Original production of "the civil war"
was made possible by generous contributions
from these funders.
And by the corporation for public broadcasting and by
contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you,
thank you.
Corporate funding for this special 25th anniversary
presentation was provided by.
Before thousands fell on the battlefield,
before millions were freed and before a country
forged its identity... A nation declared a new
birth of freedom, rededicating itself to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
Bank of America is proud to sponsor "the civil war,"
a film by Ken burns,
newly restored for it's 25th anniversary.
There's a photograph I'm very fond of.
It shows 3 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 6 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 1, 1863,
it would be in the most ordinary of places.
For 3 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 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.
21,000 mounted men clashed along the Rappahannock
for 12 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 3 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 16, Lee's advance 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.
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, wagons, 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 1,
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 Broadhead.
Every confederate and union division in the area
now converged on Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
By midafternoon,
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 landscape blind.
And people would come up to him in the field
all through those days, "can you tell me where Stuart is?
Have you seen my cavalry?"
Very strange thing for a commander to have to ask.
So when Stuart arrived,
all he had to show for all this
was 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.
He 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 broadhead.
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 35-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 1/2 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.
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 1/2 hour, I could convert little round top
"into a Gibraltar that I could hold against
10 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.
4 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,
"9 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 10 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."
360 Maine men now took cover behind boulders.
They had less than 10 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, 3 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 5 times.
5 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, 1/3 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.
"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 3 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 3 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 equalled,
"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 50 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 47 survived unhurt.
82% had fallen in less than 5 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 19, 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 uneasy and by no means exultant.
"I fear we are too hopeful.
We shall see tomorrow."
Sallie broadhead.
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.
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 rifle 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 pummelled
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.
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 23-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.
There's scarcely a trained soldier
who didn't know it was a mistake at the time it was done
except possibly Pickett 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,
a real one,
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 30 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, "master 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, 3 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 1/2 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, Barreland 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 10 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.
11 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 5 feet apart.
"There are bayonet thrusts, sabre 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
and 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.
6,500 men had fallen or been captured,
half of those who marched out of the woods.
All 15 regimental commanders had been hit.
So had 16 of 17 field officers,
3 brigadier generals, and 8 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 1/3 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 10 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 McCreary.
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 17 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 1863.
The guns are laid. The troops are lined up.
The flags are already out of their cases
and ready to be unfurled,
but it hasn'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 60 men left.
By the end of the battle, there were only 3.
"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 26, 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 5 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 6
nursed 1,333 wounded men in her private hospital
and kept all but 73 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 4 years
and 19 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 and 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 48 days of siege,
on July 4,
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 81 years.
"I found for my substitute
"a big Dutch boy of 20 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 20 and 45 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 32 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.
149 men were called for the new draft.
42 never showed up.
33 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 12,
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 3 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 14, 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 Willa negro fight,
tell him yes."
Wendell Phillips.
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.
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.
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 18, just 3 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 90 years
to the white Yankees."
40% 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 very hard feeling
against the white officers of black regiments.
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 23 blacks awarded the medal of honor,
though he had to wait 37 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.
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.
85% of the eligible black male population
had signed on.
180,000 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 5 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 10 days, he drove Bragg 80 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, like all Indian words,
is interpreted to mean the river of death.
God knows what it really means.
Chickamauga was a horrendous battle,
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's a great battle.
At 8 A.M. on the morning on September 18,
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 6-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 24.
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 2, 1863,
a 19-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 3, 1863.
"It is now just 21 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 begin 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 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 19, 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 87 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."
Corporate funding for this special 25th
anniversary presentation of the civil war was provided by.
Before thousands fell on the battlefield,
before millions were freed and before a country
forged its identity... A nation declared a new
birth of freedom, rededicating itself to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
Bank of America is proud to sponsor "the civil war,"
a film by Ken burns,
newly restored for it's 25th anniversary.
Original production of "the civil war"
was made possible by generous contributions
from these funders.
And by the corporation for public broadcasting.
And by contributions to your PBS station from
viewers like you, thank you.