All language subtitles for Civil War, The, 05 (1990)

There's a photograph
I’m very fond of.

It shows three Confederate soldiers
who were captured at Gettysburg,

and they have posed

in front of or alongside
a snake-rail fence.

And you see exactly how the
Confederate soldier was dressed.

You see something in his
attitude toward the camera

that's revealing
of his nature,

and one of
them has his

arms like this,

as if he's having
his picture made,

but he's determined to be
the individual he is.

And there's something about that
picture that draws me strongly

as an image
of the war.

More than once
during the Civil War,

newspapers reported a
strange phenomenon:

from only a few miles away, a
battle sometimes made no sound,

despite the flash and
smoke of cannon

and the fact that more-distant
observers could hear it clearly.

These eerie silences

were called
"acoustic shadows."

In the summer of 1863,
a Union warship,

hunting a Confederate
commerce raider off Yokohama,

attacked a Japanese fleet
for harassing the colony

of westerners there.

The United States won its first naval
battle against the Empire of Japan,

but the Confederates
got away.

In Paris that year, new paintings by
Cezanne, Whistler, and Manet

were shown at a special
exhibit for outcasts.

In Russia, Dostoyevsky

finished Notes from
the Underground,

and in London, Karl Marx labored
to complete his masterpiece,

Das Kapital.

For the first six
months of 1863,

Robert E. Lee and Stonewall
Jackson had carried out

one of the most extraordinary
military campaigns in history,

smashing huge
federal armies

at Fredericksburg and
Chancellorsville,

and winning the undying
love of the South.

But by late may, Confederate
luck had changed.

Jackson was dead.

A thousand miles to the west,
Ulysses S. Grant's siege

of the rebel stronghold
at Vicksburg

had gone
on so long

that Grant himself had taken
to the bottle out of boredom.

As June began, the
Confederates inside the town

somehow managed
to hold on.

Now, to draw federal troops
away from Vicksburg,

Lee led his army onto
northern soil again,

looking for the right
moment to attack.

When it came, on the
morning of July 1st, 1863,

it would be in the most
ordinary of places.

For three days,

150,000 men would
make war on each other

in the gentle farmland
of south Pennsylvania.

When the third
day was over,

it would prove to have been the
most crucial day of the entire war.

In the south, the war had
ruined the economy,

and yet the southern fighting spirit
was stronger than ever before.

In the North, where
industry was booming,

angry working men would soon
take to the streets in protest

against emancipation
and the war.

At the end of the year, Abraham
Lincoln would travel to the now-

quiet fields at
Gettysburg

and struggle to
put into words

what was happening
to his people.

When a black soldier
in New Orleans said,

"Liberty must take the day,
nothing shorter,"

he said, in effect,

that when we count up
those who have died,

when we survey
the carnage,

it must be for
something higher

than Union

and free navigation of
the Mississippi River.

During the
summer of 1863,

a convention of
free black people

demanded the right for
black men to take part

in the struggle
as soldiers.

And their key
resolution said,

"It is time now for more
effective remedies

"to be thoroughly tried in
the shape of warm lead

"and cold steel

"duly administered by
100,000 black doctors."

Early in the war, a fugitive
slave named Alex Turner

had made his way north and
joined the 1st New Jersey Cavalry.

In the spring
of 1863,

he guided his regiment
back to his old plantation

at Port Royal,
Virginia,

and killed his
former overseer.

When the war was over, he went to
New England and found work as a logger.

In 1883, his daughter,
Daisy, was born.

"Dear Madam,

"I am a soldier,

"and my speech
is rough and plain.

"I'm not much
used to writing,

"and I hate to
give you pain,

"but I promised
I would do it,

"and he thought
it might be so,

"if it came from one
that loved him

"perhaps it would
ease the blow.

"By this time, you
must surely guess

"the truth I
feign would hide,

"and you'll pardon me
for rough soldier words,

"while I tell you
how he died."

"This army has never done
such fighting as it will do now.

"We must
conquer a peace.

"We will show the Yankees
this time how we can fight."

Private William Christian.

Late in May, Lee's army
marched toward Pennsylvania.

Union troops sent to see
what they were up to

completely surprised Jeb Stuart
and his Confederate cavalry

at Brandy
Station, Virginia.

Twenty-one-thousand mounted men
clashed along the Rappahannock

for twelve hours.

It was the biggest cavalry
engagement in American history,

and it was a stand-off,

but the North had learned the
Confederates were on the move.

The flamboyant Stuart, embarrassed
at having been caught off guard

and determined
to redeem himself,

now took off on another daring
ride around the Union Army

with strict orders to stay
in close touch with Lee.

Lee's 70,000 men were
divided into three corps.

The first was commanded
by James Longstreet,

"Old Pete," whom Lee
called "my warhorse."

The Second Corps, Stonewall
Jackson’s old command,

was under Richard
"Baldy" Ewell,

who had lost a leg
at Second Manassas.

The third was led
by A. P. Hill,

a new corps commander
from Virginia,

who had helped stave off
disaster at Sharpsburg in 1862.

On June 16th,

Lee's advanced column crossed
the Potomac into Maryland.

An even larger
Union Army followed,

careful to keep between the
Confederates and Washington.

The new Union commander
was George Meade.

Blunt and bookish, he was
referred to by subordinates

as "a damned, old, goggle-
eyed snapping turtle."

If the Union generals were
not sure where Lee was going,

Lee had no idea where
the Union Army even was.

Jeb Stuart’s cavalry
had ridden too far

from the advancing army
to keep him informed.

The Confederates marched through
Maryland on into Pennsylvania, and it's

very handsome country there.
The barns are magnificent and the

green fields and
everything, and the people

watching these
Confederates go by.

And there was
a black body servant

in the column, and they
stopped, just a halt,

and the people in the
house asked him

what he thought of this
country around here.

And he said, "This is
a beautiful country,

"but it doesn't come up
to home in my eyes."

Panic spread throughout
the countryside.

Lee's men
seized livestock,

food, weapons, and
clothing from civilians,

giving them worthless
Confederate scrip in exchange.

They also seized
free blacks

and sent them
south into slavery.

"My friends," a
southern officer asked

the frightened inhabitants
of one Pennsylvania town,

"How do you like this
way of our coming back

"into the Union?"

"It was in the
morrow's battle

"fast rained the
shot and shell,

"I was standing
close beside him,

"and I saw him
when he fell.

"And so I took
him in my arms,

"and laid him
on the grass.

"It was going
against orders,

"but I think
they let it pass.

"'Twas a Minie ball
that struck him,

"it entered at his side,

"but we didn't
think it fatal,

till this morning,
when he died."

The greatest battle ever fought in
the western hemisphere began

as a clash
over shoes.

At dawn on July 1st, a
Confederate infantry officer

led his men toward the little crossroads
town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,

within view of a
Lutheran Seminary,

whose high cupola
offered a fine prospect

of the surrounding
farms and rolling hills.

There was rumored to be a
supply of shoes at Gettysburg,

and the footsore rebels were
there to commandeer them.

The South came in
from the north that day,

and the North came
in from the south.

On the outskirts of town, the
Confederates ran headlong

into general John
Buford’s Union cavalry.

While both sides sent couriers
pounding off for reinforcements,

Buford tried desperately
to hold his ground.

But the Confederates
finally overwhelmed him

and pushed the Union
forces back toward town.

"People were running here and there,
screaming that the town would be shelled.

"No one knew where
to go or what to do.

"My husband went to the garden
and picked a mess of beans,

"for he declared the rebels
should not have one."

Sallie Brodhead.

Every Confederate
Union division in the area

now converged on
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

By mid-afternoon, Confederate
troops occupied Gettysburg,

and Union forces had been
driven back south of the town.

There, Major General
Winfield Scott Hancock

managed to rally the fleeing
troops into defensive positions

on Culp’s Hill and
Cemetery Ridge.

A sign near the
cemetery's gateway read,

"All persons found using
firearms in these grounds

"will be prosecuted

"with the utmost
rigor of the law."

During the battle, the artist
Alfred Waud sketched the action,

sending his drawings back
to New York for engraving.

Meanwhile, Sam Wilkeson
of the New York Times

filed dispatches,

sitting next to the fresh
grave of his son.

Lee arrived in the
middle of the afternoon,

set up headquarters and urged Ewell
to renew the attack before nightfall.

Ewell chose not to.
His men needed rest.

By the end of the day, the Union
Army held the high ground.

Rather than
attack it headlong,

Confederate General Longstreet wanted
to swing around the Union position

and take a stand between
Meade’s army and Washington,

then let the
Union attack.

Without knowing the enemy's
strength, Lee overruled Longstreet.

"No," said Lee, "I’m going
to whip them here,

"or they are going
to whip me."

He had always counted
on Stuart and his cavalry

for intelligence as to enemy
positions and movements,

and he was lacking that.
He was groping around. the hori…

around the
landscape blind.

And people would come up to him
in the field all through those days

and he said, "Can you tell me where
Stuart is? Have you seen my cavalry,"

a very strange thing for a
commander to have to ask.

So when
Stuart arrived,

all he had to show for all
this a couple of hundred

wagons and mules
and everything else.

And he saw Lee standing there,
sternly looking at him arriving late,

and he blew the thing by making
his announcement at the start,

and said, "General, I brought
you 200 brand-new wagons."

And Lee said, "General, they're
an impediment to me now.

"I asked you to help me
whip these people."

And it was a...

severe admonishment
from Lee.

And Lee saw he'd
hurt his feelings,

so he said, "Come. It'll be
all right. It'll be all right."

"I cannot sleep.

"We know not what the
morrow will bring forth.

"I think little has
been gained so far.

"Has our army been
sufficiently reinforced?"

Sallie Brodhead.

Compared to
what was coming,

the day had
been a skirmish.

"My Dear Son, Albert,

"I received your affectionate letter
yesterday, and I assure you, my dear son,

"it gives me great relief of
mind to hear that you

"and your dear brothers were
still in the land of the living.

"I had not heard one
word from you since

"Barlow Rodgers
returned home.

"May God bless you,
my dear Albert.

"Your devoted father,
Thomas Batchelor."

Through the night, the two
armies continued to gather.

After a thirty-five-
mile, all-night march,

Union General John Sedgwick
arrived with his 6th Corps.

By morning, 65,000
Confederates

faced 85,000
federal troops

commanded by
General George Meade.

Hills overlooked the federal
position at either end--

to the north, on the Union right,
Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill;

to the south, the Big
and Little Round Tops.

Lee wanted
them taken.

Meade was no less determined
to hold his ground.

"All commanders are authorized
to order the instant death

"of any soldier who fails
in his duty at this hour."

It took Longstreet all morning
and most of the afternoon

to shift two divisions into position
for the assault on the Round Tops.

Assigned to hold the Union
position was General Dan Sickles,

a turbulent, ex-
Tammany Hall politician

best known before the war for
having shot and killed his wife's lover.

Now sickles
disobeyed orders

and marched his men further
out from Little Round Top

to the Devil's Den, the Wheat Field,
and into the Peach Orchard beyond.

He was half a mile in front of the
Union line on a flat, exposed position

that left the round tops
completely undefended.

The rest of the
army was amazed.

Someone said he stuck
out like a sore thumb.

And I think it was Hancock who
saw him go out, and he said,

"Wait awhile. You'll see
him tumbling back."

And, of
course, he did.

The Confederates finally attacked
at 4:00 in the afternoon.

As they swept forward,

the 15th Alabama Regiment
scrambled up Big Round Top.

From there, well
above the fighting,

Colonel William C. Oates
saw his chance.

Little Round Top was
completely undefended.

From that position,
Oates said,

he could blow the whole
Union Army apart.

"Within half an hour, I could convert
Little Round Top into a Gibraltar

"that I could hold against ten times
the number of men that I had."

Meanwhile, Meade dispatched
General G. K. Warren to the summit.

He immediately
saw the danger.

Only a handful of
signal men held the hill.

Oates' Confederates were moving
down and around the Union left.

Warren sent at once
for reinforcements.

Four Union regiments
raced up Little Round Top.

"In a moment, all
was excitement.

"Every soldier seemed
to understand the situation

"and to be inspired
by its danger.

"Away we went, under
the terrible artillery fire.

"Shells were exploding
on every side.

"But our men appeared to be as cool
and deliberate in their movements,

"as if they had been forming a line upon the parade ground in camp.

"Up the steep
hillside we ran,

"and reached
the crest."

At the extreme left of
the Union line now

was Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain's 20th Maine.

Oates' Alabamians were already
moving between the two hills.

Chamberlain's orders were to
"Hold that ground at all costs."

"Imagine, if you can, nine
small companies of infantry,

"numbering
perhaps 300 men,

"in the form of
a right angle,

"on the extreme flank of
an army of 80,000 men,

"put there to hold the key
of the entire position

against a force at least
ten times their number."

"Stand firm, you
boys from Maine,

"for not once in a century are men
permitted to bear such responsibilities

"for freedom and justice,

"for God and humanity, as
are now placed upon you."

Three-hundred-sixty Maine men
now took cover behind boulders.

They had less than
ten minutes to spare.

At the last possible moment,
Chamberlain sent his Company B

across the hollow between the
hills to bolster his left flank.

Before they were in place,
Oates' Confederates

charged up the slope.

Chamberlain assumed
Company B had been wiped out.

He could not
afford the loss.

The Maine men opened fire
into the charging rebels.

Oates' men staggered but
regrouped and came at them again.

"The line had broken because of the timber
and the first fire of the hidden federals.

"A long line of us went down,
three of us close together.

"There was a sharp, electric pain
in the lower part of the body,

"and then a sinking
sensation to the earth,

"And falling, all
things growing dark.

"The one and last idea passing
through the mind was,

" 'This is the
last of earth.' "

Private W. C. Ward,
4th Alabama.

Fire!

"The enemy was pouring
a terrible fire upon us,

"his superior forces giving
him a great advantage.

"The air seemed to
be alive with lead.

"The lines at times were
so near each other

"that the hostile gun
barrels almost touched."

The Southerners drove the Maine
men from their positions five times:

five times they fought
their way back again.

Saplings were gnawed
in two by bullets.

"At times, I saw around me more of
the enemy than of my own men--

"gaps opening, swallowing,
closing again--

"squads of stalwart men who had
cut their way through us disappearing,

"as if translated.

"All around, a strange,
mingled roar."

In an hour and a half, a third
of Chamberlain's men fell.

Sounds of battle now increased
behind the 20th Maine.

Chamberlain assumed Little
Round Top was being surrounded.

"Our ammunition
is nearly all gone,

"and we are using the cartridges from
the boxes of our wounded comrades.

"A critical moment has arrived and
we can remain as we are no longer.

"We must advance
or retreat.

"It must not
be the latter.

"But how can it be
the former?"

Chamberlain's only
choice was to attack,

and now, he conjured up an
unlikely textbook maneuver.

With his men almost out of ammunition,
he ordered them to fix bayonets.

Then, while the right
of his line held straight,

he had his left plunge
down the hillside

all the while wheeling
to the right--

"like a great gate upon a post,"
an eyewitness said.

The Confederates were taken
completely by surprise.

Those in the front ranks
dropped their weapons.

Those behind
turned and ran.

"Many of the enemy's first line threw
down their arms and surrendered.

"An officer fired his pistol
at my head with one hand

while he handed me
his sword with the other."

The Confederates had gone only
a few paces when, from their left,

came a second,
horrifying surprise:

Chamberlain's
missing Company B,

which had found protection
behind a stone wall,

now rose and fired.

"While one man was
shot in the face,

"his right-hand comrade was
shot in the side or back.

"Some were struck simultaneously
from two or three balls

"from different directions."

Colonel William C. Oates.

Oates' men wavered,

broke, and ran
for their lives.

"My dead and wounded were
then nearly as great in number

"as those still on duty.

"They literally
covered the ground.

"The blood stood in puddles
in some places on the rocks.

"The ground was
soaked with blood."

Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain's scanty force

captured 400 Confederates.

Little Round Top held.

"The regiment we fought and
captured was the 15th Alabama.

"They said they never
were whipped before

and never wanted to meet
the 20th of Maine again."

Corporal William
T. Livermore.

On the slopes of Little Round Top,
farmers from Talladega, Alabama

had fought fishermen
from Presque Isle, Maine.

The two towns were each
650 miles from Gettysburg,

which lay almost exactly on
a direct line between them.

Throughout the day's fighting,
Colonel A. S. Fremantle,

a British observer
traveling with Lee,

was surprised to hear the
sound of a Confederate band

playing polkas
and waltzes

amidst the hissing and
bursting of the shells.

But far out in front
of the Union lines,

General Sickles and his men
were in desperate trouble.

The rebels were closing
in from three sides.

Confederate shells tore
branches from the peach trees

and bounded
among the men.

"The hoarse and indistinguishable
orders of commanding officers,

"the screaming and bursting of
shells, canister, and shrapnel

"as they tore through the
struggling masses of humanity,

"the death screams
of wounded animals,

"the groans of their
human companions,

"wounded and dying and trampling
underfoot by hurrying batteries,

"riderless horses and the
moving lines of battle.

"A perfect hell on earth, never,
perhaps, to be equaled,

"certainly not
to be surpassed

"nor ever to be forgotten
in a man's lifetime.

"It has never been effaced
from my memory, day or night,

"for fifty years."

Private Robert H. Carter,
22nd Massachusetts.

"The balls were whizzing so
thick," a Texan remembered,

"that it looked like a man could
hold out a hat and catch it full."

"I was within a few feet of General
Sickles when he received the wound

"by which he
lost his leg.

"A terrific explosion seemed
to shake the very earth,

"instantly followed
by another.

"I noticed that his pants and
drawers at the knee were torn

"clear off to the leg,
which was swinging loose.

"He was carried
from the field,

"coolly smoking a cigar."

Sickles' men
counterattacked,

fell back, held, pushed
the Confederates back,

then retreated again through
places still remembered

for the ferocity of the fighting
that happened there--

the Wheat Field...

the Slaughter Pen...

Devil's Den...

the Valley of Death.

Finally, the
fighting subsided.

Of the 262 in one
Minnesota regiment,

only forty-seven
survived unhurt.

Eighty-two percent had fallen
in less than five minutes.

No Union regiment in the war
suffered greater casualties.

Company F of the
6th North Carolina

lost 100%.

"Dear Father,

"Finally I came to poor
Albert lying on the ground,

"wounded under
the left eye.

"He had also had a ball
shot through his left leg.

"I had no one to help me
bear him from the field.

"I then called a captain of
another company to assist me,

"and we bore Albert 600 yards through a
dense swamp, all bleeding and sore with pain,

"before we could find any of the ambulance
corps to bear him off to the hospital.

"Taking him in my arms, I
assisted him in the stretcher.

"Dropping a tear of grief upon his
bleeding face, I bade him good-bye."

Charles Batchelor.

"Last night I
wanted so to live,

"I seemed so
young to go,

"last week I
passed my birthday,

"I was just nineteen,
you know.

"When I thought of
all I'd planned to do

"it seemed so
hard to die,

"but now I’ve prayed
to God for grace

"and all my
care's gone by.

"And here his
voice grew weaker,

"as he proudly
raised his head,

"and whispered,
'Good-bye, mother.'

"And your soldier
boy was dead."

"Who was victorious or with
whom the advantage rests,

"no one here can tell.

"Some think the rebels
were defeated,

"as there has been no
boasting as on yesterday,

"and they look un easy
and by no means exultant.

"I fear we are
too hopeful.

"We shall see
tomorrow."

Sallie Brodhead.

As the sun set, the Union
left and right still held.

Lee was sure an all-out
Confederate attack on the center

the next day
would work.

"When the second
day's battle was over,

"General Lee pronounced
it a success,

"but we had accomplished little
toward victorious results."

General James Longstreet.

The first day's fighting
was so encouraging,

and the second day's fighting, he
came within an inch of doing it.

And by that time,
Longstreet said,

Lee's blood was up.

And Longstreet said when his blood
was up, there was no stopping him.

Longstreet tried to stop him,
and Lee said, "No, he's there,"

meaning the enemy,
"and I'm going to strike him."

General Longstreet, I think,
had good reasons to

worry about attacking the
Union position at Gettysburg.

After all, it
was his corps

at Fredericksburg that mowed
down the Union troops

in front of the
stone wall.

He could realize what the
rifled musket could do

held in the hands of
determined troops.

The next day was
Pickett’s charge.

Lee, by the
summer of 1863,

had come to believe
that he was invincible

and so was the Army
of Northern Virginia.

The record would almost invite that when you see how they had pummeled one

Union general after another
and had defeated--

or at least fought to a draw the Army of the
Potomac almost in every battle up to that point.

And Lee really did think that if he asked his
boys to do something, they would do it--

that they would
do anything.

He had come by Gettysburg, then, to believe
in his invincibility and that of his men,

and it was his doom.

The third day began
badly for Lee:

Ewell's men were driven
back from Culp’s Hill.

Jeb Stuart was supposed
to get behind the federals

and attack them
from the rear.

But Union cavalry
stopped and held him,

thanks in part to a series
of reckless charges

led by twenty-three-year-old
General George Armstrong Custer.

Everything now depended on
Longstreet's attack on the Union center

on Cemetery Ridge.

Meade saw it coming
and was ready for him.

The man Lee chose to lead the
assault was dashing, perfumed

General George
E. Pickett,

who had never before taken
his division into combat.

It was an incredible mistake, and
there's scarcely a trained soldier

who didn't know it was a mistake
at the time it was done

except possibly Picket
himself who was

very happy he had
a chance for glory.

But every man who
looked out over that field,

whether it's a sergeant
or a lieutenant general,

saw that it was a
desperate endeavor

and, I’m sure, knew that it
should not have been made.

Pickett’s men filed into the woods
west of the Emmitsburg Road

and waited in
the stifling heat.

To relieve the tension,

some of the men pelted
each other with green apples.

They knew what they were
going to do, but they had to wait.

And while they were waiting,
formed and ready to move out--

they were in defilade--
among brush and things--

and a rabbit jumped out of the bushes and took off rearward,

and one of the soldiers
looked after him and hollered,

"Run, old hare. If I was
an old hare, I'd run, too."

It wasn't all valor.

Exactly at 1:00, a
giant artillery barrage

intended to soften up the Union
defenses before the attack

began with a
deafening explosion.

Fire!

Meade had just left his
commanders finishing their lunch.

As an orderly
served them butter,

a shell tore the
man in two.

"The storm broke upon us so suddenly
that numbers of soldiers and officers

"who leaped from their tents
or lazy siestas on the grass

"were stricken in their
rising with mortal wounds,

"and died, some with cigars
clamped between their teeth,

"some with pieces of
food in their fingers."

"The flying iron
and pieces of stone

"struck some men down
in every direction.

"About thirty men of our brigade
were killed or wounded."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

To keep up his men's courage,
General Winfield Scott Hancock

rode up and down the line without
flinching at the screaming shells.

A brigadier urged
him to take cover.

Hancock refused.

"There are times,"
he answered,

"when a corps commander's
life does not count."

Union artillery
began to fire back.

"We sat and
heard in silence.

"What other expression
had we that was not mean

"for such an awful
universe of battle?

"All in the rear of the
crest for 1,000 yards

"was the field of the
shells' blind fury.

"Ambulances passing
down the Tarrytown Road

"with wounded
men were struck.

"The hospitals
were riddled."

Frank Haskell.

Suddenly, the Union
guns fell silent

to conserve ammunition for the
attack Meade was sure was coming

and to lure the enemy
out into the open fields.

It worked.

At about 2:00, Pickett asked
if his men should go forward.

Longstreet, convinced
the charge was folly,

unable to bring
himself to speak,

only nodded.

If you stop to think about it, it would have
been much harder not to go than to go.

It would have taken a great deal of courage
to say, "Marse Robert, I ain't going."

Nobody’s got that
much courage.

Now, Pickett
gave the order:

"Up, men, and
to your posts.

"Don't forget today that
you are from old Virginia."

At 3:00, three
divisions,

13,000 men,

started out of the woods toward the
stone wall a mile and a half away

at a brisk,
steady pace,

covering about
100 yards a minute.

They were silent
as they marched,

forbidden this
time to fire

or even to give
the rebel yell

until they were on
top of the enemy.

"More than half-a-mile
their front extends,

"man touching man,
rank pressing rank.

"The red flags wave, their
horsemen gallop up and down.

"The arms of
13,000 men,

"barrel and bayonet
gleam in the sun.

"A sloping forest
of flashing steel;

"right on they move,
as with one soul.

"None on that crest
now need be told

"the enemy
is advancing.

"Every eye could
see his legions,

"an overwhelming
resistless tide,

"an ocean of armed men
sweeping upon us.

"All was orderly and
still upon our crest,

"no noise and
no confusion.

"General Gibbon rode down
the lines, cool and calm,

"and in an unimpassioned
voice he said to the men,

"Do not hurry, men, and fire too fast.
Let them come up close before you fire

and then aim slow."

"It was," a Union
colonel recalled,

"the most beautiful
thing I ever saw."

Fire!

Suddenly, the Union
artillery on Cemetery Ridge

and Little Round
Top opened fire,

and a great moan went up
from the Confederate line.

"We could not help hitting
them at every shot,"

a federal
officer recalled.

As many as ten men at
a time were destroyed

by a single
bursting shell.

A Confederate lieutenant
cried out to his men,

"Home, boys, home!

"Remember, home is over
beyond those hills."

The waiting Union
troops began chanting,

"Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!
Fredericksburg!"

When the first Southerners
came within 200 yards,

Union General Alexander
Hays told his men to fire.

Eleven cannon and 1,700
muskets went off at once.

Entire regiments
disappeared.

"The rebel lines were at once
enveloped in a dense cloud of dust.

"Arms, heads, blankets,
guns, and knapsacks

"were tossed into
the clear air."

Still, the Confederates
came on.

They reached the Union
line at one place only,

a crook in the stone wall
known as “the Angle.”

"Seconds are centuries,
minutes ages.

"Men fire into each other's
faces, not five feet apart.

"There are bayonet thrusts,
saber strokes, pistol shots,

"men going down on their hands
and knees spinning 'round like tops,

"throwing out their arms,
gulping blood, falling

"legless, armless,
headless.

"There are ghastly
heaps of dead men."

"Foot to foot, body to
body, and man to man,

"they struggled and pushed
and strived and killed.

"The mass of wounded and heaps
of dead entangled their feet,

"and underneath
the trampling mass,

"wounded men who could
no longer stand fought,

drowned in sweat,
black with powder,

"red with blood."

The Confederates were led by
General Lewis A. Armistead.

He stepped over the wall
waving his hat on his sword

and seized a
Union battery

before he was
shot down.

All the Confederates who breached
the wall were killed or captured.

The Union line held.

Pickett’s charge had failed.

Lee's army would never
again penetrate so far

into northern territory.

"Cheer after cheer rose from
the triumphant boys in blue,

"echoing from Round Top,
from Cemetery Hill,

"resounding in
the vale below

"making the very
heavens throb."

Private Jesse Young.

As the rebels
staggered back,

Lee rode out
to meet them.

"All this has been my
fault," he told them.

Probably his
finest hour

was after the repulse
of Pickett’s charge.

He walked out into the field,
met the men retreating,

and said,
"It is all my fault."

He told them that.

He wrote to the government, to Jefferson
Davis, and said, "It was all my fault.

"I asked more of men than
should have been asked of them."

Pickett was horrified.

When told to rally his division for
a possible Union counterattack,

Pickett answered, "General Lee,
I have no division now."

Pickett never
forgave Lee.

Years later he said,

"That old man had my
division slaughtered."

Gettysburg was the price
the South paid for having

R. E. Lee.

That was the mistake he made,
the mistake of all mistakes.

Six-thousand-five-hundred men
had fallen or been captured,

half of those who marched
out of the woods.

All fifteen regimental
commanders had been hit,

so had sixteen of
seventeen field officers,

three brigadier generals,
and eight colonels.

Every one of the
University Greys,

a company made up of students
from the University of Mississippi,

had been killed
or wounded.

"Gettysburg," Longstreet said,
had been "ground of no value."

"That day," he added,
"was the saddest of my life."

Almost a third of
those engaged,

51,000 men,
were lost.

The North suffered
23,000 casualties...

the South, 28,000.

The 2,400 inhabitants
of Gettysburg now had

ten times that number of
dead and wounded men

to care for.

"Wounded men were
brought into our houses

"and laid side by side in our
halls and first-story rooms.

"Carpets were so
saturated with blood

"as to be unfit
for further use.

"Walls were bloodstained,

"as well as books that
were used for pillows."

Jennie McCrery.

The Confederacy could
not afford such sacrifices.

All hope of invading
the North was ended.

The next day, Lee began the
long retreat back to Virginia

as a summer downpour washed
the blood from the grass

and pelted the wounded
who rode in a wagon train

that stretched
seventeen miles.

"July 4.

Was ever the nation's birthday
celebrated in such a way before?

"I wonder what the South
thinks of us Yankees, now.

"I think Gettysburg will cure the rebels of
any desire to invade the North again."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

Despite urgings
from Washington,

Meade refused to attack
Lee's retreating army.

Another opportunity to destroy the
Army of Northern Virginia was lost.

Once again,
Lincoln was furious.

Meanwhile, Robert E. Lee
wrote Jefferson Davis,

offering to resign.

"Dear President Davis,

"I cannot even accomplish
what I myself desire.

"How can I fill the
expectations of others?

"I generally feel the growing
failure of my bodily strength.

"I anxiously urge the matter
upon Your Excellency

"from my belief
that a younger,

"and abler man than myself
can readily be obtained."

Robert E. Lee.

The offer was
not accepted.

William Faulkner, in
Intruder in the Dust,

says that for every
southern boy,

it's always
in his reach

to imagine it
being 1:00

on an early July

day in 1963.
The guns are laid.

The troops
are lined up.

The flags are already out of their
cases and ready to be unfurled,

but it hadn't
happened yet.

And he can

go back to the time before
the war was going to be lost.

And he can always
have that moment

for himself.

"Hospital, near Gettysburg.

"My Dear Father,

"It has pleased the God of battles that I
should number among the many wounded.

"Through His infinite kindness and
mercy, I am permitted to inform you

"that I have recovered.

"I was wounded
in two places.

"First, through the hip,

"second, the ball entered the
inner corner of my left eye

"and came out at the
lower tip of my right ear.

"Both are doing fine
and healed up.

"Write to me. I may
get the letter.

"Your devoted son,
Albert Batchelor."

After Gettysburg, the
residents of Deer Isle, Maine,

began scanning the casualty
lists for familiar names.

Two privates, John Gray
and Isaiah Eaton,

were badly wounded and
soon died in hospitals.

Both were buried in the new
national cemetery at Gettysburg.

The streets grew quiet
when news of Gettysburg

reached Clarksville,
Tennessee.

The 14th Tennessee Regiment
had left town two years before

with 960 men.

When the battle of
Gettysburg began,

only 365 remained.

By the end of the first day,
there were sixty men left;

by the end of the battle,
there were only three.

"A gloom rests
over the city.

"The hopes and affections of the
people were wrapped in the regiment.

"What a terrible
responsibility rests

"upon those who
inaugurated this unholy war."

On July 26th, 1863,
Sam Houston,

first president of the
Republic of Texas,

unshakable supporter
of the American Union,

died at
Huntsville, Texas.

"I ask of him who buildeth up
and pulleth down nations

"to unite us.

"I wish, if this Union
must be dissolved,

"that its ruins be the
monument of my grave."

"I carved him out a headboard
as skillful as I could,

"and if you wish to find it,
I can tell you where it stood.

"I send you back his hymn book,
the cap he used to wear,

"and a lock I cut
the night before

"of his bright
curly hair.

"I send you
back his bible,

"the night before he died
I turned its leaves together,

"and read it
by his side.

"I’ll keep the belt
he was wearing,

"he told me
so to do,

"it had a hole
upon the side

"just where the
ball went through.

"So now I've
done his bidding,

"there's nothing
more to tell,

"but I shall always
mourn with you

"the boy we
loved so well."

"Our hired man left to enlist just
as corn planting commenced,

"so I shouldered my hoe and
have worked out ever since.

"I guess my services are
just as acceptable as his."

"No conflict in history,"
a journalist wrote,

"was so much a woman's
war as the Civil War."

North and South, women
looked for ways to help.

In the north, citizens formed
the Sanitary Commission

and the Christian Commission
to organize private relief

and check the spread
of disease in the army.

The disease rate
was cut in half.

Sanitary commissioners prowled the
camps, demanding they be cleaned up,

reforming
hospital conditions,

insisting on
better food,

making sure blankets, shoes,
medicines, and packages from home

were distributed fairly.

Prominent men ran
the Sanitary Commission.

New York lawyer George
Templeton Strong was its treasurer.

But hundreds of
thousands of women

in 7,000 local chapters all
over the north did the work--

sewing, knitting, baking,
wrapping bandages,

raising funds,
organizing rallies.

"If this war developed
some of the most brutal,

"bestial, and devilish qualities
lurking in the human race,

"it has also shown
us how much of the

"angel there is in the
best men and women."

Mary Livermore.

Mary Livermore,
a Chicago minister's wife,

organized Midwestern
volunteers into 3,000 chapters

and, when the army was
threatened with scurvy,

sent so much food south
that one reporter said,

"A line of vegetables connected
Chicago and Vicksburg."

Clara Barton, who stood
barely five feet tall,

distributed supplies
by mule train,

ministered to the wounded from
Cedar Mountain to Antietam,

and tirelessly lobbied Washington
for better care for the men.

In a letter home,
Katherine Wormsley,

a nurse on a hospital ship, decried
the confusion and chaos on board,

but she ended,
"Good-bye. This is life."

George Templeton
Strong’s wife, Ellie,

went south to serve
on a hospital ship, too.

"Ellie's tact, sense,
good nature,

"and energy conquered the USA
surgeon in charge at once

"and coerced all his official dignity
into hearty, grateful cooperation

"in the care of his cargo of
500 cases, mostly bad ones.

"I’ve never given her credit
for tithe of the enterprise,

"pluck, discretion, and force
of character she has shown.

"God bless her."

"We had no Sanitary
Commission in the South.

"We were too poor.

"We had no line of rich
and populous cities

"closely
connected by rail.

"With us, every house
was a hospital."

Southern women
worked as nurses, too,

despite criticism that it was unladylike
for them to care for ruffians.

Sallie Thompkins of Richmond
and a staff of only six

nursed 1,333 wounded
men in her private hospital

and kept all but seventy-
three of them alive,

a record unmatched by any
other Civil War hospital,

North or South.

Mary Ann Bickerdyke, a Quaker
widow and Sanitary Commission agent,

traveled with the Union Army through
four years and nineteen battles,

assisting at amputations,
brewing barrels of coffee,

rounding up cattle and
chickens and eggs

to feed the
grateful men

who called her
Mother Bickerdyke.

By the end of the war,
General Sherman said simply,

"She ranks me."

Every day
since late May,

U. S. Grant's
200 Union guns

had pounded
Vicksburg from land,

while Admiral David
Porter's gunboats

battered it
from the river.

"They fire at the city,
thinking that they will

"wear out the women
and children and sick,

"and General Pemberton will be obliged
to surrender the place on that account,

"but they little know the spirit of the
Vicksburg women and children."

Civilians dug caves in
the yellow clay hillsides,

some with several rooms
fitted out with rugs,

beds, and chairs, and
staffed with slaves.

But food ran low.

The city's defenders were reduced
to eating mules, horses, and dogs.

The Vicksburg Gazette had to be printed
on the back of flowered wallpaper.

There was no
more newsprint.

"We are utterly cut
off from the world,

"surrounded by
a circle of fire.

"The shower of shells
goes on day and night.

"People do nothing but
eat what they can get,

"sleep when they can,
and dodge the shells."

Dora Miller.

It was "living like plant
roots," one woman said.

Union troops began
calling Vicksburg

"Prairie Dog Town."

Finally, after forty-eight
days of siege, on July 4th,

the same day that Lee began
his retreat from Gettysburg,

31,000 Confederates
surrendered.

Confederate general
John C. Pemberton

said it would be an act
of "cruel inhumanity"

to subject his men to the
terrible ordeal any longer.

Besides, he added,

"I am a northern man.
I know my people.

"I know we can get better terms
from them on the Fourth of July

"than on any other
day of the year."

The Stars and Stripes was raised
above the Vicksburg courthouse.

At the celebration aboard Admiral
Porter's flagship on the Mississippi,

Grant was the only one who did
not touch the wine offered him,

but contented
himself with a cigar.

"Grant is now
deservedly the hero,

"belabored with praise by those
who accused him a month ago

"of all the sins
in the calendar,

"and who next week
will turn against him

"if so blows the
popular breeze.

"Vox populi,
vox humbug."

William Tecumseh
Sherman.

"It is now conceded that
all idea of British intervention

"is at an end.

"I want to hug the Army of
the Potomac for Gettysburg,

"I want to get the whole army of
Vicksburg drunk at my own expense,

"I want to fight some
small man and lick him."

Henry Adams.

The Confederacy
was cut in two.

The Mississippi had
become a Union highway.

"The father of waters,"
Lincoln said,

"again goes unvexed
to the sea."

"We have lost
the Mississippi,

"and our nation
is divided,

"and there's not
enough left to fight for."

The Fourth of July would not be
celebrated in Vicksburg again

for eighty-one years.

"I found for my
substitute a big Dutch,

"a boy of twenty
or thereabouts.

"For the moderate
consideration of $1,100,

"my alter-ego could make
a good soldier if he tried.

"Gave him my address and told him to
write to me if he found himself in the

"hospital or
in trouble,

"and that I would try to do what
I properly could to help him."

George Templeton Strong.

In July, Lincoln issued
the first federal draft call:

all able-bodied men between
twenty and forty-five were enrolled,

but the law favored
the well-to-do.

Any man willing to pay $300
as a "commutation fee"

or hire a substitute
to serve in his place

was exempt.

"The law is a
rich man's bill,

"made for him who
cannot raise that sum."

Senator Thaddeus
Stevens.

The fathers of Theodore and
Franklin Roosevelt hired substitutes.

So did Andrew Carnegie
and J. P. Morgan

and two future
presidents--

Chester A. Arthur
and Grover Cleveland.

Bounty jumping
became a profession.

Men signed up from one district long
enough to receive a reward for enlisting,

then deserted to do
the same elsewhere.

One man repeated the process thirty-
two times before he was caught.

Shaker Elder Frederick Evans
came to see Lincoln,

hoping to have his pacifist community
excused from military service.

"We need regiments of such
men as you," Lincoln said,

but Granted Elder
Evans' request.

The Shakers were among the
first conscientious objectors.

On Deer Isle, two prominent local
citizens began going house-to-house

delivering induction notices.

One-hundred-forty-nine men
were called for the new draft:

forty-two never
showed up;

thirty-three were exempted
for medical reasons;

two paid substitutes;

and one man
sold his house

and left his wife and
several children homeless

rather than desert
them for the front.

New York City

contemplated secession
from the Union, too,

and they wanted to be
declared an open city.

There was a great
deal of resentment

of the influx
of blacks

and a lot of resistance
to the draft,

because men could get better-
paying jobs than they'd ever had,

and the last thing they
wanted was to go to the war.

There was a good deal of resentment,
too, that if you could scrape up $300,

you could be exempt,

and all those resentments flared up into
what's called “the New York draft riots.”

No group was more outraged than
the immigrant Irish of New York,

who feared the blacks who
competed for the lowest-paying jobs

and for whose freedom
they did not wish to fight.

Democratic politicians
fanned their anger.

"Remember this,

"that the bloody and treasonable and
revolutionary doctrine of public necessity

"can be proclaimed
by a mob

"as well as by
a government."

Governor Horatio
Seymour, New York.

On Sunday, July 12th, when
the names of the first draftees

appeared in
the newspapers

alongside long lists of those
who had fallen at Gettysburg,

a mostly Irish mob attacked
and destroyed the draft office,

then fanned out
across the city.

For three days, the east side of
Manhattan belonged to the mob.

Blacks were their
main targets.

They burned black boarding
houses, a black church,

a black orphanage,

then lynched a crippled
black coachman

and set his
corpse on fire

while chanting
"Hurrah for Jeff Davis!"

"July 14th,

"fire bells clanking as they have clanked
at intervals throughout the evening.

"Many details come in
of yesterday's brutal,

cowardly ruffianism
and plunder.

"Shops were
cleaned out

"and black men hanged
in Carmine Street

"for no offense but
that of negritude."

George Templeton Strong.

Finally, exhausted
troops from Gettysburg

arrived to
impose order.

More than 100 people
had been killed.

Bloody riots broke out
throughout the north

as opposition to
the war increased.

"The nation," wrote the editor
of the Washington Times,

"is at this time in a
state of revolution--

"north, south,
east, and west."

"You say you will not
fight to free negroes.

"Some of them seem
willing to fight for you.

"When victory
is won,

"there will be some black men
who can remember that

"with silent tongue
and clenched teeth

"and steady eye and
well-poised bayonet,

"they have helped mankind on
to this great consummation."

Abraham Lincoln.

"The negro is the key
to the situation,

"the pivot upon which the
whole rebellion turns.

"This war, disguise
it as they may,

"is virtually nothing
more or less

"than perpetual slavery
against universal freedom,

"and to this end

"the free states will
have to come."

Frederick Douglass.

"Will the slave fight?

"If any man asks
you, tell him ‘no,’

"but if anyone asks you
‘Will a negro fight,’

"tell him ‘yes.’ "

Wendell Philips.

Since the first
shots were fired,

abolitionists had been pressing the
government to put blacks into battle.

Congress authorized
colored troops in 1862,

but a year went by before the
first black men put on blue coats

to serve under
white officers.

"This, with the emancipation
of the negro,

"is the heaviest blow yet
given the Confederacy.

"By arming the negro,

"we have added
a powerful ally.

"They will make
good soldiers."

Ulysses S. Grant.

Do you (do you)

Thank our (thank our)

Maker? (Maker?)

Since when soldier

Do you...

Black privates were
paid $10 a month,

$3.00 less than whites.

Several regiments
served without pay

rather than submit
to that inequality.

Blacks were
rarely promoted.

Maker (soldiers)

Soldiers (soldiers)

Of the

Cross

Many of the Union
soldiers who began with

stereotypical assumptions
about black men,

who assumed that they
couldn't fight, that they would

hand their weapons over to the enemy,
that they would run and so on,

had their minds
changed in

the grimmest circumstances,
and some of

the documents
that tell the story

of how people's ideas
were transformed

are not the sort of documents
that you enjoy reading

because they speak of
how people became

companions in death,

of how white soldiers learned to
respect their black comrades

when they watched how
they reacted as people

all around were being
killed, being butchered.

On July 18th, just three days
after the draft riots ended,

650 men of the all-black
54th Massachusetts regiment

assaulted a Confederate position
at Battery Wagner, South Carolina.

Their commander was a
Boston abolitionist's son,

Colonel Robert
Gould Shaw.

"It is not too much
to say that if this

"Massachusetts 54th had
faltered when its trial came,

"200,000 troops for
whom it was a pioneer

"would never have
been put into the field;

"but it did
not falter.

"It made Fort Wagner such
a name for the colored race

"as Bunker Hill has
been for ninety years

"to the white Yankees."

Forty percent of the regiment did
not return, including Colonel Shaw.

Shaw led their attack
on Battery Wagner.

They were cut to pieces. They never
should have made that charge either.

And when it was over, the
Confederates were in control.

And there was a very hard
feeling against the white officers

of black regiments,

and Shaw was simply thrown
in a burial pit with his soldiers.

Shaw’s father

later said he was proud to
have him buried that way.

When the flag- bearer fell and
the order to withdraw was given,

Sergeant William Carney
seized the colors

and made it back to his lines,
despite bullets in the head,

chest, right
arm, and leg.

He was the first of twenty-three
blacks awarded the Medal of Honor,

though he had to wait
thirty-seven years to get it.

"Fort Wagner.

"My Dear Amelia,

"I have been in two
fights and am unhurt.

"I am about to go in
another, I believe, tonight.

"Our men fought well
on both occasions.

"How I got out of that fight
alive I cannot tell, but I am here.

"My dear girl, I hope
again to see you.

"I must bid you farewell.
Should I be killed,

"remember, if I die,
I die in a good cause.

"I wish we had 100,000
colored troops.

"We would put an
end to this war."

Sergeant Lewis
Douglass.

Do you (do you)

Do you (do you)

Want your (do you)

Freedom? (freedom?)

They constituted less than 1%
of the North's population,

yet by the war's end,
they would make up

nearly 1/10 of the
northern army,

most of them freed blacks
and runaway slaves.

Eighty-five percent of the eligible
black male population had signed on.

One-hundred-eighty-thousand
fought to free their people.

"Once let the black man
get upon his person

"the brass
letters ‘U. S.,’

"let him get an eagle
on his buttons

"and a musket on his shoulder
and bullets in his pockets,

"and there's no
power on earth

"which can deny that he has
earned the right to citizenship

"in the United States."

"The whole army of
the United States

"could not restore the institution
of slavery in the south.

"They can't get
back their slaves

"any more than they can get
back their dead grandfathers.

"It is dead."

William Tecumseh
Sherman.

Once a black Union soldier
spotted his former owner

among a group of
Confederate prisoners.

"Hello, Massa,"
he said,

"bottom rail on
top this time."

"Folks talk about the
fighting being nearly over,

"but I believe there's
a heap yet to come.

"Let the colored man accept the offer
of the president and cabinet;

"take arms,
join the army,

"then we'll whip
the rebels,

"even if Longstreet and all
the streets of the south

"concentrate at
Chattanooga."

Jerry Sullivan.

Hard against the
Tennessee River

at the meeting point of two
strategically crucial railroads,

the city of Chattanooga
guarded the gateway

to the eastern
Confederacy

and the rebel war
industries in Georgia.

For five months, Union
General William Rosecrans

resisted Lincoln’s
urgent calls

to drive Braxton Bragg’s
Confederates out of Tennessee

and seize Chattanooga.

When summer came, Lincoln
demanded more decisive action,

and at long last
Rosecrans moved,

launching a series of brilliant and
almost bloodless flanking maneuvers.

In ten days, he drove
Bragg eighty miles

through a relentless
Tennessee rain.

"No Presbyterian rain, either,"
a soldier remembered,

"but a genuine
Baptist downpour."

In September, Bragg abandoned
Chattanooga and kept backing away

until just over the
Tennessee line in Georgia,

where he gathered
his forces--

now bolstered by Longstreet’s
Virginia veterans--

along a meandering creek
called “Chickamauga.”

Chickamauga is like
all Indian words:

it's interpreted to mean
“the River of Death.”

God knows what
it really means.

Chickamauga was
a horrendous battle.

Very...a lot of breakthroughs,
a lot of hand-to-hand combat,

a long,
ragged retreat,

a glorious Southern victory
which was unexploited.

All the western heroes were
there, from Forrest on down.

It was...It's...It's a
great battle.

At 8 a.m. on the morning
on September 18th,

Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry
ran into a brigade of federals

heading for little
bridge over the creek.

By noon, one of Forrest’s
officers reported,

the dead were piled upon
each other like cordwood

to make passage for
advancing columns.

By nightfall,
both lines held.

On the second day of fierce fighting,
Rosecrans committed a fatal mistake--

ordering his troops to close
a gap in the Union line

that wasn't there.

In the process, he
opened up a real one,

and Longstreet’s Confederates
stormed through.

The Union forces
broke and ran.

"They have fought their
last man," Longstreet said,

"and even he
is running."

But George Henry Thomas,
a Union man from Virginia,

refused to retreat

and organized a stubborn
last-minute defense

that kept the battle
from becoming a rout,

and earned him the nickname
the "Rock of Chickamauga."

The northern army limped
back into Chattanooga.

Rosecrans was "confused
and stunned," Lincoln said,

"like a duck hit
on the head."

Bottled up in Chattanooga, the
Union forces were miserable--

cold, vermin-infested,

cut off from all but a
thin trickle of supplies.

They demolished houses
and hacked down every tree

and fence in
town for fuel.

The Confederates
besieging the city

were in no
better shape.

"In the very acme of our
privations and hunger,

"when the army was most
dissatisfied and unhappy,

"we were ordered into line to be reviewed
by the honorable Jefferson Davis.

"When he passed us with his great
retinue of staff officers at full gallop,

"cheers greeted him
with the words

'send us something to eat, Massa
Jeff, I’m hungry, I’m hungry!’ "

Sam Watkins.

In October,
Ulysses S. Grant,

now in command of all Union armies
from the Appalachians to the Mississippi,

hurried to Chattanooga
and immediately

replaced Rosecrans
with Thomas.

Braxton Bragg’s Confederate
army now occupied

the six-mile crest of Missionary
Ridge east of the city.

Confederate guns were massed
on the 2,000-foot summit

of nearby Lookout
Mountain, south of town.

Grant, down in Chattanooga,
resolved to drive them off.

The Battle of Chattanooga
began on November 24th.

Union troops stormed
Lookout Mountain,

fighting through
such dense fog

that it was remembered as
the "battle above the clouds."

During the night, a
besieged Bragg withdrew

from the summit of Lookout Mountain
to nearby Missionary Ridge.

Just before dawn
the next morning,

federals stepped out
onto an overhanging rock,

and as the sun rose,
unfurled their flag.

Thousands of Union
men in the valley below

broke into a
thunderous cheer.

The Union had won.

The next Union task was
to take Missionary Ridge.

In command at the bottom
of the hill was 115-pound

General Phil
Sheridan,

who pulled a flask
from his pocket

and toasted the Confederate
gunners above him.

"Here’s at you,"
he said.

The rebels opened fire, spattering
him and his officers with dirt.

"That was ungenerous,"
Sheridan said,

"I’ll take your
guns for that."

"Who ordered those men
up the hill?" Grant asked.

"No one,"
an aide replied.

"They started up
without orders.

"When those
fellows get started,

"all hell can't
stop them."

"Those defending the heights
became more and more desperate

"as our men
approached the top.

"They shouted 'Chickamauga' as
though the word itself were a weapon.

"They thrust cartridges
into guns by the handsful.

"They lighted the fuses of
shells and rolled them down,

"but nothing could stop
the force of the charge."

"John Williams,
South Carolina,

"killed at Missionary Ridge,
Tennessee, November, 1863."

Under Grant's leadership,
the Union Army had broken

the Confederate siege
at Chattanooga.

It was another
triumph for Grant.

"It was a great victory,"
Sherman said,

"the neatest and cleanest
battle I was ever in.

"and Grant deserves
the credit of it all."

In the weeks
that followed,

everybody posed
on Lookout Mountain.

General Thomas ordered
a Union cemetery

laid out on a hill called
“Orchard Knob”

that had seen
savage fighting.

A chaplain asked if the
burials should be by state.

"No, no. mix them up,"
Thomas said,

"I’m tired of
states’ rights."

At the capitol in
Washington at noon

on December
2nd, 1863,

a nineteen-foot bronze goddess
of "Freedom Triumphant"

was at last
hoisted into place.

The great dome
was finished.

"I like to stand aside and
look a long, long while

"up at the dome.

"It comforts
me somehow."

Walt Whitman.

"In camp,
December 3rd, 1863.

"It is now just twenty-
one days till Christmas.

"I would give anything if I could be
there to take Christmas with you.

"Martha, if you get this letter and have
any chance, I wish you would send me

"an old
woolen quilt,

"for I’ve not got any blankets, and we can't
get any, so I fare bad of a cold night."

Benjamin Franklin
Jackson.

"Christmas Day, 1863.

"General Buckner had
seen a Yankee pictorial.

"Angels were sent
down from heaven

"to bear up
Stonewall's soul.

"They could not find it,
flew back, sorrowing.

"When they got to the
golden gates above,

"they found Stonewall, by
a rapid flank movement,

"had already
cut his way in."

Mary Chesnut.

"This year has brought
about many changes

"that at the beginning would
have been thought impossible.

"The close of the year
finds me a soldier

"for the cause
of my race.

"May God bless
the cause

"and enable me in the
coming year to forward it on."

Christian Fleetwood.

It was an extremely
religious age.

Both sides wanted
to get right with God.

John Brown said he was an
instrument in the hands of God

to bring him to Harpers Ferry
to free the slaves and perhaps

began the
Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln finally felt that he, too,
was an instrument in the hand of God

and that God was punishing the
country for the crime of slavery.

Robert E. Lee said that he was an
instrument in the hands of God

and said at Gettysburg
that it's all in God's hands

and then sent the cream
of his army to its doom.

They really felt that providence
was at work in this war.

As Lincoln said, "We both pray to the
same God. We both invoked him.

"We both said we
were on his side."

But it wasn't until 1863, indeed at the
end of the war, that it became clear

where God's judgment was coming
down--that was on the whole country.

It must now
atone in blood

for its complicity in wickedness--
the wickedness of slavery.

The Civil War was fought
in 10,000 places--

at Big Bend,
Big Sandy,

and the Big
Sunflower River;

from Bunker Hill,
West Virginia,

and Blue Springs, Tennessee,
and Cairo, Illinois,

to Golgotha Church, Georgia
and Christianburg, Kentucky;

at Citrus Point on
the Cimarron River,

and along
Cowskin Bottom;

at Pebbly Run and
La Glorieta Pass,

and Gettysburg.

I think if I had my choice
of all the moments

to be present
at, at the... in that

war period it would
be at Gettysburg

during Lincoln’s
delivery of his speech,

maybe to have seen him craft those
beautiful words, those marvelous

healing words, and
then deliver them.

They were for
everyone for all time.

They subsumed the
entire war and all in it.

It showed his
compassion for everyone,

his love for
his people.

That's where I'd
like to be.

On November 19th, Lincoln
traveled to Gettysburg

to dedicate the new
Union cemetery.

The featured speaker was
Edward Everett of Massachusetts,

a diplomat, clergyman,
and celebrated orator.

The president had been invited
almost as an afterthought

to offer a few
"appropriate remarks."

Everett spoke for
not quite two hours,

then Lincoln rose.

A local photographer
took his time focusing.

Presumably the president could be
counted on to go on for a while.

But he spoke
just 269 words.

He started off by
reminding his audience

that just eighty-seven years had passed
since the founding of the nation,

and then he went on to
embolden the Union cause

with some of the most
stirring words ever spoken.

Lincoln was heading
back to his seat

before the photographer
could open the shutter.

He felt that
he had failed,

that it was a poor speech,
that the people didn't like it.

It was so brief--
less than two minutes.

He felt that
he had failed.

Lamon--his friend Ward Lamon--
was sitting next to him on the stand.

When he sat down, there was
just a sprinkling of applause.

And he said, "Lamon,
that speech won't scour."

That's what you say about
a plow in the prairies

when the mud
doesn't come off it.

"The cheek of every American
must tingle with shame

"as he reads the silly, flat,
dish-watery utterances

"of the man who has to be pointed
out to intelligent foreigners

"as the President of
the United States."

Chicago Times.

"Dear Mr. President,

"I should be glad if I
could flatter myself

"that I came as near
to the central idea

"of the occasion
in two hours

"as you did in
two minutes."

Edward Everett.

"Four score and
seven years ago,

"our fathers brought forth upon
this continent a new nation,

"conceived in liberty

"and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged
in a great civil war,

"testing whether that nation
or any nation so conceived

"and so dedicated
can long endure.

"We are met here on a
great battlefield of that war.

"We have come to
dedicate a portion of it

"as a final resting place for
those who here gave their lives

"that their nation
might live.

"It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.

"But in a larger sense,
we cannot dedicate,

"we cannot consecrate,

"we cannot hallow
this ground.

"The brave men, living and
dead, who struggled here

"have consecrated it far
above our poor power

"to add or detract.

"The world
will little note

"nor long remember
what we say here,

"but can never forget
what they did here.

"It is for us,
the living

"rather, to be
dedicated here

"to the unfinished work
which they have thus far

"so nobly
carried on.

"It is rather for us to
be here dedicated

"to the great task
remaining before us--

"that from these
honored dead

"we take increased
devotion to that cause

"for which they here gave the
last full measure of devotion,

"that we here
highly resolve

"that these dead shall
not have died in vain,

"that this nation,
under God,

"shall have a new
birth of freedom,

"and that government
of the people,

"by the people,
for the people,

"shall not perish
from the earth."

We are (we are)

Climbing (climbing)

Jacob's (Jacob's)

Ladder (ladder)

We are (we are)

Climbing (climbing)

Jacob's (Jacob's)

Ladder (ladder)

We are (we are)

Climbing (climbing)

Jacob's

Ladder

Soldiers

Of the

Cross

Every (every)

Rung goes (rung goes)

Higher (rung goes higher)

Every (every)

Rung goes (rung goes)

Higher (yes, well every)
(Higher)

Every (every)

Rung goes (rung goes)

Higher (higher)

Soldiers (soldiers)

Of the

Cross

Do you (do you)

Thank our (thank our)

Maker? (Maker?)

Since when, soldier?

Do you (do you)

Thank our (thank our)

Maker? (Maker?)

Since when, soldier?

Do you (do you)

Thank our (thank our)

Maker? (soldier)

Soldiers (soldiers)

Of the

Cross

Rise (rise)

Shine (shine)

Give God (give God)

Your glory (your glory)

Rise (rise)

Shine (shine)

Give God (your glory)

Your glory (your glory)

Rise (rise)

Shine (shine)

Give God (your glory)

Soldiers

Of the

Cross

Keep on (keep on)

Climbing (climbing)

We will (we will)

Surely make it (make it)

Keep on (keep on)

Climbing (climbing)

We will (we will)

Surely make it

Keep on (keep on)

Climbing (climbing)

We will (we will make it)

Soldiers

Of the

Cross

Children (children)

Do you (do you)

Want your (do you)

Freedom? (freedom?)

Children (tell me)

Do you (do you)

Want your (do you)

Freedom?

Do you (do you)

Do you (do you)

Want your

Freedom

Soldiers

Of the

Cross?

Soldiers

Of the

Cross