Original subtitles

"We believed that it was most desirable

"that the North should win.

"We believed in the principle that the Union

"is indissoluble.

"We, or many of us at least, also believed

"that the conflict was inevitable

"and that slavery had lasted long enough,

"but we equally believed that those who stood against us

"held just as sacred convictions

"that were the opposite of ours,

"and we respected them as every man with a heart

"must respect those who give all

"for their belief."

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

We are the veterans of the Civil War,

'61 to '65.

This flag

is of the Hawkins' Zouaves, New York.

Now salute.

As a southerner, I would say

one of the main importances of the war is that

southerners have a sense of defeat,

which, none of the rest of the country has.

You'll see in the movie "Patton,"

the actor who plays Patton saying, "We Americans have never lost a war."

That was a rather amazing statement for him to make as Patton

because Patton's grandfather was on...

in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia,

and he certainly lost a war.

In 1865 in South Africa,

whites drove the Basuto tribe from their land.

In Afghanistan, Russian troop movements along the border

were a cause of great international concern.

At a monastery in Austria,

Gregor Mendel established the principle of heredity,

and in Ireland, the poet William Butler Yeats was born.

In 1865 in America, Samuel Clemens

published his first short story

as Mark Twain.

The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery,

was formally ratified,

and the Ku Klux Klan was formed.

In 1860, most of the nation's thirty-one million people

lived peaceably on farms or in small towns.

By 1865, everything had changed:

Sharpsburg, Maryland;

Fredericksburg, Virginia;

Murfreesboro, Tennessee;

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania;

Vicksburg, Mississippi;

Atlanta, Georgia.

By the beginning of 1865, the Confederacy was dying.

To the west, only the tattered Confederate Army of Tennessee remained.

Its soldiers, like Sam Watkins,

worried more about food and blankets and shoes

than fighting.

Outside Petersburg, Elisha Hunt Rhodes

and 120,000 other Union troops were dug in,

unable to dislodge the stubborn rebel army.

Atlanta had been razed,

and Georgia and the Carolinas lay helpless

in William Tecumseh Sherman’s path.

As the new year began, Robert E. Lee

assumed command of all Southern forces

and with it, the hopeless task of hurling back the huge Union armies

now closing in from every side.

With victory within his grasp,

Abraham Lincoln looked forward to a second presidential term

and a new challenge--

healing the nation he had struggled so hard

to reunite.

"Here was the greatest and most moving chapter in American history,

"a blending of meanness and greatness,

"an ending and a beginning.

"It came out of what men were,

"but it did not go as men had planned.

"Of all men, Abraham Lincoln came the closest to understanding

what had happened.

"Yet even he, in his final backward glance,

"had to confess that something that went beyond words

"had been at work in the land.

"The almighty had his own purposes."

Bruce Catton.

"My aim was to whip the rebels,

"to humble their pride,

"to follow them to their innermost recesses,

"and to make them fear and dread us.

"War is cruelty.

"There's no use trying to reform it.

"The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."

William Tecumseh Sherman.

"War is all hell,"

William Tecumseh Sherman once said,

and it was now his aim to bring that hell to the heart of the Confederacy.

He saw from the very beginning

how hard a war it was gonna be,

and when he said how hard a war it was gonna be,

he was retired under suspicion of insanity

and then brought back when they decided

maybe he wasn't so crazy after all.

Sherman is maybe the first truly modern general.

He was the first one to understand,

in the present- day world,

that civilians were the backers-up of things

and that if you went against civilians, you

deprived the army of what kept it going, so he

quite purposely made war against civilians.

From Atlanta in late 1864,

Sherman proposed to march his army through the heart of Georgia

all the way to Savannah.

His army would live off the land,

destroying everything in its path that could conceivably aid

the faltering Confederacy,

and a good deal that couldn't.

"I can make this march," he promised,

"and make Georgia howl."

Lincoln's advisors thought Sherman’s plan foolhardy.

The president approved it.

"If you can whip Lee

"and I can march to the Atlantic," Sherman told Grant,

"I think Uncle Abe will give us 20 days' leave

"to see the young folks."

"There are rumors that we are to cut loose and march south to the ocean.

"We're in fine shape and, I think, could go anywhere Uncle Billy would lead."

Private Theodore Upson.

Before leaving Atlanta, Sherman ordered all townspeople,

white and black, out of their homes,

then directed his men to burn or destroy

anything of use to the rebels.

Civilians looted the town and helped spread the blaze

throughout the city.

"A grand and awful spectacle is presented to the beholder

"in this beautiful city, now in flames.

"The heaven is one expanse of lurid fire.

"The air is filled with flying cinders.

"The city, which, next to Richmond,

"has furnished more material for prosecuting the war

"than any other in the South,

"exists no more as a means for injury

to be used by the enemies of the Union.

Sherman began his march.

Sixty-two-thousand men in blue were on the move

in two great columns.

Their supply train stretched twenty-five miles.

A slave watching the army stream past

wondered aloud if anybody was left up north.

"The name of the captor of Atlanta, if he fails now,

"would become the scoff of mankind

"and the humiliation of the United States for all time.

"If he succeeds, it will be written on the tablet of fame."

London Herald.

"Reaching the hill just outside the old rebel works,

"we paused to look back.

"Behind us lay Atlanta in ruins,

"the black smoke rising high in the air,

"hanging like a pall.

"Then we turned our horses' heads to the east.

"Atlanta was soon lost behind the screen of trees

"and became a thing of the past."

It had been cumulative evidence that an army

could subsist itself

on what was growing in the fields, winter or summer,

and they were a...

a moving city, like.

They would grind their own corn

at the grist mills along the way,

butcher their own cattle.

Sherman was perfectly satisfied he could make the march

without difficulty with regard to supplies.

In fact, they ate better on that march than they did not marching.

Sweet potatoes were particularly prized, and pork.

They had plenty to eat.

"This is probably the most gigantic

"pleasure excursion ever planned.

"It already beats everything I ever saw soldiering

"and promises to prove much richer yet."

"We had a gay old campaign.

"Destroyed all we could not eat, stole their niggers,

"burned their cotton and gins, spilled their sorghum,

"burned and twisted their railroads, and raised hell, generally."

Sherman's men tore up railroads,

heating the rails and twisting them beyond repair.

It became a trademark--

Sherman’s Neckties.

He forbade his men to plunder the homes they passed,

but neither he nor they took the order very seriously.

"I've got a regiment that can kill, gut, and scrape a pig

"without breaking ranks."

"They say no living thing is found

"in Sherman's track, only chimneys.

"like telegraph poles, to carry the news of his attack backwards."

Mary Chesnut.

"I doubt if history affords a parallel

"to the deep and bitter enmity of the women of the south.

"No one who sees them and hears

"but must feel the intensity of their hate."

"As far as the eye could reach,

"the lurid flames of burning houses lit up the heavens.

"I could stand out on the veranda and for two or three miles

"watch the Yankees as they came on."

"I could mark when they reached the residence

"of each and every friend on the road."

The troops looted slave cabins, as well as mansions,

poked their ramrods into flower beds in search of buried valuables,

and burned everything in their path.

"The thousand pounds of meat in my smokehouse is gone.

"My eighteen fat turkeys,

"my hens, chickens, and fowl,

"my young pigs,

"are shot down in my yard

"as if they were the rebels."

"The cruelties practiced on this campaign

"towards the citizens

"have been enough to blast a more sacred cause than ours.

"We hardly deserve success."

At Milledgeville, Georgia, Sherman’s men boiled their coffee

over bonfires of Confederate currency,

held a mock session of the legislature

that passed a resolution returning Georgia to the Union.

Sherman's men were feasting on delicacies foraged from local farms

when a band of emaciated men tottered into the firelight.

They were Union escapees from Andersonville Prison.

An Indiana colonel remembered that the sight of the starved men

"sickened and infuriated" his troops.

"When foraging now,

"they think of the tens of thousands of their imprisoned comrades

"slowly perishing with hunger,

"and they sweep with the scythe of destruction."

Before they were through, Sherman and his men

would cross 425 miles of hostile territory

and wreak $100 million worth of havoc.

The South would never forget.

"We will fight you to the death.

"Better to die a thousand deaths than submit to live under you

"and your negro allies."

General John Bell Hood.

Lacking a leg and the use of one arm,

John Bell Hood had to be strapped to the saddle each morning,

but he fought as hard and as recklessly as ever.

Hood and his dwindling army now tried to divert Sherman’s attention

by moving north to join forces

with Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry

and invade Tennessee.

Sherman was delighted.

"If he will go to the Ohio river, I'll give him rations," he said.

"My business is down south."

Waiting for Hood in Tennessee was a fresh,

well-equipped Union army a third again as large as Hood's,

commanded by George Thomas, `the "Rock of Chickamauga."

At Franklin,

Hood ordered a series of thirteen hopeless charges

in which twelve Confederate generals

and 7,000 soldiers were lost,

more men than U. S. Grant had lost at Cold Harbor the year before,

more than George McClellan lost in all the battles

of the Seven Days in 1862.

Franklin is a horrendous battle,

and the flower of the army fell. These...

There's a strong suspicion that Hood was trying to discipline his army

by staging that charge, and there's some truth in it.

His army was wrecked.

The defeat at Nashville is in large part due to what had happened

at Franklin a month before.

At Nashville, George Thomas attacked

what was left of Hood's army.

"My boot was full of blood and my clothing saturated with it.

"I reached General Hood's headquarters.

"He was much agitated and affected,

"pulling his hair with his one hand--he had but one--

"and crying like his heart would break."

Sam Watkins.

Hood's army had disintegrated.

"I beheld for the first and only time," he confessed,

"a Confederate army abandon the field in confusion."

Hood resigned.

Lee recalled Joe Johnston to active duty

and put him in charge of patching together

whatever Confederate forces remained outside of Virginia.

"We were willing to go anywhere or to follow anyone who'd lead us.

"We were anxious to flee, fight, or fortify.

"I have never seen an army so confused and demoralized.

"The whole thing seemed to be tottering and trembling."

"Gentlemen,

"you cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.

"We cannot change the hearts of these people of the South,

"but we can make war so terrible

"and make them so sick of war

"that generations will pass away

"before they again appeal to it."

William Tecumseh Sherman.

"Darkest of all Decembers ever my life has known,

"sitting here by the embers,

"stunned, helpless, alone."

Mary Chesnut.

"My name is Charles Jess.

"I was born in South Carolina as a slave,

"and I was freed

"when Sherman’s army came into the County of Chatham.

"I was a Union man.

"I's a slave and could not be anything else

"because I wanted my freedom,

"and I hoped and expected it would give me my freedom,

"as it did."

"The Negroes followed the army like a sable cloud in the sky

"before a thunderstorm.

They thought it was freedom now or never."

Twenty-five-thousand slaves fled to Sherman’s army,

jubilant he had come to liberate them,

but fearful that if they strayed too far from his columns,

they would be caught by Confederate guerrillas.

"Perfect anarchy reigned," one plantation owner said.

It was, said another, "the breath of emancipation."

And the Yankees would come,

then, after a while,

there'd be a whole troop of men come. They said they were Yankees,

all riding horses.

So I asked them, I said, "where are they going?"

They said they all going home now.

They said, "Well, all of you niggers is all free now."

"They gather around me in crowds,

"and I can't find out whether I am Moses or Aaron, but surely,

"I am rated as one of the congregation."

"It seems the good people in the north are terribly worried about us.

"They called us the "Lost Army,"

"and some thought we would never show up again.

"I don't think they know what kind of an army this is that Uncle Billy has.

"Why, if Grant can keep Lee and his troops busy,

"we can tramp all over this Confederacy."

Private Theodore Upson.

Throughout the north, people wondered what had happened to Sherman’s army,

until suddenly, William Tecumseh Sherman

emerged near Savannah.

"December 25, 1864.

"Dear Mr. President,

"I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift,

"the city of Savannah,

"with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition,

"also about 25,000 bales of cotton."

He then regroups at Savannah,

and in the last week of

January, he starts

into South Carolina.

South Carolina gets it even worse than Georgia

because they figured that's where secession started.

Sherman now turned his columns northward into the Carolinas.

A relentless winter rain was falling,

and Confederate generals were confident no army

could march through the mud.

But Sherman and his men made a steady ten miles a day.

Battalions of ax- men led the way,

hacking down whole forests

to construct corduroy roads.

"When I learned that Sherman’s army was marching through the Salkehatchie swamps

"making its own roads at the rate of a dozen miles a day

"and bringing its artillery and wagons with it,

"I made up my mind that there had been no such army in existence

"since the days of Julius Caesar."

Joseph E. Johnston.

Sherman's men were still harsher in South Carolina

than they had been in Georgia.

"Here is where treason began," a private said,

"and by God, this is where it shall end."

Few houses were left standing.

"The wind moans among the bleak chimneys

"and whistles through the gaping windows.

"The market is a ruined shell,

"its spire fallen in,

"the old bell, "secessia,"

"that had rung out every state as it seceded,

"lying half-buried in the earth."

On February 17th, 1865,

Fort Sumter was abandoned,

along with all of Charleston.

"This disappointment," Jefferson Davis admitted,

"is extremely bitter."

"A city of ruins,

"of desolation,

"of vacant houses, of widowed women,

"'of rotting wharves,

"of deserted warehouses,

"of weed- wild gardens,

"of miles of grass- grown streets,

"of acres of pitiful and voiceful barrenness--

"that is Charleston,

"wherein rebellion loftily reared its head."

"Jack Middleton writes from Richmond,

" 'The wolf is at the door here.'

"We dread starvation far more than we do Grant or Sherman.

"Famine--that is the word, now."

Mary Chesnut.

Everywhere the Union armies marched,

the back roads filled with Confederate refugees.

Thousands fled to Texas in search of a new start.

Thousands more flocked to Richmond,

hoping the Confederate government would care for them.

There was little it could do.

The Confederate government was coming apart.

The governor of North Carolina refused to permit any but his own troops

to wear the 92,000 uniforms he was hoarding.

In Georgia, Governor Joseph Brown

threatened to secede from the Confederacy.

States' rights still came first.

"If the Confederacy fails,

"there should be written on its tombstone--

" 'Died of a theory.' "

President Jefferson Davis.

"I have been up to see the congress,

"and they do not seem able to do anything

"except eat peanuts and chew tobacco,

"while my army is starving."

Robert E. Lee.

Lee begged for more supplies.

Davis had none to give.

A single stick of firewood cost $5.00 in Richmond.

A barrel of flour had risen to $250

and could rarely be found even at that price.

"I daily part with my raiment for food.

"We find no one who will exchange

"eatables for Confederate money,

"so we are devouring our clothes."

Hundreds of Confederate soldiers were deserting every day,

cold, hungry barefoot,

driven by desperate letters from home.

Lee asked that slaves

now be armed to defend the Confederacy.

"We must decide," he said, "whether the negro shall fight for us

"or against us."

"Those willing to fight," he added,

"would be freed after the war."

The Confederate Congress finally authorized black troops

because, as the Richmond examiner said,

"the country will not deny General Lee

"anything he may ask for."

Six days later,

the citizens of Richmond saw an astonishing sight--

a new Confederate battalion made up of white convalescents

and black hospital orderlies

marching up main street to the strains of Dixie.

"You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers.

"The day you make a soldier of them

"is the beginning of the end of the revolution,

"and if slaves seem good soldiers,

"then our whole theory of slavery is wrong."

Senator Howell Cobb, Georgia.

Earlier that winter, the United States Congress

had voted 119-56 to pass the Thirteenth Amendment

to abolish slavery

and sent it to the states for ratification.

Eleven months later,

slavery was officially abolished everywhere

and for all time.

"Verily,

"the work does not end with the abolition of slavery,

"but only begins."

Frederick Douglass.

"I see the president almost every day.

"I saw him this morning about 8:30, coming into business.

"We've got so that we exchange bows,

"and very cordial ones.

"I see very plainly

"Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face

"with its deep- cut lines,

"the eyes always, to me, with a latent sadness

"in the expression.

"None of the artists or pictures

"has caught the deep,

"though subtle and indirect, expression of this man's face.

"There's something else there.

"One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago

"is needed."

Walt Whitman.

"March 4th.

"We captured twenty- five cannon.

"General Mower fired them today in a salute

"in honor of the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln for his second term.

"His first inauguration was not celebrated in North Carolina,

"but the glorification over the beginning of his second term

"goes to make up the deficiency."

George Nichols.

Inauguration Day was cold and windy,

just as it had been four years earlier.

But the U.S. Capitol was now complete,

its great iron dome in place,

crowned by a bronze Liberty.

Just before the president began to speak, the clouds parted,

flooding the stand with brilliant sunlight.

"Fondly do we hope,

"fervently do we pray

"that this mighty scourge of war

"may speedily pass away.

"Yet if God wills that it continue

"until all the wealth piled up

"by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil

"shall be sunk,

"and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash

"shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,

"as was said 3,000 years ago,

"so still must be said,

"The judgments of the Lord are true

"and righteous altogether.

"With malice towards none,

"with charity for all,

"with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,

"let us strive on to finish the work we are in,

"to bind up the nation's wounds,

"to care for him who shall have borne the battle

"and for his widow and his orphan.

"To do all which may achieve and cherish

"a just and lasting peace among ourselves

"and with all nations."

Can it be anyone but Lincoln

that any of us

could be drawn to as the central

figure of the war?

Because, in a way,

he comprehended both sides.

"We must not be enemies.

"We must be friends.

"I'm a tired man," Lincoln said afterwards.

"Sometimes I think I'm the tiredest man on earth."

In the crowd just a few yards from Lincoln

was the young actor John Wilkes Booth,

a pistol in his pocket.

His vantage point on the balcony, Booth said afterwards,

"had offered an excellent chance to kill the president...

"if I had wished."

John Wilkes Booth was a fervent believer

in slavery and white supremacy,

but during four years of war,

he had not been able to bring himself

actually to fight for the southern cause.

"I have begun to deem myself a coward

"and to despise my own existence."

His mind fixed on Lincoln

as the tyrant responsible for all the country's troubles

and his own.

Booth hatched a scheme to kidnap Lincoln

and gathered a worshipful band of dubious conspirators

willing to help out:

Lewis Paine, a wounded Confederate

who had recently sworn allegiance to the Union;

David E. Herold, a druggist's clerk

who was thought by some to be mentally retarded;

George Atzerodt, a German- born wagon painter

barely able to make himself understood in English;

and John H. Surratt, a sometime Confederate spy

whose widowed mother Mary kept a Washington boarding-house

where booth and his admirers sometimes met.

Two weeks after the inauguration, Booth and his accomplices,

all wearing masks,

rode out toward the Soldiers' Home,

where Lincoln often slept, hoping to intercept his carriage.

The president never came.

"So goes the world," Booth wrote.

"Might makes right."

Late in March, Lincoln sailed down to City Point, Virginia,

to confer with his generals aboard Grant's floating headquarters,

the River Queen.

Sherman, who had interrupted his march through the Carolinas,

had met Lincoln only once before, in 1861,

and found him then a weak and partisan politician

unequal to his task.

The talks lasted two days.

Grant, Sherman, and Admiral Porter

detailed plans for one last major campaign.

Lincoln, satisfied that victory seemed within reach,

outlined plans for peace.

"If the rebels would lay down their guns and go home," Lincoln said,

"they should be welcomed back

"as citizens of the United States."

"I never saw him again.

"Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to me to possess more

"of the elements of greatness

"combined with goodness

"than any other."

William Tecumseh Sherman.

"My own corps was stretched until the men stood like a row of vedettes

"fifteen feet apart.

"It was not a line,

"it was the mere skeleton of a line."

General John B. Gordon.

Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee

had faced one another in front of Petersburg for nine months.

Slowly, steadily,

Grant had extended his trenches around Petersburg.

Lee's lines had been forced to stretch, too,

but his army was shrinking.

In nine months, 60,000 southern soldiers had deserted.

"All of us think we're whipped now.

"The men are ragged and they're getting half rations.

"Some say we'll have to go to Georgey, but the men will not go there."

The thinning Confederate lines around Petersburg

finally extended fifty-three miles.

Grant's forces numbered 125,000;

Lee's had dwindled to 35,000.

Lee's only hope lay in moving his army to the southwest

to link up with Johnston in the hills of North Carolina

and fight on.

On March 25th,

Confederates under John B. Gordon

mounted a sudden night assault that briefly won possession of an earthwork

called Fort Stedman.

It was Lee's last advance.

Grant counterattacked,

racing around the rebel flank to block Lee's escape at Five Forks.

There, on April 1st,

he routed a Confederate division under George Pickett.

The next day, Union forces attacked

all along the Petersburg line.

Slowly, relentlessly, and at great cost,

they drove the Confederates out of their trenches.

Among the Southern dead left behind

were shoeless boys as young as fourteen.

"The conduct of the Southern people

"appears many times truly noble,

"as exemplified, for instance, in the defense of Petersburg.

"Old men with silver locks lay dead in the trenches side-by-side

"with mere boys of thirteen or fourteen.

"It almost makes one sorry to have to fight against people

"who show such devotion for their homes and their country."

Washington Roebling.

A. P. Hill, who had served Lee faithfully in a dozen battles

and staved off Confederate disaster at Antietam,

tried to rally his men.

Two Union infantrymen

shot him dead as he rode between the lines.

"He is at rest,

"and we who are left are the ones to suffer."

In Petersburg, the scene of nine months' siege,

fell to Grant's army.

As black civilians cheered the black soldiers

that led the Union columns into the city,

Lee's army slipped across the Appomattox River.

In Richmond, Jefferson Davis was attending

10:00 services that Sunday morning

at St. Paul's Episcopal Church

when the sexton handed him a message.

"President Davis,

"My lines are broken in three places.

"Richmond must be evacuated this evening."

Robert E. Lee.

"I happened to sit in the rear of the president's pew,

"so near that I plainly saw this sort of

"grey pallor that came upon his face

"as he read a scrap of paper thrust into his hand."

Davis hurried from the church and ordered his government to move to

Danville, Virginia, 140 miles to the south.

On the evening of April 2nd,

Davis and his cabinet boarded the last train,

a series of freight cars labeled

"Treasury Department," "Quartermaster's Department,"

"War Department."

"We tried to comfort ourselves by saying, in low tones,

"that the capital was only moved temporarily,

"that General Lee would make a stand

"and repulse the daring enemy,

"and that we would yet win the battle and the day."

A slave dealer named Lumpkin

failed to get his fifty chained slaves aboard.

He had to unlock $50,000 worth of property in the street

and let them go.

The retreating Confederates set fire to much of Richmond.

Mobs plundered stores, broke into abandoned houses.

The fire on land spread to the Confederate arsenal.

The explosion rocked the city

and shattered windows for miles around.

"Everything was in the wildest confusion.

"The low characters of the town had broken into everything and were looting the town,

"being aided to a considerable extent by the soldiers

"who had broken through all discipline."

"I saw a Confederate soldier on horseback pause

"under my window.

"He wheeled and fired behind him,

"rode a short distance,

"wheeled and fired again.

"Coming up the street

"rode a body of men in blue."

"Arriving at the capital, I sprang from my horse,

"first unbuckling the Stars and Stripes from my saddle,

"and with Captain Langdon, I rushed up to the roof.

"Together, we hoisted the first large flag over Richmond

"and, on the peak of the roof, drank to its success."

Mrs. Robert E. Lee,

too crippled by arthritis to travel, remained in Richmond.

The Union commander posted a guard before her house,

a black cavalryman,

to ensure no harm came to her.

"April 3rd, 1865.

"Thank God I have lived to see this.

"It seems to me that I have been dreaming

"a horrid nightmare for four years,

"and now the nightmare is gone.

"I want to see Richmond."

On April 3rd, Abraham Lincoln and his son, Tad,

arrived at Rockett's Wharf aboard a small barge

and were escorted through the smoking city

by a unit of black cavalry.

Freed slaves mobbed the president,

laughing, singing, weeping for joy,

kneeling before him, straining to touch his clothes.

"I know I am free," said one man, "for I have seen Father Abraham

"and felt him."

The president walked about a mile through the crowd

and loped up the steps of the Confederate White House,

now Union headquarters.

When he sat down at Jefferson Davis' desk,

the troops outside burst into cheers.

"Richmond has fallen,

"and I have no heart to write about it.

"They are too many for us.

"Everything lost in Richmond, even our archives.

"Blue-black is our horizon."

Mary Chesnut.

"There is a stillness in the midst of which Richmond, with her ruins

"and her unchanging spires, rests beneath a ghastly, fitful glare.

"We are under the shadow of ruins.

"From the pavements where we walk stretches a vista of devastation.

"The wreck, the loneliness seem interminable.

"There is no sound of life

"but the stillness of the catacomb.

"Only as our footsteps fall dull on the deserted sidewalk

"and a funeral troop of echoes bump

"against the dead walls and closed shutters in reply.

"And this is Richmond,

"says a melancholy voice.

"And this is Richmond."

On April 8th, Abraham and Mary Lincoln took a drive together

past a country cemetery on the outskirts of Petersburg.

"It was a retired place shaded by trees,

"and early spring flowers were opening on nearly every grave.

"It was so quiet and attractive

"that we stopped the carriage and walked through it.

"Mr. Lincoln seemed thoughtful and impressed.

"He said, Mary,

"you are younger than I. You will survive me.

"When I'm gone,

"lay my remains in some quiet place like this."

"General Lee was riding slowly

"along the line of tangled wagons.

"He rode erect, as if incapable of fatigue."

Lee's army fled westward.

Grant was right behind them.

"On and on, hour after hour, from hilltop to hilltop,

"the lines were alternately forming, fighting, and retreating,

"making one almost continuous battle.

"A boy soldier came running by at the top of his speed.

"When asked why he was running, he shouted back,

" 'I'm running 'cause I can't fly.' "

From Danville on April 4th,

Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation pledging to fight on.

"Relieved from the necessity

"of guarding cities,

"with our army free to move from point to point,

"nothing is now needed to render our triumph

"certain but our own unquenchable resolve.

"No peace will ever be made

"with the infamous invaders."

On April 6th at Sailor’s Creek, Union cavalry and infantry

inflicted 6,000 casualties on Lee's army

and captured eight generals, including Lee's own son, Custis.

He now had fewer than 25,000 men.

One-hundred-twenty-five- thousand federal troops

were now closing in on Lee from three sides.

Union General Phil Sheridan wired Grant:

"if the thing is pressed, I think that Lee will surrender."

"Let the thing be pressed," Lincoln answered.

An officer urged Lee to surrender.

The general asked what the country would think of him if he failed to fight on.

"The country be damned," said the officer, "there is no country.

"There has been no country for a year or more.

"You're the country to these men."

"The few men who still carried their muskets

"had hardly the appearance of soldiers;

"their clothes all tattered and covered with mud,

"their eyes sunken and lusterless,

"Yet still they were waiting for General Lee to say

"where they were to face about and fight."

Magnus Thompson, 35th Virginia Cavalry Battalion.

Lee's Confederate army was moving along one side

of the Appomattox River,

a willow-fringed run that any country boy could jump.

His pursuers clung to the opposite bank.

Five p.m., April 7th, 1865.

"General Lee,

"the result of last week

"must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance.

"I regard it as my duty to shift from myself

"the responsibility of any further effusion of blood

"by asking of you the surrender of that portion

"of the Confederate States Army

"known as the Army of Northern Virginia."

Ulysses S. Grant.

On April 8th, Grant again flanked Lee's army

and captured two trainloads of supplies.

The Confederates were living on handfuls of parched corn.

That night, Lee and his weary lieutenants

gathered around a campfire

near the little village of Appomattox Courthouse.

"We met in the woods at his headquarters

"by a low-burning bivouac fire.

"There was no tent, no table, no chairs, no camp stools.

"On blankets spread upon the ground or on saddles at the roots of trees

"we sat around the great commander."

General John B. Gordon.

They were almost entirely surrounded,

outnumbered nearly five-to-one,

without hope of resupply or reinforcement.

"By sunrise, we had reached Appomattox Station,

"where we might cut Lee's retreat.

"Already we heard the sharp ring of the horse artillery.

"There was no mistake.

"Sheridan was square across the enemy's front, holding at bay

"all that was left of the proudest army of the Confederacy.

"It had come at last--

"the supreme hour."

April 9th was Palm Sunday.

Lee ordered Gordon to make one more attempt at breaking out.

At dawn, just outside Appomattox Courthouse,

Gordon's men drove federal cavalry from their positions

and swept forward to the crest of a hill.

Below them, a solid wall of blue was advancing--

the entire Union Army of the James.

"There is nothing left for me to do

"but to go and see General Grant,

"and I would rather die a thousand deaths."

Shortly before noon, Lee dispatched a letter

under a white flag into the Union lines.

Grant was resting in a field, nursing a blinding headache.

Suddenly, a horseman galloped up, at full speed, a reporter noted,

"waving his hat above his head and shouting at every jump."

Grant opened the envelope, looked at it,

then asked his friend, General John Rawlins, to read it aloud--

Lee would surrender.

Grant, himself, said nothing,

"betrayed no more emotion," a witness said,

than "last year's bird nest,"

but his headache had instantly disappeared.

"No one looked his comrade in the face.

"Finally Colonel Duff, Chief of Artillery,

"sprang upon a log and proposed three cheers.

"A feeble hurrah came from a few throats,

"when all broke down in tears."

Lee dispatched Colonel Charles Marshall to Appomattox Courthouse

to find a suitable building in which he and Grant might meet.

The streets were almost deserted.

Marshall stopped the first civilian he happened to see,

Wilmer McLean,

who reluctantly agreed to loan the armies his house for the occasion.

"By a singular coincidence,

"the meeting of Generals Lee and Grant

"took place in the house of Wilmer McLean,

"the same gentleman who, in 1861, at the Battle of Bull Run,

"had tendered his house to General Beauregard for headquarters.

"He removed from Manassas after the battle

"with the intention of seeking some quiet nook

"where the alarms of war could never find him."

"One o'clock came.

"I turned about.

"There behind me appeared a commanding form, superbly mounted,

"richly accoutered,

"of imposing bearing, noble countenance,

"with expression of deep sadness

"over-mastered by a deeper strength.

"It was no other than Robert E. Lee.

"Not long after appeared another form--plain,

"unassuming, simple, and familiar to our eyes,

"but as awe-inspiring as Lee in his splendor and sadness.

"It was Grant,

"sitting his saddle with the ease of a born master,

"taking no notice of anything,

"all his faculties gathered into intense thought.

"He seemed greater than I had ever seen him,

"a look as of another world about him."

Lee arrived at the McLean house first,

magnificent in a crisp gray uniform,

an engraved sword at his side.

"I have probably to be General Grant's prisoner," he explained to an aide,

"and thought I must make my best appearance."

He waited half an hour for Grant to arrive.

The Union commander wore a private's dirty jacket.

His boots and trousers were splattered with mud.

He had no sword.

The two commanders shook hands.

"What general Lee's feelings were, I do not know.

"As he was a man of much dignity

"with an impassible face, his feelings were entirely concealed

"from my observation.

"But my own feelings were sad and depressed.

"I felt like anything

"rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe

"who had fought so long and valiantly

"and had suffered so much for a cause,

"though that cause was, I believe,

"one of the worst for which people ever fought."

Grant reminded Lee that they had met once before during the Mexican war.

Lee said he had not remembered what Grant looked like.

"Our conversation grew so pleasant

"that I almost forgot the object of the meeting.

"General Lee called my attention to the object."

They knew each other.

Grant remembered Lee very well.

Lee didn't quite remember Grant.

That was understandable

from the time that they were acquainted back in the early days,

but I think it was the sensitivity that the...

the two men had for each other and

for the moment;

enormous dignity, and yet,

the necessary informality--

Grant not wanting to get to the point

too quickly;

Lee bringing him up shortly

to the point of why they're together;

Lee dressed

in his last good uniform;

Grant apologizing

that he was rushing from the field and didn't have

time to change;

the scribe being unable to

hold the pen steady,

and having it taken by another soldier;

the...

that--from Lee's point of view--awful moment,

and from Grant's point of view, glorious moment, and yet for the two of them,

a sad and quiet moment;

and Lee taking his leave and

doffing his hat from Traveller and

riding back to his troops

after securing

those reasonable terms.

It was the-- it was the beginning of the unification of the country.

The terms Grant offered were simple and generous:

Confederate officers could keep their side-arms and personal possessions;

officers and men who owned their own horses

could keep them, too.

It was planting season.

Grant asked Lee how many men he had

and if they needed any rations.

Lee said he no longer knew the size of his army,

but he was sure all his men were hungry.

Grant offered 25,000 rations.

"This will have the best effect upon my men.

"It will be very gratifying and do much toward

"conciliating our people."

Colonel Ely S. Parker, a Seneca Indian,

and a member of Grant's staff,

inscribed the articles of surrender for the two commanders to sign.

The two men shook hands again.

Lee left the house, mounted Traveller,

and started back toward his army.

The Union soldiers began to cheer.

Grant ordered them to stop.

"The confederates are now our prisoners," he explained,

"and we do not want to exult over their downfall.

"The war is over.

"The rebels are our countrymen again."

Lee's men lined the road to his camp.

"As he approached, we could see the reins hanging loose,

"and his head was sunk low on his breast.

"As the men began to cheer, he raised his head, and, hat in hand,

"he passed by, his face flushed, his eyes ablaze."

"As he passed,

"they raised their heads and looked upon him with swimming eyes.

"Those who could find voice said good-bye.

"Those who could not speak

"passed their hands gently over the sides of Traveller."

"If one army drank the joy of victory

"and the other the bitter draught of defeat,

"it was a joy moderated by the recollection of the cost

"at which it had been purchased

"and a defeat mollified

"by the consciousness of many triumphs.

"If the victors could recall a Malvern Hill, an Antietam,

"a Gettysburg, a Five Forks,

"the vanquished could recall a Manassas, a Fredericksburg,

"a Chancellorsville, a Cold Harbor."

A crowd of soldiers waited in front of Lee's tent.

"Boys," he told them,

"I have done the best I could for you.

"Go home, now,

"and if you make as good citizens as you have soldiers,

"you will do well,

"and I shall always be proud of you.

"Good-bye,

"and God bless you all."

He turned and disappeared into his tent.

The formal surrender came three days later.

General John B. Gordon,

shot through the face and wounded four more times

in the service of the Confederacy,

led 20,000 men toward the Union lines for the last time--

not to fight, but to stack their arms and surrender their battle flags.

There to receive them

was Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain,

himself wounded six times for the Union.

Promoted on the field at Petersburg near death,

he had somehow survived.

"On they come with the old swinging route step and swaying battle flags.

"Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood--

"thin, worn, and famished, but erect,

"and with eyes looking level into ours,

"waking memories that bound us together as no other bond.

"Was not such manhood to be welcomed back

"into the Union so tested and assured?

"On our part, not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum,

"not a cheer, nor word, nor whisper of vainglorying,

"nor motion of man,

"but an awed stillness, rather, and breath-holding,

"as if it were the passing of the dead."

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

Now, Chamberlain made an extraordinary gesture.

"Chamberlain called his men into line,

"and as my men marched in front of them,

"the veterans in blue gave a soldierly salute

"to those vanquished heroes,

"a token of respect from Americans to Americans."

General John B. Gordon.

"At the sound of that machine-like snap of arms,

"General Gordon started,

"then wheeled his horse, facing me,

"touching him gently with the spur so that the animal slightly reared,

"and, as he wheeled,

"horse and rider made one motion.

"The horses head swung down with a graceful bow,

"and General Gordon dropped his sword point to his toe

"in salutation."

In Washington, fireworks filled the sky.

A great crowd gathered around the White House and called for Lincoln.

He was too weary to make a formal speech

but asked the band to play Dixie.

"I have always thought it one of the best tunes I ever heard," he said.

The next day, Lincoln walked over to Alexander Gardner’s studio

at the corner of 7th and D Street

to sit for another portrait.

Somehow, the glass-plate negative cracked while being developed.

The photographer made a single print,

then threw the negative away.

Over the next four years,

there would be plenty of time to make more Lincoln portraits.

Just a few blocks away,

a friend found John Wilkes Booth alone in his darkened room

and asked him if he wanted to get a drink.

"Yes," said Booth, who was now drinking a quart of brandy a day,

"anything to drive away the blues."