All language subtitles for Civil War, The, 03 (1990)

Private Edwin Tennison,

killed in action
at Malvern Hill,

July 1st, 1862.

During the Civil War, photographers
followed the armies everywhere

to make proud portraits
for the boys to send home

and to capture as much of the
action as cumbersome equipment

and slow shutter
speeds allowed.

Near the battle of Fair Oaks, Virginia,
Captain George Armstrong Custer

paused to have
his picture taken

with J. B. Washington,

a close friend and classmate
from West Point--

and now a
Confederate Lieutenant

who had just that morning been
captured by federal pickets.

As 1862 dragged on,

the character of the
war was changing,

and much of the country
was changing with it.

By 1862, more than
a million farm workers

had enlisted in
the Union army,

and travelers in the Midwest saw more
women at work in the fields than men.

The year, which had begun
so promisingly for the North,

had now gone awry.

U. S. Grant's triumphs
at Donelson and Shiloh

were being overshadowed
by disasters in the east.

In Virginia, Union General George
McClellan's army sat outside Richmond,

its commander in possession
of vastly greater forces,

but without the
will to fight.

Meanwhile, the Confederacy

was beginning to appreciate the
brilliance of a new commander,

Robert E. Lee,

who would soon
establish a reputation

as one of the greatest
military leaders of all time.

And there was still more
trouble for the Union:

at Blackburn, England,
a public meeting declared

that it was impossible for the
North to vanquish the South

and called for a negotiated
settlement of the war.

With Europe poised to
recognize the Confederacy,

the unthinkable looked
increasingly likely--

the Union was going
to lose the war.

"We must change our
tactics or lose the game,"

Abraham Lincoln
wrote in 1862.

To Lincoln, it was clear now
that it was no longer possible

to restore the old Union:

a new one had to
be embraced.

By summer, he knew what tactic
was needed to win the war--

emancipation--

but doubted whether he
would ever have the political

or military
opportunity to use it.

"I find it hard to maintain my
lively faith in the triumph

"of the nation
and the law,"

New York lawyer George Templeton
Strong confided to his diary.

"These are the darkest days
we have seen since Bull Run."

What no one knew was that
the year would soon see

the bloodiest
day of the war,

and then the brightest.

It could have been a
very ugly, filthy war

with no redeeming
characteristics at all,

and it was the battle
for emancipation

and the people who
pushed it forward--

the slaves, the free black
people, the abolitionists,

and a lot of
ordinary citizens--

it was they who ennobled what
otherwise would have been

meaningless carnage
into something higher.

Outside Richmond, George
McClellan continued to call

anxiously for more troops,

though his 110,000-
man force

already greatly outnumbered
Joseph Johnston's army.

Meanwhile, west of the Blue Ridge
in the Shenandoah Valley,

General Thomas
J. Jackson

was keeping three
federal armies busy.

"Always mystify, mislead,
and surprise the enemy,

"and when you strike
and overcome him,

"never let up in the pursuit.

"Never fight against heavy
odds if you can hurl your force

"on only a part of your
enemy and crush it.

"A small army may thus
destroy a large one,

"and repeated victory
will make it invincible."

General T. J. Jackson

He was a true eccentric:

he believed that if he
had pepper in his food,

it would make
his left leg ache;

he would never
mail a letter

that would be in
transit on a Sunday;

he was a strict observer
of the Sabbath,

and yet so many of his battles
were fought on Sundays

that the soldiers began to believe
that he would fight on Sunday

because the Lord would
be even more with him.

Jackson was a pious,
blue-eyed killer,

utterly untroubled by
the likelihood of death.

It was a man's
"entire duty," he said,

"to pray and fight."

"He would have a man
shot at the drop of a hat,

"and he'd drop it himself."

Sam Watkins.

He had a strange quality
of overlooking suffering.

There was a... during one of the
battles, he had a young courier,

and Jackson looked around
for him, and he wasn't there,

and he said, "Where is
Lieutenant So-and-so?"

And they said, "He was
killed, General."

Jackson said, "Very commendable,
very commendable,"

and then put him
out of his mind.

"All old Jackson gave us was a musket,
100 rounds, and a gum blanket,

"and he drove us like hell."

His men did not love him.
He was too grim, too remote,

and he demanded
too much.

Some thought him mad.

He believed that only by
keeping one hand in the air

could he stop himself
from going out of balance,

and he sucked constantly on
lemons, even in the midst of battle.

Others worried that his religious
fervor would cloud his judgment.

His command, Jackson said,
was "an army of the living God,

"as well as of its country."

But his men were willing to endure the
36-mile-a-day marches he demanded

because he brought
them victories.

It was Jackson's duty in the
Shenandoah to unsettle the Union

and keep Washington from
reinforcing McClellan.

Operating in the midst of
three federal armies,

each with more men than
his own force of 17,000,

Jackson lashed out at one
army and then another.

Armed with a detailed map
that stretched 8½ feet,

he surprised
them every time--

at Winchester, Front Royal,

Cross Keys, Port Republic,

and a half-dozen
other places.

After routing Nathaniel Banks'
army at the battle of Winchester,

Jackson chased it all
the way to the Potomac.

"Stop, men," Banks shouted
to his retreating troops.

"Don't you love
your country?"

"Yes, by God,"
said one,

"and I'm trying to get back
to it just as fast as I can."

Jackson's Valley
Campaign was a triumph.

In just over a month, his men
marched almost 400 miles,

inflicted 7,000 casualties,

seized huge quantities
of badly needed supplies,

and kept almost 40,000 federal
troops off the peninsula.

"He who does not see
the hand of God in this

"is blind, sir, blind."

"There is no doubt

"that Jefferson Davis and other leaders
of the South have made an army.

"They are making,
it appears, a navy,

"and they have made
what is more than either:

"they have made a nation.

"We may anticipate with
certainty the success

"of the Southern States."

William E. Gladstone.

Confederate gospel held
that Britain and France

could not survive
without Southern cotton.

Before long, one or both would surely
intervene on behalf of the Confederacy

to end the
Union blockade.

To put more
pressure on Europe,

the Confederates cut
cotton production 90%.

Two-and-a-half million bales were burned
or left to rot on Confederate wharves

to keep it out of
English hands.

Now, in addition to
directing a war at home,

Lincoln had to find a
way to keep Europe

from coming in on
the side of the South.

And increasingly, in the North,
there was pressure for emancipation,

and it came from
unlikely people

in unlikely places.

On May 1st, 1862,

Lincoln named General
Benjamin F. Butler

Military Governor of
occupied New Orleans.

Butler went right to work.

He hanged a man suspected of
having desecrated the American flag.

He closed a
Secessionist newspaper;

confiscated the
property of citizens

who refused to swear
allegiance to the Union,

and was given the scornful
nickname "Spoons"

for allegedly
pocketing silverware.

New Orleans women
routinely insulted his troops.

When a woman in the French
Quarter leaned from a window

to dump her chamber pot on
the head of Admiral Farragut,

Butler issued General
Order Number 28.

"As officers and soldiers
of the United States

"have been subject
to repeated insults

"from the women
calling themselves

" 'Ladies of New Orleans,'

"it is ordered that, hereafter,

"when any female shall,

"by word, gesture,
or movement, insult

"or show contempt for
any officer or soldier

"of the United States,

"she shall be
regarded and held

"liable to be treated as
a woman of the town

"plying her avocation."

General Benjamin Butler.

Southerners were outraged
and called Butler "The Beast."

A New Orleans entrepreneur
sold chamber pots

featuring Butler's
portrait inside the bowl.

In Charleston,
South Carolina,

a private citizen offered
a $10,000 reward

for the capture of
"Beast" Ben Butler--

dead or alive.

But the harassment
of his men stopped.

With the Union
Army so near,

unrest on Louisiana
plantations increased.

When desperate slave owners began
complaining of rebellious blacks,

Butler declared the planters
disloyal to the Union,

then took away
their slaves.

"Go to the Yankees," one
slave-holder told his slaves.

"They are kings here now."

"I have been reading so
much about the Yankees,

"I was very anxious
to see them.

"The whites would tell their colored
people not to go to the Yankees,

"for they would
harness them to carts

"and make them pull the carts
around in place of horses.

"I asked grandmother
one day if this was true.

"She replied, 'certainly not',

"that the white people did not want
slaves to go over to the Yankees

"and told them these
things to frighten them.

"I wanted to see those
wonderful Yankees so much,

"as I heard my parents
say that the Yankees

"was going to set
all the slaves free."

Susan King Taylor.

The slaves understood

that that war was about
slavery before it was a war.

They made a nuisance for the army,
and they also made an issue

hat the army
had to deal with.

And if the army
had to deal with it,

the War Department
had to deal with it.

If the War Department
had to deal with it,

Congress had to
deal with it.

That means that
every fugitive slave

who made a
nuisance of himself

to the local commander

eventually made a
figure of himself

to the Congress of
the United States.

Congress, controlled
by Republicans,

now forbade the army to return
slaves to their masters,

and in June, it outlawed
slavery in the territories,

finally reversing the old
Dred Scott decision.

"Only the damnedest of
damned abolitionists dreamed

"of such things
a year ago.

"John Brown's soul
is marching on,

"with the people after it."

George Templeton Strong.

"The slavery question perplexes the
president almost as much as ever,

"and yet I think he's
about to emerge

"from the obscurities where
he has been groping

"into somewhat
clearer light.

"So, you see,
the man moves."

Salmon P Chase.

"July 4th, 1862.

"I would do it if
I were not afraid

"that half the officers would
fling down their arms

"and three more
states would rise."

Lincoln continued
to back a plan

to pay $400 for
every slave freed

and then encourage
the freed men

to sail off to a colony in
Africa or Central America.

The abolitionist Wendell Phillips
called Abraham Lincoln

a first-rate
second-rate man.

I lose patience with
the argument that

because of
someone's time,

his limitations are therefore
excusable or even praiseworthy.

It is not true

that it was impossible
in that time and place

to look any higher.

Think of Wendell
Phillips, who,

commenting on Abraham
Lincoln's proposal

to colonize black people
out of the country,

was sarcastic. He said, "Colonize the blacks?

"A man might as well
colonize his own hands,

"or when the robber
is in his house,

"he might as well
colonize his revolver."

"Emancipation is the
demand of civilization,

"that is a principle;

"all else is intrigue."

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

On the Virginia peninsula,
the rains came,

inundating the bottomlands.

Along the roads outside Richmond, George
McClellan's force was divided in two

by the flooded
Chickahominy River.

The rebels saw their chance and
attacked the smaller force on May 31st.

In the fierce fighting that followed,
the Confederates did best

near a crossroads
called Seven Pines.

The Union soldiers were
most successful at Fair Oaks.

When the battle of Fair Oaks was
over, the North had lost 5,000 men;

the South, 6,000,

and it hadn't
changed a thing.

Joseph Johnston, the overall
Confederate commander,

was himself severely wounded
and carried from the field.

"The shot that struck me down was the
best ever fired for the Confederacy,

"for I possessed in no degree the
confidence of the government,

"and now a man who does
enjoy it will succeed me

"and be able to accomplish
what I never could."

"His name might be 'Audacity'. He will take
more chances and take them quicker,

"than any other general in this
country, north or south."

Now for the first
time in the war,

Robert E. Lee was placed at
the head of a major army.

"I prefer Lee to Johnston.

"Lee is too cautious and weak
under grave responsibility:

"personally brave and
energetic to a fault, he is

"yet wanting in moral
firmness when pressed by

"heavy responsibility."

George McClellan.

McClellan completely misjudged
the new Confederate commander.

Robert E. Lee
was a fighter.

Wanting to get at the Union men
who had dared invade his state,

Lee renamed his force
The Army of Northern Virginia,

seized the initiative,
and never let it go.

First, Lee sent his
cavalry chief,

Jeb Stuart, to reconnoiter
McClellan's forces.

Stuart now led 1,200
troopers on a pounding,

three-day,
150-mile ride

around McClellan's
huge army.

His men burned federal camps, cut down telegraph poles,

took prisoners and
horses and mules,

and slowed only to accept bouquets
and kisses from women along the way.

In vain pursuit was Stuart's
own father-in-law,

who had stayed loyal to the
Union and become a general--

a decision, Stuart said he
would "regret but once,

"and that will
be continuously."

Throughout the
whole campaign,

Lee carefully observed McClellan's
tentative advance up the peninsula.

As McClellan was preparing at
last to lay siege to Richmond,

Lee surprised him first, at
Mechanicsville on June 26th.

It was a daring move.

Defying all military convention,
Lee divided his tiny force

and then attacked the
huge Union army,

gambling that McClellan would be
too cautious to move into Richmond.

Lee's assault didn't work.

He lost 1,500 men
at Mechanicsville,

but he would not let up.

Determined to drive McClellan out
of Virginia, Lee kept on the attack.

And so it went.

For seven days, the
two armies clashed.

From Gaine's Mill...

from Savage's Station...

to Frayser's Farm...

and Malvern Hill,

where federal gunners
stopped the Confederates

who came at them
up the long slope.

"Our ears had been
filled all night

"with agonizing cries
before the fog was lifted.

"But now our eyes saw

"that 5,000 dead or wounded
men were on the ground.

"A third of them
were dead or dying,

"but enough of them were alive and moving to give the field

"a singular crawling effect."

"Each of the battles
of those seven days

"brought a harvest of
wounded to our hospital.

"I used to veil myself closely as
I walked to and from my hotel,

"that I might shut out
the dreadful sights.

"Once I did see one of
those dreadful wagons.

"In it, a stiff arm
was raised, and it

"shook as it was
driven down the street,

"as though the dead owner appealed
to heaven for vengeance."

All but one of the battles of the
seven days were Union victories,

yet McClellan treated
them as defeats,

continuing to back down until he
reached the safety of federal gunboats

of at Harrison's Landing
on the James River.

Union officers urged
a counterattack.

Lee had lost 20,000 men.

McClellan refused.

One officer suggested his
commander was motivated

either by "cowardice
or treason."

In just one week, Lee had completely
unnerved the Union general

and demonstrated for the
first time the strengths

that would make
him a legend--

surprise, audacity,

and an eerie ability to
read his opponent's mind.

In just seven days,

McClellan had been
totally out-generaled.

"I am tired of the sickening
sight of the battlefield,

"with its mangled corpses
and poor suffering wounded.

"Victory has no charms for me
when purchased at such cost."

On July 7th, an
exasperated Lincoln

sailed down to see his
commanding general.

He had not lost,
McClellan insisted;

he had merely
failed to win.

He needed 50,000 more
men, or perhaps 100,000.

No such numbers were
available, Lincoln told him.

If McClellan did not feel he
could resume the offensive,

his men would be withdrawn
from the peninsula.

"If I gave McClellan all
the men he asks for,

"they couldn't find
room to lie down.

"They'd have to
sleep standing up.

"Sending men to that army is like
shoveling fleas across a barnyard--

"not half of them get there."

"September 3.

"Today we took a steamer and went
up the Potomac past Washington

"and landed at Georgetown.

"It is hard to have reached the
point we started from last March,

"and Richmond is still
the rebel capital."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

Union guns battered Fort Pulaski,
Georgia into surrendering

and choked off the Savannah
River to Southern ships.

There was fighting at Foyt's
Plantation, North Carolina,

St. Andrew's Bay, Florida,

Wartrace, Tennessee,

and at Albuquerque in far-off
New Mexico Territory.

"Sea Islands, Georgia.

"Here I am, surrounded by
troopers, missionaries,

"contrabands, cotton
fields, and serpents,

"in a summer climate,

"disgusted with
all things military

"and fighting off malaria
with whiskey and tobacco.

"No man seems to realize
that here in this little island,

"all around us,

"has begun the solution of the
tremendous nigger question.

"Some 10,000 former slaves are thrown upon the hands

"of the unfortunate
government.

"They are the forerunners of
hundreds of thousands more."

Lieutenant Charles
Francis Adams.

Stationed in places like
Hilton Head and Beaufort,

New Englanders got their
first taste of the tropics.

None of the
2nd Massachusetts

had ever seen a
palm tree before.

When Union forces took parts
of the South Carolina coast,

plantation owners fled,

leaving behind empty
houses and 10,000 slaves.

Missionaries, teachers
and other volunteers

soon arrived to help
the newly-liberated.

"We have come to do antislavery
work," one teacher wrote.

"We think it noble work,
and we will do it nobly."

"My dear wife,

"This day I can address
you, thank God,

"as a free man.

"I had a little trouble
getting away, but

"as the Lord led the children of
Israel to the land of Canaan,

"so he led me to a land
where freedom will reign

"in spite of earth and hell.

"My dear,

"I trust the time will come
when we will meet again.

"and if we don't
meet on earth,

"we will meet in heaven,
where Jesus reigns.

"Dear wife, I must close.

"Rest yourself contented.

"I am free.

"Your affectionate husband.

"Kiss Daniel for me."

John Boston.

At Deer Isle, Maine, people were
afraid to go to the post office,

where the casualty
lists were posted.

"New Berne, North Carolina.
March 20th, 1862.

"To Mr. John Webster, Jr.,
Deer Isle, Maine.

"Dear sir...

"It is with pain that I have
to announce to you

"the death of your
brother, Charles Gray.

"By his good conduct and
bravery while with me,

"he had risen to the
rank of corporal,

"and had he lived, I should
have promoted him again.

"He was shot through the body
at the battle of New Berne.

"His last words were,
'We will never give up.'

"He is buried here.

"His effects I shall send home at the earliest opportunity.

"Yours truly,
E. A. P. Brewster,

"Captain, Commanding
Company A,

"23rd Massachusetts."

Deer Isle had lost
its first soldier.

A parcel containing Charles Gray's
personal effects arrived in the mail--

his hat, promotion papers
attesting to his valor,

and a cartridge box in which
someone had placed

the mangled bullet
that killed him.

His mother refused
to look at it.

The men of the reduced fishing
fleet struggled to harvest a catch.

Wives tended kitchen
gardens and scraped linen

for the lint from which army
bandages were made.

More bad news arrived:

Private Alex Henderson had died of
disease at Fort Jackson, Louisiana,

leaving a widow
and several children.

At Clarksville, Tennessee,
tensions between the town

and the occupying
Union army ran high.

Federal troops vandalized
Stewart College,

wrecking laboratories
and stealing books,

then set up
headquarters there.

Soldiers burst in
on a Church service,

arrested the preacher,
commandeered horses,

and forced
reluctant parishioners

to take a loyalty oath.

As much as possible, the
residents stayed at home.

The answer to a--
a southerner would give you

as to why are you fighting
if you were a northerner,

he would say, "I'm fighting
'cause you're down here."

He was being invaded, and he fought,
as he thought, to defend his home.

Lincoln had the much more difficult
job of sending men out to

shoot up somebody
else's home,

and he had to unite them
before he could do that.

And his way of doing it was double:
one was to say that the--

the republic must be preserved,
not split in two, that was one;

and the other one he
gave them as a cause--

the freeing of the slaves.

On the morning of
July 22nd, 1862,

the president called
a cabinet meeting.

What he said took
everyone by surprise.

After long thought,
he told them,

he had decided to
emancipate the slaves.

It was a stunning moment.

It was against everything
Lincoln had promised

all the Republicans
and indeed the country--

that he would not
become an abolitionist.

He would not strike at
slavery where it existed.

And here, suddenly, he was
changing the character of the war.

But Secretary of State Seward worried
that until the army had won a real victory,

emancipation would seem like
the last shriek on the retreat.

Lincoln agreed to
wait for a victory.

It's hard to separate one
issue from another.

Obviously, Lincoln
had to win the war.

He had to keep
his respectability

as president of a country that would
not allow itself to be defeated

by a group of rebels.

So that was
always an issue,

and it was especially an
issue, of course, in 1862.

He could not let
himself be made a fool

and the union
be made a fool

by standing up for principles that could not be vindicated on the battlefield.

I have read a fiery gospel

Writ in burnished
rolls of steel

"As ye deal with
my contemners

"So with you, My
grace shall deal"

Let the Hero
born of woman

Crush the serpent
with His heel

Since God is

Marching on

Desperate for a victory,
Lincoln removed McClellan

and put tall, bombastic
John Pope in command.

Pope so often bragged that his
headquarters were in the saddle,

people began to say
he had his headquarters

where his hindquarters
should have been.

Lincoln was warned
at the start that

Pope was not to be trusted
with telling the truth.

And Lincoln said, "I've known
the Popes back in Illinois,

"known all of them. They're
all liars and braggarts.

"but I don't know of any particular
reason why a liar and a braggart

"shouldn't make
a good general."

Pope wasted no time,

charging into northern Virginia after the rebel armies,

but he was in trouble
from the start.

First, Stonewall Jackson fought him to a standoff at Cedar Mountain.

Jeb Stuart hit him next,

raiding his headquarters and
getting away with $35,000 in cash

and the Union
commander's dress coat.

Then the rebels
simply disappeared.

It took Pope two
days to find them,

dug in along an
abandoned railroad

overlooking the old
Bull Run battlefield.

On August 29th,
Pope attacked,

promising to "Bag
the whole crowd."

But the Confederates held,

Jackson's men hurling rocks
when ammunition ran low.

At 2:00 the next afternoon,

Confederate General
James Longstreet

sent five divisions storming
into the Union flank.

It was another
Union disaster.

Twenty-five thousand men were
killed, wounded, or missing

at Second Bull Run,

five times the figure that
had so horrified the country

the first time North
and South fought there.

Lincoln sent Pope
west to Minnesota

to deal with an uprising
among the Sioux

and reluctantly put George
McClellan back in command.

"We must use the
we have," Lincoln said.

McClellan told his wife

he had been called upon to
save the country once again.

"We would ask the North
Carolinians if they had any tar,

"and call them 'tar heels.'

"They would reply that they
were just out, as they had

"let us Virginians have all they had
to make us stick in the last fight,

"and call us sore backs,

"as they'd knocked all
the skin off our backs

"running over us
to get into battle.

"And so it would go, but
all in the best of humor,

"knowing that all
did their duty."

John Casler, 33rd Regiment,
Virginia Infantry,

Stonewall's Brigade.

You must remember they
were all from the same state.

They had followed
the same flag.

The battles they had
fought in, were...

the names were
stitched on that flag.

And there was a
great deal of unit pride

and I'm sure there was a great deal of
sadness over the losses that they suffered.

But there was a closeness
among those men

that came from years
of being exposed to

the most horrendous
warfare that I know of.

"Dear father,

"the next morning we
had our second battle.

"It was rather strange
music to hear the balls

"scream within an
inch of my head.

"I had a bullet strike me on top of
the head just as I was going to fire

"and a piece of
shell struck my foot.

"A ball hit my finger,
and another hit my thumb.

"The firing increased tenfold, and then
it sounded like the rolls of thunder,

"and all the time every man
shouting as loud as he could.

"I got rather more excited
than I wish to again."

"I saw the body of a man killed
the previous day this morning,

"and a horrible
sight it was.

"Such sights do not affect
me as they once did.

"I cannot describe the change,
nor do I know when it took place.

"Yet I know there
is a change,

"for I look on the
carcass of a man now

"with pretty much the
same feeling as I would do

"were it a horse
or a hog."

"Sunday, a soldier of
Company A died and was buried.

"Everything went on as
if nothing had happened,

"for death is so common that
little sentiment is wasted.

"It is not like
death at home."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

Falling back from the
Bull Run battlefield,

Union troops skirmished briefly with
rebel forces at Falls Church, Virginia,

where the men stopped long enough to
scribble their names on the chapel walls.

"In great contests," Abraham Lincoln
wrote as the summer waned,

"each party claims to act in
accordance with the will of God.

"Both may be, but
one must be, wrong.

"God cannot be
for and against

"the same thing
at the same time."

"August 20th, 1862.

"An open letter
to the president:

"We think you are
unduly influenced

"by the counsels of
certain fossil politicians

"hailing from
border slave states.

"We ask you to consider
that slavery is everywhere

"the inciting cause and
sustaining base of treason.

"It seems to us the
most obvious truth

"that whatever strengthens
or fortifies slavery

"drives home the wedge
intended to divide the Union."

Horace Greeley.

"August 22nd.

"My paramount object in this
struggle is to save the Union

"and is not either to save
or to destroy slavery.

"If I could save
the Union

"without freeing any
slave, I would do it.

"If I could save it by freeing
all the slaves, I would do it.

"And if I could save it
by freeing some

"and leaving
others alone,

"I would also do that."

"It seems to me that
time is fast approaching

"when some joint offer of mediation
by England, France, and Russia

"might be made with
some prospect of success

"to the combatants
in North America.

"The proposal would naturally be
made to both North and South.

"If both accepted,

"we should recommend an armistice
and cessation of blockades,

"with a view to negotiation on
the basis of separation."

Prime Minister Palmerston

Lincoln had to
have a victory.

"September 3rd, 1862.

"The present seems to be
the most propitious time

"since the commencement
of the war

"for the Confederate army
to enter Maryland."

Robert E. Lee.

The brilliant Southern victories
of spring and summer

had brought Lee's army
international renown.

"One more successful campaign,"
he wrote Jefferson Davis,

"would force Europe to
recognize the Confederacy."

Now, for the first time,

Lee led 40,000 soldiers
across the Potomac

and onto Union soil.

"This body of men moving
along with no order,

"their guns carried
in every fashion,

"no two dressed alike,

"their officers hardly
distinguishable from the privates--

"were these the men that had
driven back again and again

"our splendid legions?

"They were the dirtiest
men I ever saw,

"a most ragged, lean, and
hungry set of wolves.

"Yet there was a dash about them
that the Northern men lacked."

Lee's target was the federal rail
center at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Hoping Marylanders would
rise up against the Union,

he instructed his
men to sing

Maryland, My Maryland,
as they marched.

It didn't work.

Most residents
of the small towns

stayed fearfully
behind closed doors.

Then, on September 13th,
in a meadow near Frederick,

a Union soldier
found three cigars

wrapped in a
piece of paper.

It was a copy of Lee's battle
plans, accidentally left behind.

McClellan now knew
Lee had divided his army,

sending one part off
to seize Harpers Ferry.

McClellan had
in his hands

the instrument with
which to destroy Lee.

Still, he did nothing

for eighteen
crucial hours.

On September 15th,
Lee and his Confederates

took up positions along the
crest of a three-mile ridge

just east of the town
of Sharpsburg,

and only fifty-two miles
from Washington.

The Potomac
was at their back:

in front ran a creek
called Antietam.

"On the forenoon
of the 15th,

"the blue uniforms of the federals
appeared among the trees

"that crowned the heights on the
eastern bank of the Antietam.

"The number increased, and larger
and larger grew the field of blue

"'til it seemed to stretch
as far as they eye could see.

"And from the tops of the mountains
down to the edges of the stream

"gathered the great
army of McClellan."

General James Longstreet.

Had McClellan hurled his army
at the Confederates that day,

the war might have
ended, but he did not.

"There was a single item
in our advantage,"

an aide to Lee
remembered,

"but it was an
important one:

"McClellan had brought
superior forces to Sharpsburg,"

the aide conceded,

"but he had also
brought himself."

"September 16th.

"That night I lay beside
the Charlestown Pike

"and watched until morning
the grimy columns

"come pouring up
from the pontoons.

"It was a weird,
uncanny sight

"and drove sleep
from my eyes.

"It was something demon-
like; a scene from an inferno.

"They were silent
as ghosts,

"ruthless and rushing
in their speed,

"ragged, earth-colored,
disheveled, and devilish.

"The shuffle of their badly-shod feet
on the hard surface of the pike

"was so rapid as to be
continuous, like the hiss

"of a great serpent.

"The spectral,
ghostly picture

"will never be erased
from my memory."

Captain Edward
Hastings Ripley.

"As night grew nearer,

"whispers of a great battle to be
fought the next day grew louder,

"and we shuddered
at the prospect,

"for the battles had come to mean
to us, as they never had before,

"blood, wounds,
and death."

The battle that began the next
day was really three battles:

The first began at 6 a.m.
on Lee's left,

where a federal force charged
along the Hagerstown Pike

to attack Stonewall
Jackson's men

hidden in woods
beyond a big cornfield.

The Union objective was a
plateau edged with artillery

on which stood a small
whitewashed church,

built by a German Baptist
Pacifist sect, the Dunkards,

for whom even a steeple
was thought immodest.

The Union field commander
was Major General Joe Hooker,

a profane and hard-
drinking Massachusetts soldier

known as Fighting Joe.

As Hooker
cautiously advanced,

he noticed the glint of
bayonets in the cornfield

and ordered four
batteries to fire into it.

The rebels countercharged.

The battle surged back and forth
across the cornfield fifteen times.

In a matter of minutes,
the 12th Massachusetts

lost 224 of 334 men.

Hooker himself was carried from
the field, shot through the foot.

"The men are
loading and firing with

"demoniacal fury and shouting
and laughing hysterically,

"and the whole field before
us is covered with rebels

"fleeing for life
into the woods."

Hooker's men were closing
in on the Dunkard church.

At that moment, Stonewall Jackson
sent in his last reserves,

John Bell Hood's division--
fierce fighters at any time,

but now enraged at
having missed breakfast,

which had promised to be
their first real meal in days.

Their first volley was "Like a
scythe running through our line,"

one Union survivor
remembered.

And the Confederate
counterattack came on.

"Every stalk of corn
was cut as closely

"as could have been
done with a knife,

"and the slain
lay in rows,

"precisely as
they had stood

"in their ranks a few
moments before."

Joseph Hooker.

The Northern troops ran
back through the cornfield.

Hood's men ran after
them, but were stopped

by a hail of shells and
federal reinforcements.

When the Confederates
finally withdrew,

one officer asked Hood
where his division was.

"Dead on the field,"
he answered.

"I have never in my soldier's
life seen such a sight.

"The dead and wounded
covered the ground.

"In one spot, a rebel
officer and twenty men

"lay near a wreck
of a battery.

"It is said Battery A, 1st Rhode
Island Artillery did this work."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

By 10 a.m., 8,000 men
lay dead or wounded.

Jackson's lines had
wavered, but held.

After his part of
the battle was over,

Jackson was sitting on his
horse, eating a peach and his

medical director,
Dr. McGuire, was there,

and...

he looked out over this field where there were dead

of both sides littered
all over the place.

And as he's eating a peach he said,
"God has been very kind to us this day."

The second part of the battle of Antietam
began at the center of Lee's line,

a sunken country road

that now served as a ready-made
rifle pit for two Confederate brigades.

Lee ordered it
held at all costs.

General John B.
Gordon assured him,

"These men are going to stay here, General, 'til the sun goes down

"or victory is won."

Then, the Union attacked.

"The brave Union commander,
superbly mounted,

"placed himself in front,

"while his band cheered
them with martial music.

"I thought, what a pity
to spoil with bullets

"such a scene of
martial beauty."

General John
B. Gordon.

Gordon let the blue line
get within a few yards,

then gave the
order to fire.

The Union commander
was killed instantly.

His men wavered, retreated,

then came back at the
Confederates five more times.

Gordon was hit twice in the
right leg, once in the left arm,

a fourth time
through the shoulder.

He refused all aid, limping
along the line to steady his men

as the federals kept coming.

"I was finally shot
down by a fifth ball,

"which struck me
squarely in the face.

"I fell forward and lay unconscious
with my face in my cap,

"and might have
smothered in blood

"but for a Yankee bullet hole
which let the blood run out."

Still the Confederates held.

Unit after unit of
Northern troops fell back

from the sheets
of Southern fire.

Finally, some New Yorkers
managed to find a spot

from which they could shoot
down on the road's defenders.

The tide of battle turned.

The sunken road, remembered
now as Bloody Lane,

rapidly filled with Southern
bodies, two and three deep,

and the triumphant federals
knelt on top of what one called,

"this ghastly flooring" to fire
at the fleeing survivors.

The Confederate center
had splintered.

One more push might
have broken it apart.

General McClellan,
however, decided,

"It would not be prudent"
to attack again.

All day long, in hastily
constructed field hospitals,

Clara Barton tended
the wounded.

She worked so close to the fighting
that a bullet went through her sleeve

and killed a man
she was treating.

"I had to wring the blood

"from the bottom of my
clothing before I could step,

"for the weight
about my feet."

"I was lying on my back,
supported on my elbows,

"watching the shells explode
overhead and speculating

"as to how long I could hold up my
finger before it would be shot off,

"when the order to
get up was given.

"I turned over to look
at Colonel Kimball

"thinking he had become
suddenly insane."

Lieutenant Matthew
J. Grohan.

The third battle took place
on the Confederate right,

where the Union army, led by
General Burnside's corps,

tried to fight its way across a
strongly defended stone bridge

over Antietam Creek.

Ambrose Burnside was
a genial, dapper man--

his distinctive whiskers
or sideburns set a fashion--

but "he shrank from responsibility,"
an admiring fellow officer said,

"with sincere modesty,"

and he owed his position to his old friend McClellan,

who now promised to support
his assault across the bridge.

Burnside had 12,500 men

against barely 400 Georgians
led by Robert Toombs.

But Confederates commanded
the bluff overlooking the bridge

and poured a
relentless volley of fire

down on the Union troops.

It took three hours and
three bloody charges

for the federals
to cross the creek

and begin fighting their way up
the slope towards Sharpsburg.

Seven successive Union
color bearers were hit

before the Confederates
finally broke,

racing back into the town.

"Oh, how I ran.

"I was afraid of being
struck in the back,

"and I frequently turned around in
running so as to avoid, if possible,

"so disgraceful a wound."

Private John Dooley.

Union victory again
seemed certain.

But while the Union troops cheered,
the Confederate light division

was arriving from
Harpers Ferry...

3,000 men, footsore from
their seventeen-mile march,

but otherwise ready to fight

and commanded by
General A. P. Hill,

dressed in the red shirt he
liked to wear in battle.

A. P. Hill is the fighting-est division
commander in Lee's army.

Hill arrived at
another one of those

nick-of-the-
moment things, and

it was the last one,
and it succeeded

in throwing Burnside back after
he finally got across the bridge.

Hill slammed into the
celebrating Union troops.

Burnside begged McClellan to send up
the reinforcements he had promised.

McClellan refused.

As night fell, Burnside
withdrew to the stone bridge

his men had fought
so hard to seize.

The battle was over.

No ground had
been gained.

"Before the sunlight faded, I
walked over the narrow field.

"All around lay the Confederate
dead, clad in butternut.

"As I looked down on the poor
pinched faces, all enmity died out.

"There was no secession
in those rigid forms,

"nor in those fixed eyes
staring at the sky.

"Clearly, it was
not their war."

"The sun went down.
The thunder died away.

"The musketry ceased.

"Bivouac fires gleamed
out as if a great city

"had lighted its lamps."

It had been the bloodiest
day in American history.

The Union lost
2,108 dead,

another 10,293
wounded or missing--

double the casualties of
D-Day eighty-two years later.

Lee lost fewer men--

10,318 casualties--

but that was a quarter
of his army.

"Why did we not attack them
and drive them into the river?

"I do not understand
these things.

"But then, I am
only a boy."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

McClellan had plenty of reserves
waiting outside Sharpsrburg,

but he never used them.

Lee, outnumbered
three-to-one,

braced for a new
attack all the next day.

It never came.

On the 18th, Lee and his army
slipped back across the Potomac.

McClellan could
claim a victory,

but he could have
won the war.

Lee's invasion
had been halted.

He had suffered
terrible losses,

but his army had
not been destroyed.

"The causes of the war
were wide apart,

"but the manhood
was the same."

Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain, 20th Maine.

Held in reserve
outside Sharpsburg,

the 20th Maine included
farmers and lumbermen,

seamen and shopkeepers
and trappers.

Its colonel was Joshua
Lawrence Chamberlain,

a thirty-three-year-old
professor of rhetoric, oratory,

and modern languages
at Bowdoin College.

Denied a leave of
absence to enlist,

he applied for a sabbatical
to study in Europe,

then volunteered.

On paper, his only
qualification for command

was that he was a gentleman
of the highest moral,

intellectual, and
literary worth.

Chamberlain was still
at Sharpsburg

when Abraham Lincoln
came to see the battlefield.

"We could see the deep
sadness in the president's face

"and feel the burden
on his heart,

"thinking of his great
commission to save his people

"and knowing that he could
do this no otherwise

than as he had
been doing--

"by and through the
manliness of these men."

Watching the president
review his troops,

it seemed to Joshua
Lawrence Chamberlain

that a "mystic bond,
wonderful in its intensity,"

joined the men to their
commander-in-chief.

The object of Lincoln's visit was
to get McClellan to pursue Lee.

"I came back thinking
he would move at once,

"but when I got home, he began to
argue why he ought not to move.

"I peremptorily ordered
him to advance.

"It was nineteen days before
he put a man over the river,

"and nine days longer before
he got his army across,

"and then he
stopped again."

Lincoln at last had had enough
of George McClellan.

The president relieved him
of command permanently.

"They have made
a great mistake.

"Alas, for my
poor country."

"September 21st, 1862.

"Dear Sam, Jr.,

"A great many of your old
friends and schoolmates

"have died or been killed.

"I will merely name

"Lem Ambercrombie,

"Jeff Montgomery,

"John Garrett,

"Lem Hatch,

"John Hill,

"Proctor Porter,

"Bill Humes,

"John White,

"Walter Maxey,

"Angus Alston.

"Old Mrs. Thomas
of our neighborhood

"has lost five sons.

"Your mother,
Margaret Houston."

You do have a...

a big problem when
you have units

that are from states and
counties and even towns,

and one of these regiments
can get in a very tight spot

in a particular battle,

like in the Cornfield
at Sharpsburg,

and the news may be that there are
no more young men in that town.

They're all dead.

In October of 1862,
at his New York gallery,

Mathew Brady opened an
exhibition of photographs

entitled "The Dead
of Antietam."

Nothing like them had ever
been seen in America before.

"The dead of
the battlefield

"come up to us very
rarely, even in dreams.

"We see the lists in the
morning paper at breakfast,

"but dismiss its recollection
with the coffee.

"Mr. Mathew Brady has done
something to bring to us

"the terrible reality and
earnestness of the war.

"If he has not brought bodies
and laid them in our dooryards

"and along our streets,

"he has done something
very like it."

Against the advice
of his advisers,

Lincoln reinstated U. S.
Grant to field command.

"I can't spare this man,"
Lincoln said.

"He fights."

A thousand miles to
the west, Vicksburg,

high on a bluff overlooking
the Mississippi River,

remained Confederate.

"Vicksburg,"
Jefferson Davis said,

"is the nail that holds the
South's two halves together."

That fall, Grant tried to take
the heavily fortified city.

He failed.

The Confederacy was on this
offensive over a thousand-mile front.

Mr. Gladstone, a power in the
English Cabinet, is saying,

"Jeff Davis has
made a navy.

"He's made an army,"
and, what's more important,

intimating that he's
made a nation.

But the invasion
of Maryland fails.

Lee is defeated,
falls back.

They lose at Perryville
in Kentucky.

They lose at Iuka and
Corinth in Mississippi,

and even at Newtonia
in Missouri

and the Confederate
tide rolls back.

Lincoln, as a result
of Antietam,

converted the war
to a higher plane,

again the
master politician.

He announces a preliminary
emancipation proclamation.

Of course, it doesn't free
a single slave in revolt;

it frees only as a war measure,
and only frees the slaves

in states where the
Confederacy is in control,

and it will take effect
on the first day of January.

"On the first
day of January,

"in the year of
our Lord 1863,

"all persons held as
slaves within any state

"or designated
part of a state,

"the people whereof
shall then be in rebellion

"against the United States,

"shall be then, thenceforth,

"and forever free."

Abraham Lincoln.

On September 22nd,

just five days after the
battle of Antietam,

the president issued his
emancipation proclamation.

"If my name ever goes
into history," Lincoln said,

"it will be for this act."

The South was outraged.

Jefferson Davis called it the
"most execrable measure

"recorded in the
history of guilty man."

At a Washington
dinner, John Hay,

the president's twenty-
three-year-old secretary,

noted that "everyone seemed to
feel a new sort of exhilarating life.

"The president's proclamation
had freed them,

"as well as the slaves."

"It was no longer a question
of the Union as it was

"that was to be
re-established.

"It was the Union
as it should be--

"that is to say,

"washed clean from
its original sin.

"We were no longer merely the
soldiers of a political controversy;

"we were now the missionaries
of a great work of redemption,

"the armed
liberators of millions.

"The war was ennobled.

"The object was higher."

Abroad, the proclamation had
the effect Lincoln had hoped for:

neither England nor
France was willing openly

to oppose a United States
pledge to end slavery.

"The triumph of
the Confederacy

"would be a victory
of the powers of evil,

"which would give courage
to the enemies of progress

"and damp the spirits of friends
all over the civilized world.

"The American Civil War

"is destined to be
a turning point,

"for good or evil,

"of the course of
human affairs."

John Stuart Mill.

"Put not your
trust in princes,

"and rest not your hopes
on foreign nations.

"This war is ours.

"We must fight it
out ourselves."

Jefferson Davis.

That December, Lincoln
spoke to Congress.

"The dogmas of
the quiet past

"are inadequate to
the stormy present.

"As our case is new,
so we must think anew

“and act anew.

"We must
disenthrall ourselves,

"and then we shall
save our country.

"Fellow citizens, we
cannot escape history.

"The fiery trial through
which we pass

"will light us down, in honor or
dishonor, to the latest generation.

"We say we
are for Union.

"The world will not
forget that we say this.

"In giving freedom
to the slave,

"we assure freedom
to the free--

"honorable alike
in what we give

"and what we preserve.

"We shall nobly save
or meanly lose

"the last best
hope of earth."

"December 31.

"Well, the year 1862
is drawing to a close,

"and as I look back, I am
bewildered when I think of the

"hundreds of miles I
have tramped,

"the thousands of dead and
wounded that I have seen.

"But we hope for the best
and feel sure that in the end,

"he Union will
be restored.

"Goodbye, 1862."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

"We shout for joy that we live to
record this righteous decree--

"free forever!

"Oh, ye millions of
free and loyal men

"who have earnestly sought to free your bleeding country

"from the dreadful ravages
of revolution and anarchy,

"lift up now your voices
with joy and thanksgiving,

"for with freedom to
the slave will come

"peace and safety
to your country."

Frederick Douglass.

On December 31st, a large
crowd of abolitionists,

including Harriet Tubman
and Wendell Phillips,

gathered together in the
music hall in Boston.

At midnight, the emancipation
proclamation would take effect.

On the stage, William
Lloyd Garrison

wept with joy beside
Frederick Douglass.

The cheering crowd called
for Harriet Beecher Stowe.

She stood in the balcony,
tears in her eyes.

At a Washington, D.C.,
contraband camp,

former slaves testified.

One remembered the
sale of his daughter.

"Now, no more
of that," he said.

"They can't sell my wife
and children anymore.

"Bless the Lord."

On the Sea Islands
off South Carolina,

Federal agents read the proclamation
aloud to former slaves

under the spreading
boughs of a huge oak tree.

As the commander of a
new all-black regiment

unfurled an American flag,

his men broke into song:

"It seemed the choked
voice of a race

"at last unloosed,"
he wrote.

In the beauty
of the lilies,

Christ was born
across the sea

With a glory in
His bosom

That transfigures
you and me

As he died to
make men holy,

Let us strive to
make men free

While God is

Marching on

Glory, glory, Hallelujah!

Glory, glory, Hallelujah!

Glory, glory, Hallelujah!

His truth is

Marching

On!