All language subtitles for Civil War, The, 04 (1990)

"In this army,

"one hole in the seat of the
britches indicates a captain;

"two holes--a lieutenant,

"and the seat of
the pants all out

"indicates that the
individual is a private."

They both have a
particular way of yelling:

the northern troops
made a sort of hurrah.

It was called--one soldier--
"the deep, generous

"manly shout" of
the northern soldier.

The Confederates, of course, had
what was called "the rebel yell."

We don't really know
what that sounded like.

One northerner
described it, he said--

he described it by describing the
peculiar corkscrew sensation

that goes up your backbone
when you hear it,

and he said, "and if you've
claimed you've heard it

"and weren't scared, that
means you never heard it."

It was...

it was basically, I think,
a sort of fox hunt yip

mixed up with a sort
of banshee squall.

And it was used
on the attack.

And an old Confederate
veteran after the war

was asked at a UDC meeting in
Tennessee somewhere to give

the rebel yell. The ladies
had never heard it.

And he said,
"It can't be done,

"except at a run,

"and I couldn't do it anyhow
with a mouth full of false teeth

"and a stomach
full of food."

So they never got to hear
what it sounded like.

The civil war was fought
in 10,000 places:

Murfreesboro, Chambersburg,

Dranesville, and Opelousas;

Apache Canyon,
St. Augustine,

Paducah, and
Brandy Station;

on the Red River,
the Rappahannock,

and the Rapidan;

across the Susquehanna
and the Monongahela;

from Mount Ida and
Mount Olive to Mount Zion;

from Ninevah and
Nickajack Gap

to New Berne, New Carthage, New Iberia, New Lisbon,

and New Hope;

from the Yazoo Delta

to the Chickasaw Bluffs.

By 1863, the Taiping
Rebellion in China

had entered its
thirteenth year.

Civil war broke out
in Afghanistan.

In America, Eddie Cuthbert
of the Philadelphia Keystones

stole the first base in
professional baseball.

The National Academy of Science
was founded in Washington.

The roller skate
was patented,

and Henry Ford and William
Randolph Hearst were born.

In 1863, Confederate General
Stonewall Jackson

would become a terror
to the Union army

and a legend,
north and south.

Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain,

a college professor
from Maine,

would lead his regiment
to glory on hillsides

in Virginia and
Pennsylvania.

In the Wilderness,
west of Fredericksburg,

Robert E. Lee would devise one of the most daring

and brilliant battle
plans of the war...

while 1,000 miles
to the west,

Ulysses S. Grant
continued to hammer away

at the rebel stronghold
at Vicksburg.

Confederate private Sam Watkins would
fight at Murfreesboro, Shelbyville,

Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain,
and Missionary Ridge,

and somehow survive,

while Elisha
Hunt Rhodes

would have the best
Fourth of July of his life.

In 1863, despite a Northern
victory at Antietam,

despite emancipation,

despite a clear superiority
in men and materiel,

the Union seemed close
to fumbling all it had.

Meanwhile, from
Vicksburg to Charleston,

the fragile
Confederate coalition

was coming apart.

And yet somehow the
Confederacy stayed alive

by the daring
and luck

and genius of its
high command.

But the biggest tests were
coming that summer

where the Mississippi took
a sharp turn at Vicksburg

and at a sleepy corner
of Pennsylvania.

"Murfreesboro, Tennessee,
January 1st, 1863.

"Martha, I can inform you that I
have seen the monkey show at last

"and I don't want
to see it no more.

"I never want to go on another
fight anymore, sister.

"I want to come home worse
than I ever did before."

Thomas Warwick.

Charles Coffin,
Boston Journal.

"All the surrounding
forests had disappeared,

"built into huts with
chimneys of sticks and mud

"or cut for burning
in the stone fireplaces.

"The soldiers
were discouraged.

"They knew that they
had fought bravely

"but that there had been
mismanagement

"and inefficient generalship."

"Falmouth, Virginia.

"This morning, we found ourselves covered with snow that had fallen during the night.

"It is too cold to write.

"How I would like to
have some of those

" 'On to Richmond'
fellows out here with us."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

The men of the Army of the Potomac
had not been paid for six months,

and while army warehouses
at Washington bulged with food,

little of it got to
the winter camp.

"I do not believe I
have ever seen

"greater misery
from sickness

"than now exists in our
Army of the Potomac."

Thomas F. Perley,
Inspector General.

One Wisconsin officer called the
winter camp at Falmouth, Virginia,

the Union's
"Valley Forge."

Hundreds died from
scurvy, dysentery,

typhoid, diphtheria,
pneumonia.

There were epidemics of measles,
mumps, and other childhood diseases,

and farm boys, crowded with other
men for the first time in their lives,

were especially
susceptible.

Disease was the
chief killer of the war,

taking two for every one
who died of battle wounds.

"One of the wonders of these
times was the army cough,

"and it is almost a literal fact
that when 100,000 men

"began to stir
at reveille

"the sound of their
coughing would drown out

"that of the
beating drums."

"The newspapers say the army
is eager for another fight.

"It is false.

"They are heartily sick of battles
that produce no results."

"I don't think I have
received half of my letters.

"It cannot be possible

"that one is my quota in over three weeks from home.

"I've written constantly from every
place where we have stopped

"long enough to write
and could mail a letter."

Edward Hastings Ripley.

Two hundred men
deserted every day.

By late January, ¼ of the Union
army was absent without leave.

Added to the men's misery were
memories of the battle they had fought

across the Rappahannock at
Fredericksburg in December.

At Fredericksburg,
there was a...

an exchange across
the Rappahannock.

One of them hollered, "Hey, reb,"
and they said, "Yeah?"

"When are you fellas
going to come over?"

They said, "When we get good
and ready. What do you want?"

They said,
"Want Fredericksburg."

"Don't you wish,
you may get it!"

And things like that. There were
a lot of those exchanges.

A line of hills overlooked
Fredericksburg, Virginia,

a key Confederate
transportation link

midway between Richmond
and Washington.

Union General Ambrose
E. Burnside's plan

had been to cross the
Rappahannock by pontoon,

occupy the town, then take
the thinly defended heights.

Bold action did not come
naturally to Ambrose Burnside,

though he had led his
men to Fredericksburg

determined to display the fighting spirit
his predecessor, George McClellan,

had so
conspicuously lacked.

But now the War
Department failed him,

and seventeen days passed waiting
for pontoon bridges to arrive.

By the time the
bridge was in place,

Lee had 75,000 men
waiting in the hills.

Stonewall Jackson
was on the right;

James Longstreet on the left along
a bluff called "Marye's Heights."

From the top of the Heights, Lee
could just see Chatham Mansion

across the river
on the Union side,

where thirty years before, he had
courted his wife, Mary Custis.

It was now Burnsides'
headquarters.

On December 11th, Union guns
began shelling Fredericksburg,

setting much of
the town on fire;

then the troops started
across the river.

Some wondered why the Confederates
did not make it harder for them to cross.

"They want to get us in,"
one private said;

"getting out won't be quite
so smart and easy."

While waiting to
attack the Heights,

Union men looted what
was left of the town.

The great assault came two
days later on December 13th.

Federal forces advanced
toward Marye's Heights.

Lee could not believe the
enemy would be so foolish.

His artillery covered
all the approaches.

Four lines of riflemen
waited behind a stone wall

that ran along
the base of the hill.

"General," an officer
assured James Longstreet,

"a chicken could not live in that
field when we open on it."

"How beautifully
they came on;

"their bright bayonets glistening in the
sunlight made the line look like a huge

"serpent of blue
and steel.

"We could see our shells bursting
in their ranks, making great gaps,

"but on they came, as though they would
go straight through us and over us.

"Now we gave them canister,
and that staggered them.

"A few more paces onward, and the
Georgians in the road below us rose up and

"let loose a storm of lead into the
faces of the advancing brigade."

"The brilliant assault of their Irish
brigade was beyond description;

"we forgot they
were fighting us, and

"cheer after cheer at their
fearlessness went up along our lines.”

General George Pickett.

It was suicide.

"They came forward,"
one man said,

"as though they were breasting
a storm of rain and sleet.

"Faces and bodies half turned to
the storm, shoulders shrugged."

The Irish brigade got within
twenty-five paces of the wall.

The men of the 24th Georgia
who shot them down

were Irish, too.

A Union officer watching
from a church steeple

saw brigade after brigade
charge the stone wall.

"They seemed to
melt," he said,

"like snow coming down
on warm ground."

They still believed that to take a
position, you massed your men

and moved up and
gave them the bayonet.

There were practically no
bayonet wounds in the Civil War,

much more than there were in the
First World War or the Second.

They never came in
that kind of contact,

or at least very seldom came
in that kind of contact,

but they still thought that to mass
their fire they had to mass their men.

So they lined up and marched up toward
an entrenched line and got blown away.

Fourteen assaults were beaten
back from Marye's Heights

before Burnside decided
it could not be taken.

Nine thousand men fell
before the Confederate guns.

More credit for valor is given
to Confederate soldiers.

They're supposed to have
had more élan and dash.

Actually, I know of no
braver men in either army

than the Union troops
at Fredericksburg,

which is a
serious defeat.

But to keep charging that wall
at the foot of Marye's Heights,

after all the failures there had been--
and they were all failures--

is a singular
instance of valor.

Watching from above, even
Robert E. Lee was moved.

"It is well," he said,
"that war is so terrible;

“we should grow
too fond of it."

Colonel Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain and his 20th Maine

were among the thousands of Union men
pinned down at the foot of the Heights.

That night, the temperature fell
below freezing, and a stiff wind blew.

Men now froze as
well as bled to death.

Night brought quiet.

"But out of that silence rose new
sounds, more appalling still--

"a strange ventriloquism, of which
you could not locate the source;

"a smothered moan,

"as if a thousand discords were
flowing together into a keynote--

"weird, unearthly,
terrible to hear and bear,

"yet startling
with its nearness;

"the writhing concord
broken by cries for help;

"some begging for
a drop of water,

"some calling on
God for pity,

"and some on friendly
hands to finish

"what the enemy had
so horribly begun;

"some with delirious,
dreamy voices

"murmuring loved names as if the dearest were bending over them,

"and underneath,
all the time,

"the deep bass note
from closed lips

“too hopeless

"or too heroic to
articulate their agony.

"At last, out-wearied
and depressed,

"I moved two dead men a little
and lay down between them,

"making a pillow of
the breast of a third,

"drew the flap of his
overcoat over my face

"and tried to sleep.”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

They were stuck there all
night and all the next day,

crouching behind a
wall of their own dead,

trying not to hear the
Confederate bullets

thudding into the
corpses of their friends.

Burnside, openly weeping,
declared that he himself

would lead the
new attack.

Subordinates
talked him out of it.

That night, Chamberlain
and his men

scraped out shallow
graves for the dead.

As they worked, the northern lights
began to dance in the winter sky.

"Who would not
pass on as they did,

"dead for their
country's life

"and lighted to burial by the meteor
splendors of their native sky?"

It was very unusual to see the
northern lights that far south,

but the whole heavens were
lit up with streamers of

fire and whatever the
northern lights are.

And the Confederates
took it as a sign that

God almighty himself was
celebrating a Confederate victory.

"The slaughter is terrible,
the result, disastrous.

"Until we have good generals,
it is useless to fight battles."

The Union had
lost 12,600 men.

The South had
lost 5,300 men,

but many of them were only
missing--gone home for Christmas.

The battered Union army
limped back across the river.

Icy rain began to fall.

From the ruins
of Fredericksburg,

Confederate soldiers openly taunted
the Union troops huddled miserably

on the far side of
the Rappahannock.

After the battle of Fredericksburg, the
Confederates went back into the town

and they saw all the damage that had been
done during the Union occupation of the town--

it was a great deal of
damage, real vandalism--

and they were shocked, and
someone on Jackson's staff said,

"How are we going to put an
end to all this kind of thing?"

And Jackson said,
"Kill them.

"Kill them all."

Clarksville.

"Those hateful gunboats.

"They looked like they
were from the lower regions.

"Now this is the second
night that four of them

"have been anchored in the
river opposite our house.

"I see the men crawling
about on the boats

"like so many
black snakes."

Nannie Haskins.

Fifteen-hundred Union men were now
stationed at Clarksville, Tennessee.

No one could enter or leave the
town without a military pass.

"Every day," Mrs. D. N. Kennedy
wrote her husband in Georgia,

"the reins are tightened."

On Deer Isle, Maine, the parents
of Private Harlton Powers

learned that he was among
the missing at Fredericksburg.

In fact, his fellow soldiers
were certain he was dead,

but had been unable to recognize
his body among the swollen,

blackened Union corpses.

His father placed a stone
to his memory anyway

in the little cemetery
at Southwest Harbor.

Private Alfred
Robbins, age twenty,

collapsed and died while
on his way to mail a letter

in camp near Port
Hudson, Louisiana.

The cause was
never discovered.

In March, Corporal Farnum Haskell's
coffin came home from Louisiana

and was buried at
Mount Adams Cemetery,

despite the great difficulty of digging a grave in the frozen ground.

During the long, cold,
rainy winter of 1863,

Confederate forces huddled
in defensive positions

south of the Duck River
near Tullahoma, Tennessee.

Confederate officers liked
to explain that "Tullahoma"

came from the Greek word
"tulla," meaning "mud,"

and "homa," meaning
"more mud."

The Confederacy
was on the move:

Confederate General John C.
Pemberton beat back Union forces

trying to take the
Chickasaw Bluffs

north of Vicksburg;

John Morgan's Confederate
cavalry raided Kentucky,

burning bridges, twisting
train tracks, and

taking 2,000
Union prisoners;

and Nathan Bedford Forrest was
driving the Union army mad

everywhere he went--

stealing horses,
harrying supply lines,

attacking armies four
times the strength of his,

then disappearing
without a trace.

In two weeks, Forrest
stole 10,000 rifles,

wrecked $3 million
worth of equipment,

and cut U. S. Grant's life lines,
and forced him to retreat.

In Texas, General
John B. Magruder

captured a Union
flotilla at Galveston.

After the bombardment was over,
Confederate Major A. M. Lea

went aboard the badly
hit U.S.S. Harriet Lane.

There he found
his son,

a federal lieutenant,
dying on the deck.

January 24,
near Falmouth.

"Daylight showed
a strange scene:

"men, horses, artillery, pontoons,
and wagons were stuck in the mud.

"Rebels put up
a sign marked,

" 'Burnside stuck
in the mud.'

"We can fight rebels,
but not in the mud.”

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

"I wish you could hear
Joshua give off a command

"and see him ride along the battalion on his white horse.

"He looked so splendidly.

"He told me last night that he
never felt so well in his life.”

Tom Chamberlain.

"What makes it strange is that I
should have gained twelve pounds

“living on worms."

"We live so mean here that
hard bread is all worm,

"and the meat
stinks like hell.

"And rice two or three times a week,
and worms as long as your finger.

“I liked rice once, but
goddamn the stuff now."

"It was no
uncommon occurrence

"for a man to find the
surface of his pot of coffee

"swimming with weevils after
breaking up hardtack in it,

"but they were
easily skimmed off

“and left no distinctive
flavor behind."

"Tell ma that I think of her beans and collards often and wish for some;

"but wishing
does no good.”

Benjamin Franklin Jackson.

Union troops were
issued beans, bacon,

pickled beef--called
salt horse by the men--

desiccated, compressed
mixed vegetables,

and hardtack--

square, flour-and-water biscuits hard enough, some said,

they could stop bullets.

In the southern army, you ate
something called "sloosh."

You got issued
cornmeal and bacon,

and you fried the bacon--which left
a great deal of grease in the pan--

then you took the cornmeal and
swirled it around in the grease

to make the dough;

then you might take the
dough and make a snake of it

and put it around your ramrod and cook it over the campfire.

That was called "sloosh."

They ate a
lot of that.

Coffee was the preferred
drink of both armies.

Union troops crushed the
beans with their rifle butts;

drank four pints
of it a day--

strong enough, one man said,
to float an iron wedge--

and when they could
not build a fire,

were content to
chew the grounds.

Southerners made do with
substitutes brewed from peanuts,

potatoes, and chicory.

"We have been living on the contents
of those boxes you sent to us.

"Nothing was spoiled
except that card of biscuits.

"Those were molded some, but we
used over half of them in a soup.

"Thank Mr. Berdicts a
thousand times for me,

"also Mrs. Maxson
for those pies.

"and those fried cakes and
gingersnaps are first-rate.

"And the dried berries, they're nice,
and the dried beef and applesauce--

"that was first-rate."

"No one agent so much
obstructs this army

"as the degrading vice
of drunkenness.

"Total abstinence would
be worth 50,000 men

"to the armies of
the United States."

General George McClellan.

If a soldier couldn't
buy it, he made it.

One Union recipe called
for bark juice, tar water,

turpentine, brown sugar,
lamp oil, and alcohol.

Southerners sometimes
dropped in raw meat

and let the mixture
ferment for a month or so

to add what one veteran
remembered as

"an old and
mellow taste."

The men called their home brew
"nockum stiff," "pop skull,"

and "oh, be joyful."

"I invited my comrades
to assist me in emptying

"three canteens of
"oh, be joyful,"

"then spent the balance
of the evening singing.

"Then we parted
in good spirits."

In March 1863, John Mosby's
Confederate rangers

raided Fairfax Court
House, Virginia,

capturing two captains, thirty
privates, fifty-eight horses,

and Brigadier General
Edwin Stoughton.

"For that, I am sorry," Lincoln
said when told of the capture,

"for I can make
brigadier generals,

"but I can't
make horses."

General Mosby had made life
miserable for northern commanders

throughout the war.

No other Confederate officer
was mentioned favorably

as many times in
Robert E. Lee's dispatches

as John
Singleton Mosby.

There were no medals in the Confederate
army, not one in the whole course of the war.

The Confederate reason
for that given was

that they were all heroes and it would
not do to single anyone out, but

they were not
all heroes.

But there was
a suggestion

made to Lee that there be a roll of
honor for the Army of Northern Virginia,

and Lee disallowed it.

The highest honor you could
get in the Confederate army

was to be mentioned
in dispatches,

and that was considered
absolutely enough.

"March 5th, 1863.

"The arm of the slaves

"is the best defense against
the arm of the slave holder.

"Who would be
free themselves

"must strike the blow.

"I urge you

"to fly to arms and
smite with death

"the power that would bury
government and your liberty

"in the same
hopeless grave.

"This is our golden
opportunity."

Frederick Douglass.

"The colored population
is the great available,

"and yet un-availed-of,
force for restoring the Union.

"The bare sight of
50,000 armed and drilled

"black soldiers upon the banks of the Mississippi

"would end the
rebellion at once.

"And who doubts that we
can present that sight

"if we but take
hold in earnest?"

Abraham Lincoln.

The people most

affected by the emancipation
proclamation obviously

did not receive
it as news

because they knew
before Lincoln knew

that the war was
about emancipation,

and moreover they knew,

as perhaps Lincoln did
without fully realizing it,

and certainly as many
people today do not realize,

that the emancipation proclamation
did nothing to get them their freedom.

It said that they
had a right to go

and put their
bodies on the line

if they had the nerve
to believe in it,

and many of them had
the nerve to believe in it,

and many
suffered for that.

To Lincoln, it was now clear that
harsher measures were needed

to destroy the
Confederacy.

He called for more
troops, and in February,

pushed a conscription
act through congress.

The emancipation proclamation
had already authorized the arming

of freed slaves.

"As to the politics
of Washington,

"the most striking thing is the absence
of personal loyalty to the president:

"it does not exist.
He has no admirers,

"no enthusiastic
supporters,

"no one to bet
on his head."

The fall elections
had not gone well;

Fredericksburg only
made matters worse,

and in Washington, talk of
the disaster was everywhere.

"If there is a worse place than
hell," Lincoln told a visitor,

"I am in it."

The single most unpopular act
of Lincoln's administration

was the emancipation
proclamation.

It not only was horribly
unpopular in the Confederacy,

where Jefferson Davis called it
"the most wicked thing that the

"dark side of humankind
had ever come up with,"

but millions of northerners
responded to it as well.

They did not
really want the--

a great many
northerners did not want

the war to be changed to a
war over slave liberation.

Opposition to the
war was spreading,

especially among democrats
in the heartland--

Michigan, Ohio,
Iowa, Indiana,

and the southern half
of Lincoln's own Illinois.

The proclamation ignited an
antiwar movement in the north.

All but thirty-five men
of the 138th Illinois

deserted over
emancipation,

declaring they would lie in the woods
until moss grew on their backs

rather than help
free the slaves.

Groups with names like the
Knights of the Golden Circle

and Sons of Liberty met in secret and
muttered of forcing an end to the war.

Their enemies called
them "copperheads,"

and they wore on their
lapels the head of Liberty,

snipped from a
copper penny.

Their leader was Congressman
Clement Vallandigham of Ohio.

Lincoln had him
thrown in jail

and later banished
to the Confederacy.

"You have not conquered
the South; you never will.

"War for the Union
was abandoned;

"war for the negro
openly begun,

"and with stronger
battalions than before,

"with what success?

"Let the dead at
Fredericksburg answer."

All of these things
bore in on him,

plus the fact that the South had a strong
army and a good leadership and was--

but then he would pick up
a Richmond newspaper,

and he'd say, "Here's what they're
saying about Jeff Davis down here.

"You know, I don't look so bad."

Because the South
had a free press,

too, and he realized,
you know, that

Jeff was not doing any better than he
was as far as they were concerned.

Davis was walking down the
street in Richmond one day,

and a Confederate soldier, who was
in Richmond on furlough, passed him

and stopped
him and said,

"Sir, mister, be'nt you
Jefferson Davis?"

And Davis said
that he was.

Then the soldier said, "Well, I thought so. You look
so much like a Confederate postage stamp."

Jefferson Davis was trying to
win a war while forging a nation

out of eleven states suspicious
of even the most trivial move

toward centralized
government.

When Davis called for a
day of national fasting,

the governor of
Georgia ignored it,

then named a different
fast day of his own.

"I entered into this revolution
to contribute my might

"to sustain the
rights of states

"and to prevent the
consolidation of the government,

"and I am still a rebel, no
matter who may be in power."

Governor Joseph Brown
of Georgia.

"The Confederacy has been
done to death by politicians."

Mary Chesnut.

"Pardon me," a South Carolinian
wrote his congressman,

"is the majority
always drunk?"

Vice President Alexander Stephens
believed Davis weak and vacillating,

timid, petulant,
peevish, obstinate.

Stephens left Richmond
in 1862, rarely to return.

"I make no terms,"
Davis once said.

"I accept no
compromise."

He refused to unbend in public
or to curry favor with the press.

Privately, he commuted
nearly every death sentence

for desertion that
reached his desk,

explaining that the
poorest use of a soldier

was to shoot him.

He's often described
as a bloodless pedant,

a man who filled
all his time with

small-time paperwork
and never anything else,

an icy-cold man who had
no friendliness in him.

I found the opposite to be
true in all those respects.

Davis is an outgoing,
friendly man,

a great family man--
loved his wife and children--

infinite store of
compassion.

Lee said it best--
he said,

"I don't think anyone could name anyone who
could have done a better job than Davis did,

"and I personally don't know of anyone
who could have done as good a job."

That's from Robert E. Lee,
which is pretty good authority.

Davis may well have
been the only southerner

who understood
southern nationality,

who understood what
sacrifices had to be made

if the Confederacy was ever
going to jell as a nation.

He kept saying, "I need the kind
of powers that Lincoln got.

"I need the kind of resources
that he got in the draft laws.

"I need to be able to suspend the writ of habeas corpus like he did."

He would have said, "We can't live by the
dogmas of the quiet past any longer."

He didn't say that,
but he acted that out.

He said, "I have to be given the kinds--
this Confederate government--

"needs the kind of national
authority--national power

"that the Union had
in order to win."

And they didn't get it because the states'
rights helped kill the Confederacy.

A single cake of soap
now cost $1.10--

a tenth of a soldier's
monthly pay.

At the beginning of
1863, a barrel of flour

cost $70 in the south;

by year's end,
it cost $250.

The Confederate Treasury
cranked out millions of dollars

in notes un-
backed by gold.

Southern printing
was so primitive

that counterfeiters were sometimes
caught because their work was too good.

By 1862 and '63, the South
suffered from terrible

inflationary currency.

What was really at a premium
was a Union gold dollar.

So that the Confederate people could never get
away from the Union, not even economically.

"If the Confederacy
is defeated,

"it will be by the
people at home."

Atlanta Southern
Confederacy.

Thousands of women,
infuriated by soaring prices,

stormed through downtown
Richmond shops,

smashing windows and gathering
up armfuls of food and clothing.

Troops tried
to stop them,

and Jefferson Davis
himself came out,

throwing what money he had
in his pockets to the crowd

and begging them to blame the
Yankees, not the government.

Then he warned the troops would
open fire if they did not disperse.

The women
straggled home.

"Patriotic planters would willingly put
their own flesh and blood into the army,

"but when they were
asked for a negro,

"it was like drawing
an eyetooth."

Senator Louis T.
Wigfall, Texas.

Farmers were called upon to
contribute one-tenth of their produce,

and the Confederate army was empowered
to impress male slaves as laborers,

provided a monthly fee
was paid to their masters.

Planters moved their slaves inland, away
from the government and the fighting.

One-hundred-fifty-thousand slaves
were marched all the way to Texas.

Hundreds, perhaps
thousands,

died along the way.

"Wartrace, Tennessee,

"June 10th, 1863.

"I have just heard
from Hilliard's Legion:

"they're deserting
every day.

"They say they don't
get enough to eat.

"I just bought me
a testament.

"I gave $2.00 for it.
Everything's high here."

Benjamin Franklin Jackson.

"I saw a sight today that
made me feel mighty bad.

"I saw a man
shot for deserting.

"There was twenty-four guns at him,
and they shot him all to pieces.

"He went home, and they brought him
back, and then he went home again,

"so they shot
him for that.

"Martha, it was one sight
that I did hate to see."

By the end of the year, two-fifths of
the Southern Army would be absent,

with or without leave.

Deserters sometimes
banded together,

often fed and clothed
by Union sympathizers.

In North Carolina, the pro-
Union Heroes of America

had over 10,000 members.

By the end of the war, Unionists
from every Confederate state

except South Carolina

had sent regiments
to the north.

In Jones County,
Mississippi, a guerrilla band

ran off tax collectors,
burned bridges,

and ambushed Confederate
columns for three years.

Reporters called
the region

"The Kingdom of Jones."

"How I wish you could hear the
music of this encampment tonight.

"Just stand out in the open
air a little while and listen.

"All seems happy,

"and all seems
gay, but still,

"could you look into their hearts you
would see thoughts of the loved ones

"that they have left at home rise
above their mirth and gaiety.

"Yet, they are contented,
though not happy,

"contented to
do their duty,

"contented to bear
their part in this war,

"and sing sad
thoughts away."

"Dear Fanny,

"I don't know what we should
have done without our band.

"It's acknowledged by everyone
to be the best in the division.

"Every night about sundown,
Gilmore gives us a splendid concert,

"playing selections
from the operas and

"some very pretty marches,
quicksteps, waltzes, and the like."

Troops sang in camp
and on the way to battle.

Confederates
favored "Dixie"

and "The Bonnie
Blue Flag."

Union soldiers still preferred
an old Methodist tune.

Mostly, they liked
sentimental songs:

"Just Before the
Battle, Mother,"

"The Vacant Chair,"

"All Quiet Along
the Potomac,"

and "Home
Sweet Home."

In many camps, the men were
forbidden to play a song called,

"Weeping, Sad
and Lonely,"

officers considering it
destructive of morale.

Both sides
loved "Lorena."

"April 14th, 1863,

"Rappahannock River, Virginia,
near Franklin's Crossing.

"General Thomas J. Jackson came
down to the riverbank today

"with a party of
ladies and officers.

"We raised our hats to the
party, and strange to say,

"The ladies waved their
handkerchiefs in reply.

"General Jackson took his field
glasses and coolly surveyed our party.

"We could have shot
him with a revolver,

"but we have an agreement
that neither side will fire,

"as it does
no good

"and, in fact, is
simply murder."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

"General, I have placed you at the
head of the Army of the Potomac.

"I have heard in such
away as to believe it

"of your recently saying that both
the army and the government

"needed a dictator.

"Of course, it was not for
this but in spite of this

"that I have given
you the command.

"Only those generals
who gain successes

"can set up
as dictators.

"What I now ask of you
is military success,

"and I will risk
the dictatorship."

Abraham Lincoln.

Again Lincoln turned
to a new general.

He replaced Burnside
with Joseph Hooker,

a tenacious West Pointer
called fighting Joe,

who drank and talked too
much for his own good.

It was absolutely necessary,
Lincoln told him,

to destroy Lee's army.

"My plans are perfect.

"May God have mercy
on General Lee,

"for I will have none."

Hooker's plans called for one
part of his enormous army

to feign an assault
on Lee's front,

still at Fredericksburg,

while the rest marched up the
Rappahannock, crossed the river,

and attacked Lee
from the rear.

On April 30th,
Hooker's main force

70,000 strong--reached
Chancellorsville--

a lone house in a clearing
surrounded by a thick forest

called "The Wilderness."

Hooker and his officers
moved in downstairs

and continued to map out the assault
they were sure would trap Lee.

"The enemy must
either ingloriously fly

"or come out from
behind his defenses

"and give us battle
upon our own ground,

"where certain
destruction awaits him."

"The hen is the wisest
of all the animal creation

"because she
never cackles

"until after the
egg is laid."

But Robert E. Lee, outnumbered
nearly two to one,

was not fooled
by Hooker's plan.

Defying all military convention, he
divided his own much smaller force,

leaving only ¼ of his
men at Fredericksburg,

before rushing west
to shore up his flank.

When Lee's Confederates reached
the edge of the Wilderness,

Union troops moved
out to engage them.

Fire!

But the fighting
had hardly begun

when fighting Joe
Hooker inexplicably

ordered his forces back
to defensive positions

around the
Chancellor house.

"To tell the truth,"
he later tried to explain,

"I just lost confidence
in Joe Hooker."

Lee sensed
Hooker's confusion

and the next day divided
his army a second time,

sending 28,000 men
under Stonewall Jackson

on an extraordinary
fourteen-mile march

through the
dense wilderness

and around the
Union's right flank.

Hooker somehow persuaded himself
that Jackson was actually retreating

and despite the skeletal rebel
force remaining in front of him,

chose to
stay in camp.

All day long came reports from terrified
Union pickets of a huge rebel force

moving just beyond the
screen of trees to the west.

They were ignored.

Late that afternoon,

Union troops were boiling
coffee and playing cards

when deer came bounding out of
the forest and through their camp.

Jackson's army was
right behind them.

"It was a perfect whirlwind
of men," a survivor said.

"The enemy seemed to
come from every direction."

The federals fell back
nearly two miles

before darkness stopped
the Confederate sweep.

Chancellorsville, in many
ways, is Lee's masterpiece:

it's where the
odds were longest;

it's where he took
the greatest risk

in dividing his army in the
presence of a superior enemy,

and kept the
pressure on.

The real fault at
Chancellorsville was

the attack was staged so late in the
day that they were not able to push it

to the extent that
Jackson had intended to.

And he was even attempting
to make a night attack--

a very rare thing
in the Civil War--

because he knew that he hadn't finished
up what he had started to begin.

Eager to fight on, Jackson rode
out between the lines that evening

to scout for a
night attack.

When he turned back
toward his men,

nervous Confederate
pickets opened fire.

Two of his
aides fell dead.

Jackson was hit twice
in the left arm.

His shattered arm was
amputated the next morning.

Lee was horrified.

"He has lost his
left arm," he said,

"but I have lost
my right."

Hooker continued
to bumble.

As he nervously watched the fighting
from the porch of the Chancellor house,

a shell split the pillar he
was leaning against

and knocked
him senseless.

Groggy all day, he refused
to relinquish command.

Finally, he ordered retreat.

The defeat was total.

Again the Union army withdrew
across the Rappahannock.

Hooker had lost
17,000 men,

even more than
at Fredericksburg.

"My God, my God," said Lincoln
when he got the news,

"what will the
country say?"

Chancellorsville was
Lee's most brilliant victory

and one of
the costliest.

Thirteen-thousand of his men
were dead or out of action,

but it was the loss of one man
that concerned him most.

Stonewall Jackson
seemed to be recuperating.

Then on Sunday,
May 10th,

he took a turn
for the worse.

The scene is in a
bedroom in which

he's coming in and
out of consciousness.

Pneumonia's what he died
of, not the loss of his arm.

And his wife got
there to be with him,

and the surgeon,
Dr. McGuire,

told Mrs. Jackson that her
husband would die that day,

and she told
him, said,

"The doctor says that you
won't last the day out,"

and he said, "Oh, no, my child.
It's not that serious."

And then finally
she said,

"You'll be with the
lord this day."

And he went off into some
sort of sleepy delirium.

Pneumonia affects
people in strange ways.

And he called the doctor
over and he says,

"Dr. McGuire, my wife tells me I'm gonna
die today. Is that true?" And the doctor said,

"Yes, it is."

And he said,
"Good. very good.

"I always wanted to
die on a Sunday."

And when they offered
him brandy or morphine,

He said, "No. I want to
keep my mind clear."

And the last thing he said--
is sort of--he wandered in his mind.

He was calling on A. P. Hill,
and "Prepare for action."

And then all of a
sudden, he was quiet,

and very quiet
for a spell,

and he said in a
clear, distinct voice,

"Let us cross
over the river

"and rest under the
shade of the trees,"

and then died.

"The death of
our pious, brave,

"and noble General
Stonewall Jackson

"is a great blow
to our cause."

Winfield Scott.

Henry Halleck.

Irvin McDowell.

George McClellan.

John Pope.

George McClellan, again.

Ambrose Burnside.

Joseph Hooker.

Lincoln could not find
the general he needed.

He now knew that to win the war,
the southern armies had to be crushed.

He had the men,

but he needed a general
with the will to use them.

"No general yet found
can face the arithmetic,

"but the end of the
war will be at hand

"when he shall
be discovered.

"Vicksburg
is the key.

"The war can never be brought to a
close until the key is in our pocket."

"A long line of high,
rugged, irregular bluffs

"clearly cut
against the sky,

"crowned with cannon,
which peered ominously

"from embrasures
to the right and left

"as far as the eye
could see--

"that is Vicksburg."

For two and-a-half months, Ulysses
S. Grant doggedly attempted to dig

or hack or float his army
through the tangled bayous

and seize the
town of Vicksburg.

Nothing worked.

The press accused him
of sloth and stupidity;

hinted he was
drinking again.

Finally, Grant decided
on a daring plan:

he would march downriver through
the swamps on the western side,

cross below Vicksburg,

and without hope of
resupply or reinforcement,

come up from behind
and attack the city.

By early May, Grant
had crossed the river.

"When this was effected,

"I felt a degree of relief
scarcely ever equaled since.

"I was now in the
enemy's country

"with a river and the
stronghold of Vicksburg

"between me and
my base of supply,

"But I was on
dry ground

"on the same side of the
river with the enemy."

The men knew they were
cut loose from their base,

knew they were going to be dependent for
supplies on a very tenuous supply line,

but Grant himself gave
them confidence.

They believed Grant knew
what he was doing,

and one great encouragement
for their believing that was,

quite often on the march, whether
at night or in the daytime,

they'd be moving along
a road or over a bridge

and right beside the road would
be Grant on his horse--

a dust-covered man on a dust-covered
horse, saying "Move on, close up."

So, they felt very much that he personally
was in charge of their movement

and it--it gave them an
added confidence.

In three weeks, Grant's army,
cut off from all communication

with the outside world,
marched 180 miles,

fought and won five
battles at Port Gibson...

Raymond...

Jackson...

Champions Hill...

and Big
Black River...

and finally surrounded
Vicksburg itself,

trapping 31,000
Confederates.

On May 19th, Grant tried to take
the town by direct assault

but was beaten back.

"May 19th.

"Thanks be to the great ruler of the universe Vicksburg is still safe.

"The first great assault has been
most successfully repelled.

"All my fears in reference to
taking the place by storm:

"now vanished."

Reverend William
Lovelace Foster,

Chaplain, 35th
Mississippi Volunteers.

Grant settled
in for a siege,

resolved, he said, to
"out-camp the enemy."

"It is such folly for them to waste
their ammunition like that.

"How can they ever take a
town that has such advantages

"for defense and
protection as this?

"We'll just burrow into
these hills and let them

"batter away as hard
as they please."

On May 15th, Jefferson Davis
summoned General Lee to Richmond.

Something had to be
done about Grant.

Davis wanted to send
part of Lee's army

to relieve Vicksburg.

Lee was against it.

He had a bolder plan.

The Army of Northern Virginia
should invade the north again,

striking this time
into Pennsylvania.

Lee would attack
Harrisburg and Philadelphia

and force Grant north
to defend Washington.

With luck, Washington
itself might fall.

It might even force
Lincoln to sue for peace

and recognize
the Confederacy.

Davis agreed.

Everything now hung
on Vicksburg in the west

and Pennsylvania
in the east.

As Grant pressed his
siege at Vicksburg,

Lee moved north.