All language subtitles for Civil War, The, 02 (1990)

At the Willard Hotel
in Washington, D.C.,

the poet Julia
Ward Howe

awoke from a
spectacular dream.

That day, she had heard a New
England regiment singing on parade

and had fallen asleep with
the song "John Brown's Body"

ringing in her head.

Now, in the dark,
she got up

and scribbled out the
words with a pencil stub.

She sold her poem to the
Atlantic Monthly for $4.00.

It became the
anthem of the Union.

Mine eyes have
seen the glory

Of the coming
of The Lord

He is trampling
out the vintage

Where the grapes of
wrath are stored

He hath loosed the
fateful lightning

Of His terrible,
swift sword

His truth is

Marching on

By 1862, Russia had
emancipated the serfs.

In France, Victor Hugo
published Les Miserables,

and Jean Bernard Foucault
measured the speed of light.

In America, the United States
passed the first national income tax

to pay for war.

The Gatling gun was invented,
and war itself was changing.

The shocking casualties of
Bull Run and Wilson's Creek

were dwarfed by
battle after battle.

And now there were
new questions--

would the North's
strength be offset

by incompetence
and low morale?

Would England side with
cotton and the South?

Who would control
the Mississippi?

For a year, the nation, now two
nations, had torn itself apart.

From a bloodless duel over a man-
made island in Charleston Harbor,

the war had spread along a 1,000-
mile line from Manassas, Virginia,

to Shanghai, Missouri,
and beyond.

As 1862 began,
over a million men

were massing for war.

In a fierce struggle
for Tennessee,

the people of Clarksville
on the Cumberland

found themselves prisoners
in their own homes.

Far north of any fighting, the people
of Deer Isle, Maine, suffered, too--

with sad news from
places most of them

had never heard of.

By the end of the war, the little
town of Winchester, Virginia,

had changed hands
seventy-two times.

Sam Watkins, a Confederate private,
would see his first big battle

in April on the banks
of the Tennessee.

Elisha Hunt Rhodes, a clerk
from Providence, Rhode Island,

would celebrate his 20th
birthday in a Union camp.

Union General George
McClellan, the idol of his troops,

would fashion a mighty army and
lead it south towards Richmond,

where Robert E.
Lee was waiting.

"The struggle of today,"
Lincoln told Congress,

"is not altogether
for today.

"It is for a vast
future, also."

Now, in this,
its second year,

the war was becoming a struggle
over the future of freedom.

It really is one
of those, um...

one of those watershed things.
It was a huge chasm

between the beginning
and the end of the war.

The nation had come
face to face with a...

a dreadful tragedy, and we
reacted the way a family would do

with a dreadful tragedy.

It was almost inconceivable that
anything that horrendous could happen.

You must remember that
casualties in Civil War battles

were so far beyond anything
we can imagine now.

If we had 10% casualties
in a battle today,

it would be looked on
as a bloodbath.

They had 30% in
several battles,

and one after
another, you see.

"This afternoon, seeing the
General alone in the office,

"I stepped up to
him and said,

"General, I want
to go home.

" 'Want to go home,
and for what?' he replied.

"As I could not think of
an excuse, I blurted out,

"I want to see
my mother.

" 'Is she sick,' he asked.

"No, I replied.
I hope not.

"He then asked me how
long since I left home and

"if I was ever away for
so long a time before.

"I told him I had been in the
service seven months

"and never been away
from home alone before.

" 'Well,' said the General,

" 'you have been
a good boy,

" 'and you shall have a
furlough for ten days.' "

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

"I always shot
at privates.

"It was they that did the
shooting and killing,

"and if I could kill
or wound a private,

"why, my chances were
so much the better.

"I always looked on officers
as harmless personages."

Sam Watkins.

The commander of Sam
Watkins' Company H

was Captain
William R. Johnston.

His immediate superior was Colonel George Maney

of the 1st Tennessee.

From there, the Confederate
chain of command

ascended through Colonel William
H. Stephens of the 2nd Brigade

to General Benjamin Cheatham,
Commander of the 2nd Division

of General Leonidas
Polk's 1st Army Corps,

then to General Albert
Sidney Johnston,

Commander of the Army
of the Mississippi;

above that, to War Secretary
George W. Randolph...

finally, to Jefferson Davis,

President of the Confederate
States of America.

For one Union soldier,

the chain of command descended
from President Lincoln,

Secretary of War
Simon Cameron,

and General McClellan, Commander
of the Army of the Potomac,

to General Erasmus Keyes,
Commander of the Union 4th Corps,

General Darius N. Couch
of "Couch's Brigade,"

to Colonel
Frank Wheaton,

Commander of the
2nd Rhode Island Volunteers.

and finally to Private
Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

"January 31, 1862.

"Mud, mud, mud.

"I'm thinking of starting a steamboat
line to run on Pennsylvania Avenue

"between our office
and the Capitol.

"Will the mud never dry
so the army can move?"

"Of all detestable places,
Washington is the first.

"Crowd, heat, bad quarters,
bad fare, bad smells,

"mosquitoes,

"and a plague of flies transcending
everything within my experience.

"Beelzebub surely
reigns here,

"and Willard's hotel
is his temple."

George Templeton Strong.

Throughout Lincoln's Presidency--
and this is true of most presidents--

he was fairly run crazy
by office seekers,

especially at the start, when his
campaign managers had promised jobs

to a great many people
who came to collect them.

And one man saw him one day,
and he looked particularly worried,

and the man said, "What's
the matter, Mr. President?"

and Lincoln said, "There's too
many pigs for the tits."

Abraham Lincoln's problems were not
confined to fighting rebels alone:

the president's unwieldy cabinet
included former Conservative Whigs,

Free-soil Whigs, and
Union Democrats.

Four had been his rivals for the
Republican presidential nomination.

Nearly all were privately sure they
could do a better job than their chief.

Secretary of State William H.
Seward hoped to replace Lincoln.

Secretary of the Treasury
Salmon P. Chase

wanted to
replace Seward.

Mary Todd told her husband
to get rid of both of them.

Instead, Lincoln fired War
Secretary Simon P. Cameron,

a Pennsylvania boss so
corrupt, said Lincoln,

that the only thing he wouldn't
steal was a red-hot stove.

The new Secretary of War
was Edwin M. Stanton,

an able, ruthless war
Democrat from Ohio

who worried about
what he believed to be

Lincoln's "painful imbecility."

On one thing, the
cabinet was agreed:

General George McClellan
was not moving fast enough

against the Confederates.

"The army," Secretary
of War Stanton said,

"has got to fight
or run away.

"The champagne and
oysters on the Potomac

"must be stopped."

"Dear Ellen, I can't tell you how
disgusted I am becoming

"with these
wretched politicians.

"They are a most
despicable set of men.

"Seward is a meddling, officious,
incompetent little puppy.

"The president is nothing more
than a well-meaning baboon."

George McClellan.

The president pored over military
books, asked officers for advice,

and in exasperation,

"suggested that "If General McClellan
does not want to use the army,

"I would like to borrow
it for a time."

Finally, he ordered McClellan to
move on Manassas Junction,

and then proceed overland
to take Richmond,

but McClellan
would not move,

and took to his
bed with a fever.

McClellan did
not want to fight

the vast Confederate army
he had convinced himself

now occupied
Northern Virginia.

Instead, he proposed to float
his army to Fortress Monroe

at the tip of the finger of land between
the James and York Rivers,

then race up the peninsula to
seize the Confederate capital.

Impatient for any action,
Lincoln agreed.

McClellan would
move in mid-March.

It had been eight months

since the norther army had
crawled back into Washington

after Bull Run.

"February 9th, 1862.

"Dear Mr. President,

"General McClellan
has almost ruined.

your administration
and the country.

"He is a do-nothing.

"He is thinking of the
presidency in '64.

"He is placating
the rebels--

"that's what ails him.
Depend upon it."

Joseph Medill.

"What shall I do?

"The people are impatient.

"Chase has no money and tells
me he can raise no more.

"The General of the Army,
McClellan, has typhoid fever.

"The bottom is
out of the tub.

"What shall I do?"

"Washington.

"Dear Ellen, I went to the White
House shortly after tea,

"where I found the
original gorilla,

"about as
intelligent as ever.

"What a specimen to be at the
head of our affairs now."

George McClellan.

In the midst of all his troubles, the
president delighted in his sons.

The oldest, Robert,
was away at Harvard,

but Willie, eleven, and eight-year-
old Thomas, known as Tad,

had the run of the
White House.

Willie was studious,
liked to compose verse

and memorize
railroad timetables.

He'd raised a boys' battalion
from among his schoolmates

and invaded cabinet
meeting with his "troops."

In February, he developed what
the doctor called "bilious fever."

His parents sat up night
after night to nurse him.

On February 20th,

Willie died.

For three months, Mary Lincoln
veered between loud weeping

and silent depression

and sought to communicate
with her dead child

through spiritualists.

"If I had not felt the
spur of necessity

"urging me to cheer
Mr. Lincoln,

"whose grief was as
great as my own,

"I could never
have smiled again."

The war left Lincoln
little time to mourn.

He was soon back working
eighteen hours a day.

"As she came plowing
through the water,

"she looked like a huge
half-submerged crocodile.

"At her prow, I could see the iron
ram projecting straight forward."

The Confederacy had begun the
war with no navy whatsoever,

but by the fall of 1861,

Confederate engineers
were bolting iron plates

to the hull of the steam
frigate Merrimack,

building a warship more powerful
than anything the Union had.

News of the monster
quickly reached the north.

Secretary of War Stanton feared
she would steam up the Potomac

and shell the
White House.

There was probably only one man in America who could stop the Merrimack,

and he was mad
at the Navy.

The Swedish-born
inventor John Ericsson

was proud, vain,
and cranky,

and felt he had been cheated out of
payment for services to the government

years before,

but when Secretary of the
Navy Gideon Welles

begged him to do something
to stop the Merrimack,

Ericsson came up with
an extraordinary design.

His ship would have only two
guns to the Merrimack's ten,

but they would be mounted
on a revolving turret,

and though his vessel would
be made entirely of iron,

Ericsson assured everybody

that "The sea shall ride over her,
and she shall live in it like a duck."

Professional navy men dismissed the
plan, but Lincoln overruled them,

and just 100 days later,
on January 30th, 1862,

Ericsson's ship slid into
Manhattan's East River.

He called her the Monitor, and there
had never been anything like her.

The single vessel
contained forty-seven

patentable inventions.

"We ran first to the New York
side and then to Brooklyn,

"and so back and forth
across the river,

"like a drunken man
on a sidewalk.

"We found she would not
answer her rudder at all."

Once at sea, water spilled
in, ventilators failed,

the ship filled with gas,
her crew began to faint,

but the monitor
kept limping south.

Four-hundred miles away,
off the coast of Virginia,

the Merrimack
was waiting.

Saturday, March 8th, was
wash day for the Union fleet

in Hampton
Roads, Virginia.

Laundry was drying on the
rigging of the Union warships

when the
Confederate Merrimack

headed straight for the
U.S.S. Cumberland.

The Cumberland
opened fire,

but the shots bounced harmlessly
off the Merrimack's side.

The Confederate ship
rammed the Cumberland,

then stood in so close, their
muzzles almost touched.

The Cumberland sank
in shallow water.

The Merrimack went on to set
the U.S.S. Congress afire,

drove the U.S.S.
Minnesota aground,

then drew back
for the night.

For one day, the Confederate
Navy ruled the sea.

At 1:00 that morning, the crew
of the battered Minnesota

saw a strange-looking ship draw up
alongside them in the darkness.

"Close alongside
the Minnesota,

"there was a craft such as
the eyes of a seaman

"never looked
upon before--

"an immense shingle
floating on the water

"with a gigantic cheese
box rising from its center.

"No sails, no wheels,
no smokestack, no guns.

"What could it be?"

The monitor had arrived.

The next morning, the epic
battle of ironclads began.

Hull to hull, the two ships
hammered away at each other,

so close, they collided five times as the men inside,

half-blind with smoke,
loaded and fired.

After 4½ hours, the
Merrimack drew off.

It was her only fight.

Two months later, rather
than surrender their ship,

the Confederates
blew her up

when they were
forced out of Norfolk.

Both sides set to work
building more ironclads

while Europe watched
in worried fascination.

From the moment the two ships
opened fire that Sunday morning,

every other navy on
earth was obsolete.

"General Grant habitually wears an
expression as if he had determined

"to drive his head
through a brick wall,

"and was about to do it."

The year 1862
would introduce

two great forces
into the war--

unspeakable slaughter
and Ulysses S. Grant.

While McClellan hesitated
in Washington,

Grant, back in the field
after months of desk duty,

won two crucial
victories out west:

launching simultaneous
attacks by land and water,

he took first Fort Henry
on the Tennessee River,

then Fort Donelson
on the Cumberland,

where he issued an ultimatum
to the Confederate commander--

"No terms except unconditional
and immediate surrender."

The Tennessee and Cumberland
Rivers were now in Union hands.

The Confederates had been
driven from Kentucky.

Dozens of southern towns were
now occupied by Union troops.

In less than a year,
Grant had gone from clerk

to Union hero.

News stories described him
coolly smoking under fire,

and admirers shipped
him barrels of cigars.

A delighted northern public
now thought they knew

what the initials in
his name stood for:

they called him "Unconditional
Surrender" Grant.

But before Grant's men
marched into Fort Donelson,

Confederate General
Nathan Bedford Forrest

slipped out of it
with 1,000 men.

"I did not come here for the purpose of
surrendering my command," he said,

and led his troops seventy-five
miles through the snow to safety.

Grant and the Union army would
meet Bedford Forrest again.

After the Confederate
defeat at Fort Donelson,

the Female Academy and Stewart College
at nearby Clarksville, Tennessee,

were converted
to hospitals.

"Sunday the news came.

"Such panic-stricken people
were never before seen.

"The wounded were
being brought up.

"The citizens
were running.

"There were already two hospitals
here which were filled with the sick,

"and they, poor fellas, were
crawling out from every piece--

"walking, going on
horseback, in wagons."

Nannie Haskins.

The Union army was right
behind the wounded.

They met no resistance.

A white flag flew above tiny
Fort Defiance west of town,

and Mayor Smith came out to
inform the Union commander

that the Confederate army
had retreated to Nashville.

Farmer John Barker
wrote in his diary

that there were nothing but
Lincolnites throughout the county.

An uneasy federal occupation
of Clarksville began.

Early in the war, some, um--

a Union squad closed in on a
single ragged Confederate,

and he obviously
didn't own any slaves.

He couldn't have much interest in--
in the constitution or anything else.

They said, "What are you fighting
for, anyhow," they asked him,

and he said, "I'm fighting
because you're down here,"

which is a pretty
satisfactory answer.

On April 4th, George McClellan at last
began to move for Richmond--

121,500 men,

14,592 horses
and mules,

1,150 wagons,

forty-four batteries
of artillery,

ambulances, pontoon bridges,

tons of provisions,
tents, telegraph wire.

It took 400 boats three
weeks to land it all

at Fortress Monroe
on the Virginia coast.

"The whole region seems
literally filled with soldiery.

"One of the finest armies ever
marshaled on the globe

"now wakes up these long-
stagnant fields and woods.

"General McClellan is here
and commands in person."

Reverend A. M. Stewart.

"I am to watch over you as
a parent over his children,

"and you know that your general loves
you from the depths of his heart.

"It shall be my care to gain success
with the least possible loss."

But at Yorktown, less
than twenty miles away,

the Confederates waited,

vastly outnumbered, but
determined to defend their homes

and hurl back
the invaders.

For the north, it
was slow going.

Roads said to be
bone dry were bogs.

Union officers, forced to rely on store-bought maps,

lost their way.

Finally, on April 5th, the advance
guard reached Yorktown,

where the Confederates
had taken over the building

used by Lord Cornwallis
as headquarters

during the
Revolutionary War.

There were just 11,000
southern troops dug in--

not even 1/10 of
McClellan's force...

but the Confederate commander
was John Bankhead Magruder,

a showy Virginian who loved
amateur theatricals.

He now outdid
even himself.

To fool McClellan into believing
that his small force was enormous,

Magruder kept up a sporadic,
widely scattered artillery barrage

and paraded one battalion
in and out of a clearing

in an endless circle until it
seemed to Union observers,

a mighty host.

Corporal Edmund
Patterson, 9th Alabama.

"This morning, we were
called out by the long roll,

"and have been traveling
most of the day,

"seeming with no other view than
to show ourselves to the enemy

"at as many different points
of the line as possible.

"I'm pretty tired."

"It seems clear that I shall have the
whole force of the enemy on my hands,"

McClellan
telegraphed Lincoln,

"probably not less
than 100,000 men,

"and possibly more."

McClellan called
for reinforcements.

General Joseph E. Johnston, the overall Confederate Commander,

could not
believe his luck.

"Nobody but McClellan," he said,
"could have hesitated to attack."

"Once more,
let me tell you,

"it is indispensable to you
that you strike a blow.

"I have never written
to you or spoken to you

"in greater
kindness than now,

"nor with fuller
purpose to sustain you,

"but you must act."

"The president very
coolly telegraphed me

"that he thought I had better
break the enemy's lines at once.

"I was much tempted to reply that
he'd better come and do it himself."

George McClellan.

"I don't see the sense of piling
up earth to keep us apart.

"If we don't get at each other
sometime, when will the war end?

"My plan would be to quit
ditching and go to fighting."

But McClellan
chose to dig in.

As he settled in for
a siege of Yorktown,

Union General Phil Kearney
took to calling his commander

"the Virginia creeper."

During the Peninsula Campaign,
McClellan's working his way

up the York/James peninsula,
and he came to a stream.

and he and his staff were sitting
there wondering how deep it was

if they had to
march across it,

and Custer, who was
a junior officer on his staff--

just graduated from West
Point, a captain, I think--

rode out into midstream, sat on his
horse, and turned around in the saddle

and said to McClellan,
"This is how deep it is, General."

I have seen Him
in the watch-fires

Of a hundred
circling camps

They have builded
Him an altar

In the evening
dews and damps

I can read His
righteous sentence

By the dim and
flaring lamps

His day is

Marching on

"A man's conceit
dwindles

"when he crawls into
an unteasled shirt,

"trousers too short
and baggy behind,

"coat too long at both ends, and a
cap as shapeless as a feedbag.

"A photograph of
any one of them,

"covered with yellow dust
or mosaics of mud,

"could ornament any
mantel, north or south,

"as a true picture
of our boy."

North and south, the
average soldier was 5'8 tall

and weighed
143 pounds.

His chance of dying
in combat was 1-in-65;

of being wounded,
1-in-10.

One in thirteen
would die of disease.

The average age of a
soldier was twenty-five.

The minimum age for
enlistment was eighteen,

but recruiting officers
were not particular.

Drummer boys as young
as nine signed on.

There were more than 100,000
soldiers in the Union army

who were not yet
fifteen-years-old.

William Black was not yet
twelve when he enlisted.

Shot in the left arm
during battle,

he was thought to be the
youngest combat soldier

wounded in the war.

"Almost every known trade, profession, or calling

"has its representatives
in our regiment:

"tailors, carpenters,
masons, and plasterers,

"and molders
and glassblowers,

"puddlers and rollers, and
machinists and architects,

"printers, bookbinders
and publishers,

"gentlemen of leisure,

"politicians, merchants,

"legislators, judges, lawyers,
doctors, preachers.

"Some malicious fellow might ask the
privilege of completing the catalog

"by naming jailbirds,
idlers, loafers,

"drunkards and gamblers...

"but we beg his pardon
and refuse the license.

"All the appliances of home
life which are possible

"are being introduced
into our encampment:

"a weekly newspaper, a
photographic establishment,

"a temperance league, and
a Christian association.

"We have a post
office, letter box,

"postmaster and
mail carrier.

"Our boys write vastly more
letters than they receive.

"You can hardly imagine
the eagerness

"with which the
mailman is looked for.

"the delight on the
reception of a letter,

"the sadness, sometimes
even to tears,

"with which those
who are disappointed

"turn away."

Reverend
A. M. Stewart.

For the enlisted man, army
life meant periods of tedium

punctuated by moments
of extreme terror.

It also meant long absences
from family and home.

"July 1862.
Tupelo, Mississippi.

"Dear sisters,

"I would be the gladdest person in the
world to see you and talk with you awhile,

"for I see nobody here but men, and
they appear to be very sorry company.

"I think that I could enjoy myself at home
better than anywhere else in the world."

Benjamin Stubbs.

For those officers who took their
families with them to camp,

life was
somewhat better.

"There has been a great battle
indeed in the southwest,

"a conflict of two days,

"closely fought and with varying
fortune and by great armies.

"It seems entitled to a place among
the first-class battles of history."

George Templeton Strong.

It was fought in early April.
The trees were leafed out,

and the roads were
meandering cow paths.

Nobody knew north from
south, east from west.

They'd never been in combat
before, most of them,

especially on the
southern side.

So it was just a disorganized,
murderous fistfight,

100,000 men slamming
away at each other.

In early April, as McClellan
continued to sit in front of Yorktown,

42,000 union troops under
General Ulysses S. Grant

were encamped on the west side of the
Tennessee River near Pittsburgh Landing.

Grant's invasion of Tennessee had
practically cut the state in two,

and now he was waiting
for Don Carlos Buell's

Army of the Ohio
to join him.

Their combined forces

were then to plunge into
the heart of Mississippi.

But Buell was late, and at Corinth,
Mississippi, twenty-two miles away,

the commander of the western
Department of the Confederate army,

Albert Sidney Johnston,

saw no reason to wait.

Their armies were still
evenly matched,

and he would attack and
end Grant's invasion.

"Tonight we will water our
horses in the Tennessee,"

Johnston told his staff officers
on the morning of April 6.

The Confederates quietly
moved toward the Union lines.

"It was a most
beautiful morning.

"It really seemed like Sunday
in the country at home.

"The boys were scattered
around camp,

"polishing and brightening
their muskets and

"brushing up and cleaning
their shoes, jackets,

"and trousers for inspection."

Private Leander Stilwell.

At the head of one Union division
was William Tecumseh Sherman,

who had shaken off the melancholy that
had sent him home the previous year.

His Ohioans were
encamped on a hill not far

from a little log-built Methodist
church called Shiloh

when the 6th
Mississippi attacked.

"I saw men in gray
and brown clothes

"running through the camp.

"And I saw something else, too,
something I had never seen before--

"a gaudy sort of thing
with red bars...

"a rebel flag."

"We were crowding them. One more
charge, and their lines waver and break.

"They retreat in wild
confusion. We were jubilant,

"and the officers could not curb
the men to keep them in line."

Sam Watkins.

The battle extended
along a three-mile front.

The worst fighting
was in the center,

where the rebels
came on and on

like "maddened demons,"
a Union soldier said.

The generals didn't know their jobs.
The soldiers didn't know their jobs.

It was just pure
determination to

stand and fight
and not retreat,

and the bloodiness of it was
just astounding to everyone.

It also corrected a southern
misconception which had said,

"one good southern soldier is
worth ten Yankee hirelings."

They found out that wasn't
true by a long shot.

In a peach orchard, the federals lay
flat beneath the blossoming trees,

firing as the rebels came,

soft pink petals raining down
on the living and the dead.

By late morning, thousands of untried
federal troops had seen enough.

Most did not stop running until
they reached the river,

where almost 5,000 men
cowered beneath the bluff.

"We are sweeping the
field, General Johnston

told his second in
command, Beauregard,

"and I think we shall
press them to the river."

Grant's back was
to the Tennessee.

There was no sign of Buell
and nowhere else to go,

but a thin federal line
held in the center,

Illinois and Iowa
farm boys mostly,

prone along a
sunken road.

Their commander,
Benjamin Prentiss,

understood the deadly
seriousness of Grant's order

"to maintain that
position at all costs."

The Confederates launched
a dozen massive assaults

against what became known
as the "hornet's nest."

Albert Sidney Johnston
himself led the last charge.

He came out of it with bits
of his clothing nicked all up.

One boot sole was shot in
half and he flapped his--

on--on horseback there, and said,
"they didn't trip me up that time."

And very soon after that, they
saw him reel in the saddle

and realized he was hurt,
and someone said,

"General, are you wounded," and he said, "Yes, and I fear seriously,"

And he was shot
behind the knee--

in the femoral artery,
I suppose--

and bled to death. They saw
blood coming out of his boot,

and he could have been easily saved
with a tourniquet, but he had sent his--

his surgeon off to take care
of some federal prisoners.

"Advancing a little further, we saw
General Albert Sidney Johnston

"surrounded by his staff.

"We saw some little commotion
among those who surrounded him,

"but we did not know at the
time that he was dead.

"The fact was kept
from the troops."

Sam Watkins.

The command of the Western army
now passed to General Beauregard.

Albert Sidney Johnston was
looked on by many people

at the time of Shiloh,

and especially before Shiloh, while he
was holding that line up in Kentucky,

as the South's number-
one field soldier.

Jefferson Davis viewed him as that, and when he lost Albert Sidney Johnston,

he said, "I realized our strongest
pillar had been broken."

Meanwhile, the center of the
Union line bent back on itself

but would not break.

Confederates trained sixty-two cannon at point-blank range

and opened fire.

The hornet's nest exploded in a hail of splintered trees

and shattered men.

At 5:30, Prentiss and
the 2,200 survivors

of his division surrendered.

They had held up the Southern
advance for nearly six hours,

and it was growing dark.

Beauregard wired Jefferson Davis
that he had won a complete victory.

"I had General Grant just
where I wanted him," he said,

"and could finish him
up in the morning."

Everywhere, wounded
men lay in agony.

Neither army had yet
devised a system

for gathering or caring
for them on the field.

Scores of wounded collapsed and died drinking from a mud hole

near the peach orchard, staining the water red.

It began to rain,

and flashes of lightning showed hogs
feeding on the un-gathered dead.

"Some cried for water,

"others for someone to
come and help them.

"I can hear those poor
fellows crying for water.

"God heard them, for the heavens
opened and the rain came."

Grant spent that night
beneath a tree

rather than listen to the screams of the
wounded men in his headquarters.

It was there that
Sherman found him.

"Well, Grant," he said, "we've had
the devil's own day, haven't we?"

"Yes," said Grant.

"Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

"Never to me was the sight of
reinforcing legions so welcome

"as on that
Sunday evening

"when Buell's
advance column

"deployed on the bluffs
of Pittsburgh landing."

During the night, Buell's
army finally arrived.

The Union men marched ashore
as a band played "Dixie."

At dawn, the union force,
now 70,000 strong,

drove into
Beauregard's 30,000.

The Confederates fell
back, counterattacked,

fell back again, and
began to withdraw.

The Union held the field.

Covering the Confederate retreat
was Nathan Bedford Forrest,

who now turned to lead
one last cavalry charge

headlong into the
pursuing northern army.

And he landed square in the
main body of the Union troops.

He was surrounded by--one
Gray uniform in a sea of blue,

and, uh... they
began to holler,

"Kill him! Kill the goddamn rebel.
Knock him off his horse,"

and one soldier
did, stick his

rifle out into Forrest's side
and pulled the trigger

and lifted Forrest clear of the saddle
with the impact of the bullet,

and Forrest, meantime,
was slashing with his saber.

his horse was
kicking and turning,

and Forrest sawed him
around and got him

clear and took off, and they were shooting after him,

so he reached down and
grabbed one Union soldier

and swung him
up behind him

on the crupper of the
horse to use as a shield,

and when he got out of range,
he threw the man off

and rode back to
join his command.

That was the last shot fired
in the battle of Shiloh.

The ground, Grant said,
was so covered with dead

that it would have been possible to walk
across the clearing in any direction,

stepping on dead bodies without
a foot touching the ground.

"When the grave
was ready,

"we placed the bodies
therein, two deep.

"All the monument reared to
those brave men was a board

"upon which I cut
with my pocket knife

"the words '125 rebels.' "

Two-thousand, four-hundred,
and seventy-seven men

were killed at Shiloh.

There were 23,000
casualties overall--

more than all the
American casualties

in all previous American
wars combined...

and it was only
the beginning.

Shiloh had the same number
of casualties as Waterloo,

and yet, when it was fought, there were
another twenty Waterloos to follow.

And Grant, shortly
before Shiloh, said,

"I consider this war practically over.
They're ready to give up,"

and the day after
Shiloh, he said,

"I saw that it was going to have to be
a war of conquest if we were to win."

Shiloh did that,

and it sobered the nation
up something awful,

to the realization that they had a
very bloody affair on their hands,

and it called for a
huge reassessment

of what this thing
was going to be.

Years afterward, a
Union veteran said,

the most a soldier could
say of any fight was,

"I was worse scared
than I was at Shiloh."

"Shiloh" is a Hebrew word

meaning "place of peace."

"April 11th, 1862.

"I firmly believe that before
many centuries more,

"science will be
the master of man.

"The engines he
will have invented

"will be beyond his
strength to control.

"Someday, science

"shall have the existence
of mankind in its power,

"and the human race
commit suicide

"by blowing up the world."

Henry Adams.

The armies that U. S. Grant
and George McClellan led

were the best-
equipped In history.

The productive capacity and
technical ingenuity of the North

were now focused
on weapons...

and the Civil War would see
the first railroad artillery,

the first land mines
and telescopic sights,

the first military telegraphs.

In 1862 alone,

240 patents were issued
for military weapons.

Lincoln was fascinated
by new weaponry.

He personally tested
new rifles and

ordered up ten Union
repeating guns,

forerunners of
the machine gun,

but he passed up a
scheme to manufacture

canoe-shaped footwear
for walking on water,

and tactfully declined
a herd of war elephants

offered by the
King of Siam.

Oh, they had many crazy ideas,
along with some good ones.

There was one plan
to use two cannon,

each with a cannonball and the two
cannonballs connected by a chain,

and you would fire the two cannons at the
same time, and the balls would go out,

and the chain between them would just
cut a swath through everything in the way.

The trouble was, one cannon, of course,
went off before the other one did

with the result that the ball went around
in a circle from the other cannon.

The most important innovation of the whole war was the rifled musket,

along with a
French refinement--

Captain Claude
Minie's new bullet,

an inch-long lead slug

that expanded into the
barrel's rifled grooves

and spun as it left the muzzle.

The Minie ball could
kill at half a mile

and was accurate
at 250 yards--

five-times as far as any
other one-man weapon.

The age of the bayonet
charge had ended,

though most officers did not yet
know it when the war began,

and some had still
not learned it

when the war was over.

It was brutal stuff. The reason for the
high casualties is really quite simple--

the weapons were way
ahead of the tactics.

The rifle itself--

it threw a .53 caliber soft lead
bullet at a low muzzle velocity,

and when it hit--

the reason there were so many
amputations--if you got hit here,

it didn't clip your bone the way the
modern steel-jacketed bullet does.

You didn't have any
bone from here to here.

They had no choice
but to take the arm off,

and you'll see pictures of the dead on the
battlefield with their clothes in disarray

as if someone had been
going--rifling their bodies.

That was the men themselves tearing their
clothes up to see where the wound was,

and they knew perfectly well if
they were gut shot, they'd die.

"April 25th, 1862,

"Pittsburgh Landing,
Tennessee.

"Dear Julia...

"I'm no longer boss.

"General Halleck is here,
and I'm truly glad of it.

"I hope the papers will let
me alone in the future.

"If the papers only knew
how little ambition I have

"outside of putting
down this rebellion

"and getting back once
more to live quietly

"and unobtrusively
with my family,

"I think they would say
fewer falsehoods."

Ulysses S. Grant.

Ulysses S. Grant's reward for the
costly Union victory at Shiloh

was to be removed
from field command.

Grant's superior was
General Henry Wager Halleck,

a calculating administrator who
was jealous of Grant's success

and anxious to get
rid of his chief rival.

After the battle of Fort Donelson, he
spread rumors Grant was drinking.

After the fearful
losses at Shiloh,

he had Grant reassigned.

Grant decided to quit,

but his friend William Tecumseh
Sherman talked him out of it.

"You could not be quiet
at home for a week," he said,

"when armies are moving."

Grant and Sherman
were both Ohio boys

and West Pointers who were fond
of cigars, scorned pomp and politics,

and had fared poorly
in civilian life.

Grant enjoyed Sherman's
rapid-fire brilliance

and was grateful for the dispatch with
which he carried out every order.

Sherman admired his
friend's cool temper,

his steadiness in
the midst of crisis,

and what he called Grant's
"simple faith in success."

They trusted each other.

"I'm a damned sight
smarter than Grant.

"I know more about organization,
supply, and administration,

"and about everything
else than he does,

"but I'll tell you where he beats me
and where he beats the world--

"he don't care a damn for what
the enemy does out of his sight,

"but it scares me like hell."

William Tecumseh Sherman.

"Any attempt now to separate
the freedom of the slave

"from the victory
of the government,

"any attempt to secure
peace to the whites

"while leaving the
blacks in chains,

"will be labor lost.

"The American people and the government at Washington

"may refuse to
recognize it for a time,

"but the inexorable logic of events
will force it upon them in the end--

"that the war now being
waged in this land

"is a war for and
against slavery."

Frederick Douglass.

Letter by letter, speech by
speech, month after month,

Frederick Douglass tirelessly lobbied
the government in Washington,

urging Lincoln to
emancipate the slaves...

but the president still insisted the
war was being fought for union

and publicly avoided
Douglass and the debate.

"Our southern friend tell us the
North is fighting for Negroes.

"Our Union friend says,

"they're not fighting to free the
Negroes, but for the Union.

"Very well:

"let the whites fight
for what they want;

"we Negroes fight
for what we want.

"Liberty must take the day,

"nothing shorter.

"We care nothing
about the Union;

"we've been in it
slaves over 250 years."

"Whatever nation gets
the control of the Ohio,

"Mississippi, and
Missouri Rivers

"will control the continent."

William Tecumseh Sherman.

Out west, Union naval
strategy was straightforward:

seize control of the Mississippi
and cut the Confederacy in two.

On April 7th, Union
gunboats and 2,000 troops

took the Confederate
fortress at Island Number 10

near New Madrid, Missouri,

leaving the river open as
far south as Memphis.

Two months later,
Memphis fell.

On the night of April 24th,

a 60-year-old flag officer,
David G. Farragut,

started north up
the Mississippi

intent on capturing
New Orleans.

But first, he had to get
by the heavy guns

at Forts Jackson
and St. Phillips,

seventy miles
below the city.

When the moon rose, the
Confederates opened fire

and sent blazing rafts
drifting into the Union fleet.

The first vessel was
hit forty-two times.

Farragut's own flagship
was set on fire,

but somehow the entire
fleet made it past the forts.

New Orleans surrendered
the next day.

Farragut had the American
flag raised over city hall.

"New Orleans gone--

"and with it, the
Confederacy?

"Are we not cut in two?

"That Mississippi
ruins us, if lost."

Mary Chesnut.

"Tupelo, Mississippi.

"I don't know how the
war will be decided

"if England and France don't
interfere and stop the war,

"and if the Confederacy has to
gain her independence by fighting,

"I am afraid she will
have to give it up,

"for there are so few provisions in
this portion of the Confederacy."

James Jackson.

In the following months, Farragut's fleet
gained control of the southern Mississippi

as far north as Baton
Rouge and Natchez.

But the North did not
possess the whole river:

the Confederate stronghold
at Vicksburg still held.

"Republics--
everybody jawing,

"everybody putting their
mouths in, nothing sacred,

"all confusion of babble.

"Republics can't
carry on war.

"Hurrah for a strong
one-man government!"

Mary Chesnut.

From the southern
White House in Richmond,

Jefferson Davis struggled to
keep the war effort on track.

Southern industry grew,
driven by necessity,

and the Confederate Government,
founded on the principle of decentralization,

found itself
controlling everything...

from the forging of cannon at the big
Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond

to the daily output
of the women

who spun cloth for
uniforms in their parlors.

In Charleston,
Mary Chesnut's circle

knit socks for Stonewall
Jackson's entire brigade.

Women wove boots
from palmetto fronds,

and saved their urine from which
to distill niter for gunpowder.

Southerners grew
poppies to yield opium,

and made coffee
from corn and peas,

hypodermic needles
from thorns,

rope from Spanish Moss...

but the Confederate
army was shrinking.

The term of enlistment for the earliest
volunteers was up in the spring.

Most men planned
to go home.

In April, at the insistence
of Jefferson Davis,

the Confederate Congress
passed two laws:

one extended all
enlistments for the duration;

the other required all able-
bodied white men between

eighteen and thirty-five
to serve for three years.

It was the first national
draft in American history.

"The Conscription Act,
at one fell swoop,

"strikes down the
sovereignty of the states,

"tramples upon the constitutional rights
and personal liberty of the citizens,

"and arms the president
with imperial powers."

Governor Joseph E.
Brown of Georgia.

"Mrs. Davis is
being utterly upset.

"She is beginning to hear the carping and faultfinding

"to which the president
is subjected.

"There must be an
opposition in a free country,

"but it is very uncomfortable."

Mary Chesnut.

Veterans were especially resentful
because potential draftees

who owned twenty
slaves or more

could be exempted.

"A law was made allowing every person
who owned twenty Negroes to go home.

"It gave us the blues.
We wanted twenty Negroes!

"There was raised the howl of
'rich man's war, poor man's fight!' "

"From this time on
till the end of the war,

"a soldier was simply
a machine, a conscript.

"All our pride and
valor had gone,

"and we were sick of war and
cursed the southern Confederacy."

Sam Watkins.

Nearly half the southerners
eligible for the new draft

failed to sign up.

"April 21st.

"Sixteen days have now
been spent in this place.

"Our grand army has
again come to a halt.

"Under the dry pine leaves
where we encamp,

"a great secesh army of
wood ticks have wintered.

"Few are so happy

"as not to find half a dozen of
these villainous bloodsuckers

"sticking in his flesh
every morning."

Chaplain A. M. Stewart.

"The firing from the Confederate
lines was of little consequence,

"not amounting to over ten or
twelve artillery shots each day,

"a number of these being
directed at the huge balloon

"which went up daily from General
Fitz John's headquarters."

"When about 100 feet above
the ground, the rope broke,

"and the General sailed
off toward Richmond

"at a greater speed than the
army of the Potomac is moving.

"He had sufficient calmness
to pull the valve rope,

"and gradually descended
about three miles from camp."

On the peninsula, General
George McClellan's huge army

sat in front of the smaller
rebel force at Yorktown

for almost a month.

It rained two out of
every three days.

Hundreds fell ill.

"I feel that the fate of a
nation depends on me,

"and that I have not one single
friend at the seat of government."

George McClellan.

McClellan had moved more than ninety
federal guns to Yorktown by May 3rd,

some so massive that it took 100
horses to haul them up along

hastily constructed
timber highways

called "cor-du-roi" roads.

McClellan finally
decided to act

and carefully planned a massive
bombardment for May 5th.

But on the night of the 3rd, General
Magruder's Confederate batteries

suddenly intensified their fire.

McClellan braced
for an attack,

but the next morning, the
Confederates had vanished.

Disbelieving federal troops

edged into the deserted
Southern camps.

Magruder had packed up
his show and moved on,

but McClellan declared
it a Union victory.

"The success is brilliant,

"and you may rest assured that its
effects will be of the greatest importance.

"There shall be no delay in
following up the rebels."

The Union men now cautiously
followed the rebel army

west towards Richmond.

"May 20. Richmond is
just nine miles off.

"The Negroes are
delighted to see us,

"but the whites look as if
they would like to kill us."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

From McClellan's lines, you could
hear the bells of Richmond tolling.

You could hear the church
bells in the public clock striking,

He was that close.

A worried Jefferson Davis now
prepared for a siege of Richmond,

relying more and more on the
advice of his close military advisor,

Robert E. Lee.

When Davis asked where
Lee thought the South's

next defensive line
should be drawn

once Richmond
fell, Lee said,

"Richmond must not fall.

"It shall not be given up."

Still, George McClellan
refused to attack.

Though his army still
outnumbered the rebels,

he remained convinced
the opposite was true.

One observer noted that
McClellan had a particular faculty

for "realizing hallucinations."

He demanded
another 40,000 men.

"If he had a million men, he would
swear the enemy had two millions,

"and then he would sit down in
the mud and yell for three."

Edwin M. Stanton.

With the year half gone, the Union's
grand strategy had stalled.

The Western Campaign
begun by U. S. Grant

had ground to a halt
in north Mississippi,

and McClellan's mighty forces were
paralyzed in front of Richmond.

There was worse to come:

the killing that would soon break out
in Virginia would continue all year

and come to a climax

along a tiny creek
in western Maryland

called The Antietam.

"We talk of the
irrepressible conflict

"and practically give
the lie to our talk.

"We wage war against
slaveholding rebels

"and yet protect and
augment the motive

"which has moved the
slaveholders to rebellion.

"We strike at the effect

"and leave the
cause unharmed.

"Fire will not
burn it out of us,

"water cannot
wash it out of us,

"that this war with the
slaveholders can never be brought

"to a desirable
termination until slavery...

"the guilty cause of all
our national troubles,

"has been totally

"and forever abolished."

Frederick Douglass.