about Lincoln to me,

is that he could remove
himself from himself

as if he were
looking at himself.

It's a very strange,
very eerie thing,

and highly intelligent.

It's a simple thing
to say, but

Lincoln's been so smothered
with stories of his compassion,

that people forget what a
highly intelligent man he was,

and almost
everything he did--

almost everything he did
was calculated for effect.

Keep on (keep on)

Climbing (climbing)

We will (we will)

Make it (make it)

"Teach the rebels
and traitors

"that the price they are to pay for the
attempt to abolish this government

"must be the
abolition of slavery."

Frederick Douglass.

Soldiers

Of the cross

From the start of the war slaves fled
their plantations for the Union lines,

but Lincoln's
policy was clear:

despite pressure
from the abolitionists,

he insisted he was making
war on secession, not slavery

and ordered the army to
return fugitives to their owners.

But now, an unlikely figure
helped to change men's minds.

General Benjamin Butler was
a Massachusetts politician

with crossed eyes
and mixed motives

who had once backed Jefferson Davis
for president of the United States.

"Returning slaves only aided
the enemy," Butler argued,

and he got permission to hold
fugitive slaves as contraband of war

and employ them as
laborers in the Union army.

"Major Cary of Virginia asked
if I did not feel myself

"bound by my
constitutional obligations

"to deliver up fugitives under
the Fugitive Slave Act;

"to this I replied,

"that the Fugitive Slave Act did
not affect a foreign country,

"which Virginia claimed to be,
and she must reckon it

"one of the infelicities
of her position,

"that insofar, at least, she
was taken at her word."

General Benjamin Butler.

The trickle of runaways
coming into northern lines

now swelled to a flood.

One ex-slave who had
recently bought his freedom

told a Union soldier,

"if I had known you
gun men was a-comin',

"I'd have saved my money."

War was breaking out
all across the country.

There were engagements
at Big Bethel, Virginia,

and Bonneville, Missouri;

skirmishes from Maryland
to new Mexico Territory.

At Phillipi, in
western Virginia,

a young Union General,
George McClellan,

won a small, highly
publicized victory

over a tiny
Confederate force.

But still, there had
been no decisive battle.

"July 9. Our battle summer.

"May it be our first
and our last so called.

“After all, we have not had
any of the horrors of war."

Mary Chesnut.

"July 16. It begins
to look warlike,

"and we shall probably have a
chance to pay our southern brethren

"a visit upon the sacred soil
of Virginia very soon.

"I hope we shall be successful and
give the rebels a good pounding."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

On July 16th, the
volunteer Union army

of 37,000 men
marched into Virginia.

Their aim--to cut the
railroad at Manassas,

then move on at
last to Richmond.

Washington Star.

"The scene from
the hills was grand.

"Regiment after regiment was
seen coming along the road

"and across the long bridge,
their arms gleaming in the sun.

"Cheer after cheer was heard
as regiment greeted regiment,

"and with the martial music and sharp,
clear orders of commanding officers,

"it made a combination of sounds very
pleasant to the ear of a Union man."

To stop the Union invasion,

22,000 Confederate troops had
moved north from Richmond,

commanded by
General Beauregard,

who knew in advance
the federals were coming.

Rose Greenhow, a prominent
socialite in Washington

and a Confederate
spy, had alerted him.

Now Beauregard
made his headquarters

in Wilmer McLean's
farmhouse.

The Confederates formed a
meandering eight-mile line

along one side
of Bull Run Creek.

They were less than twenty-
five miles from Washington,

and there they waited.

Hundreds of Washingtonians in
holiday mood rode out to Manassas

hoping to see
a real battle.

Some brought field
glasses, picnic baskets,

bottles of champagne.

"We saw carriages which
contained civilians

"who'd driven out from Washington
to witness the operations.

"A Connecticut boy said,
'there's our senator,'

"and some of our men recognized
other members of Congress.

"We thought it
wasn't a bad idea

"to have the great men from
Washington come out to

“see us thrash the rebs."

Private James Tinkham.

On the morning
of the 21st,

McDowell sent his men
across Bull Run.

They smashed into the left
side of the Confederate line,

driving the rebels from
one position after another.

The civilian onlookers waved hats
and fluttered handkerchiefs.

It was not yet noon, and all was
going just as they wanted.

"On reaching a clearing separated
from our left flank by a rail fence,

"we were saluted by
a volley of musketry

"which was fired so high that all
the bullets went over our heads.

"My first sensation was astonishment
at the peculiar whir of the bullets,

"and that the regiment immediately laid
down without waiting for orders."

"We fired a volley and
saw the rebels running.

"The boys were saying constantly
in great glee, 'we whipped 'em.

" 'We'll hang Jeff Davis
to a sour apple tree.

“ 'They're running.
The war's over.' "

An onlooker remembered that
the advancing Union army

looked like a bristling monster
lifting himself by a slow,

wavy motion up the
laborious ascent.

Union victory seemed so sure
that on one part of the battlefield

men stopped to
gather souvenirs.

But holding a hill at the
center of the southern line

was a Virginia brigade led by
General Thomas Jackson.

While other southern
commands wavered,

Jackson's held firm.

One Confederate officer, trying
to rally his own frightened men,

shouted, "Look! There's
Jackson with his Virginians,

“standing like
a stone wall."

The name stuck.

He had the strange
combination of

religious fanaticism
and, uh... glory in battle.

He loved battle.
His eyes would light up.

They called him old blue light because of
the way his eyes would light up in battle.

He was totally fearless,
had no thought whatsoever

of danger at any time
when the battle was on,

and he could define
what he wanted to do.

He said, "once you get them running,
you stay right on top of them.

"That way a small force can
defeat a large one every time."

He knew perfectly well that
a reputation for victory

would roll and build.

It was the turning point.

At 4:00, Beauregard
ordered a counterattack.

Jackson urged his men
to yell like furies.

The rebel yell first heard that
would echo from 1,000 battlefields.

Confederate reinforcements began
to arrive. The first came on horseback.

More arrived by train,
something new in war.

The northern
army fell apart.

The retreat soon
became a rout

as Union guns became entangled with
the carriages of fleeing spectators.

"We tried to tell them that
there was no danger,

"called on them to stop,
implored them to stand.

"We called them cowards,

"put out our heavy revolvers
and threatened to shoot,

"but all in vain."

"Along a shady little valley
through which our road lay,

"the surgeons had
plying their vocation

"all the morning
upon the wounded.

"Tables about breast-high had
been erected, upon which

"screaming victims were
having legs and arms cut off.

"The surgeons and
their assistants,

"stripped to the waist and
all bespattered with blood,

"stood around, some holding
the poor fellas, while others,

"armed with long,
bloody knives and saws,

"cut and sawed away
with frightful rapidity,

"throwing the mangled limbs on a
pile nearby as soon as removed."

Lieutenant Colonel W. W. Blackford,
1st Cavalry, Virginia.

"What a horrible
sight it was--

"here a man, grasping his
gun firmly in his hands,

"stone dead;

"several with distorted
features, all horribly dirty.

"Many were terribly wounded,
some with legs shot off,

"others with arms gone.

"Some so badly wounded they
could not drag themselves away,

"slowly bleeding to death.

"We stopped many times
to give some a drink,

"and soon saw enough to satisfy
us with the horrors of war."

Lieutenant Josiah Favill.

"I struggled on, clinging to
my gun and cartridge box.

"Many times, I sat down in the
mud, determined to go no further

"and willing to die
and end my misery,

"but soon a friend would pass and
urge me to make another effort,

"and I would stagger
a mile further.

"At daylight, we could see
the spires of Washington,

"and a welcome
sight it was.

"The loss of the regiment
in this disastrous affair

"was ninety-three killed,
wounded, or missing."

There is a… a…
a Congressman,

I believe from Alabama--
I've forgotten where from--

who said there would be no war, and
he offered to wipe up all the blood

that would be shed with
a pocket handkerchief.

That… that was
his prediction.

I've always said, someone
could get a PhD. by calculating

how many pocket
handkerchiefs it would take

to wipe up all the
blood that was shed.

It'd be a lot of
handkerchiefs.

From the Confederate
White House in Richmond,

Jefferson Davis rejoiced.

"My fellow citizens,
your little army,

"derided for its
want of arms,

"derided for its lack of all the
essential material of war,

"has met the grand army
of the enemy, routed it

"at every point,

"and it now flies inglorious

"in retreat before our
victorious columns.

"We have taught
them a lesson

"in their invasion of the
sacred soil of Virginia."

"Today will be known
as Black Monday.

"We are utterly and disgracefully
routed, beaten, whipped

"by secessionists."

George Templeton Strong.

London Times.

"The inmates of the White House
are in a state of utmost trepidation

"and Mr. Lincoln
in despair.

"Why Beauregard does not
attack Washington, I know not,

"nor can I well guess."

It was remembered as
the great skedaddle.

For days, discouraged troops
straggled back Into Washington.

"I saw a steady
stream of men

"covered with mud,
soaked through with rain,

"who were pouring irregularly up
Pennsylvania Avenue, toward the Capitol.

"A dense stream of vapor
rose from the multitude.

"I asked a pale young man who
looked exhausted to death

"whether the whole army
had been defeated.

" 'That's more than
I know,' he said.

" 'I know I'm going home.

" 'I've had enough of fighting
to last my lifetime.' "

The north was appalled
at the 5,000 casualties.

Both sides now knew it
would be no ninety-days war.

Two days later, canny
real estate speculators

bought up the battlefield to
make a second kind of killing--

as a tourist attraction.

"What upon earth is the matter
with the American people?

"Do they really covet
the world's ridicule

"as well as their own
social and political ruin?

"The national
edifice is on fire.

"Every man who can
carry a bucket of water

"or remove a
brick is wanted.

"Yet government leaders
persistently refuse

"to receive as
soldiers the slaves,

"the very class of men which has
a deeper interest in the defeat

"and humiliation of the
rebels than all others.

"Such is the pride,

"the stupid prejudice, and
folly that rules the hour."

Frederick Douglass.

"Little did I conceive of the
greatness of the defeat,

"the magnitude of the disaster which
had entailed upon the United States.

"So short-lived has been
the American Union

"that men who saw it rise

“may live to see it fall."

William Russell,
London Times.

"Washington, August.

"I found no preparations
whatever for defense;

"not a regiment was
properly encamped,

"not a single avenue
or approach guarded.

“All was chaos, and the
streets, hotels, and bar-rooms

"were filled with drunken
officers and men absent

"from their regiments
without leave:

"a perfect pandemonium."

George McClellan.

Five days after the disaster at
Bull Run, a new general took over

what was now called
the "Army of the Potomac."

George Brinton
McClellan, only thirty-four,

seemed just what
the North needed.

He brought with him to the demoralized
capital what one aide called,

"an indescribable
air of success."

He replaced inept
officers with regulars.

He laid out tidy camps
around Washington

to accommodate the 10,000 new
volunteers arriving each week,

drilled them eight
hours a day,

and staged grand reviews
to boost morale.

"All the attention was
upon the young general

"with the calm eye, with
the satisfied air,

"who moved around followed
by an immense staff

"to the clanking of sabers and the
acclamation of the spectators."

Regis de Trobiand.

"I find myself in a new and
strange position here--

"president, cabinet, General
Scott, and all deferring to me.

"By some strange
piece of magic,

"I seem to have become
the power of the land.

"I almost think that were I to win
some small success now,

"I could become dictator,

"or anything else that
might please me,

"but nothing of that
kind would please me,

"therefore, I won't
be a dictator.

"Admirable self-denial."

The newspapers called
him "young Napoleon,"

and he could not help seeing
the resemblance himself.

But 100,000 untrained volunteers
had become an army,

McClellan's army.

His men, who loved him for having
made them proud of themselves,

called him "little mac."

His specialty is
preparing troops to fight,

and he did that superbly.

McClellan trained that army.
Whatever the army of the

Potomac did in
the after years,

it is largely due
to the training

McClellan gave them
in that first year.

With Lincoln, McClellan and his staff
devised a three-pronged attack

on the Confederacy.

One army would drive into
Virginia and take Richmond.

Another would secure
Kentucky and Tennessee,

then push into the heartland
of the Confederacy

and occupy Mississippi,
Alabama, and Georgia.

Meanwhile, the navy would
clear the Mississippi,

surround the
Confederacy by sea,

and choke off supplies.

The war would be fought
along a 1,000-mile front.

That fall, Lincoln elevated
McClellan to General-In-Chief,

replacing the aging
Winfield Scott.

"I can do it all,"
McClellan said,

but he did nothing.

As summer turned to autumn,
it became Increasingly clear

that having made
magnificent army,

George McClellan had no immediate
plans to lead it anywhere.

"As we approached
the brow of the hill,

"my heart kept getting
higher and higher,

"until it felt to me
it was in my throat.

"I would have given anything,
then, to have been back in Illinois,

"but I kept right on.

"When the valley below
was in full view, I halted.

"The enemy's
troops were gone.

"My heart resumed its place.

"And it occurred
to me at once

"that he had been as
much afraid of me

"as I of him.

"This was a view of the question
I had never taken before,

"but it was one I never
forgot afterwards."

General Ulysses S. Grant.

In September, Ulysses S. Grant
took Paducah, Kentucky,

a strategic city at the
mouth of the Tennessee,

but two months later, his undisciplined
recruits were almost destroyed

looting a captured
rebel camp

instead of preparing
for a counterattack.

Grant was returned
to desk duty.

In November, William
Tecumseh Sherman

was relieved as Union
commander in Kentucky

when he insisted that at least
200,000 men would be needed

to suppress the
rebellion in the west.

No one believed him.

He grew melancholic,

prone to fits of
anxiety and rage.

"Sherman," McClellan said,
"is gone in the head."

December found him at home
In the care of his wife,

contemplating suicide.

No, no one thought
it would last long.

No one on either side
thought it would last long.

Those few individuals
who said that it would,

Tecumseh Sherman,
for instance,

were actually judged
to be insane

for making predictions about
casualties, which were actually low.

In November,
a Union warship

stopped a British steamer at
gunpoint in international waters

and arrested two Confederate
diplomats found on board.

Britain's prime minister,
Lord Palmerston,

was outraged, demanded
their immediate release,

and dispatched
11,000 troops to Canada.

"One war at a time,"
Lincoln said,

and quietly let the
two Confederates go.

By December, optimists on
both sides were disappointed.

The Confederacy showed no
signs of imminent collapse.

The north would not abandon its
efforts to reunite the nation by force.

By the end of the year, there were
700,000 men in the Union army.

No one knew how many
Confederates there were.

"December 31st.

"Poor old 1861 just going.

"It has been a gloomy year
of trouble and disaster.

"I should be glad of its
departure were it not that 1862

"is likely to be no better."

George Templeton Strong.

A week before the battle of
Bull Run, Sullivan Ballou,

a major in the 2nd
Rhode Island Volunteers,

wrote home to his
wife in Smithfield.

"July the 14th, 1861.

"Washington, D.C.

"Dear Sarah,

"The indications are very strong
that we shall move in a few days,

"perhaps tomorrow,

"and lest I should not be
able to write you again,

"I feel impelled to write a few lines
that may fall under your eye

"when I am no more.

"I have no misgivings about or
lack of confidence in the cause

"in which I am engaged,

"and my courage
does not halt or falter.

"I know how American
civilization now leans

"upon the triumph
of the government,

"and how great a debt we owe
to those who went before us

"through the blood and
suffering of the revolution,

"and I am willing,
perfectly willing,

"to lay down all
my joys in this life

"to help maintain
this government

"and to pay that debt.

"Sarah,

"my love for you
is deathless.

"It seems to bind me
with mighty cables

"that nothing but
omnipotence can break,

"and yet my love of country comes
over me like a strong wind

"and bears me irresistibly with all
those chains to the battlefield.

"The memory of all the blissful
moments I have enjoyed with you

"come crowding over me,

"and I feel most deeply
grateful to God and you

"that I've enjoyed
them for so long.

"And how hard it is for
me to give them up

"and burn to ashes the
hopes of future years,

"when, God willing, we might still
have lived and loved together,

"and see our boys grown up to
honorable manhood around us.

"If I do not return,
my dear Sarah,

"never forget how
much I loved you,

"nor that when my last breath
escapes me on the battlefield,

"it will whisper your name.

"Forgive my many faults

"and the many pains
I have caused you.

"How thoughtless, how foolish
I have sometimes been.

"But, oh, Sarah,

"if the dead can come
back to this earth

"and flit unseen
around those they love,

"I shall always be with you in the
brightest day and the darkest night,

"always, always.

"And when the soft
breeze fans your cheek,

"it shall be my breath,

"or the cool air at your
throbbing temple,

"it shall be my
spirit passing by.

"Sarah, do not
mourn me dead.

"Think I am gone

"and wait for me,

"for we shall meet again."

Sullivan Ballou was
killed a week later

at the first battle
of Bull Run.