All language subtitles for Civil War, The, 06 (1990)

"I have just this moment
heard from the front.

"There is nothing yet
of a movement,

"but each side is
continually on the alert,

"expecting something
to happen.

"To think

"we are to have here soon what
I have seen so many times,

"the awful loads and trains and
boatloads of bloody and pale,

"and wounded
young men again.

"For that is what we certainly will have. I see all the signs here."

Walt Whitman.

Men's beliefs...

has startling
simplicity to it.

For example, a soldier
in line at Gettysburg told,

"You will advance a mile across
that open valley and take that hill."

I, for one,
would say,

"General, I... I don't think
we should do this.

"I don't believe we
can get there."

But they,,, they... they took it
in the matter of course.

And you must remember they
fought for four years, which is a...

a long time, and this simplicity
was severely tested,

but they
never lost it.

They... they... duty,

bravery under adversity,
very simple virtues,

and they
had them.

In 1864, a
rebellion in China

that cost twenty-million
lives finally came to an end.

In 1864, the Czar's armies
conquered Turkistan,

and Tolstoy finished
War and Peace.

In 1864, Louis Pasteur
pasteurized wine,

the Geneva Convention established
the neutrality of battlefield hospitals,

and Karl Marx

founded the International
Workingmen's Association

in London and
New York.

Nevada became
a state,

and for the first time, the
words, "In God We Trust"

appeared on
a US coin.

In 1864, the Civil War
was in its fourth year.

Union ships controlled
the Mississippi.

The Union blockade
was tightening.

Lee had been
beaten at Gettysburg.

Vicksburg and
Chattanooga had fallen.

As Confederate
hopes began to dim,

Union objectives
became clear:

Attack the heart of the
Confederacy at Atlanta

and destroy Lee's Army
of Northern Virginia.

But there was still
no real end in sight.

As Robert E. Lee
and Ulysses S. Grant

prepared to confront each
other for the first time,

neither knew what
awaited their armies

along a 100-mile crescent
east of Richmond.

To win, one would
have to out think

as well as outfight
the other.

In 1864, for the
first time in history,

a nation would try to hold an
election in the midst of civil war.

After three-and-a-
half years of war,

Abraham Lincoln's
prospects for reelection

did not seem bright.

For Elisha Hunt Rhodes, stuck in the
Union trenches outside Petersburg,

the war stretched
on interminably.

To Confederate Sam Watkins
at Franklin, Tennessee,

it seemed "the death angel was
there to gather its last harvest."

That same year, William
Tecumseh Sherman,

now in command of the
Union's western armies,

would set out through the
mountains of Georgia for Atlanta.

Lieutenant
Washington Roebling,

who thought he'd seen
the worst at Gettysburg,

came close to losing his
faith in the Union cause.

In Washington, a sometime
poet, Walt Whitman,

worked as a nurse in the
crowded Union hospitals

until they
overwhelmed him.

In 1864, the pictures that
would come back from the war

would be too horrible to
look at for years to come.

"It is enough to make
the whole world start

"at the awful amount of death and
destruction that now stalks abroad.

"I begin to regard the
death and mangling

"of a couple of thousand
men as a small affair,

"a kind of
morning dash,

"and it may be well that
we become hardened.

"The worst of the war
is not yet begun."

William Tecumseh
Sherman.

In early 1864,
Spotswood Rice,

a slave on a
tobacco plantation,

escaped and made his
way to Glasgow, Missouri,

where he enlisted
in the Union army.

"Benton Barracks Hospital,
St. Louis, Missouri.

"My children,

"A few lines to let you know
that I have not forgot you

"and that I want to see
you as bad as ever.

"I feel confident
that I will get you.

"Your Miss Kitty said
that I tried to steal you,

"but I let her know that God
never intended for man

"to steal his own
flesh and blood.

"I once thought that I had
some respect for them,

"but now my respect
is worn out.

"And I have no sympathy
for slave-holders."

Spotswood Rice.

"The Willard Hotel may be
much more justly called

"the center of Washington
and the Union

"than either the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department.

"Everybody may
be seen there."

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

On the afternoon of
March 8th, 1864,

a stubby, rumpled man
made his way across

the crowded lobby
of Willard's Hotel.

A fourteen-year-old
boy carrying a satchel

followed in
his wake.

He didn't have his three
stars on yet because

he wasn't going to get his
commission until the next day,

but he just walked up to the
desk and asked for a room, and

there had been a great many
generals in and out of Willard's.

Practically all of them had
been in and out of Willard's.

And the desk
clerk said he...

"Well, I've got something up
on the top floor, if that will do,"

and Grant said,
"That would do fine."

And he gave him the register
to sign, and Grant signed it,

and when the clerk looked
down and saw "U. S. Grant

"and son, Galena, Illinois," his
eyes bugged out of his head.

Word spread quickly that the
man Lincoln had recently placed

at the head of all the Union
armies was in the hotel,

and when he and his son
entered the crowded dining room,

everyone stood
and cheered.

Afterwards, he strolled two blocks up
Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House,

where President and Mrs. Lincoln
were giving a reception.

"I wish to express
my entire satisfaction

"with what you have
done up to this time,

"so far as I can
understand it.

"The particulars of your
plans I neither know

"nor seek
to know."

Abraham Lincoln.

Three years earlier, Grant had
been notable only for his failures.

Now he was the conqueror of
Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga

come to Washington to receive
the rank of lieutenant general,

last held by
George Washington.

He had command, now,
of 533,000 men,

the largest army
in the world.

"I want to push on as rapidly as
possible to save hard fighting.

"These terrible battles are
very good things to read about

"for persons who
lose no friends,

"but I am decidedly
in favor of having

:as little of it
as possible.

"The way to avoid it
is to push forward."

Ulysses S. Grant.

Hiram Ulysses Grant was
born at Point Pleasant, Ohio,

on April 27th, 1822.

His father, Jesse,
ran a tannery,

and its stench was one
of his first memories.

He was sensitive and
withdrawn with people,

but wonderful
with horses.

His father thought him
hopelessly impractical

and got him an
appointment to West Point.

A clerk mistakenly registered
the boy as Ulysses S. Grant

and rather than
complain, he lived with it.

His friends
called him Sam.

He was graduated in
the middle of his class.

The next year he was
engaged to Julia Dent,

the daughter of a
Missouri slave owner.

He adored her, and she
bore him four children.

Grant thought the Mexican
War wicked but went anyway.

"I considered my supreme duty
was to my flag," he wrote,

and served bravely in battle, riding
alone through a hail of enemy fire

to bring ammunition
to his men.

After the war, the army sent him
to a remote California outpost,

where, lonely and miserable
without his family,

he began to drink.

"Dear Julia,

"I sometimes get so anxious
to see you and our children

"that I am almost
tempted to resign

"and trust to Providence and
my own exertions for a living.

"Whenever I get to thinking
up the subject, however,

"poverty, poverty

"begins to stare
me in the face."

In 1854, he left the army and
returned east to rejoin Julia

and work a piece of land his
father-in-law had gave him.

He called it "hardscrabble farm"
and could not make a go of it.

He tried bill-collecting, real
estate, raising potatoes,

even peddling
firewood in the street.

Nothing worked.

One year, in St. Louis,
he pawned his watch

to buy Christmas
presents for his family.

He had been reduced
to working as a clerk

in his father's harness
shop in Galena, Illinois,

when the war began.

As a West Point graduate,
Grant was a scarce commodity.

He reentered the army
and never looked back.

"In this season, I saw
energies in Grant.

"He dropped a stooped-
shouldered way of walking

"and set his hat
forward on his head

"in a careless fashion."

John A. Rawlins.

He was promoted
to brigadier general,

won a small battle at Belmont, Missouri,
then a big one at Fort Donelson

at a time when other northern
generals were going down to defeat.

"His soldiers do
not salute him.

"They only watch him with a
certain sort of familiar reverence.

"They observe him coming
and, rising to their feet,

"gather on each side of
the way to see him pass;

"no Napoleonic displays,
no ostentation, no speech,

"no superfluous flummery."

He was distinctly
unglamorous

and had only one
personal attendant,

a runaway Missouri
slave named Bill.

He didn't like marching bands and
could recognize only two tunes:

"one was Yankee
Doodle," he said,

"and the other wasn't."

He insisted that his
meat be cooked dry

because even a suggestion of
blood on his plate made him sick.

Once, on the eve of a battle in
which thousands of men would die,

he had a teamster tied
to a tree for six hours

for mistreating
a horse.

He was
methodical, dogged,

and uncommonly
clearheaded under fire.

Grant, the general, has
many qualities, but

he had a...

a thing that's very necessary
for a great general.

He had what
they call

You could wake him up at four o'clock
in the morning and tell him that

they had just turned his right flank and
he would be as cool as a cucumber.

He had an ability to concentrate.
A good example of that is,

he would be working at his
desk, bent over writing,

and he would need something across
the room, a document or something.

He would get up and never get
out of that crouched position,

go over there and pick up
the document he'd need,

come back to his desk and sit down again
without ever having straightened up.

It's an example of how
he could concentrate.

He drank bourbon,
and he got drunk easily.

A Galena neighbor, John Rawlins,
was made his Chief of Staff

and took it upon himself
to keep Grant sober.

Grant never got drunk
when his wife was around.

It was only two conditions
Grant would drink under:

one was, his wife wasn't there, and the
other was there wasn't anything going on.

He went on a true bender during
the Vicksburg campaign,

but it was when nothing
was happening.

It was as
if he...

whether it was anything sexual
about his wife being out of touch,

I'm not too sure
about, but I do know

that it was boredom
that would...

that would
make him drink.

Now he traveled south to Meade's
headquarters at Brandy Station

near Culpeper,
Virginia,

the largest Union
encampment of the war.

"April 19.

"Yesterday, the 6th Corps was reviewed
by Lieutenant General U. S. Grant.

"He is a short,
thickset man

"and rode his horse
like a bag of meal.

"I was a little disappointed
in the appearance,

"but I liked the
look of his eye."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

"We all felt at last that
the boss had arrived."

While Grant conferred
with Meade,

members of his staff described
Grant's triumphs in the west.

Veterans of the Army of the
Potomac were not impressed.

"That may be,"
one said,

"but Grant never
met Bobby Lee."

"Can anybody say
they know the general?

"I doubt it.

"He looks so
cold, quiet,

"and grand."

"I think that Lee should
have been hanged.

"It was all the worse
that he was a good man

"and a fine character and
acted conscientiously.

"It's always the
good men

"who do the most
harm in the world."

Henry Adams.

Lee is, one of the most
difficult people to talk about

because he's
been immortalized,

or as they call him now,
some people, "the marble man."

He's been dehumanized
by the glory and the worship.

He was a warm,
outgoing man,

always had time for any
private soldier's complaint.

Once a northern soldier being
marched to the rear as a prisoner

complained to Lee in person that
someone had taken his hat,

and he said,
"that man got it," and

Lee made the man
give him his hat back.

The man Grant faced across
the Rapidan River in Virginia

came from a family as celebrated
as Grant's was obscure.

Robert E. Lee
was born in 1807

at Stratford in Westmoreland
County, Virginia,

and was raised
by his mother.

She taught him to revere General
Washington, a neighbor remembered,

"to practice self-denial and
self-control" in all things.

His father,
"Light Horse Harry" Lee,

had been a friend and favorite
lieutenant of George Washington.

But Light Horse Harry also
squandered two wives' fortunes

before deserting his
family for the West Indies.

At West Point, Robert E. Lee
did not earn a single demerit.

Classmates called him
"the marble model,"

but liked him in spite
of his perfection.

He was graduated second
in his class in 1829.

In 1831, he married Martha
Washington's granddaughter,

Mary Custis.

She bore him
seven children

and endured his long
absences as best she could.

The mansion at Arlington
with its 250 slaves

was her home
before it was his.

Appointed to the prestigious
Corps of Engineers,

he was three times promoted for
bravery during the Mexican war,

where he once met a
young Ulysses S. Grant.

Superintendent of West Point,
captor of John brown,

he was at the start of the war the
nation's most promising soldier.

In 1861, Lee refused
command of the Union army

and followed his state
out of the Union,

not because he approved
of slavery or secession,

but because he believed
his first duty was to Virginia.

"I did only what my
duty demanded.

"I could have taken no other
course without dishonor."

"The man who
stood before us

"was the realized
King Arthur.

"The soul that looked out
of his eyes was as honest

"and fearless as when
it first looked out on life.

"One saw the character
as clear as crystal,

"without complication,

"and the heart

"as tender as that
of ideal womanhood."

A Union girl watching Lee ride
past her Pennsylvania home said,

"I wish he
were ours."

Early in the war, he was
ridiculed as "the king of spades"

because of his fondness
for entrenching

and "granny Lee" because of
his gray hair and strict ways.

But after he drove
McClellan off the peninsula,

stopped Pope at
second Manassas,

demolished Burnside
at Fredericksburg,

and destroyed Hooker
at Chancellorsville,

all despite
overwhelming odds,

he won the unshakable
confidence of Jefferson Davis

and the unqualified love
of his officers and men.

He is a very
great general,

and, he's superb on both the
offensive and the defensive.

He took long chances, but he
took them because he had to.

If Grant had not had
superior numbers,

he might have taken chances
as long as Lee took.

The only way to win was with long
chances, and it made him brilliant.

No one ever called him
"Bobby Lee" to his face.

His men called him "Marse
Robert" or "Uncle Robert."

He had a terrible temper, which
he worked all his life to control.

When angered, his icy
stare was unforgettable.

There was a young man brought before
him for some infraction of the rules,

and can you imagine being
brought before General Lee for

having broken
the rules?

And the young man was
trembling, and Lee said,

"You need not be afraid.
You'll get justice here,"

and the young man said, "I know it,
General. That's what I'm scared of."

He referred to the Union
Army as "those people"

rather than as
"the enemy."

Now "those people"
had a new commander

whom Lee had
not tested.

When Grant began his
spring campaign of '64,

he took what they
called "the heavies",

the heavy artillerymen out of the forts in
Washington and put them in the field.

And many had been in the
army two or three years

and never had heard
a shot fired in anger,

and as these units
marched into camp,

they were so much larger than
the combat regiments that

soldiers alongside
the road used to say,

"What division is that?"
There were so many of them,

But they had some fierce things.
The first time they'd go into combat,

they'd have a
mangled corpse,

artillery casualty,

by the side of the road
with a blanket over him,

and as the new green
regiments came abreast

of him, they'd whisk the
blanket off and say,

"this is what's waiting
for you up ahead."

Not a... not a...
not a very pleasant story.

"To get possession of Lee's
army was the first object.

"With the capture of his army,
Richmond would necessarily follow.

"It was better to fight him outside
his stronghold than in it."

Ulysses S. Grant.

"This advance by General Grant inaugurated the seventh act

"in the 'on-to-
Richmond' drama

"played by the
armies of the Union."

General John
B. Gordon.

"That man Grant will fight us
every day and every hour

"till the end
of the war."

General James
Longstreet.

Grant's plan called for
four simultaneous blows.

William Tecumseh Sherman
had orders to strike out

from Chattanooga
for Atlanta.

Franz Sigel would advance
up the Shenandoah Valley.

Benjamin Butler was to lead an
army up from the James River,

and George Gordon Meade was
to lead the army of the Potomac,

110,000 strong,
south against Lee.

"Wherever Lee goes,
you will go also,"

Grant told Meade,

and Grant would
come along, too.

Lee's strategy
was unchanged:

destroy the Union
resolve to wage war.

He would refuse to
fight Grant in the open,

force him to attack fortified
Confederate positions,

and thereby offset
Grant's superior numbers.

The bloody cost of trying to force the
South back into the Union at gunpoint

would bolster antiwar
sentiment in the North.

"If we can break up the enemy's
arrangements early and throw him back,

"he will not be able to recover
his position or his morale

"until the presidential
election is over,

"and then we shall have a
new president to treat with."

General James
Longstreet.

"April 1st, 1864.

"The president came down
to Culpeper to review the army.

"The president was mounted
on a fractious horse.

"Soon after the march
began, his tall hat fell off,

"his pantaloons slipped up to the knees,
showing his white homemade drawers,

"which presently
slipped up also,

"revealing a
long, hairy leg.

"While we were inclined
to smile, we were

"very much chagrined to
see our poor president

"compelled to endure
such...torture."

Washington Roebling.

"On the morning
of May 4th,1864,

"we, with the entire grand
Army of the Potomac,

"were in motion
toward the Rapidan.

"The dawn was clear,
warm, and beautiful.

"As the almost countless
encampments were broken up,

"with bands in all directions
playing lively airs, banners waving,

"regiments, brigades, and
divisions falling into line.

"The scene, even to
eyes long familiar

"with military displays,

"was one of
unusual grandeur."

Chaplain A. M.
Stewart.

Lee's 60,000 men
were waiting for Grant

in the tangled thicket
known as "the Wilderness,"

in which they had trapped the
same army under Joseph Hooker

only a year before.

"Covered by a
dense forest

"almost impenetrable by
troops in line of battle,

"the undergrowth was so heavy
that it was scarcely possible to see

"more than 100 yards
in any direction.

"The movements of the enemy
could not be observed

"until the lines were
almost in collision."

Advance units of
the Union army

camped for the night on the
old Chancellorsville battlefield,

where winter rains had washed
open the shallow graves.

"In glades they meet
skull after skull

"where pine
cones lay;

"the rusted gun;
green shoes full of bones;

"the moldering coat
and cuddled-up skeleton,

"and scores of such.

"Some start as
in dreams,

"and comrades
lost bemoan.

"By the edge of these wilds,
Stonewall had charged,

"but the year and
the man were gone."

"It grew dark,
and we built a fire.

"The dead were
all around us.

"Their eyeless skulls seemed
to stare steadily at us.

"The trees swayed and sighed
gently in the soft wind."

Private Frank Wilkeson.

The Battle of the Wilderness
began in chaos.

Units got lost, fired on
their own comrades.

Officers tried to
navigate by compass.

But on the second day, Union forces
drove through the Confederate center.

As a worried
Lee watched,

General John Gregg's Texans
hurried to plug up the hole.

"Scarce had we moved a step when
General Lee, in front of the whole command,

"raised himself in his stirrups,
uncovered his gray hairs,

"and with an earnest
voice exclaimed,

"Texans always
move them!"

"Never before in my lifetime
did I ever see such a scene

"as was enacted when Lee
pronounced these words.

"A yell rent the air that must have
been heard for miles around.

"A courier riding by
my side with tears

"coursing down his
cheeks, exclaimed,

"I would charge Hell
itself for that old man."

The Texans held the position
until reinforcements came.

By the end of the day, the Confederates
had smashed Grant's right,

seized two generals
and 600 prisoners,

and come close to cutting
the Union supply line.

Grant received these
reports without comment.

Right in the middle of the Battle
of the Wilderness, all the staff men

who had been fighting in the east all this time--
and he had just come from the west--

kept talking about "Bobby Lee, Bobby
Lee. He will do this and do that other,"

and Grant finally told them,
"I'm tired of hearing about Bobby Lee.

"You'd think he was going to do a
double-somersault and land in our rear.

"Quit thinking about what
he's going to do to you

"and think about what you're going to do to him. Bring some guns up here."

Things like that.
Grant's... he's wonderful.

The Wilderness is probably not
the bloodiest battle in the war,

but the most terrible battle
in the war in many ways.

Grant in two days
loses more men

than hooker did... did
at Chancellorsville.

But in the Wilderness,

the leaves from the previous
year cover the ground,

and using the type of weapon
they used in the Civil War,

you have lots of
lint and linen

smoldering, falling
into the leaves,

and it will set
these leaves afire,

and men who have

been shot badly
through the bowels,

with broken legs,

will not be able to move as the
fire starts burning toward them,

and large numbers of
wounded men will perish

in the flames.

Grant's first move
had been a disaster.

The Wilderness had
cost 17,000 men.

That night, brush fires
raged through the woods.

Two-hundred wounded
federal soldiers

burned alive, while the
entrenched armies

listened to
their screams.

"I am holding my
breath in awe

"at the vastness of the shadow that
floats like a pall over our heads.

"It is come that man has no
longer an individual existence,

"but is counted in thousands
and measured in miles."

Clara Barton.

In the Wilderness, surgeons
amputated limbs without letup

for more than
100 hours

and sent back behind the lines
2,000 wounded men each day.

"As a wounded man
was lifted on the table,

"often shrieking with pain as
the attendants handled him,

"the surgeon quickly examined
the wound and resolved

"upon cutting off
the wounded limb.

"Some ether was
administered,

"the surgeon snatched his knife from between
his teeth, wiped it rapidly once or twice

"across his
bloodstained apron,

"and the cutting began.

"The operation accomplished,

"the surgeon would look around
with a deep sigh, and then...

" 'Next.' "

Carl Schurz.

"The Wilderness was
a useless battle

"fought with great loss

"and no result."

Washington Roebling.

Grant, in the Wilderness--

after that first night in the
Wilderness--went to his tent,

broke down, and
cried very hard.

Some of the staff members said they'd
never seen a man so unstrung,

but he didn't cry until
the battle was over,

and he wasn't crying when
it began again next day.

What was different about Grant
became clear the next morning

when he gave the
order to march.

For the first time
after a defeat,

the army of the Potomac
was moving forward.

"May 7.

"If we were under any
other general except Grant,

"I should expect
a retreat,

"but Grant is not
that kind of soldier."

Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

"Our spirits rose,"
one Union man remembered.

"We marched free.
The men began to sing."

"Ulysses," another
soldier said,

"don't scare
worth a damn."

"General Grant is
not going to retreat.

"He will move his
army to Spotsylvania.

"I am so sure of his next move that I
have already made arrangements."

He knew what Grant was going to do
because he could make himself Grant

for long enough to figure out
what Grant would do in a situation.

When, they
fired, let's see,

five or six generals before
they got to Grant--

and by the time they let
McClellan go, Lee said,

"I'm afraid they're gonna
keep making these changes

"until they get someone
I don't understand."

They never got anyone
he didn't understand, but

they finally got Grant, who
knew how to whip him and did.

In the first years of the war,
battle was bloody but sporadic;

from now on, it would be
waged without a break.

From the Wilderness to Cold Harbor,
it would not stop for thirty days.

It was, one
soldier wrote,

"living night and day within the
valley of the shadow of death."

"May 8.

"The dreadful work
is beginning again.

"John L. Miller,
my cousin,

"killed at the head
of his regiment.

"The blows now fall
so fast on our heads,

"it is bewildering."

Mary Chesnut.

At Spotsylvania, the two armies
mauled each other for days

without gaining ground.

It was the most relentless exchange
of fire in the history of warfare

up to that time.

Some men were hit by so many
bullets that their bodies fell apart.

A Union veteran remembered it
simply as "the most terrible day

"I have ever lived."

"The enemy's dead were
piled upon each other

"in front of the
captured breastworks,

"in some places
four layers deep.

"Below the mass
of fast-decaying corpses,

"the convulsive twitching
of limbs showed

"that there were
wounded men still alive.

"The place was well named
the 'Bloody Angle.' "

The two armies lost
another 20,000 men.

"May 12th, Yellow
Tavern, Virginia.

"General Jeb
Stuart, killed."

When Lee got the news, he said,
"I can scarcely think of him

"without weeping."

Again and again,
Lee anticipated Grant,

and again and again, the Union commander
skirted south and east in a semicircle,

the two armies locked in a
brutal, clumsy stranglehold

as the battle lines lurched
toward Richmond.

"We must destroy
this army of Grant's

"before he gets
to the James.

"If he gets there, it
will become a siege,

"and then it will be a
mere question of time."

"May 11th.

"We have now ended the sixth
day of very heavy fighting,

"and the result up to this
time is much in our favor.

"I propose to fight
it out on this line,

"if it takes
all summer."

Grant continued his stubborn
flanking maneuvers

in an attempt to get around Lee's
right and move on Richmond.

He did it with superior numbers
and doggedness--kept going.

Move by the left flank. Move by the
left flank. Move by the left flank.

And Lee's backing up the whole time,
losing men that he couldn't replace.

May 15th, 1864.

"Dear Emily,

"The papers must have told you
that we have been fighting a little.

"Our corps has only 12,000
left out of 27,000.

"Uncle Robert E. Lee isn't
licked yet by a long shot,

"and if we are not mighty
careful, he'll beat us.

"I think we have done very
well to avoid that fate so far.

"Tomorrow we
have another battle.

"I don't think it will
amount to much."

Washington Roebling.

Grant and Lee now raced for a
crossroads called Cold Harbor

near the
Chickahominy river.

Again, Lee got there first
and ordered his men to dig in

and prepare for the all-out
assault he knew would follow.

As they settled down for
the night on June 2nd,

veterans on the Union side
sensed what was coming.

"The men were calmly
writing their names

"and home addresses
on slips of paper

"and pinning them to the
backs of their coats

"so that their bodies
might be recognized

"and their fate made known
to their families at home."

General Horace
Porter.

When the bugles blew
for the attack at 4:30 A.M.,

60,000 Union men started
toward the unseen enemy.

The battle of Cold
Harbor had begun.

"I had seen the dreadful carnage in
front of Marye's Hill at Fredericksburg,

"but I had seen nothing
to exceed this.

"It was not war.
It was murder."

Those were men who knew how to take a
position where you could do the most killing from.

Their whole army was lined up, they're waiting and
hoping and praying something would come at them,

and Grant threw
three corps at them,

and in approximately seven minutes,
they shot about 7,000 men down.

It was a
bloody mess.

It's the only thing Grant ever
admitted that he'd done wrong.

"I've always regretted

"that the last assault at
Cold Harbor was ever made.

"No advantage
whatever was gained

"to compensate for the
heavy loss we sustained."

When another assault
was suggested,

Union officers rejected
the idea outright.

"I will not take my regiment
in another such charge,"

said a New
Hampshire captain,

"if Jesus Christ himself
should order it."

After the battle, the diary of a
young Massachusetts volunteer

was found spattered
with blood.

Its last entry read,

"June 3rd, 1864,

"Cold Harbor, Virginia.

"I was killed."

"Our matters here
are at a deadlock.

"Unless the rebs
commit some great error,

"they will hold us in check
until kingdom come.

"We are thoroughly
tired and disgusted.

"These two armies remind me
very much of two schoolboys

"trying to stare each
other out of countenance.

"Everyone knows that if Lee were
to come out of his trenchments,

"we could whip him, but Bob Lee
is a little too smart for us."

Washington Roebling.

From the Wilderness to
Cold Harbor, in a single month,

the Army of the Potomac
had lost 50,000 men,

half as many as it had lost
in three years of struggle.

"June 5th, 1864.

"Our people lost very
severely yesterday.

"In every calculation
that we make,

"we make ourselves out to
be 20,000 men stronger,

"yet in every fight, they show
as many men as we have,

"and they always show
as long a line as we do

"no matter how
long we make ours.

"June 7th, 1864.

"Another one of my best friends
in the army has been killed.

"One goes after the other
with perfect regularity."

"Grant doesn't care a snap
if men fall like the leaves fall.

"He fights to win,
that chap does.

"He has the disagreeable
habit of not retreating

"before irresistible
veterans."

Mary Chesnut.

"He keeps his own counsel,
padlocks his mouth,

"while his countenance
indicates nothing...

"that is, gives no expression
of his feelings and

"no evidence of
his intentions.

"He smokes
almost constantly

"and has a habit of
whittling with a small knife,

"cutting a small stick
into small chips,

"making nothing."

"Grant is a butcher and not fit
to be at the head of an army.

"He loses two men
to the enemy's one.

"He has no management,
no regard for life.

"I could fight an army
as well myself."

Mary Lincoln.

When several of Lee's officers
denounced Grant as a butcher,

Lee quieted them.

"I think Grant has managed
his affairs remarkably well

"up to the present
time," he said.

Grant kept moving.

He slipped his army out of his
trenches, crossed the Chickahominy,

feinted toward Richmond,

then shifted left again
to the James River.

His target now was Petersburg,
south of the Confederate capital,

where he hoped to
cut off Lee's supplies

and destroy the Army
of Northern Virginia.

For the first time, Lee
misjudged Grant's intentions,

rushing much of his army
to the outskirts of Richmond

to meet an attack Grant
did not plan to make.

Instead, Union engineers
laid a pontoon bridge

all the way across the
James in just eight hours.

On June 12th,

the massive Army of the
Potomac began to cross.

It took four days.

"General Grant,
I begin to see it.

"You will succeed.

"God bless you.

"A. Lincoln."

Sixteen-thousand Union troops
under General William Smith

were the first to
reach Petersburg.

The city was defended by
fewer than 3,000 Confederates

under General
Beauregard.

Smith moved
slowly to the attack.

Reinforcements intended to
aid him got lost on the way.

Still, his late-afternoon
assault made progress.

When night fell, Petersburg
seemed within the Union's grasp.

General Winfield Scott Hancock
urged a moonlight assault,

but Smith begged off,
remembering Cold Harbor.

During the night, confederate
reinforcements were brought up.

The opportunity
was gone.

"The rage of the enlisted
men was devilish.

"The most bloodcurdling blasphemy
I ever listened to I heard that night."

In just six weeks, Grant and Lee
had all but crippled each other,

and now both armies
dug in for a siege.

The burrowing would
go on for ten months.

The men lived in a twenty-
mile labyrinth of trenches,

plagued by flies, open to rain
and the fierce Virginia sun,

and exposed to
shell and mortar fire.

"Nothing for excitement

"except that a few were
picked off by sharpshooters.

"A feeling prevails
that sooner or later,

"this experience
will befall us all."

Private John
W. Haley.

Fire!

Colonel Joshua
Lawrence Chamberlain,

one of the heroes
of Gettysburg,

led his regiment in an
assault on Petersburg.

As he turned to rally his men, a
bullet smashed through his pelvis,

severed arteries,
nicked his bladder.

He stayed on his feet, leaning
on his sword with one hand

and waving his men
on with the other

until they had
all passed him by.

Then he sank
to the ground.

Doctors did not
expect him to live.

In tribute to his courage, Grant promoted
him on the field to brigadier general.

Chamberlain's obituary appeared
in the newspapers the next day.

Petersburg is a
magnificent salute

to the durability of
men on both sides.

It was just a...

It was a rehearsal for
World War I trench warfare,

and they stood up
very well to it.

But the soldiers always did
in that war. They were...

It's, to us, an almost incredible
bravery, considering the casualties.

"June 23rd,1864.

"The demand down here for killing
purposes is far ahead of the supply.

"Thank god, however,
for the consolation

"that when the last man is
killed, the war will be over.

"This war, you know, differs
from all previous wars

"in having no
object to fight for.

"It can't be finished until all the
men on either the one side

"or the other are killed.

"Both sides are trying to do that
as fast as they can, because

"it would be a pity to
spin this affair out

"for two or three
years longer."

Washington Roebling.

"Dear Henry,

"I feel more lonely and sad than
I have been in some time.

"Oh, that I knew what the termination
of this awful conflict would be."

"Henry, I want
to see you,

"but don't you come.

"Join for the war if
'tis forty years.

"If you get killed,

" 'tis the most
honorable death.

"If you escape,
I will rejoice.

"I love thee still."

Mollie Vanderberg.

"Our bleeding, bankrupt,

"almost dying country
longs for peace,

"shudders at the prospect of
further wholesale devastation,

"of new rivers
of human blood."

Horace Greeley.

"At night, my
ward became

"like the dim caverns of
the catacombs, where,

"instead of the dead
in their final rest,

"there were wasted figures
burning with fever

"and raving from the agony
of splintered bones,

"tossing restlessly from
side to side with every ill,

"it seemed, which
human flesh was heir to.

"From the rafters, the flickering
oil lamp swung mournfully,

"casting a
ghastly light."

Private Alexander
Hunter, 17th Virginia.

When the war began, there were only
a handful of army hospitals in the north.

When it ended, the Union
was running more than 350,

the Confederacy, 154.

There were sixteen hospitals
in Washington alone.

When these proved insufficient, men
were cared for in the patent office,

even in the House
and Senate chambers.

Hospitals were giant
warehouses for the dying.

The biggest and
best, north or south,

was Chimborazo
at Richmond,

with 8,000 beds, five soup
kitchens, ice houses, dairy cattle,

a herd of goats,

a bakery that turned out
10,000 loaves of bread a day,

and a 400-keg brewery.

"Arous'd and angry,

"I'd thought to beat the alarum,
and urge relentless war.

"But soon my
fingers fail'd me,

"my face droop'd
and I resign'd myself

"to sit by the wounded
and soothe them,

"or silently
watch the dead."

Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman was
too old for the ranks,

not qualified to
be an officer,

not enthusiastic about
"firing a gun

"or drawing a sword
on another man."

But when his younger brother
was wounded at Antietam,

and Whitman went to
find him in the hospital,

he was appalled
by what he saw.

He moved to Washington
to help with the wounded,

giving out small gifts,
changing dressings,

and reciting
his poetry.

"The doctors tell me

"I supply the patients with a
medicine which all their drugs

"and bottles and powders
are helpless to yield.

"It has saved more
than one life, so,

"I go around.

"Some of my boys die.
Some get well."

"No woman under thirty years need
apply to serve in government hospitals.

"All nurses are required to be
very plain-looking women.

"Their dresses must
be brown or black,

"with no bows, no
curls, no jewelry,

"and no
hoop skirts."

Dorothea Dix.

Early in the war, Dorothea Dix
volunteered her services to the Union.

The fifty-nine-year-old
crusader for the mentally ill

was put in charge of all women
nurses employed by the armies.

Tireless, and so autocratic one
woman called her "Dragon Dix,"

she barred any applicant she thought
interested in romantic adventure.

Even nuns were
sometimes turned down.

By the end of the
war, though,

the only question she asked
potential recruits was

"When can you start?"

Under her strict guidance, care
for the sick and wounded

was vastly improved.

Despite the bitter criticism and
petty rivalry of male colleagues,

she stayed at her
post for all four years,

the entire war,
without pay.

"Army Square Hospital:

"I am learning not
to let myself feel

"as much as
I did at first,

"yet I never can
get used to it."

Harriet Foote Hawley.

"They would see that the
doctor gave them up

"and they would
ask me about it.

"I would tell
them the truth.

"I told one man that,
and he asked how long.

"I said, not over
twenty minutes.

"He did not show any fear.
They never do.

"He put his hand up slow and closed
his eyes with his own fingers,

"and stretched himself out and
crossed his arms over his breast.

" 'Now fix me,'
he said.

"I pinned the toes of
his stockings together.

"That was the way
we laid corpses out,

"and he died in
a few minutes.

"His face looked as pleasant
as if he was asleep,

"and many is the time the boys would fix
themselves that way before they died."

"Lorenzo Strong,
Company A,

"9th United
States Cavalry;

"shot by a shell
last Sunday;

"right leg amputated
on the field;

"took a turn
for the worse.

"I stayed
and saw all.

"The doctor comes in and
gives him a little chloroform.

"One of the nurses
constantly fans him,

"for it is
fearfully hot.

"He asks to
be raised up,

"and they put him in
a half-sitting posture.

"He called for "Mark"
repeatedly,

"half deliriously,
all day.

"Life ebbs, runs now at
the speed of a millrace.

"His eyes
turned back.

"A crowd, including two or three
doctors, several students,

"and many soldiers,

"has silently gathered.

"The struggle goes
on and dwindles

"a little more
and a little more,

"and then welcome oblivion,
painlessness, death.

"A pause;

"the crowd
drops away."

"June 17, 1864.

"Dearest mother,

"this place seems to have
got the better of me.

"I think I shall come
home for a short time."

"I think I understand the
purpose of the South properly

"and that the best way
to deal with them

"is to meet them fair and
square on any issue.

"We must fight them,

"cut into them,
not talk to them,

"and pursue 'til
they cry 'enough.'

"War is the remedy our enemies
have chosen, and I say

"let us give them
all they want."

William Tecumseh
Sherman.

On the same day that Grant
stepped off into the Wilderness,

Sherman's grand Army of the West moved
south from Chattanooga towards Atlanta,

100 miles away.

William Tecumseh Sherman
and Ulysses S. Grant

had survived hard
times together.

Their friendship had been
forged in Kentucky

when Sherman had come
close to breaking down,

persuaded the war
would never end.

"Grant stood by me
when I was crazy,

"and I stood by him
when he was drunk,

"and now we stand by
each other always."

Sherman was an orphan and had
graduated sixth in his class at West Point

when he was only twenty.

Tall and red-haired,
intelligent and irritable,

he wore shoes rather than military
boots, slept little, and talked a lot;

"boiling over with
ideas," a friend said.

"He was always too
busy to eat much.

"He talked and smoked
cigars incessantly,

"giving orders, dictating
telegrams, bright and chipper."

He hated politicians,
profiteers, sentimentalists.

Above all, he
hated reporters,

whom he considered worse than spies
because they printed military secrets

just to sell
newspapers.

"These dirty newspaper scribblers
have the impudence of Satan.

"They come into camp, poke
about among the lazy shirks,

"and pick up their camp rumors
and publish them as facts.

"They are a pest, and
I treat them as spies,

"which, in truth,
they are."

He was convinced
if he killed them all,

there would be news from
Hell before breakfast.

Family and friends
called him "Cump."

His men called
him "Uncle Billy."

He was
ruthless in war.

Now Grant
entrusted his friend

with the second-most important
part of his grand strategy:

to seize Atlanta, and smash the
combined Confederate armies

of Tennessee and Mississippi
under Joseph E. Johnston.

In Washington, Lincoln's
chances for reelection were slim.

"I'm going to be beaten,"
Lincoln wrote that summer,

"and unless some great
change takes place,

"badly beaten."

With Grant stalled at
Petersburg, Sherman had to win.

Sherman had surveyed parts of
Georgia as a young lieutenant.

"I knew Georgia better than
the rebels did," he wrote.

He knew the fighting there would
be scattered and sporadic,

"a big Indian war,"
he called it.

Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate
commander who now faced Sherman,

was heartily disliked by
president Jefferson Davis,

but he was very nearly
worshiped by his men.

"I do not believe there
was a soldier in his army

"but would gladly
have died for him.

"With him, everything
was his soldiers.

"He would feed his soldiers
if the country starved."

Sam Watkins.

Outgunned, out-supplied, and
outnumbered almost two-to-one,

Joseph Johnston could only hope
to slow Sherman's advance

and perhaps lure him into making
the kind of doomed frontal attack

that would help swing the
election against Lincoln.

But Sherman's advance was
a masterpiece of planning.

In a matter of hours, his engineers
replaced burned bridges

and repaired ripped
up rail lines.

When Nathan Bedford Forrest's raiders
collapsed a tunnel in Sherman's rear,

one weary southern
private was not impressed.

"Sherman," he said, "probably
carried a spare tunnel with him."

Slowly, relentlessly, he forced
Johnston out of Dalton,

Resaca,

Cassville,

Allatoona,

New Hope Church.

A surrendering Confederate
told his captors,

"Sherman will
never go to hell.

"He'll flank the devil and make heaven in spite of the guards."

"June 14th.

"We killed General
Polk yesterday

"and made good
progress today."

William Tecumseh
Sherman.

At Kennesaw mountain, north of
Atlanta, the Confederates dug in.

On June 27th,

13,000 Union men
stormed up the mountain

and were hurled back.

The federals "seemed to walk up and
take death," a Southerner remembered,

"as coolly as if they were
automatic or wooden men."

"I've heard men say that if they
ever killed a Yankee during the war

"they were
not aware of it.

"I am satisfied that on this memorable
day every man in our regiment

"killed from twenty
to 100 each.

"All that was necessary
was to load and shoot."

The Union lost
3,000 men,

the Confederates,
only 750.

"One or two more such assaults,"
an aide warned Sherman,

"would use up
this army."

Sherman never admitted he had made
a mistake at Kennesaw Mountain,

but he never
repeated it either.

Reluctantly, he returned to
his slow flanking maneuvers,

forcing Johnston back to
within sight of Atlanta itself,

but there, he stalled,
just like Grant.

Two months of relentless
fighting had resulted

in identical stalemates.

Sherman was stopped
north of Atlanta:

Grant and Lee were deadlocked
outside Petersburg.

Without a decisive victory
somewhere, Abraham Lincoln

was sure to lose
the fall election.

Time was running out.

"Miss Kitty Diggs,

"I want you to understand
that Mary is my child,

"and she is a God-
given right of my own,

"and you may hold on to
her as long as you can,

"but I want you to
remember this one thing:

"that the longer you
keep my child from me,

"the longer you will
have to burn in hell

"and the quicker
you will get there.

"I have no fears about getting
Mary out of your hands.

"This whole government
gives cheer to me,

"and you cannot
help yourself."

Spotswood Rice.