[00:00] It's important to us as Americans today
[00:05] because by all historical rights, we
[00:08] shouldn't be here.
[00:11] By all historical rights, the Civil War
[00:13] should have destroyed us as a nation. By
[00:16] all historical rights, the skeptics, the
[00:20] aristocrats, the despots
[00:23] should have rejoiced and should have
[00:26] watched the American democracy destroy
[00:29] itself.
[00:38] Yet nearly 150 years after the defining
[00:42] conflict in United States history, many
[00:45] stories of our civil war remain untold.
[00:52] Gettysburg,
[00:54] Bull Run, and Tedum
[00:57] familiar battles fought in the east.
[01:05] But hundreds of miles from the opposing
[01:07] capitals of Washington and Richmond,
[01:10] another series of campaigns were fought.
[01:15] These on the great expanse of lands
[01:17] between the Appalachian and the
[01:19] Mississippi River,
[01:22] [music]
[01:23] lands then considered to be the West.
[01:28] I think in our popular memory of the
[01:31] civil war, we tend to focus a lot on the
[01:33] east, on some of the battles in the
[01:35] east, but in fact, one could easily
[01:38] argue that the civil war was won in the
[01:41] west.
[01:44] It was where this Union Army managed to
[01:48] bisect the Confederacy, taking the
[01:50] Mississippi River.
[01:52] So if we want to understand the full
[01:54] impact of this war on the people,
[01:58] you have to understand what went on in
[02:00] the west. [music]
[02:05] [music]
[02:11] [music]
[02:20] It is a nation born
[02:23] of war.
[02:31] Emboldened by the idea that all men are
[02:35] created equal, American colonists unite
[02:40] to fight their British rulers.
[02:45] In a world dominated by kings and
[02:47] tyrants, [music]
[02:48] the American Revolution gives birth to a
[02:51] noble experiment in democracy. [music]
[02:55] SHAW THESE UP. SHAW THESE UP. PACK THAT
[02:57] DOWN. DIG THAT DIRT. TOTE THAT BAR. LIFT
[03:00] THAT BAIL. BETTER. BETTER. BUT I'M GOOD
[03:02] ENOUGH.
[03:04] Slavery is [music] the ugly exception to
[03:06] the cries of liberty
[03:08] at the country's founding.
[03:10] Move along now. Move along. Break your
[03:12] backs. I'll break them for you. save it.
[03:15] David,
[03:16] one way [music] to understand the irony
[03:18] or the paradox of how this could be a
[03:21] nation built on freedom [music] and yet
[03:24] keep people in unfreedom or in slavery
[03:27] is to realize that many of these white
[03:30] Americans didn't [music] see that as any
[03:32] sort of conflict at all. In fact, uh in
[03:35] their mind, these revolutionary
[03:37] principles only applied to white people.
[03:46] The idea that all men are created
[03:47] [music] equal was not a jarring
[03:49] contradiction for slaveholders and for
[03:52] most Americans in the 18th as well as
[03:55] the 19th century. [snorts]
[03:59] To our sensibilities [music] today, it's
[04:01] something that almost impossible for us
[04:04] to imagine [music] how people could
[04:06] reconcile or live with that. But they
[04:08] did. and they did so really with with
[04:11] ease.
[04:13] Many slaveholders regard their property
[04:16] as childlike, [music]
[04:21] although we think of [music]
[04:22] African-Ameans as human beings. Now, in
[04:26] the 18th century, there was scientific
[04:28] [music] evidence that proved they were
[04:31] the missing link between [music] animals
[04:34] and human beings.
[04:37] By the 1800s,
[04:39] Americans could point to the research of
[04:41] French scientist George Cuvier, then
[04:44] considered one of the world's great
[04:46] minds in the field of zoologology.
[04:50] Cuier was fascinated with a woman from
[04:52] South Africa named Sarah Bartman.
[04:56] Known throughout England and France as
[04:58] the hot and tot Venus, the large woman
[05:02] is displayed in a traveling sideshow
[05:04] that describes her as a phenomenon of
[05:06] nature.
[05:08] Upon her death, QVA's autopsy report
[05:11] concludes that Bartman was a species
[05:14] closer to the great apes than humans.
[05:18] And so when you have science that proves
[05:22] through evidence, through experimental
[05:24] research that African people are in fact
[05:27] subhuman or at least inferior, it gives
[05:31] the contradiction of democracy and
[05:34] slavery some weight because these people
[05:36] are not citizens. These people are not
[05:38] full human beings.
[05:44] The first Africans landed on the shores
[05:46] of North America in 1619,
[05:49] a year before the arrival of the
[05:51] pilgrims.
[05:54] By the time the Constitution was
[05:56] ratified in 1789,
[05:58] the new United States had a [music]
[06:00] slave population of almost 700,000.
[06:05] Yet many, particularly northern
[06:08] religious and political leaders,
[06:10] recognized the moral conflict between
[06:12] slavery and liberty.
[06:15] In 1808,
[06:17] Congress [music] bans the importation of
[06:19] slaves.
[06:21] At the time of the writing of the
[06:23] Declaration of Independence and [music]
[06:25] the Constitution,
[06:27] it was relatively easy to for the
[06:28] founders to think that slavery was going
[06:31] to go away because [music] slavery as an
[06:33] institution was declining. Well, then in
[06:36] the [music] 1790s, the cotton gin was
[06:39] invented.
[06:44] Suddenly from the institution [music]
[06:46] declining as it had been before it began
[06:49] to increase.
[06:52] The international slave trade is
[06:55] replaced with a thriving domestic slave
[06:57] trade. It becomes the [music] lifeblood
[07:00] of the cotton economy.
[07:03] The rise of cotton changes the face
[07:05] [music] of the nation. It changes the
[07:09] conditions of [music] life for black
[07:11] people across the United States.
[07:16] [music]
[07:18] 75% of the South's cotton is shipped
[07:20] abroad,
[07:23] most of it to England and France.
[07:26] Cotton is the [music] white gold of the
[07:28] transatlantic economy. Cotton was for
[07:31] the 19th century economy, for the
[07:32] industrial revolution, what oil is today
[07:35] for the world economy that we live in.
[07:39] Southerners needed to make the profits
[07:42] that they needed to make from that
[07:44] cotton. But how to do it? You need a
[07:46] cheap labor force. If you can enslave
[07:49] that labor force, then you're getting it
[07:51] at the cheapest rates possible.
[07:55] By the time of the Civil War, the
[07:57] enslaved [music]
[07:58] people providing that labor are valued
[08:00] at about $3 billion.
[08:03] That's more than the combined value of
[08:05] all the railroads, factories, and banks
[08:08] then in America.
[08:11] And yet, it is not only Southerners who
[08:13] benefit from the cotton windfalls.
[08:17] Northern banks have a strangle hold on
[08:19] many southern planters.
[08:21] Cotton mills, shipping interests, even
[08:25] insurance companies in the [music] north
[08:26] reap great profits from America's white
[08:29] gold.
[08:31] The nation's economy was built on the
[08:34] back of slaves.
[08:38] This was not a [music] southern issue.
[08:41] It was a national issue and it was an
[08:44] issue that was not [music] a problem
[08:46] because the economy of slavery and the
[08:49] economy of wage labor in the north were
[08:52] compatible. They worked brilliantly
[08:54] together. The raw materials [music]
[08:57] produced by the hands of slaves fueled
[08:59] not just the rural south, [music] but it
[09:02] also helped energize a growing
[09:05] industrial north.
[09:06] All right, boys. We got a fresh load of
[09:08] brick. As soon as you done that break
[09:10] up, we need
[09:10] Let's tell a terrible truth that most
[09:13] northern whites, although they lived in
[09:15] where what were legally ostensibly free
[09:18] states, were thoroughly committed to
[09:20] white racial supremacy. as any random
[09:24] sampling you might take of slave holders
[09:25] in the southern states where slavery was
[09:27] legal.
[09:29] Take a census of black people in the
[09:32] north, free black people in the north,
[09:34] and you will find that only in a handful
[09:36] of locations did they have anything even
[09:38] approaching civil equality.
[09:41] For northern whites, slavery was a
[09:44] problem. Not because it was an act of
[09:46] racial injustice, but because slavery
[09:48] had permitted black people into North
[09:51] America. Northern whites wanted a nation
[09:55] that was in effect a sandbox for white
[09:58] people only.
[10:00] Northern states might be free states,
[10:02] they were also anti-lack states.
[10:05] A powerful minority called abolitionists
[10:08] preach of the evils of slavery.
[10:11] Most northerners denounce the
[10:13] abolitionists as paras and extremists.
[10:17] But by the 1850s, the abolitionist
[10:19] message begins to resonate with many who
[10:22] begin to rally around the anti-slavery
[10:24] [music]
[10:24] cause.
[10:26] And so faced with that challenge, these
[10:28] southern slaveholders begin to develop
[10:32] their own moral justification for
[10:34] slavery beginning in the 1830s. And they
[10:37] start talking about slavery as a
[10:38] positive good. that slavery is something
[10:41] that is redeeming the people of African
[10:44] descent and that we as southern
[10:46] slaveholders are taking care of and
[10:49] civilizing these people.
[10:52] So it's it's a it's a moral issue for
[10:55] them. It's an economic issue for them
[10:57] and we also can't forget it's a social
[11:00] racial issue for them. If you get rid of
[11:04] slavery, you get rid of the structure
[11:07] that is guaranteeing all white people in
[11:10] southern society status.
[11:14] And yet the catalyst for civil war comes
[11:16] not from north or south, but rather
[11:20] west.
[11:23] The United States is expanding. And so
[11:26] you there's a need for more land, for
[11:29] more cotton, and also for more slaves.
[11:34] By 1850, a nation of 13 original
[11:36] colonies has grown to 31 states.
[11:40] America stretches westward, not only to
[11:43] the Mississippi River, but all the way
[11:45] to the Pacific Ocean.
[11:48] A newspaper [music] editor actually
[11:50] coined the term and he said it was the
[11:52] manifest destiny of [music] the United
[11:54] States to overspread the continent to
[11:56] spread liberty. But wait a minute, what
[11:58] about slavery? Is slavery going to
[12:00] spread? We spread liberty. Are we going
[12:02] to spread slavery, too? Does slavery
[12:04] follow the flag?
[12:07] Southern politicians demand to not only
[12:09] preserve slavery, but to expand it.
[12:14] Political compromises in 1820, 1850, and
[12:17] then again in 1854 provide temporary
[12:20] solutions. But in the end, western
[12:23] expansion disrupts the balance [music]
[12:25] in Congress between free and slave
[12:28] states.
[12:30] A prelude of the bloodletting to come
[12:33] erupts in Kansas territory, where voters
[12:35] battle over whether their new state will
[12:37] be free or slave.
[12:41] Suddenly in 1860, a candidate is elected
[12:45] to the presidency who is unashamedly,
[12:49] unapologetically
[12:50] opposed to slavery. And when Southerners
[12:53] hear this, they hear the death nail
[12:56] ringing for them.
[12:59] Abraham Lincoln from Illinois is the
[13:03] candidate of the newly formed Republican
[13:05] party. He is elected without receiving a
[13:08] single electoral vote from the South.
[13:12] Lincoln's priority is to preserve the
[13:15] Union.
[13:17] The president-elect vows to not
[13:19] interfere with slavery in states where
[13:21] it already exists.
[13:24] That does little to comfort those in the
[13:26] South who fear Lincoln will use the
[13:28] federal government to trample states
[13:30] rights.
[13:32] For white southerners, with Lincoln's
[13:34] election, they saw the beginning of the
[13:36] end. They believed that a Republican
[13:38] party committed to stopping the
[13:40] expansion of slavery in the territories
[13:42] would spell their demise.
[13:47] They saw Lincoln as a wolf in sheep's
[13:50] clothing.
[13:53] Lincoln is [music] an arrow pointed at
[13:55] the heart of their entire social and
[13:57] economic system.
[14:06] [music]
[14:09] Come on now. Nice and tight. Yeah, I
[14:11] [music] got it. All right, that's good.
[14:13] That's good.
[14:23] Well, there were about 3.9 million
[14:25] enslaved people in uh the US in 1860.
[14:28] And that ended up being about 40% of the
[14:31] Confederate population. So, that's a
[14:34] significant proportion.
[14:36] I'm thirsty. I want some water.
[14:37] I'm going to tell you something right
[14:39] now. You remember what happened? The
[14:40] last one of y'all that got up here
[14:41] running your mouth at me. Do you
[14:43] remember that?
[14:44] Now, if you break the Confederacy down
[14:46] by region, you can see that it's in the
[14:48] deep south. uh where you see the
[14:51] greatest percentage of that slave
[14:53] population.
[14:55] Now you stop right there. I told you you
[14:58] was last.
[15:00] And so it's not really a coincidence
[15:02] that you see in those deep southern
[15:04] states are the first to secede.
[15:06] Yeah. You go ahead and you take you a
[15:07] drink this time.
[15:12] That's what I'd expect out of you, boy.
[15:13] Just wasting water. That'll be the last
[15:16] water you get today.
[15:20] [music]
[15:21] Just 2 months after Lincoln's election,
[15:24] Mississippi, the largest cotton [music]
[15:26] producing state, join South Carolina and
[15:29] secedes from the Union. Within a month,
[15:33] five more states from the Deep South
[15:35] follow.
[15:37] Jefferson Davis, [music]
[15:38] who recently resigned his US Senate
[15:40] seat, is chosen president of the new
[15:44] [music]
[15:45] Confederate States of America.
[15:49] Davis agrees with the official
[15:50] declaration made by the Mississippi
[15:52] secession delegates who defend secession
[15:55] by stating,
[15:58] "Our position is thoroughly identified
[16:00] with the institution of slavery, the
[16:03] greatest material interest in the world.
[16:05] Its labor supplies the product which
[16:08] constitutes by far the largest and most
[16:10] important portions of the commerce of
[16:12] the earth."
[16:14] These products are peculiar to the
[16:16] climate. verging on the tropical regions
[16:19] and by an imperious law of nature. None
[16:22] but the black race can bear exposure to
[16:24] the tropical sun. These products have
[16:27] become necessities of the world and a
[16:29] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce
[16:31] and civilization.
[16:34] That blow has been long aimed at the
[16:36] institution and was at the point of
[16:38] reaching its consummation.
[16:41] There was no choice left us but
[16:43] submission to the mandates of abolition
[16:45] or a dissolution of the union whose
[16:48] principles had been subverted to work
[16:50] out our ruin.
[16:56] One of the most poignant lines says we
[16:59] are thoroughly interested in maintaining
[17:02] the institution of slavery
[17:05] because it's one of the greatest
[17:06] benefits of mankind.
[17:11] And so that's an important
[17:14] acknowledgment of how vital slavery was
[17:18] not just to the state but also to that
[17:21] region that they made no bones about it.
[17:24] Slavery was the central issue of the
[17:28] civil war.
[17:33] The belief that liberty should be
[17:35] extended to all people regardless of
[17:37] class, color, or gender. that simply was
[17:39] not within thinking of most antibellum
[17:42] Americans and for slaveholders.
[17:45] They believed that liberty and freedom
[17:47] was actually depended upon the
[17:50] enslavement of African-Americans.
[17:53] So, uh, for white southerners on the eve
[17:56] of the Civil War, they could make the
[17:59] bold claim that they were fighting for
[18:01] their liberty and feel no remorse and
[18:04] feel no tension, feel no contradiction
[18:07] in the fact that they thought that that
[18:09] liberty was depended upon fighting and
[18:12] dying for the enslavement of
[18:14] African-Americans.
[18:18] If we're talking about uh politics, the
[18:20] political tensions uh that erupted uh
[18:24] sectional tensions and whatnot are
[18:26] rooted in slavery. The economic
[18:29] differences were rooted in slavery. And
[18:33] the states [clears throat] right
[18:34] argument, well, we're talking about a
[18:35] state's right to do what? The southern
[18:37] state seceded to protect slavery.
[18:42] [music]
[18:42] 85 years after declaring itself
[18:44] independent from Great Britain,
[18:47] America's grand experiment in democracy
[18:50] is about to be put to its greatest test.
[18:57] April 12th, 1861,
[19:01] Charleston, South Carolina.
[19:05] Carrying out instructions from Jefferson
[19:07] Davis, Confederate forces bombard Fort
[19:10] Sumpter, forcing the surrender of the
[19:12] Union garrison. The next day,
[19:15] President Lincoln responds by calling
[19:17] for 75,000 troops. That order convinces
[19:21] Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and
[19:25] Tennessee to join the Confederacy.
[19:28] Lincoln refuses to recognize the
[19:30] Confederate government and instead
[19:33] considers the seceding states to be in
[19:35] rebellion.
[19:37] As an Illinois congressman, Lincoln had
[19:40] said, "A house divided cannot stand."
[19:46] Now, as president, Lincoln must use
[19:49] force to unite a divided nation or watch
[19:52] the United States be dissolved.
[19:56] There was the belief by many that um
[20:00] that there would not be um be a war and
[20:03] that certainly if there was going to be
[20:05] any sort of bloodshed um it would not be
[20:09] uh very extended.
[20:11] One or two engagements and both sides
[20:14] would come to their senses.
[20:17] Both sides believe the war would be over
[20:19] within 90 days. There would be little
[20:21] bloodshed. Uh, one politician stated
[20:24] that the amount of blood shed could be
[20:25] mopped up with a handkerchief.
[20:31] So when the war begins, you have men who
[20:33] are fighting for [music]
[20:34] preservation of the Union and you have
[20:36] men who are fighting for their homes,
[20:38] defending it from an what they perceive
[20:40] as an invasion.
[20:42] But they had no idea.
[20:45] They thought that it was going to be an
[20:46] adventure. Be home by Christmas. Oh,
[20:49] Brown Rosie, the rose of Alabama, the
[20:53] sweet tobacco pos.
[20:56] And what they found out is they ended up
[20:58] in camps
[21:00] dying of disease. Um,
[21:04] in incredible boredom,
[21:07] loneliness, hot and cold, punctuated by
[21:11] these incredible conflicts.
[21:19] The Union hopes to bring a quick end to
[21:21] the war by attacking a Confederate force
[21:23] near a crossroad in Virginia called
[21:25] Manasses Junction.
[21:30] Instead,
[21:31] federal troops led by Brigadier General
[21:34] Irvin McDow are routed.
[21:38] [screaming]
[21:41] The Union force scurries back to
[21:43] Washington only 30 m to the north.
[21:51] The battle of Bull Run is the first
[21:54] major battle in the east.
[21:57] But Union leaders realize that the
[21:59] ultimate defeat of the Confederacy means
[22:02] taking the fight beyond [music] the
[22:04] Appalachian.
[22:06] We underestimate the importance of the
[22:08] western theater at our peril because in
[22:11] the west [music] you have the single
[22:14] most important economic highway of the
[22:17] North American continent and that is the
[22:20] great Mississippi Valley. [music]
[22:23] If you wanted to put a finger on the
[22:25] most important commercial confluence,
[22:28] [music]
[22:29] the most important economic lifeline of
[22:32] the American Republic, then it flowed
[22:35] through the West.
[22:37] In Virginia, the [music] east west
[22:40] flowing rivers are obstacles. But in the
[22:43] West, they are avenues.
[22:46] One Union general writes, "Whatever
[22:48] nation gets control [music] of the Ohio,
[22:50] Mississippi, and Missouri rivers will
[22:53] control the continent." [snorts]
[22:59] In February 1862,
[23:02] 15,000 Union soldiers land along the
[23:05] banks of the Tennessee River.
[23:10] It is an invasion to end a rebellion.
[23:16] [music]
[23:17] The 652mm Tennessee runs parallel to the
[23:21] Mississippi further to the west.
[23:24] [music]
[23:25] It cuts through the heart of the western
[23:27] Confederacy
[23:29] from the Ohio [music] River through the
[23:31] crucial border state of Kentucky and
[23:33] into the state of Tennessee.
[23:36] For nearly 200 miles, it even flows
[23:39] through northern Alabama.
[23:43] [music]
[23:44] Like the Mississippi and Ohio rivers,
[23:46] the Tennessee is wide enough for
[23:48] transport steamers [music] to quickly
[23:50] deliver troops and supplies.
[23:53] For the Union, this campaign will be a
[23:56] test for [music] the Navy's ironclad
[23:58] gunboats, state-of-the-art warships.
[24:06] The coming battle will also be a test
[24:08] for a littleknown graduate of West
[24:10] Point.
[24:12] A soldier with an average record whom
[24:14] many have unfairly branded a drunk.
[24:19] General Ulissiz S. Grant is the
[24:22] unlikeliest of heroes.
[24:24] Yet he will emerge from the west as the
[24:27] greatest soldier and general in the
[24:29] entire Union Army.
[24:32] Grant's orders, seize two strategic
[24:36] forts guarding the Confederate interior.
[24:39] Fort Henry overlooks the Tennessee
[24:41] River. 12 mi east, Fort Donaldelsson
[24:44] guards the Cumberland, a river leading
[24:47] to the Tennessee capital of Nashville.
[24:50] Those
[24:52] forts are important because it was hoped
[24:56] [music] by the Confederates that they
[24:58] would stop Union gunboats,
[25:00] Union [music] River boats carrying
[25:02] troops and supplies from penetrating
[25:04] farther up the Tennessee River and up
[25:07] the Cumberland River.
[25:13] On February 6th, naval gunboats pound
[25:16] Fort Henry into submission,
[25:19] but the Confederate defensive position
[25:20] at Fort Donaldelsson is much stronger.
[25:22] [music]
[25:24] Two river batteries containing more than
[25:26] a dozen heavy guns [music]
[25:28] point northward toward a sharp bend of
[25:30] the Cumberland.
[25:33] On February [music] 14th, Union
[25:36] ironclads fire hundreds of iron
[25:39] Valentines into Fort Donaldelsson.
[25:42] But this time, the Navy is decisively
[25:45] repulsed.
[25:48] Meanwhile, Grant's force of 27,000 moves
[25:52] overland and approaches the landward
[25:55] side of Fort Donaldelsson.
[25:58] Grant later summed up his idea of the
[26:01] art of war
[26:03] in a rather pathy way. He said, "Get at
[26:06] the enemy as quick as you can. Hit him
[26:09] as hard as you can, and keep moving on."
[26:14] The next morning, Grant's art of war
[26:16] philosophy is put to a serious test.
[26:23] Confederates inside Fort Donaldelsson
[26:25] attempt to break out and bust through
[26:28] Grant's lines.
[26:33] After furious fighting in the ravines
[26:35] and the steep terrain surrounding the
[26:36] fort, Grant forces the Confederates back
[26:40] inside Fort Donaldelsson.
[26:45] Confederate Brigadier General Simon
[26:46] Buckner asks for terms of surrender.
[26:50] Grant's response
[26:52] unconditional
[26:54] and immediate.
[26:56] I think what it what this unconditional
[26:58] surrender demand tells us about Grant is
[27:02] his determination.
[27:04] We've got a general here who's not going
[27:06] to fool around, who's going to prosecute
[27:08] this [music] war and is going to end it
[27:10] in a way that it ought to be ended.
[27:14] At Fort Donaldelsson, 12,000
[27:16] Confederates surrender and the Northern
[27:19] Press anoints a national hero.
[27:23] But Grant with his initials US Grant,
[27:27] unconditional surrender Grant, it came
[27:29] together brilliantly. Ulissiz Srant's
[27:32] victories, Fort Henry and Fort
[27:35] Donaldson, they captivated a northern
[27:38] nation craving good news, especially in
[27:41] the wake of what had happened at First
[27:43] Manasses.
[27:48] Just 9 days after the Confederate
[27:49] surrender, Nashville, the capital of
[27:52] Tennessee, falls to Union troops.
[27:56] More importantly, the victory enables
[27:59] Union forces to [music] seize control of
[28:01] the lower Tennessee River, the strategic
[28:04] pathway leading into the Confederate
[28:05] [music] heartland.
[28:08] Confederate forces in the West respond
[28:10] by abandoning Kentucky and Middle
[28:12] Tennessee, retreating [music] south into
[28:14] West Tennessee, northern Alabama, and
[28:17] Mississippi.
[28:21] You have to wonder how soon Confederates
[28:23] in deep south states like Mississippi
[28:25] and Alabama thought that they would have
[28:28] Union troops on their soil.
[28:31] March 1862,
[28:34] the Federals lease a fleet of steamboats
[28:36] to transport Grant's troops deeper into
[28:38] Tennessee.
[28:40] Over 12 dozen steam southward, equipped
[28:43] with everything an army needs to mount a
[28:45] major campaign.
[28:47] A journey requiring weeks overland now
[28:50] takes only days on the Tennessee.
[28:54] The Union forces unload at Pittsburgh
[28:56] Landing, where roads provide easy access
[28:59] to rail lines crucial to the Confederate
[29:01] war effort.
[29:08] By early April 1862,
[29:11] Grant's force of 48,000 stretches across
[29:15] a high wooded plateau in southwest
[29:17] Tennessee.
[29:21] Grant's most inexperienced troops camp
[29:23] over 2 miles from Pittsburgh Landing
[29:26] near a simple Methodist meeting house
[29:28] named Shiloh. Roughly translated the
[29:32] Hebrew word Shiloh means a place of
[29:36] peace.
[29:38] Grant's mission sever two vital western
[29:42] Confederate railroads which intersect at
[29:44] the small town of Corinth, Mississippi.
[29:48] A lot of the the federal high command
[29:50] will talk about how we have to go down
[29:51] to Corinth. CF Smith talks about we have
[29:54] to route them out like you would a
[29:55] badger out of a hole.
[29:57] Running through Corinth is the South's
[30:00] only complete rail connection linking
[30:02] the Mississippi to the Atlantic.
[30:05] One Confederate official called it the
[30:07] vertebrae of the Confederacy. So that
[30:10] that's what makes Shiloh, I think, so
[30:13] important.
[30:13] [music]
[30:13] And if you're a Confederate,
[30:16] you know that if the Union captures
[30:20] Corinth and captures control of those
[30:22] railroads, [music] your supply situation
[30:25] is difficult. Your movement of troops is
[30:27] difficult. Your railroad system, which
[30:30] isn't very good anyway, is going to be
[30:32] even worse.
[30:37] Grant knows a large enemy force has
[30:40] gathered to defend the Corinth Railroad
[30:41] junction, but he is unaware those same
[30:44] Confederates [music] are now marching
[30:46] forward to attack him.
[30:52] General Albert Sydney Johnston [music]
[30:55] commands the Western Confederate Army.
[30:57] President Jefferson Davis boasts, "If
[31:00] Johnston is not [music] a general, then
[31:02] we have no general.
[31:07] For Johnston, it is a race against the
[31:09] clock.
[31:11] He has received intelligence that more
[31:13] Union troops will soon be joining Grant
[31:15] at Pittsburgh Landing.
[31:20] Marching Overland from Nashville to
[31:22] Shiloh is a [music] second Union Army,
[31:26] 35,000 soldiers under the command of
[31:28] General Don Carlos Buell.
[31:33] The opportunity that is presented to
[31:35] [music] Johnson, of course, is to hit
[31:37] one at a time. And this is not rocket
[31:38] science. You don't need a military
[31:39] academy education to figure out that you
[31:41] want to fight one army instead of two.
[31:44] Johnston has a bold plan to destroy
[31:47] Grant's army before Bule's forces
[31:50] arrive.
[31:51] Surprise and turn Grant's left flank.
[31:55] Cut off his line of retreat to the
[31:56] Tennessee River. Pin his army against
[31:59] the swampy lowlands of Owl Creek. force
[32:02] Grant to surrender.
[32:08] The Confederate advance toward Shiloh is
[32:11] troubled from the start.
[32:17] A spring storm turns crude roads into
[32:20] rivers of mud.
[32:24] A march which should have taken a single
[32:26] day to accomplish consumes three.
[32:32] In a coming battle, this delay will
[32:34] haunt Johnston and his Confederate army.
[32:47] [music]
[32:47] US Grant is under explicit orders from
[32:50] the Union Command. Do not advance
[32:52] [music] until Buell and his army arrive.
[32:56] Grant is convinced Johnston lacks the
[32:59] resolve and ability to attack.
[33:04] If Grant has a weakness at at this time
[33:06] in the war, it's that he doesn't always
[33:10] consider what his opposition will do.
[33:14] Johnston wouldn't be stupid enough to to
[33:17] leave those entrenchments at Corinth and
[33:20] march 20 miles and attack us in the
[33:22] open. Never happened. Never happened.
[33:27] 16-year-old Thomas Duncan from
[33:29] Mississippi is a courier for the
[33:32] Confederates.
[33:34] Riding out to a high point in front of
[33:36] our center,
[33:38] I hear the Union troops drilling in
[33:40] their encampment. The drum and F and the
[33:42] commands of the officers are plainly
[33:44] heard.
[33:47] It suddenly struck me.
[33:50] The Union Army is absolutely unaware of
[33:53] the presence of our army.
[34:08] [music]
[34:09] Brigadier General William Tecumpsa
[34:11] Sherman receives reports of large groups
[34:14] of Confederates, but he dismisses them
[34:16] as mere scouting parties. What the hell
[34:19] is this garbage? You people are staring.
[34:21] [music]
[34:21] The preceding year, Sherman had gotten
[34:23] in trouble for overestimating the number
[34:25] of Confederates he was facing. The
[34:28] newspapers had even reported that he was
[34:29] insane.
[34:33] So, in the days leading up to Shiloh,
[34:35] Sherman was very determined that he was
[34:38] not going to have that happen again.
[34:42] Just a mile beyond Sherman's camp is the
[34:45] leading edge of Johnston's 43,000
[34:48] [music]
[34:48] Confederates
[34:52] and they camp there [music] and some of
[34:54] them are even firing their weapons
[34:56] testing them and yet nobody pays that
[34:59] much attention to it. [music] And he
[35:01] said unto them, "When you pray, say, Our
[35:06] Father, which art in heaven,
[35:09] hallowed [music] be thy name. Thy
[35:11] kingdom come, thy will be done, as in
[35:14] heaven [music] so and on earth.
[35:17] Give us day by day."
[35:18] Most of the Confederates are like Thomas
[35:20] Duncan.
[35:21] Forgive us our sins. [music]
[35:23] Raw recruits who have never tasted
[35:26] battle. We also forgive everyone.
[35:30] As night came [music] home, we lay down
[35:32] in line of battle to rest and slumber,
[35:35] realizing the danger of the coming mourn
[35:38] [music]
[35:40] and the certainty that for many the next
[35:43] sunrise would be their [music] last on
[35:45] earth.
[35:58] Colonel Everett Peabody [music] commands
[36:00] a brigade on the Union front line.
[36:04] Unlike his superiors,
[36:06] Peabody believes the Confederate
[36:08] presence is more than scouting parties.
[36:12] Despite orders not to engage the enemy,
[36:15] Peabody [music] orders 250 men out on a
[36:18] pre-dawn patrol.
[36:26] Just after 5:00 a.m. they step onto the
[36:29] farm of James Freilley, some 2 mi
[36:32] southwest of Shiloh Church.
[36:54] They are the opening shots
[36:56] of what will become the first epic
[36:59] battle of the Civil War.
[37:05] After an hour,
[37:07] Peabody's troops withdraw from Freighy
[37:10] Field.
[37:14] [music]
[37:15] It wasn't really until about sunrise
[37:19] that it really became clear on the Union
[37:22] side that they were up against
[37:24] Johnston's whole army.
[37:27] [cheering]
[37:30] Johnston realizes that he has the
[37:33] opportunity to alter the course of the
[37:35] war. He says to his men, "Today we must
[37:38] conquer or perish.
[37:43] And there had been warning signs for
[37:45] days that the Confederates were were not
[37:48] just up to something. There was
[37:49] something big in the works.
[38:01] And when it exploded,
[38:04] I mean, just all hell breaks loose.
[38:08] And the Confederate attack
[38:11] is really like a sledgehammer.
[38:21] Colonel Peabody's superior is General
[38:23] Benjamin Apprentice.
[38:25] Colonel Peabody, report.
[38:27] Sir, all indications are that there's a
[38:29] sizable force of Confederates that are
[38:31] coming up from the Coran.
[38:32] Apprentice accuses the young colonel of
[38:34] violating orders and bringing on the
[38:37] engagement. I didn't bring on an
[38:39] engagement. The whole Confederate army's
[38:40] marching on me, sir.
[38:42] Prenice was furiously
[38:45] on your shoulder.
[38:45] This had been contrary to orders and
[38:48] Peabody had not gotten permission. And
[38:50] Prentice confronted Peabody and scolded
[38:53] him very severely for bringing on a
[38:56] fight.
[38:59] [cheering]
[38:59] Apprentice's heavily outnumbered
[39:01] division puts up stubborn resistance.
[39:05] But by 900 a.m.
[39:07] their defense crumbles.
[39:12] Killed while trying to rally his troops
[39:15] is Colonel Everett Peabody.
[39:18] In 4 hours of fighting at Shiloh, the
[39:22] Union suffers over 2,000 casualties.
[39:25] Half of Grant's soldiers at Shiloh have
[39:27] never been in combat.
[39:38] [music]
[39:43] There's that first time you get shot at
[39:48] and there's that [music] first time you
[39:49] realize that this is for real
[39:53] and that you could die. [music]
[39:58] You're seeing what artillery fire does
[40:00] to the [music] human body.
[40:04] You're seeing blood spilled in ways that
[40:07] that [music] you can't imagine.
[40:11] Those moments that really haunt men for
[40:15] the rest of their lives.
[40:18] This is some of the [music] experience
[40:20] in the woods around the Shiloh Church
[40:23] that morning is they're experiencing all
[40:26] the horrors of combat [music] for the
[40:28] first time. And you're seeing things
[40:30] that really violate all sense of
[40:33] decency.
[40:45] 18-year-old Leander Stillwell is a
[40:48] private with the 61st Illinois.
[40:51] I was astonished at our first retreat in
[40:53] the morning.
[40:55] It seemed to me we were forever
[40:57] disgraced. I keep thinking to myself,
[41:01] what will they say about this at home?
[41:11] Instead of advancing, many of the
[41:13] Confederates break ranks to ransack
[41:16] Union camps.
[41:18] Some have not eaten since leaving
[41:20] Corinth, Mississippi 3 days earlier.
[41:23] For many of the raw recruits, the spoils
[41:26] of war are too tempting to pass up.
[41:30] Johnston is infuriated [music] when he
[41:32] catches an officer plundering.
[41:35] Cut that down.
[41:37] To rally his men, Johnston [music] takes
[41:39] his own plunder, a simple tin cup.
[41:42] Let this be my fortune of the poor
[41:45] today.
[41:52] By midm morning, the Confederate advance
[41:55] reaches Shiloh Church.
[42:01] It is the scene of some of the most
[42:02] savage fighting for battle.
[42:07] Horses are screeching. Horses are dying.
[42:09] People are getting hit. They're
[42:11] screaming.
[42:14] They're calling for their mothers.
[42:16] They're calling on God.
[42:18] It just it's just mass confusion.
[42:23] Most soldiers engaged at Shiloh are
[42:26] between 18 and 30 years old. At a battle
[42:30] like Shiloh, they realize it's not all
[42:33] about adventure. It's not all about
[42:36] lofty concepts like honor and
[42:39] independence. They realize it's about
[42:42] killing. And for many of them, this is
[42:46] an uncomfortable to say the least
[42:49] realization.
[42:51] They don't easily transition into
[42:53] becoming killing machines. They have a
[42:56] great deal of ambivalence about
[42:58] shouldering these weapons and actually
[43:00] killing people.
[43:04] 16-year-old musician John Cocker arrived
[43:07] with his father, the commander of the
[43:10] 70th Ohio Infantry.
[43:14] John and his father become separated
[43:16] near Shiloh Church.
[43:25] Young cockro soon finds himself aiding
[43:27] the wounded.
[43:30] Near Shiloh Church, passing soldiers
[43:32] called for me to assist them.
[43:37] We carried the poor fellow to the rear
[43:39] and found there a scene of disorder.
[43:41] Have to say panic.
[43:48] The enemy began pressing closely and
[43:50] Shiloh Church was no more a desirable
[43:52] place for my military observations. I
[43:55] started towards the Tennessee River.
[43:59] [music]
[44:02] I had not proceeded more than a mile
[44:04] when I encountered General John
[44:06] MacArthur's Highland Brigade of Illinois
[44:08] troops.
[44:09] A chipper young lieutenant stopped me
[44:11] and asked where did I belong? I replied
[44:14] that [music] I belonged to Ohio. He said
[44:17] that Ohio was making a bad show of it,
[44:20] then asked if [music] I wanted to fight
[44:21] with them. I responded I was willing to
[44:24] take a temporary birth in his regiment.
[44:27] Thus, I became attached to company B of
[44:30] the 9th Illinois regiment.
[44:33] John Cochrell doesn't realize it, but he
[44:36] has joined a unit that will have the
[44:37] highest casualty rate of all Union
[44:40] regiments at Shiloh.
[44:43] In 5 hours of brutal fighting, the
[44:45] Confederates managed to overrun the
[44:47] forward Union camps. Fresh Union
[44:50] divisions move forward from Pittsburgh
[44:53] landing to help stop the onslaught.
[44:56] Johnston [music] personally supervises
[44:58] the Confederate right while General PGT
[45:02] Bogard oversees the left.
[45:05] By 11:00 a.m., the battle rages along a
[45:08] crooked 3mile front.
[45:13] US Grant has completely underestimated
[45:16] the Confederates.
[45:18] It is a mistake he will never make
[45:20] again.
[45:22] At noon, Grant orders Sherman to
[45:24] counterattack.
[45:34] You begin to see the Confederate attack
[45:36] start to splinter.
[45:42] They're not able to deal that that final
[45:45] lethal blow.
[45:48] The Confederate attack
[45:51] is beginning to lose a lot of its steam.
[45:54] After some of the most severe fighting
[45:56] at Shiloh, Sherman grudgingly gives
[45:59] ground.
[46:01] But their decimated divisions have
[46:03] bought Grant what he needs most,
[46:06] precious time.
[46:13] Adding to the Confederates woe at Shiloh
[46:16] is the hellish terrain itself.
[46:19] A morass of dense woods, thick
[46:22] undergrowth, and deep ravines through
[46:24] which they must advance.
[46:28] Most serious is the awful carnage.
[46:37] Earlier in the day at Rave Field, the
[46:40] Sixth Mississippi marched straight into
[46:42] a murderous Union crossfire.
[46:49] In mere moments, 300 of the regiment's
[46:53] 425 soldiers were cut down.
[46:57] The slaughter of the Sixth Mississippi
[47:00] is one of many such scenes repeated
[47:02] again and again at Shiloh.
[47:07] I think that the reason for the
[47:10] extremely high casualty list at Shiloh
[47:13] was simply that you had two sides that
[47:16] were very similar
[47:18] in the motivation
[47:20] and they were simply very determined to
[47:23] prevail and and not to be beaten.
[47:29] I think if they had been using short
[47:32] swords, they probably would have stood
[47:34] up against each other and hacked at each
[47:36] other until they had killed about that
[47:38] many of each other.
[47:42] Though staggered, the majority of
[47:44] Johnston's army continues to engage the
[47:46] Union left and right.
[47:49] Meanwhile, another fight erupts. This
[47:52] one in an oak thicket choking the center
[47:54] of the battlefield.
[48:00] Since midm morning, Union soldiers have
[48:03] been putting up a stubborn defense in
[48:05] the thick underbrush.
[48:09] And the Confederate soldiers hearing the
[48:11] Union bullets whistling through the
[48:12] thicket referred to the area as the
[48:15] Hornets's Nest.
[48:28] Over the course of 4 hours,
[48:31] Confederate troops repeatedly storm the
[48:34] Hornets's nest. Each time they are
[48:37] driven back,
[48:40] Colonel Randall Lee Gibson commands a
[48:42] brigade from Louisiana and Arkansas.
[48:47] Four times the assault proved [music]
[48:49] unavailing.
[48:51] the strong and almost inaccessible
[48:53] position of the enemy. His infantry
[48:56] well-coveted an ambush and his [music]
[48:57] artillery skillfully posted and
[48:59] efficiently served was found to be
[49:02] impregnable to infantry alone. [music]
[49:05] We were repulsed.
[49:10] It's one of those situations where the
[49:13] geography plays a role. The hornets nest
[49:16] is a very difficult place to get to. So
[49:19] it does come down to geography and just
[49:21] sheer determination.
[49:26] Johnston [music] is determined to crush
[49:28] the federal stronghold.
[49:31] Stubborn over there.
[49:33] The Confederate commander will
[49:34] personally rally a group who has refused
[49:36] to [music] charge.
[49:39] The Yankees were stubborn, he said. And
[49:40] and you're going to have to give them
[49:42] the bayonet. Johnston leaned out and
[49:44] tapped their bayonets with [music] his
[49:45] tin cup. We're going to have TO USE THE
[49:48] BAYONET.
[49:49] AS he got to the middle of their line,
[49:51] he turned his horse toward the enemy and
[49:52] he said, "I will lead you." [cheering]
[49:59] They are advanced by Johnston into a
[50:01] peach orchard just east of the Hornets's
[50:03] nest.
[50:07] At the peach orchard is some of the most
[50:09] bitter fighting of Shiloh, Private Sam
[50:12] Watkins of the First Tennessee.
[50:15] I had heard and read of battlefields,
[50:18] seen pictures of battlefields,
[50:21] horses and men, cannon and wagons all
[50:24] jumbled together while the ground was
[50:26] strewn with dead and dying and wounded.
[50:29] But I must confess that I never realized
[50:34] the pomp and circumstance of the thing
[50:37] called glorious war till I saw this.
[50:42] It all seemed to me
[50:46] a dream. [music]
[50:50] With the battle raging around the peach
[50:52] orchard, an aid to General Johnston
[50:55] finds the Confederate commander
[50:58] reeling in his saddle.
[51:00] Said, "General, are you wounded?"
[51:02] Johnston said, "Yes, [music] and I fear
[51:04] seriously."
[51:06] This subornet led Johnston into a place
[51:08] that was sheltered and held him off his
[51:09] horse.
[51:12] General, [music] sir, please respond to
[51:14] us. I see nothing.
[51:15] He began looking for the wound. He
[51:17] couldn't find it.
[51:18] I don't see anything else, Captain
[51:19] myself.
[51:20] He's poking around in Johnston's
[51:22] clothes. Where's the wound? He couldn't
[51:23] find it.
[51:24] We don't know what's wrong with him.
[51:25] Johnston had quickly lost consciousness
[51:27] completely.
[51:28] You know me? Do you know me? Justin.
[51:31] Justin.
[51:33] Johnston.
[51:34] Behind Johnston's knee, a bullet has
[51:37] lacerated a large artery.
[51:40] In less than 20 minutes, he bleeds to
[51:43] death.
[51:46] [music]
[51:47] General Albert Sydney Johnston will be
[51:50] the highest ranked officer killed in the
[51:52] Civil War.
[51:55] The day that began with so much promise
[51:58] ends with [music] the death of the man
[52:00] Jefferson Davis considered to be the
[52:02] finest officer in the Confederacy.
[52:06] Word of Johnston's death slowly makes
[52:08] its way through the Confederate ranks at
[52:10] Shiloh.
[52:15] A soldier from Louisiana remarks,
[52:18] "A chilliness of gloom crept over our
[52:22] entire command."
[52:25] [music]
[52:33] I think for the Confederate forces, you
[52:36] know, east and west, because this is a
[52:38] two-f frontont war, there are several
[52:41] episodes early on where they had a
[52:43] legitimate chance to really drive a a a
[52:47] knife into the heart of the US war
[52:50] effort. And I would say that in the west
[52:52] that Shiloh's that first that first day,
[52:56] that was their chance to totally alter
[52:59] the course of the war.
[53:03] [music]
[53:19] In the hellish terrain surrounding a
[53:21] simple log structure known as Shiloh
[53:24] Church
[53:26] rages the first epic battle of the Civil
[53:29] War.
[53:42] In a dawn attack, nearly 44,000
[53:46] Confederates, led by General Albert
[53:48] Sydney Johnston, [music]
[53:50] surprised the Union Army.
[53:55] The federal troops had boldly advanced
[53:57] into southwest Tennessee. with the hopes
[54:00] of winning a grand battle that they
[54:02] believe will end the war.
[54:07] A few hours into the Battle of Shiloh,
[54:10] those hopes are all but dashed.
[54:16] By midday,
[54:17] Union generals Ulyses Srant and William
[54:20] Tecumpsa Sherman rally their stunned
[54:22] troops.
[54:25] The Confederate attack loses steam. For
[54:28] most, Shiloh is their first taste of
[54:31] battle. The casualties are unimaginable.
[54:36] Even Johnston, considered by many to be
[54:39] the best of the Confederate generals,
[54:41] lies dead.
[54:42] Johnston. Johnston, do you know me? Do
[54:45] you know me?
[54:46] Now, Shiloh becomes the first of the big
[54:50] slaughters of the Civil War. The loss of
[54:53] life, the [snorts] wounds at Shiloh are
[54:56] on a scale that the United States had
[54:58] not previously encountered.
[55:01] By midafternoon,
[55:03] the fight shifts from the Union flanks
[55:06] to a dense thicket in the center of the
[55:08] battlefield.
[55:10] At a place survivors would later dub the
[55:13] Hornets's nest, 6,000 stubborn Union
[55:17] soldiers repulsed attack after attack.
[55:22] [music]
[55:29] After hours of failed peacemeal
[55:32] assaults, Confederate leaders begin
[55:34] shifting every available cannon on the
[55:36] Shiloh battlefield,
[55:39] the batteries now take aim at the
[55:41] Hornets's Nest just 300 yd away.
[55:45] [screaming]
[55:56] For more than an hour,
[55:58] Confederate guns pound away at the
[56:00] Hornets's nest.
[56:03] The barrage pins down the Union forces.
[56:10] The brutal combat at Shiloh marks the
[56:12] first Titanic battle of the Western
[56:14] campaign.
[56:16] The federal armies have invaded,
[56:18] intending to sever a crucial railroad
[56:20] junction just 20 mi south at Corinth,
[56:23] Mississippi.
[56:25] The railroad is the Confederacy's only
[56:27] complete line connecting the Mississippi
[56:29] Valley to the Atlantic Ocean.
[56:35] In the East, the Union has already been
[56:38] humiliated at Bull Run, a battle just 20
[56:41] m from the White House. Another defeat,
[56:45] this time in lands then known as the
[56:47] West, will be a crushing blow to Abraham
[56:50] Lincoln's hope of reunifying a divided
[56:53] nation.
[56:56] The Western Theater, I argue, is the
[56:59] most significant part of the war. Had it
[57:02] not been for that activity in the
[57:05] Western theater, that war might have
[57:07] gone on forever and the number of
[57:09] casualties would have been greater. It's
[57:11] clear to me in any way that that the
[57:13] western theater is where the war war was
[57:16] either won if you're a Union supporter
[57:18] or lost if you're a Confederate.
[57:22] A Confederate victory at Shiloh would be
[57:24] a giant step toward the goal of southern
[57:27] independence.
[57:29] Steady, boys. Steady.
[57:31] While the battle rages in the Hornets's
[57:33] Nest, another fight is about to explode
[57:36] in the steep terrain overlooking the
[57:38] Tennessee River.
[57:40] We can do it, boys.
[57:41] There, a frightened John Cocherel stands
[57:44] among the ranks of the 9inth Illinois.
[57:46] Rebels are coming, but we're going to
[57:48] hold our ground. You understand that?
[57:51] Ohio, you're going to stick with us.
[57:53] We'll get you through this today. We
[57:55] will be victorious, boys. We'll get you
[57:57] back to your family and to your unit.
[58:06] Earlier in the day, the 16-year-old from
[58:09] Ohio became separated from his father's
[58:11] regiment during the fierce clash near
[58:14] Shiloh Church.
[58:20] A lieutenant with the 9inth Illinois
[58:23] convinced the young Ohio to fight with
[58:25] them.
[58:28] Now Cochril and the others wait for an
[58:32] attack that is sure to come.
[58:35] Everything looked weird and unnatural.
[58:38] The leaves on the trees, though scarcely
[58:40] out of [music] the bud, seemed greener
[58:42] than I had ever seen leaves and larger.
[58:51] [cheering and screaming]
[59:06] With a suddeness, there came from all
[59:08] along our front a crash of musketry.
[59:13] Actions took the grotesque form of
[59:15] nightmares.
[59:19] The roar and den of the battle and all
[59:21] its terror outstripped my most fanciful
[59:24] dreams of pandemonium.
[59:27] For nearly 3 hours, Confederates deliver
[59:30] what Cocharo calls a dreadful baptism of
[59:33] fire.
[59:40] Among those killed is Frederick E.
[59:42] Voggler, the chipper young lieutenant
[59:44] who invited young Cocharel to fight with
[59:46] his regimen. [music]
[59:51] The enemy fire became so terrible, we
[59:54] were driven into the ravine. We kept
[59:56] firing as long as cartridges lasted.
[59:59] Let's go. Let's go.
[01:00:06] It was at this point our blue line
[01:00:09] wavered. Out of the ravine we survivors
[01:00:12] poured, pursued [music] by the howling
[01:00:14] enemy.
[01:00:17] I remember my horror at the thought of
[01:00:19] being shot in the back as I retreated
[01:00:22] from the top of the bank and galloped as
[01:00:25] gracefully as I could.
[01:00:29] Interestingly, the soldiers referred to
[01:00:32] first experience of combat as seeing the
[01:00:34] elephant.
[01:00:36] And when you think about the the what an
[01:00:39] elephant looks like and what an elephant
[01:00:42] might do to you, it gives you, I think,
[01:00:45] kind of a good insight into the into the
[01:00:47] [music] way these people felt.
[01:00:50] In this blood bath, the 9inth Illinois
[01:00:53] loses more men killed and wounded than
[01:00:56] any Union regiment at Shiloh.
[01:00:59] Cochel somehow survives the slaughter.
[01:01:04] He joins a line of Union stragglers
[01:01:06] retreating back to the Tennessee River.
[01:01:10] The crowd of fear stricken and dejected
[01:01:12] soldiers. I met a man who belonged to my
[01:01:15] father's regiment.
[01:01:16] Have you seen my dad?
[01:01:17] Inquiring of the fate of the regiment.
[01:01:19] He told me
[01:01:21] it had been an entirely cut to pieces
[01:01:24] and he had personally witnessed the
[01:01:27] [music] death of my father.
[01:01:29] Seen him shot from his horse.
[01:01:31] Sorry, son.
[01:01:32] This filled me with dismay and I
[01:01:35] determined, non-combatant that [music] I
[01:01:37] was, to retire from the battlefield.
[01:01:48] For federals in the Hornets's Nest, the
[01:01:51] situation has grown desperate.
[01:01:54] In late afternoon, both flanks of the
[01:01:56] Confederate army press forward,
[01:01:58] tightening the noose.
[01:02:01] The stubborn Union soldiers are
[01:02:03] surrounded.
[01:02:14] Some federal troops managed to slip out
[01:02:17] of the trap.
[01:02:19] But for many, there is no escape.
[01:02:22] Take him up the hill. Leave him up the
[01:02:24] hill. General Benjamin Apprentice, who
[01:02:27] survived the opening Confederate assault
[01:02:29] some 10 hours earlier,
[01:02:31] finds himself surrounded in a wooded
[01:02:33] ravine.
[01:02:36] Apprentice surrenders along with more
[01:02:38] than 2,200 Union soldiers.
[01:02:41] You're a prisoner now.
[01:02:47] Union commander Ulissiz S. Grant hastily
[01:02:50] establishes a two-mile long last line of
[01:02:53] defense.
[01:02:56] The Confederates mount one final
[01:02:58] assault, but the Union line stands firm.
[01:03:03] After 13 hours of fighting, the
[01:03:06] exhausted Confederate troops [music]
[01:03:07] pull back to the captured Union camps.
[01:03:13] With Albert Sydney Johnston dead,
[01:03:16] General PGT Bogard assumes command.
[01:03:19] Take him to a team. Yes, sir.
[01:03:22] At his headquarters near Shiloh Church,
[01:03:25] he dispatches a message to Confederate
[01:03:27] President Jefferson Davis describing a
[01:03:30] complete victory.
[01:03:33] 16-year-old Thomas Duncan is a
[01:03:35] Confederate courier.
[01:03:37] With a seeming victory in our grasp, and
[01:03:40] with the brave, though depleted, and
[01:03:42] disorganized, Army of the Blue [music]
[01:03:44] at bay at River's Brink,
[01:03:47] we saw the battle cease for the day.
[01:03:51] But US Grant is not ready to concede
[01:03:54] defeat.
[01:03:57] He knows reinforcements are on the way.
[01:04:00] Not beaten by a damn sight, [music] he
[01:04:03] mutters. Though bloodied, Grant's army
[01:04:07] had survived to fight another day.
[01:04:11] And Grant was at the moment of crisis.
[01:04:14] And even the great commanders have
[01:04:16] moments of crisis. He always, I think,
[01:04:18] believed in himself in that capacity. I
[01:04:21] don't think there a man like Grant ever
[01:04:22] had a doubt that he would win.
[01:04:25] All of the high officers, with one
[01:04:27] exception, seemed to believe that they
[01:04:29] would pull out, that they would cross
[01:04:32] the river during the night and escape.
[01:04:35] The one exception to all this, of
[01:04:36] course, was Grant himself.
[01:04:41] Night comes
[01:04:44] and Sherman comes up to him really to
[01:04:47] see, well, what's going to happen? What
[01:04:48] are we going to do in the next day?
[01:04:50] And Sherman says to him, "Well, Grant,
[01:04:53] we've had the devil's own time today,
[01:04:55] haven't we?"
[01:04:56] And Grant looks at Sherman and says,
[01:05:00] "Yep,
[01:05:02] we'll lick him tomorrow, though."
[01:05:05] And Sherman is just taken back. This
[01:05:08] guy's not going to retreat. He's going
[01:05:10] to go on the offensive the next day. And
[01:05:13] this is an incredible
[01:05:16] thing to do.
[01:05:19] I I think that certain people are placed
[01:05:21] in certain places by luck or by fate and
[01:05:26] Grant was in the right spot.
[01:05:29] I cannot think of any general at this
[01:05:33] time in the history of the war who would
[01:05:36] have done the same thing.
[01:05:44] Late that night, a violent storm engulfs
[01:05:48] the Shiloh battlefield.
[01:05:52] Thunder and lightning combined with
[01:05:54] cannon fire from Union gunboats
[01:05:57] to create a night no soldier at Shiloh
[01:06:00] will ever forget.
[01:06:04] The woods
[01:06:06] that first night especially are filled
[01:06:08] with sounds that we could never
[01:06:12] accurately reproduce.
[01:06:18] There were soldiers who wrote on that
[01:06:19] first night of hearing the wild hogs
[01:06:23] feeding on the wounded
[01:06:30] and having to listen to that all night.
[01:06:33] And there's no button you can push to
[01:06:35] shut it off. And then when the sun comes
[01:06:38] up, you know it's going to start all
[01:06:40] over again.
[01:06:50] When the sun comes up that second day,
[01:06:53] Borugard believes that he's won the
[01:06:56] great victory and it's just a matter of
[01:06:58] mopping up.
[01:06:58] Three cheers for General Borard.
[01:07:01] [cheering]
[01:07:03] The Union Army was in terrible shape.
[01:07:05] They've been driven back. Their
[01:07:07] confidence is broken. They're they're
[01:07:09] finished.
[01:07:13] Defeat is the last thing on Grant's
[01:07:16] mind. Overnight, 13,000 soldiers
[01:07:20] commanded by General Don Carlos Buell
[01:07:22] have finally arrived from Nashville.
[01:07:25] General Lou Wallace reinforces Grant
[01:07:28] with another 5800 Union soldiers.
[01:07:32] According to a soldier from Louisiana,
[01:07:35] federal troops sprouted from the ground
[01:07:37] like mushrooms.
[01:07:40] Courier Thomas Duncan.
[01:07:42] A small squad of us were preparing
[01:07:44] breakfast when firing began suddenly on
[01:07:47] the line.
[01:07:55] A wildeyed rider proclaimed the arrival
[01:07:57] of Bule,
[01:08:00] warning us to run for our lives.
[01:08:09] [music]
[01:08:21] It's apparent [music] that counterattack
[01:08:23] has power to it. It has power. It has
[01:08:25] purpose and it's mass. And it's totally
[01:08:29] unexpected.
[01:08:31] April 7th is like day one at Shiloh, but
[01:08:34] in reverse.
[01:08:36] Bogard's stunned Confederates rally,
[01:08:39] fighting desperately to hold the
[01:08:40] onslaught of the reinforced Federals.
[01:08:46] It's no longer a sense of
[01:08:49] getting up and finding something to eat
[01:08:51] this morning. It's getting up and
[01:08:52] finding something to put in my musket so
[01:08:54] I can fight this battle because this
[01:08:55] battle has come back and it's come back
[01:08:57] into my face.
[01:08:59] A continued breakdown in the Confederate
[01:09:01] chain of command only makes matters
[01:09:03] worse.
[01:09:05] [music]
[01:09:08] Colonel John Moore commands a makeshift
[01:09:11] brigade of three regiments which
[01:09:13] includes his own second [music] Texas
[01:09:15] Infantry.
[01:09:18] Moore is ordered to advance his brigade
[01:09:19] across a peach orchard but to hold his
[01:09:22] fire.
[01:09:26] Captain
[01:09:28] on [music] the other side of the fence.
[01:09:29] Get over there and stretch your lights
[01:09:31] quickly. In the woods ahead of him,
[01:09:33] Moore [music] is told, waits another
[01:09:36] Confederate force.
[01:09:38] And it's apparent they don't know who's
[01:09:39] in front of them, but they've been told
[01:09:41] who's in front of them. And they've been
[01:09:42] told they're friends.
[01:09:49] The soldiers located in front of Moore's
[01:09:51] approaching men are not friends.
[01:09:56] They are from Indiana and Ohio.
[01:10:08] John Cine more.
[01:10:10] Even after the enemy opened fire, my
[01:10:12] officers reported the order was still
[01:10:14] given not to fire on our supposed
[01:10:16] friends.
[01:10:19] In one instance, after a private
[01:10:21] returned the fire of the enemy, a staff
[01:10:24] officer drew his pistol
[01:10:26] and threatened to blow off the man's
[01:10:28] head if he fired again.
[01:10:34] There's no way for anybody really to get
[01:10:37] a handle on it except maybe in the
[01:10:39] decision that Moore makes after the
[01:10:41] ambush
[01:10:43] when he's ordered to attack and he
[01:10:45] refuses.
[01:10:48] The chaos Moore and his men face is
[01:10:51] experienced by many Confederates on
[01:10:53] Shiloh's second day.
[01:11:00] The fighting is every bit as fierce and
[01:11:02] bloody as the day before.
[01:11:06] Confederates under General Bogard's
[01:11:08] leadership fight bravely.
[01:11:11] But now, outnumbered and overwhelmed,
[01:11:14] they are steadily driven back to Shiloh
[01:11:16] Church.
[01:11:18] An aid to General Bogard sums up the
[01:11:20] situation by saying, "The fire and
[01:11:23] animation has left our troops.
[01:11:32] Shortly after [music] 2:00 p.m.,
[01:11:35] Bo Regard issues an order unthinkable
[01:11:38] just 8 hours earlier.
[01:11:42] Withdrawal. [music]
[01:11:45] They came so very close to be so [music]
[01:11:48] close to victory so many times and never
[01:11:51] quite be able to achieve it. It was
[01:11:52] almost like it was something that they
[01:11:54] were reaching out for and could never
[01:11:56] they never could quite [music] get it.
[01:12:00] General Grant remains under orders to
[01:12:02] not engage the Confederates.
[01:12:05] For now, he [music] is content to have
[01:12:06] recovered Union camps lost the previous
[01:12:08] day.
[01:12:16] The Confederates endure a bitter 20-mile
[01:12:18] march back to Corinth, Mississippi.
[01:12:22] There they'll dig in to [music] defend
[01:12:24] the town's vital rail junction.
[01:12:31] After Shiloh [music]
[01:12:32] laments one New Orleans resident,
[01:12:35] the South never smiled again. [music]
[01:12:40] Shiloh illustrates
[01:12:43] that the war is [music] here
[01:12:47] and it's deadly.
[01:12:52] They're going to have to invest
[01:12:53] everything into the war to win their
[01:12:56] cause. [music]
[01:13:05] How could anyone smile
[01:13:07] with [music] that vision of the future?
[01:13:13] [music]
[01:13:25] For the next few days,
[01:13:28] Union soldiers undertake the gruesome
[01:13:30] task of burying the dead.
[01:13:35] Even the hardbitten General Sherman is
[01:13:38] moved.
[01:13:41] The battlefield was a heartsickening
[01:13:43] sight.
[01:13:46] The dead were lying in every conceivable
[01:13:48] shape.
[01:13:52] Some had fallen, their guns fast in
[01:13:54] their hands.
[01:13:58] Others had received the messenger of
[01:14:00] death
[01:14:02] and with their life blood ebbing away
[01:14:05] had sought the shelters of logs and
[01:14:07] trees
[01:14:10] and laid down to die.
[01:14:25] It's impossible, I think, for us to
[01:14:27] imagine what it must have looked like.
[01:14:32] The smell is awful.
[01:14:36] There are burial details every place.
[01:14:39] And maybe the biggest horror of all is
[01:14:43] as the Union Army is trying to
[01:14:46] reorganize itself and wagons are going
[01:14:48] back and forth across the battlefield,
[01:14:51] they will the wheels of the wagons will
[01:14:53] will dig up shallow graves and you will
[01:14:57] see corpses lying there being run over
[01:15:01] by wagons and by horses. What a horrible
[01:15:04] thing. You have to think to yourself, is
[01:15:06] this what's going to happen to me?
[01:15:12] At Shiloh, the total casualties,
[01:15:17] a staggering 24,000 men.
[01:15:25] A single battle claims more casualties
[01:15:28] than all of America's previous wars
[01:15:31] combined.
[01:15:39] They did arithmetic. All of a sudden
[01:15:41] they could realize hell that's more
[01:15:42] people lost in two days
[01:15:45] than we've lost in all the wars we
[01:15:47] fought to date.
[01:15:51] That's becomes apparent [music] to
[01:15:53] everyone. Golly,
[01:15:55] in two days
[01:15:58] we've amassed,
[01:16:00] you know, the same amount of killed,
[01:16:02] wounded, and missing personnel in our
[01:16:04] military bodies as we've accomplished
[01:16:06] [music] in nearly a century of
[01:16:08] existence.
[01:16:10] Uh, that's shocking.
[01:16:15] You think about the connections of that
[01:16:18] 24,000.
[01:16:20] This begins to affect homes. It affects
[01:16:22] communities. It affects
[01:16:25] loved ones, friends.
[01:16:28] Entire communities end up having a bad
[01:16:30] day because a sizable prepoundonderance
[01:16:33] of their young men 18 to 29 are gone.
[01:16:39] They're no longer or they're totally
[01:16:42] torn to pieces and maimed for life. And
[01:16:45] it's just reverberates.
[01:16:48] The great battle General Grant and
[01:16:50] others hoped would end the war is in
[01:16:53] fact just the beginning of a brutal war
[01:16:57] no one could have imagined.
[01:17:02] When the battle began, John Cocherel was
[01:17:05] a young musician.
[01:17:07] Now in the aftermath of Bloody Shiloh,
[01:17:11] the 16-year-old Cocharel is a combat
[01:17:14] veteran.
[01:17:17] Near dusk, He wanders through the
[01:17:19] ransacked camp of the 70th Ohio.
[01:17:26] The last place he saw his father alive.
[01:17:34] Through the haze is a sight Cochel can
[01:17:36] hardly believe.
[01:17:42] The 70th regiment came back after the
[01:17:44] most terrible fighting and campaigning.
[01:17:48] At its head rode my father, whom I
[01:17:51] supposed to be dead.
[01:17:55] He was pale, haggarded, and worn,
[01:17:57] [music] but unscathed.
[01:18:00] My father had not seen me, nor heard
[01:18:02] from me for more than 60 hours.
[01:18:06] [music]
[01:18:13] [music]
[01:18:16] He took me into his arms and gave me the
[01:18:19] most affectionate embrace my life had
[01:18:22] ever [music] known.
[01:18:27] 7 months after Shiloh, John Cocherel
[01:18:30] returned to the Ohio home he dreamed of
[01:18:33] during the battle.
[01:18:36] He would become an accomplished
[01:18:37] journalist, writing for the Cincinnati
[01:18:40] Inquirer and the Washington Post.
[01:18:44] Years later, he would write about 2 days
[01:18:47] in April 1862
[01:18:50] when the world appeared to turn upside
[01:18:52] down in the thick woods along the
[01:18:55] Tennessee River.
[01:19:06] Two weeks after their defeat at Shiloh,
[01:19:08] the Confederacy suffers another blow in
[01:19:11] the West.
[01:19:12] A fleet of Union warships under the
[01:19:15] command of Admiral David Farragut
[01:19:17] captures New Orleans, the South's
[01:19:20] largest city and most important port.
[01:19:24] And for [music] Confederate troops over
[01:19:25] a thousand miles away in Virginia, the
[01:19:28] war effort begins to falter.
[01:19:40] Union General George [music] Mlen,
[01:19:42] nicknamed Little Napoleon,
[01:19:45] has a bold plan to take the Confederate
[01:19:47] capital of Richmond, Virginia. In March
[01:19:50] 1862,
[01:19:52] Mlelen landed [music] more than 100,000
[01:19:54] troops at Fort Monroe and begins to
[01:19:57] fight his way up the peninsula towards
[01:20:00] Richmond.
[01:20:01] At Seven Pines, Confederate commander
[01:20:04] [music] Joseph Johnston is severely
[01:20:06] wounded and replaced with a rising star
[01:20:09] named Robert E. Lee.
[01:20:13] 4 months after it began, Lincoln orders
[01:20:16] Mlelen to return his army to Washington.
[01:20:19] For the Union, the Peninsula campaign is
[01:20:23] a military disappointment.
[01:20:27] Yet, it was a seemingly minor incident a
[01:20:30] year earlier on the tip of the very same
[01:20:32] Virginia peninsula that ignites a
[01:20:35] sweeping chain of events that would
[01:20:37] alter the course of the war.
[01:20:41] [music]
[01:20:42] May 1861,
[01:20:45] three runaway slaves row a stolen boat
[01:20:49] and surrender to the Union occupied Fort
[01:20:51] Monroe.
[01:20:54] Their arrival creates a legal dilemma
[01:20:56] for the fort's commander and for the
[01:20:58] United States Army.
[01:21:01] President Abraham Lincoln refuses to
[01:21:03] recognize the Confederate [music]
[01:21:05] government. He considers the southern
[01:21:07] states to be in rebellion.
[01:21:10] Therefore, federal law still applies in
[01:21:13] the South.
[01:21:15] Legally, the escaped slaves are the
[01:21:17] property of their southern owner and
[01:21:19] must be returned.
[01:21:21] The fugitive slave law of 1850 is still
[01:21:23] on the books. It's still the law of the
[01:21:26] land. And strictly speaking, the United
[01:21:29] States Army is obligated to live up to
[01:21:32] the tenants of the fugitive slave law.
[01:21:34] Those soldiers are after all obliged to
[01:21:38] enforce the law.
[01:21:40] The next day, a Confederate officer
[01:21:43] under a flag of truce, arrives at Fort
[01:21:45] Monroe and demands the property back.
[01:21:50] The Union fort's commander, General
[01:21:53] Benjamin Franklin Butler, quickly
[01:21:55] rejects the request.
[01:21:59] The runaways had earlier revealed that
[01:22:01] they were going to help construct
[01:22:03] Confederate gun imp placements. Guns to
[01:22:06] be aimed directly at Fort Monroe. Butler
[01:22:10] curtly dismisses the Confederate
[01:22:12] officer, calling the escaped slaves
[01:22:15] contrabands of war. Contraband means uh
[01:22:20] property. And so there's this legal term
[01:22:23] that enters the lexicon and it is lashed
[01:22:26] on to and used throughout the end of the
[01:22:28] Civil War.
[01:22:31] And what Butler's thinking is that they
[01:22:35] are still property, but they are enemy
[01:22:37] property and therefore it is lawful in a
[01:22:40] time of war for the Union to seize them.
[01:22:43] So he justifies allowing these slaves to
[01:22:46] stay in Union Army lines as contraband.
[01:22:53] And within a few days [music] he had 200
[01:22:56] uh fugitive slaves at the fort door and
[01:22:59] he took them all in confiscating [music]
[01:23:02] them as contraband of war. He realized
[01:23:04] by taking this this source of labor, the
[01:23:06] source of aid that it would [ __ ] the
[01:23:08] Confederacy.
[01:23:09] [music]
[01:23:10] In Washington DC, President Lincoln and
[01:23:13] his cabinet follow the unfolding [music]
[01:23:15] drama.
[01:23:16] He takes no formal action.
[01:23:19] for now.
[01:23:22] It took the Union [music] Army by
[01:23:23] surprise and it took the Union um
[01:23:26] government by surprise. It took [music]
[01:23:28] Lincoln by surprise. They were not
[01:23:31] expecting this. They did not plan for
[01:23:33] it. They had not encouraged it. They had
[01:23:36] not put out a [music] welcome mat for
[01:23:38] the enslaved to come into Union Army
[01:23:40] lines, but they came anyway.
[01:23:44] Although Lincoln was not going to
[01:23:45] encourage people overtly to break the
[01:23:48] law, he certainly was [music] not going
[01:23:50] to see slaves who did run away returned
[01:23:53] to their slavery, to their bonds, to
[01:23:56] their cattle status. [music]
[01:23:58] To the contrary, he said, I'd be damned
[01:24:00] in time and eternity if I ever allowed
[01:24:03] that [music] to happen. slaves. He said
[01:24:05] to Congress, "Slaves who have achieved
[01:24:08] their actual freedom are not going to be
[01:24:11] molested in that." [music] That was as
[01:24:13] much as waving a very large flag that
[01:24:16] said, "Come hither and find safety."
[01:24:23] The news of the contrabands at Fort
[01:24:25] Monroe quickly spreads throughout the
[01:24:27] Union.
[01:24:30] The news also spreads among the enslaved
[01:24:33] themselves.
[01:24:35] What powers the need for freedom for
[01:24:38] enslaved people is they don't want to be
[01:24:42] degraded anymore. They don't want to be
[01:24:44] brutalized anymore. They don't want to
[01:24:46] exist as property.
[01:24:52] So all of a sudden you have
[01:24:55] government officials, you have military
[01:24:58] officers who are confronted with the
[01:25:00] fact that we have to take black concerns
[01:25:04] seriously.
[01:25:07] At this point now, you have growing
[01:25:08] refugee camps uh within Union lines and
[01:25:11] in all of the border states.
[01:25:15] They don't wait for Lincoln to free
[01:25:18] them. They are agents in their own
[01:25:21] emancipation.
[01:25:28] Lincoln hoped at the beginning of the
[01:25:30] war to keep the opposition to slavery
[01:25:34] and [music] the restoration of the Union
[01:25:36] running on two separate but parallel
[01:25:39] tracks.
[01:25:41] One problem, the problem of the
[01:25:42] rebellion, he wanted to solve
[01:25:43] militarily. The other problem, the
[01:25:46] problem of slavery, he wanted to solve
[01:25:47] politically. What he found though a year
[01:25:50] into the war was that these two tracks,
[01:25:53] as much as he was trying to keep them
[01:25:54] separate, insisted on converging.
[01:25:57] The contraband [music] issue triggers a
[01:25:59] fundamental question.
[01:26:01] Are the contraband still slaves
[01:26:06] or are they now free?
[01:26:11] There is a dynamic, a collision of
[01:26:14] people on the ground, slaves running to
[01:26:18] Union armies, Union armies, not knowing
[01:26:20] how to handle this problem, but knowing
[01:26:22] that if they sent those slaves back,
[01:26:23] that they simply would be abetting the
[01:26:26] Confederate war effort. That step that
[01:26:28] slaves took toward Union lines, it
[01:26:31] triggers a process.
[01:26:34] Congress [music] passes a series of
[01:26:35] largely ineffective laws called the
[01:26:38] Confiscation Acts. It is legislation the
[01:26:41] president opposes. [music] Lincoln's own
[01:26:44] views on abolishing slavery continue to
[01:26:46] evolve. Early in the war, he favors a
[01:26:50] plan to remove freed slaves [music] to a
[01:26:52] colony outside of the United States.
[01:26:55] In summer 1862,
[01:26:57] he writes to newspaper editor Horus
[01:26:59] Gley. [music]
[01:27:02] Lincoln says, "If I could save the Union
[01:27:05] without freeing any slave, I would do
[01:27:07] [music] it."
[01:27:09] And yet, that very summer, in a secluded
[01:27:12] cottage on a hill overlooking
[01:27:13] Washington,
[01:27:15] Lincoln begins [music] to pen a document
[01:27:18] that will do exactly that.
[01:27:21] And it's in the aftermath of the [music]
[01:27:22] Peninsula campaign that Lincoln realizes
[01:27:26] that they need to move toward a policy
[01:27:28] that wages war not just on [music] the
[01:27:30] Confederate army but on Confederate
[01:27:32] society. And the first step in that
[01:27:34] direction, [music] he decides, is to
[01:27:37] begin emancipating the slaves.
[01:27:41] [music] In the wake of a string of
[01:27:42] devastating defeats on the eastern
[01:27:44] theater, Lincoln now sees emancipation
[01:27:47] as a military necessity.
[01:27:50] He says, [music] "We must free the
[01:27:52] slaves or be ourselves subdued."
[01:27:58] Lincoln's coming action will test the
[01:28:00] constitutional limits of the office of
[01:28:02] the presidency.
[01:28:05] The Constitution provides that the
[01:28:08] president of the United States be the
[01:28:09] commander-in-chief
[01:28:12] in time of war or rebellion, but it
[01:28:15] doesn't describe what the powers of the
[01:28:17] commander-in-chief are.
[01:28:19] I mean, what is it to be a
[01:28:20] commander-in-chief? No one was really
[01:28:23] sure within those war powers. What is he
[01:28:25] allowed to do? Well, he should be
[01:28:28] allowed to do some things which will
[01:28:30] [ __ ] the enemy's ability to carry on
[01:28:33] war. What will [ __ ] the Confederacy's
[01:28:36] ability to carry on war? Free their
[01:28:39] slaves. Free them. Give them every
[01:28:42] incentive possible to desert and run
[01:28:44] away to the Union lines. Give them every
[01:28:46] reason to expect that the advance of the
[01:28:48] Union armies into the South will mean
[01:28:51] their freedom, subvert, undermine,
[01:28:55] weaken the Confederate ability to carry
[01:28:57] on the rebellion.
[01:29:00] To his stunned cabinet, Lincoln unveils
[01:29:03] a preliminary emancipation proclamation
[01:29:06] on July 22nd, 1862.
[01:29:11] Secretary [music] of Treasury Salmon
[01:29:12] Chase thinks it's too extreme.
[01:29:16] Secretary of Interior Caleb Smith
[01:29:18] strongly objects and threatens to
[01:29:20] resign.
[01:29:22] Postmaster General Montgomery Blair
[01:29:25] fears it will cost the Republicans the
[01:29:27] full elections.
[01:29:28] Lincoln [music] pushes to release his
[01:29:30] proclamation immediately,
[01:29:32] but Secretary of State William [music]
[01:29:34] Seard cautions the proclamation will be
[01:29:37] perceived as an act of desperation
[01:29:39] [music] in the aftermath of the failed
[01:29:41] peninsula campaign.
[01:29:43] So, the president agrees to hold the
[01:29:45] announcement until after a federal
[01:29:47] victory on the battlefield.
[01:30:15] The slaughter at Antidum is hardly the
[01:30:18] decisive victory Lincoln desired.
[01:30:21] On September 17th, 1862,
[01:30:24] along Antidum Creek near Sharpsburg,
[01:30:27] Maryland,
[01:30:29] more than 22,000 Union and Confederate
[01:30:31] soldiers are killed, wounded, or
[01:30:34] missing.
[01:30:37] That's nearly as many casualties as
[01:30:39] there were in two days of fighting at
[01:30:41] Shiloh.
[01:30:44] The Battle of [music] Antidum ranks as
[01:30:46] the bloodiest day in American military
[01:30:48] history.
[01:30:52] Because the Confederates are forced to
[01:30:54] [music] retreat into Virginia, the Union
[01:30:56] claims victory, but tactically the
[01:31:00] battle is a draw.
[01:31:05] 5 days after Antidum on September 22nd,
[01:31:08] [music] 1862,
[01:31:10] Lincoln issues what he calls a
[01:31:12] preliminary emancipation proclamation.
[01:31:17] The presidential order is a threat
[01:31:19] pointed directly at the Confederacy.
[01:31:23] The rebelling [music] states have until
[01:31:25] January 1st to cease hostilities or else
[01:31:29] on that date slaves in the rebelling
[01:31:32] states [music] will be forever free.
[01:31:36] Delivering the preliminary emancipation
[01:31:39] proclamation was a revolutionary moment.
[01:31:42] It was a terrific blow against the
[01:31:45] Confederacy
[01:31:47] for white southerners. When Lincoln
[01:31:49] issued it after the Battle of Antidum,
[01:31:53] they recognized that this war for Union
[01:31:56] now was a war for Union and the
[01:31:59] destruction of slavery. The North had
[01:32:02] now raised the stakes of the game. No
[01:32:05] longer just a war for Union, but a war
[01:32:07] for Union and for black freedom.
[01:32:11] That turned a war of consiliation into a
[01:32:14] revolutionary struggle.
[01:32:24] The Confederates turned the proclamation
[01:32:26] into a rallying point.
[01:32:30] 800 m from Washington in the woodlands
[01:32:33] outside of Corinth, Mississippi. They
[01:32:36] are determined to avenge the losses at
[01:32:38] Shiloh.
[01:32:41] Following their victory at Shiloh, Union
[01:32:43] forces had advanced 22 mi south to
[01:32:46] Corinth and seized its prized railroad
[01:32:49] junction. For more than 4 months, a
[01:32:52] large garrison has occupied [music] the
[01:32:54] strategic town. But in October 1862,
[01:32:58] the Confederates are determined to take
[01:33:00] [music] Corinth back.
[01:33:05] 22,000 Confederate soldiers led by Major
[01:33:09] General Earl Van Dornne storm through
[01:33:12] the Union defenses northwest of town,
[01:33:14] pushing the Federals back nearly 2
[01:33:16] miles.
[01:33:19] The next day, Union artillery delivers a
[01:33:21] punishing blow to Van Dorne's men. After
[01:33:25] a savage two-day fight, the Confederate
[01:33:27] attack is repulsed.
[01:33:31] Corinth once and for all is under Union
[01:33:35] control.
[01:33:38] The desperate gamble to retake Corinth
[01:33:40] costs the Confederates over 5,000
[01:33:43] casualties,
[01:33:45] nearly twice that of the Union
[01:33:46] defenders.
[01:33:50] One Confederate division alone loses
[01:33:53] 2500 out of 3,900 of its men.
[01:33:59] Just as devastating as the loss of human
[01:34:01] life is the permanent loss of the vital
[01:34:03] rail junction
[01:34:07] in the fight for control of the
[01:34:08] Mississippi Valley. It is a blow from
[01:34:11] which the Confederacy will never
[01:34:13] recover.
[01:34:17] Still,
[01:34:23] [singing and music]
[01:34:27] the timing of the Union victory at
[01:34:29] Corenth and Lincoln's preliminary
[01:34:31] emancipation proclamation unleashes a
[01:34:34] movement throughout the Mississippi
[01:34:36] River Valley.
[01:34:39] [singing]
[01:34:42] [music]
[01:34:45] 3 months before emancipation is
[01:34:46] official, thousands escape plantations
[01:34:49] and farms,
[01:34:51] taking their first precarious steps
[01:34:53] toward freedom.
[01:34:56] [singing]
[01:34:57] [music]
[01:35:01] One Union officer complains, "They will
[01:35:04] not even wait for January 1st. I do not
[01:35:07] know what we shall do with them.
[01:35:10] [singing]
[01:35:11] For the enslaved, the Union garrison at
[01:35:14] Corinth has become a beacon of hope.
[01:35:18] [singing]
[01:35:20] Corinth is just a short
[01:35:24] 2 or three days walk from the bread
[01:35:27] basket of Mississippi.
[01:35:30] There were large plantations and there
[01:35:32] were large farms and a significant
[01:35:33] number of slaves. Same is true along the
[01:35:36] Tennessee River Basin in northern
[01:35:38] Alabama. There's a significantly large
[01:35:40] number of slaves. It's a sizable
[01:35:43] prepoundonderance of of slaves present.
[01:35:46] Therefore, they're in close proximity to
[01:35:48] what the lynch pin of Union control in
[01:35:50] northeast Mississippi, which is Corinth,
[01:35:53] once it falls and is occupied by Union
[01:35:56] forces.
[01:36:06] In the years leading up to the war,
[01:36:08] small bands of escaping slaves sought
[01:36:10] freedom along an underground railroad
[01:36:13] leading north.
[01:36:20] But this mass movement towards Corinth
[01:36:22] and other areas in the south is unlike
[01:36:25] anything before.
[01:36:28] Before the war, we tended to see men
[01:36:31] running on their own. We did not see
[01:36:34] whole families. We did not see couples
[01:36:37] [clears throat] bringing their children.
[01:36:39] This time around, they did because they
[01:36:42] calculated in their minds that this was
[01:36:45] the [music] moment when freedom was
[01:36:46] going to come. So, this was the moment
[01:36:49] to get the entire family out of slavery
[01:36:52] [music]
[01:36:53] because it was actually going to happen
[01:36:55] this time.
[01:36:57] [music]
[01:36:58] By war's end, some 500,000 to 1 million
[01:37:02] of the South's 4 million slaves will
[01:37:05] have escaped to Union lines.
[01:37:10] The very presence of a contraband camp,
[01:37:13] I think, speaks to the testimony of
[01:37:17] black people's ability to create power
[01:37:21] even in the most powerless situation.
[01:37:26] The Union [music] garrison in Corinth is
[01:37:29] in fact illequipped to deal with the
[01:37:31] thousands of refugees.
[01:37:35] For many soldiers, it is the first time
[01:37:38] they come face to face with the sheer
[01:37:40] magnitude of the institution of slavery.
[01:37:44] I mean, if you grew up in Michigan, you
[01:37:46] had a good chance you had never seen an
[01:37:47] African-American
[01:37:50] ever.
[01:37:51] If you grew up in Iowa, you had a real
[01:37:53] good chance you'd never seen an
[01:37:55] African-American ever in your entire
[01:37:58] life.
[01:37:59] Then you start you start experiencing it
[01:38:04] and you seeing the conditions in which
[01:38:07] they exist within this society.
[01:38:15] For temporary shelter, the Union Army
[01:38:18] issues the contraband's old army tents.
[01:38:21] But at Corinth, the former slaves are
[01:38:23] determined to transform a refugee camp
[01:38:26] into a community.
[01:38:29] They lay out streets, build a church,
[01:38:32] hospital, and school.
[01:38:35] They plant and harvest crops. Most
[01:38:38] importantly,
[01:38:40] they plant seeds of hope.
[01:38:43] We've escaped. So now let us do what we
[01:38:45] have always been trained to do. We will
[01:38:47] set up our own camps. We will live in
[01:38:50] these spaces. We will grow food. We will
[01:38:53] try to heal each other. We will try to
[01:38:56] live out some semblance of life as free
[01:38:59] people or at least quasi free people.
[01:39:02] And so they did what they had always
[01:39:05] done. They served each other. They
[01:39:07] served white people because that's what
[01:39:09] slaves are trained to do.
[01:39:12] except they now for the first time are
[01:39:15] paid for their labor. It is just part of
[01:39:18] the transition from slave to freed men
[01:39:21] and women.
[01:39:23] Do you know any words that start with I?
[01:39:26] In the south, it is illegal to teach
[01:39:29] slaves how to read and write.
[01:39:33] At Corinth,
[01:39:34] volunteers from the American Missionary
[01:39:36] Association arrive to instruct the
[01:39:39] refugees. They do this because they
[01:39:41] recognize that freedom is not going to
[01:39:45] mean much until these men, women, and
[01:39:48] children learn to read and write and are
[01:39:51] educated. And so this becomes a focus of
[01:39:54] life there in this Corinth contraband
[01:39:57] camp. And the numbers increase. By March
[01:40:01] 1863,
[01:40:03] there are about 3,600
[01:40:05] men, women, and children there. Almost
[01:40:07] half of them are children.
[01:40:10] In just a few months, Corinth becomes a
[01:40:12] model contraband camp in the Union
[01:40:14] occupied south.
[01:40:17] But the success is short-lived.
[01:40:22] Inevitably,
[01:40:24] the Union force at Corinth [music] is
[01:40:25] ordered to move on
[01:40:29] and so are the contrabands.
[01:40:34] They are forced to leave the community
[01:40:36] they had helped to build.
[01:40:41] and travel 100 miles to a refugee center
[01:40:45] in Memphis.
[01:40:48] And that's the end [music] of the
[01:40:50] Corinth contraband camp. It disappears.
[01:40:52] It's done. So, its life is short. It has
[01:40:56] a lot of hope and a lot of promise, but
[01:40:59] it is blown away in some ways by the
[01:41:02] military, the changes in the military
[01:41:04] situation. [music] And in some ways that
[01:41:06] really is representative of what happens
[01:41:08] in a lot of places and tells us
[01:41:11] something about what it means to become
[01:41:13] free in the middle of a war. The
[01:41:16] military situation [music] is constantly
[01:41:18] creating upheavalss in the lives of
[01:41:21] these men, women, and children trying to
[01:41:23] become free. So the story of Corinth is
[01:41:25] in some ways the story of what happens
[01:41:27] everywhere.
[01:41:33] The Corinth Contraband camp was at once
[01:41:36] a glimpse into a life of freedom
[01:41:40] and a harbinger of the struggles ahead.
[01:41:44] Its brief success is a glimmer of hope
[01:41:46] in a year [music] that has seen North
[01:41:48] and South spiral into an abyss of hard
[01:41:51] war. [music]
[01:42:04] In December at Fredericksburg, Virginia,
[01:42:07] is still another colossal blunder by a
[01:42:09] Union general.
[01:42:11] This time, Ambrose Burnside.
[01:42:15] In a series of ill-advised frontal
[01:42:17] assaults, Burnside's men are slaughtered
[01:42:20] by Roberty Lee's Confederates positioned
[01:42:23] along the heights above the town.
[01:42:26] One Confederate at Fredericksburg stated
[01:42:29] the charging Federals melted like snow
[01:42:32] coming down on a warm ground.
[01:42:35] The Union debacle at Fredericksburg
[01:42:38] results in 12,000 [music] senseless
[01:42:40] casualties.
[01:42:44] 2 weeks later in the Western Theater is
[01:42:47] another Titanic battle. This one near
[01:42:50] the Tennessee town of Murreey'sboro.
[01:42:54] Along the Stones River on the final day
[01:42:57] of 1862,
[01:42:59] Union and Confederate forces square off
[01:43:01] for control of Middle Tennessee.
[01:43:05] For 2 days, the massive armies collide
[01:43:08] at places aptly named Hell's Halfacre
[01:43:11] and the Slaughter Pen.
[01:43:14] Union forces led by General William Rose
[01:43:17] Cray force the Confederate [music] army
[01:43:20] to retreat.
[01:43:22] It is a victory Lincoln desperately
[01:43:24] needs,
[01:43:26] but the cost in human lives is
[01:43:28] staggering.
[01:43:31] At the Battle of Stones River, Union and
[01:43:34] Confederate armies lose a stunning
[01:43:36] [music] 31% of their men.
[01:43:42] The casualties exceed even those of
[01:43:44] Bloody Shiloh.
[01:43:48] The shocking death tolls are another
[01:43:50] nightmare to a public now growing numb
[01:43:52] to the bloodbaths of the Civil War.
[01:43:58] Lincoln says, "If there is a worse place
[01:44:01] than hell,
[01:44:03] I am in it."
[01:44:08] went through
[01:44:10] fiery trials.
[01:44:14] In the dying light of 1862,
[01:44:19] America's fiery trial now seems to be a
[01:44:22] war
[01:44:24] without end.
[01:44:26] The flame
[01:44:28] shall not hurt thee.
[01:44:32] I won't be designs
[01:44:39] to consume
[01:44:42] and I go to find
[01:44:59] when Lincoln issued the Emancipation
[01:45:01] proclamation. It's hardly an inspiring
[01:45:03] document, but there are two words in
[01:45:06] that document,
[01:45:08] forever free.
[01:45:11] And those two words, they set in motion
[01:45:14] a chain of revolutionary events. The
[01:45:17] people at the time, northerners and
[01:45:19] southerners, they understood that the
[01:45:21] stakes of the game had been raised and
[01:45:24] that this would be a death match to the
[01:45:26] finish. Everything's hanging in the
[01:45:29] balance.
[01:45:33] [music]
[01:45:39] [music]
[01:45:43] [bell]
[01:45:45] It is a date abolitionist Frederick
[01:45:47] Douglas Cole's greater than July 4th,
[01:45:50] 1776. [music]
[01:45:53] In midafter afternoon on the first day
[01:45:55] of 1863,
[01:45:57] President Abraham Lincoln has just
[01:46:00] penned his name to the Emancipation
[01:46:03] Proclamation.
[01:46:06] With his signature,
[01:46:08] Lincoln [music] proclaims more than 3
[01:46:11] million slaves in the rebelling states
[01:46:14] [music] to be forever free.
[01:46:20] When Lincoln [music] issued the
[01:46:21] Emancipation Proclamation, he now
[01:46:24] fundamentally brought together the cause
[01:46:26] of union and the cause of ending
[01:46:28] slavery. [music]
[01:46:29] These two causes that he had not fused
[01:46:31] at the beginning of the war now came
[01:46:33] together. And so what this meant for the
[01:46:36] North and for these northern soldiers
[01:46:38] that when they said they were fighting
[01:46:40] for the Union, they are now fighting to
[01:46:42] end slavery. So the meaning of the war
[01:46:45] changed in a pretty dramatic way.
[01:46:53] [cheering]
[01:46:54] Lincoln's signature is a history-making
[01:46:56] exclamation point to nearly 2 years of
[01:46:59] civil war. When the war began,
[01:47:04] Americans in the North and South
[01:47:07] believed it could be decided by a single
[01:47:09] grand battle.
[01:47:11] By the end of 1862,
[01:47:14] it seemed as if the very gates of hell
[01:47:16] had been pried open.
[01:47:22] The battle casualties were numbers no
[01:47:24] American, north or south, could ever
[01:47:27] have imagined.
[01:47:30] A two-day battle in western Tennessee
[01:47:32] [music] in a place known as Shiloh left
[01:47:35] more than 24,000 killed, wounded, or
[01:47:38] missing. In Maryland, the Battle of
[01:47:41] Antidum yielded 22,000 casualties to
[01:47:45] both armies in a single day.
[01:47:52] [music]
[01:48:00] The enslaved have been seizing their own
[01:48:02] destiny.
[01:48:04] Thousands of men, women, and children
[01:48:07] have already escaped from plantations
[01:48:09] and have found refuge with Union forces.
[01:48:13] [singing]
[01:48:18] By law, the escaping slaves were still
[01:48:20] the legal property of their southern
[01:48:22] owners. Their actions in the midst of a
[01:48:25] rebellion have forced the US government
[01:48:28] to revisit a fundamental question.
[01:48:31] Were the escaping slaves free?
[01:48:35] The simple fact that slaves have fled
[01:48:38] and slaves have been protected
[01:48:40] in essence taken in as contrabands of
[01:48:43] war has altered the shape of things
[01:48:45] because we have a fugitive slave act
[01:48:47] that says by law they're supposed to be
[01:48:48] returned to their rifle owners. And that
[01:48:52] of course had been challenged in the
[01:48:53] Supreme Court. And guess what? The court
[01:48:56] of land said the law is the law.
[01:49:00] So here the wars altered that the wall
[01:49:02] the war has said the law don't mean
[01:49:04] squat.
[01:49:06] And it says
[01:49:10] that on first day of January in the year
[01:49:14] of our Lord 1,863
[01:49:19] all persons held as slaves.
[01:49:22] Word of the Emancipation Proclamation
[01:49:24] spreads among the over 3 million people
[01:49:26] in bondage.
[01:49:28] The news is met with a combination of
[01:49:31] joy, relief,
[01:49:34] and trepidation.
[01:49:37] My brothers and sisters, do you realize
[01:49:40] what that means?
[01:49:42] We free.
[01:49:44] We free.
[01:49:46] So they were they were happy but
[01:49:48] cautiously optimistic.
[01:49:50] Signed Abraham Lincoln in Washington DC.
[01:49:55] At least they knew that the Emancipation
[01:49:57] Proclamation
[01:49:59] symbolized the promise of freedom, that
[01:50:02] there was now hope because their own
[01:50:04] needs were legitimized by the president
[01:50:07] of the United States.
[01:50:13] And yet Lincoln's proclamation only
[01:50:17] applies to slaves within the rebelling
[01:50:19] states.
[01:50:22] Here's one for mama.
[01:50:25] Under the proclamation, [music] some
[01:50:28] 800,000 remain enslaved in four border
[01:50:31] states and [music] areas in the south
[01:50:34] under Union control.
[01:50:37] Lincoln's birth state of Kentucky alone
[01:50:39] has a [music] quarter of a million
[01:50:40] slaves within its borders.
[01:50:47] Kentucky,
[01:50:48] Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri are
[01:50:52] slave states that have reluctantly
[01:50:54] remained loyal to the Union.
[01:50:57] Since the war began, one of Lincoln's
[01:50:59] greatest fears has been losing the
[01:51:01] border states to the Confederacy.
[01:51:06] Lincoln is reputed to say, "I hope to
[01:51:09] have God on my side,
[01:51:12] but I must also have Kentucky.
[01:51:21] What are you What are you doing sitting
[01:51:22] on the ground?"
[01:51:24] In truth, the Emancipation Proclamation
[01:51:27] does not immediately free those still
[01:51:29] enslaved in the Confederacy. [music]
[01:51:31] Tired, huh?
[01:51:32] You're tired. You're tired. Don't you
[01:51:35] think I'm tired standing out [music] in
[01:51:37] this field all day?
[01:51:39] For Emma Stevenson and millions of
[01:51:41] others,
[01:51:42] 1863 will be just another year of hard
[01:51:46] labor, drudgery, and humiliation.
[01:51:49] [music]
[01:51:51] What you doing in my way, boy? Get up
[01:51:53] off. [music]
[01:51:54] Lincoln's proclamation is an empty
[01:51:57] promise without the power of the United
[01:51:59] States Army to [music] enforce it.
[01:52:03] Well, the reaction of the South would be
[01:52:05] initially one of, oh, this is desperate
[01:52:08] major. It's laughable.
[01:52:10] What do you mean that you're freeing the
[01:52:12] slaves that we have?
[01:52:15] You know, cuz you're not freeing
[01:52:17] anything. They're still our slaves.
[01:52:20] Uh, and you know, and as long as we
[01:52:22] resist and your armies aren't present,
[01:52:26] they're still slaves. So, in that sense,
[01:52:29] it was viewed as a desperation.
[01:52:35] For many in the North, [music] Lincoln
[01:52:37] included, the situation in early 1863 is
[01:52:41] one of desperation.
[01:52:44] We must change our tactics [music]
[01:52:46] or lose the game. Lincoln says
[01:52:50] the president publicly positions the
[01:52:52] Emancipation Proclamation as a war
[01:52:55] measure to reunify [music]
[01:52:57] the nation.
[01:53:00] He also believes it's an act of justice.
[01:53:03] He could not satisfy the constitutional
[01:53:07] debate or [music] criticism or concerns
[01:53:09] about emancipation by simply saying it's
[01:53:11] morally right. He had to have a
[01:53:13] constitutional argument. And the
[01:53:16] argument in his mind becomes that this
[01:53:18] is a military necessity.
[01:53:21] and northerners as they saw this, it
[01:53:23] began to dawn on them that the use of
[01:53:26] slavery as a Confederate military asset
[01:53:29] was what was prolonging and supporting
[01:53:31] the Confederate effort to destroy the
[01:53:33] Union. So for northern imaginations,
[01:53:36] this business of slavery and rebellion
[01:53:38] also began to converge.
[01:53:41] And eventually, northerners were
[01:53:42] beginning to be persuaded that if they
[01:53:44] were going to restore the Union, they
[01:53:46] would have to pull up slavery by the
[01:53:49] roots because slavery was what was
[01:53:51] nourishing rebellion.
[01:53:54] The Emancipation Proclamation does more
[01:53:57] than make people free. It gives all
[01:54:00] black men the freedom to fight.
[01:54:05] One of the greatest articles in the
[01:54:06] Emancipation Proclamation is the one
[01:54:09] that allows African-American men to
[01:54:11] enlist in the United States Army. At
[01:54:14] this point now, not only are you only
[01:54:15] taking the aid, the labor that aids the
[01:54:18] Confederate cause, but you're enlisting
[01:54:20] that labor in [music] the armed forces
[01:54:22] to be used against the Confederacy.
[01:54:27] [singing]
[01:54:32] Over the next two years of the war, some
[01:54:35] 200,000 African-Ameans will enlist in
[01:54:39] the army and navy. [cheering]
[01:54:42] [singing]
[01:54:44] In the eyes of skeptical northerners,
[01:54:46] these new soldiers must prove they can
[01:54:49] kill before they are considered men.
[01:54:52] to let [singing] my people.
[01:54:56] [music]
[01:54:58] The war effort and the enlistment of
[01:55:01] black men into the war is so vital
[01:55:03] because black men now have the
[01:55:05] opportunity to not just say we're men,
[01:55:08] but to prove their manhood.
[01:55:15] And so now African-Amean men can wear
[01:55:18] uniforms. they can work alongside white
[01:55:23] men.
[01:55:25] [singing and music]
[01:55:29] And also, this is a way for Africanamean
[01:55:32] men to show how you can live out and
[01:55:36] perform freedom. This is how it looks to
[01:55:40] be free.
[01:55:42] [singing]
[01:55:45] Ready. [music]
[01:55:50] [music]
[01:56:01] Aim.
[01:56:02] FIRE.
[01:56:05] Freedom to the newly emancipated
[01:56:08] ultimately depends on Union victory.
[01:56:13] In the spring of 1863,
[01:56:16] the Union hopes to reverse a series of
[01:56:18] stunning defeats at the hands of General
[01:56:20] Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern
[01:56:23] Virginia.
[01:56:28] In spring, the Union Army of the PTOAC,
[01:56:32] now commanded by Joseph Hooker, readies
[01:56:35] to avenge the humiliating defeat to Lee
[01:56:38] at Fredericksburg, Virginia.
[01:56:40] Hooker's bold plan is to lure Lee out of
[01:56:43] his defenses at Fredericksburg, then
[01:56:46] destroy his Confederate army.
[01:56:48] Just before the battle, Hooker boasts,
[01:56:51] "May God have mercy on General Lee, for
[01:56:55] I will have none."
[01:57:02] About 10 miles west of Frederick'sburg
[01:57:05] at a wilderness crossroads named
[01:57:08] Chancellor'sville,
[01:57:10] Hooker's bravado quickly fades.
[01:57:14] The Battle of Chancellor'sville in May
[01:57:17] 1863
[01:57:19] is yet another Union failure in the
[01:57:22] Eastern Theater.
[01:57:25] Though outnumbered 2 to1, Lee once again
[01:57:28] outgenerals his Union counterpart.
[01:57:32] Many consider Chancellorsville Lee's
[01:57:34] greatest triumph. [music]
[01:57:38] But the Confederate victory comes with a
[01:57:40] heavy price.
[01:57:42] Lee's most trusted lieutenant, Stonewall
[01:57:44] [music] Jackson, is mortally wounded
[01:57:47] from a bullet fired by one of his own
[01:57:49] men.
[01:57:56] With [music] nation's eyes on the fight
[01:57:58] in Virginia, few in America are aware of
[01:58:01] the unfolding drama emerging in the
[01:58:04] West.
[01:58:07] The lands between the Appalachians
[01:58:08] [music]
[01:58:09] and the Mississippi River.
[01:58:16] Victories in Tennessee, at Shiloh,
[01:58:21] and at Corinth in northern Mississippi
[01:58:24] have Union forces poised to capture what
[01:58:27] many consider [music] to be the biggest
[01:58:30] prize in the Western campaign.
[01:58:35] The Mississippi River is likened to the
[01:58:37] trunk of the American tree with limbs
[01:58:40] and branches reaching to the Alaganis,
[01:58:43] [music] the Canadian border, and the
[01:58:45] Rocky Mountains.
[01:58:48] For northern farmers who need to get
[01:58:50] their crops to market, the Mississippi
[01:58:53] is their economic lifeblood.
[01:58:56] During the past two years of war, that
[01:58:59] lifeblood has been blocked by the
[01:59:00] Confederates.
[01:59:02] Lincoln had to look at the entire north
[01:59:05] and when he looked across the
[01:59:06] Appalachians, he saw Ohio, Indiana,
[01:59:10] Illinois, Wisconsin, all of them
[01:59:13] ultimately dependent on the commercial
[01:59:16] traffic of the Mississippi Valley.
[01:59:18] [music] When that is stopped up by the
[01:59:22] secession of the Confederate states,
[01:59:24] then the western states immediately
[01:59:26] begin looking to their own self-interest
[01:59:28] as the farmers, as the economies of
[01:59:30] those states begin to hurt. If they
[01:59:32] continue to hurt, if no measures are
[01:59:34] taken to reopen the Mississippi Valley,
[01:59:37] then the inhabitants of those states are
[01:59:40] going to lose any kind of enthusiasm or
[01:59:42] heart for the war. They may simply fold
[01:59:45] their arms, refuse to cooperate.
[01:59:49] [music]
[01:59:49] Indiana is one of those states.
[01:59:53] Governor Oliver Perry Morton strongly
[01:59:56] backs Lincoln, but fears a civil war
[01:59:58] within his own divided state.
[02:00:02] Morton is convinced Indiana Democrats
[02:00:05] will vote to secede [music] unless the
[02:00:07] Mississippi River is reopened.
[02:00:12] By the spring of 1863,
[02:00:15] General Ulissiz S. Grant is determined
[02:00:17] to do just that. [music]
[02:00:20] Grant's sights are set on Vixsburg,
[02:00:23] Mississippi, the most formidable
[02:00:25] Confederate stronghold on the
[02:00:27] Mississippi River.
[02:00:29] The bustling river town [music] has a
[02:00:31] population of 4600 and is the second
[02:00:34] largest city in Mississippi.
[02:00:37] Vixsburg is home to a large [music]
[02:00:39] group of immigrants from Ireland,
[02:00:41] Germany, and Great Britain. The home of
[02:00:44] Confederate President Jefferson Davis is
[02:00:46] just 20 m to [music] the south. The
[02:00:49] symbol of Vixsburg's importance is the
[02:00:52] recently completed Warren County
[02:00:54] Courthouse, a magnificent brick
[02:00:56] structure constructed using slave labor.
[02:01:00] The Union controls the river just north
[02:01:02] of [music] Vixsburg and to the south
[02:01:05] from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico,
[02:01:08] but Vixsburg guards a critical stretch
[02:01:10] of the Mississippi, [music] still under
[02:01:12] Confederate control.
[02:01:15] Lincoln said, "Vixsburg is the key." He
[02:01:17] said, "I've got to have that key in my
[02:01:18] pocket." Jefferson Davis said, "Vixsburg
[02:01:21] [music] is the nail head that holds the
[02:01:23] two halves of the Confederacy together."
[02:01:26] If that river falls into Union hands,
[02:01:28] the [music] South is split in half. It
[02:01:30] loses the father of waters, this this
[02:01:33] great channel for for supplies and and
[02:01:36] and and food and ammunition. Uh
[02:01:39] something that [music] gives blood to
[02:01:41] the Confederacy.
[02:01:44] Called the Gibralar of the Confederacy,
[02:01:47] Vixsburg is perched at top steep bluffs
[02:01:50] overlooking a hairpin curve of the
[02:01:53] Mississippi.
[02:01:55] Batteries protect a river crossing where
[02:01:57] cargo essential to the Confederate war
[02:01:59] effort is transported to railroads on
[02:02:01] either side. They are the only remaining
[02:02:05] railroads connecting the western
[02:02:07] Confederacy to the east. The
[02:02:10] Confederates [music] are prepared to
[02:02:11] defend Vixsburg at all costs.
[02:02:16] Vixsburg is is so important because of
[02:02:19] its geography, I think, and it's
[02:02:21] surrounded by swamps.
[02:02:25] So, how do you get control of Vixsburg?
[02:02:34] Grant's ill-advised plan is to approach
[02:02:37] through the swamps from the north.
[02:02:43] Grant's subordinate, General William
[02:02:45] Tecumsa Sherman, [music] is routed just
[02:02:48] north of Vixsburg at Chickasaw Bayou.
[02:02:52] [music]
[02:02:56] Sherman's repulse is followed by a
[02:02:58] series of failed advances by land and
[02:03:00] naval forces.
[02:03:03] The Union forces battle swamps and bayus
[02:03:06] as much as they do the Confederates.
[02:03:08] [music]
[02:03:11] By April 1863,
[02:03:13] Grant is no closer to Vixsburg than he
[02:03:15] was 6 months earlier. [music]
[02:03:22] Grant's next series of risky moves will
[02:03:24] baffle the Confederates and astound even
[02:03:27] his own men.
[02:03:29] He orders the Union force to march south
[02:03:32] through the soggy lands on the Louisiana
[02:03:35] side of the river, safe from the big
[02:03:37] [music] guns at Vixsburg.
[02:03:40] Next, the Union forces do the
[02:03:43] unthinkable. [music]
[02:03:49] During a moonless night on the evening
[02:03:51] of April 16th,
[02:03:54] a fleet of Union ironclad warships and
[02:03:57] unarmored transports led by David Dixon
[02:04:00] Porter
[02:04:02] attempts to sneak by the Confederate
[02:04:04] defenses at Vixsburg.
[02:04:07] As the batteries roar,
[02:04:10] the Union ships run the gauntlet.
[02:04:14] Somehow the battered Union flotilla
[02:04:16] slits by Vixsburg.
[02:04:21] Meanwhile, Grant's Overland Force in
[02:04:23] Louisiana has marched to a point 40 m
[02:04:26] south of Vixsburg. Along the
[02:04:29] Mississippi, they are joined by Porter's
[02:04:32] naval fleet and transported to the
[02:04:34] Mississippi side of the river.
[02:04:38] Instead of advancing to Vixsburg, Grant
[02:04:40] boldly moves east.
[02:04:44] The rails linking Jackson to [music]
[02:04:46] Vixsburg are the only lifeline to the
[02:04:48] Confederate Citadel.
[02:04:50] In a bold [music] dash through West
[02:04:52] Central Mississippi, Grant overwhelms
[02:04:55] Confederate forces at Port Gibson, then
[02:04:58] at Raymond.
[02:05:00] On May 14th, Grant arrives at Jackson
[02:05:04] and defeats another Confederate army.
[02:05:05] [music]
[02:05:06] This one led by General Joseph Johnston.
[02:05:10] After destroying the military resources
[02:05:12] at Jackson, Grant now turns back towards
[02:05:16] Vixsburg.
[02:05:18] That leads Confederate General John
[02:05:20] Peton to march 23,000 men out of
[02:05:24] Vixsburg to stop Grant's advance.
[02:05:34] Peton's Confederates take positions
[02:05:36] above a crossroads connecting Jackson to
[02:05:39] Vixsburg.
[02:05:41] A top Champion Hill, they deploy along a
[02:05:45] threemile front.
[02:05:48] The Confederate force is all that stands
[02:05:50] between Grant and Vixsburg.
[02:05:54] Ready, aim, [screaming] fire.
[02:06:01] Shortly after 10:00 a.m.,
[02:06:04] the vanguard of Grant's 32,000 men
[02:06:06] advances up the hill.
[02:06:09] The Battle of Champion Hill becomes the
[02:06:12] bloodiest of the Vixsburg campaign.
[02:06:17] One Confederate wrote, "The battle here
[02:06:20] raged fearfully. One unbroken roar of
[02:06:23] musketry was all that could be heard.
[02:06:30] After a desperate struggle,
[02:06:34] the Confederates withdraw from Champion
[02:06:36] Hill.
[02:06:38] Their retreat quickly becomes a route.
[02:06:42] Pursued by Grant's army, the
[02:06:44] Confederates race back towards Vixsburg
[02:06:46] in panic and confusion.
[02:06:51] At the Big Black River,
[02:06:54] some put up a brief fight, but are
[02:06:56] overwhelmed.
[02:06:59] From there, Peton's humiliated army
[02:07:02] limps back [music] to Vixsburg.
[02:07:05] One resident wrote that an anxious doom
[02:07:09] seemed to hang over the faces of the
[02:07:11] men. A sorrowful tiding that all knew
[02:07:15] would tell of disaster.
[02:07:19] In the past 17 days, Grant's force has
[02:07:23] moved 200 miles, met the enemy five
[02:07:26] times, and been victorious in every
[02:07:30] fight.
[02:07:31] Grant's Vixsburg campaign is one of the
[02:07:34] major campaigns in all of military
[02:07:37] history. Not just [music] American, but
[02:07:39] military history as a whole, because of
[02:07:41] what he was able to achieve. [music]
[02:07:43] I mean, he did things that nobody's
[02:07:46] supposed to be able to do. People still
[02:07:49] study this battle in modern times as to
[02:07:52] how a general, an audacious general, a
[02:07:55] general that has determination can
[02:07:57] [music] get things done.
[02:08:00] But what Grant hasn't done is take
[02:08:03] Vixsburg.
[02:08:07] The Confederate force of 35,000 works
[02:08:10] feverishly to ready the 8 miles of
[02:08:13] fortifications encircling the town. Pull
[02:08:16] that down. Get it down. Get it down.
[02:08:18] To the west, Union gunboats [music] now
[02:08:21] control the river. To the east, more
[02:08:24] than 40,000 Union troops quickly [music]
[02:08:27] surround the city.
[02:08:29] On May 19th,
[02:08:33] then again on May 22nd,
[02:08:36] Grant's troops attack,
[02:08:40] but fail in their attempt to break
[02:08:42] through the Confederate earthworks.
[02:08:47] Grant's next and final move
[02:08:51] to lay siege to Vixsburg.
[02:08:54] In his memoir, Grant stated his goal was
[02:08:57] to simply out camp the enemy.
[02:09:01] In reality, Grant's plan is to starve
[02:09:04] the defenders of Vixsburg into
[02:09:06] submission.
[02:09:12] Emma Balffor and [music] her husband, a
[02:09:14] prominent physician,
[02:09:17] live in a home overlooking the river.
[02:09:21] Like many civilians in Vixsburg, the
[02:09:24] Balffors refuse [music] to leave.
[02:09:27] In her diary, Emma defiantly writes,
[02:09:31] "The general [music] impression is that
[02:09:32] they fire at this city in that way,
[02:09:34] thinking they will wear out the women
[02:09:35] and children.
[02:09:38] General Peton will be impatient to
[02:09:40] surrender the place on [music] that
[02:09:41] account,
[02:09:43] but they know little the spirit of
[02:09:45] Vixsburg women and children if they
[02:09:48] expect this
[02:09:52] for protection from the relentless
[02:09:54] shelling.
[02:09:56] Many of the civilians dig caves into the
[02:09:59] hillsides.
[02:10:01] Mary Webster [ __ ] arrived in Vixsburg
[02:10:04] in April with her husband, a Confederate
[02:10:07] officer.
[02:10:08] With her husband on the front line, Mary
[02:10:11] is left to fend for herself and their
[02:10:13] 2-year-old daughter.
[02:10:20] Terrorstricken, we remained crouched in
[02:10:23] the cave while shell after shell
[02:10:26] followed each other in quick secession.
[02:10:32] I endeavored by constant prayer to
[02:10:34] prepare myself for the sudden death I
[02:10:37] was almost certain awaited me.
[02:10:41] My heart stood still as we would hear
[02:10:43] the reports from the guns.
[02:10:46] Cowering in a corner, holding my child
[02:10:49] to my heart. The only feeling of my life
[02:10:53] being the choking throbs of my heart
[02:10:55] that rendered me almost breathless.
[02:11:06] Day
[02:11:07] after day after day, Grand's artillery
[02:11:11] tries to pound Vixsburg into submission.
[02:11:29] Even the righteousness of God, which is
[02:11:31] by faith in Christ,
[02:11:34] for all have sinned.
[02:11:38] Reverend William Lord, his wife and
[02:11:41] young daughter, endure the siege of
[02:11:43] Vixsburg in a cave just yards from the
[02:11:46] forward lines.
[02:11:48] God will protect us.
[02:11:50] God will protect us.
[02:11:54] I'm afraid they got killed, too.
[02:12:13] Confederate Secretary of War James
[02:12:15] Seddin exhorts, "Vixsburg must not be
[02:12:18] lost without a desperate struggle."
[02:12:22] He orders General Joseph Johnston to
[02:12:24] march his army from Jackson and attack
[02:12:26] Grant from the east.
[02:12:29] Johnston stalls, saying he does not have
[02:12:32] enough men.
[02:12:37] By June, the situation at Vixsburg is so
[02:12:39] desperate [music] that Confederate
[02:12:41] President Jefferson Davis considers
[02:12:42] sending Roberty E. leave and part of the
[02:12:44] Army of Northern Virginia a thousand m
[02:12:47] westward to relieve enemy pressure on
[02:12:50] the besieged [music]
[02:12:51] city.
[02:12:53] Instead,
[02:12:55] Lee and Davis decide to invade the
[02:12:57] North.
[02:12:59] At the sleepy town of Gettysburg,
[02:13:01] Pennsylvania, Lee's army of Northern
[02:13:04] Virginia collides with the Union [music]
[02:13:06] Army of the PTOAC, commanded by yet
[02:13:09] another general. George me is its fourth
[02:13:13] commander since the war began. Me says
[02:13:17] Gettysburg will determine the fate of
[02:13:19] our country and our cause.
[02:13:23] All eyes in the summer of [music] 1863
[02:13:25] were on two military situations. Lee's
[02:13:29] raid into Pennsylvania and [music]
[02:13:31] Grant's investment of the Confederate
[02:13:34] bastion at Vixsburg. Both of those
[02:13:37] military campaigns were crucial to the
[02:13:41] fortunes of both sides.
[02:13:51] After 3 days of savage fighting at
[02:13:54] Gettysburg, Lee and his army of Northern
[02:13:57] Virginia are defeated. [music]
[02:14:00] The loss of life is catastrophic, even
[02:14:03] by Civil War standards.
[02:14:07] Some 50,000 [music] from north and south
[02:14:10] are killed, wounded, or missing.
[02:14:13] A New Jersey infantryman [music]
[02:14:16] helping to bury the dead spoke of
[02:14:20] the stench of decaying humanity hugging
[02:14:22] the earth like a fog,
[02:14:25] poisoning [music] every breath.
[02:14:30] After the battle, Lee and his battered
[02:14:33] army retreat back into Virginia.
[02:14:36] For the remainder of the war, most of
[02:14:38] the fighting will take place in and
[02:14:40] around [music] Richmond.
[02:14:47] While the battle at Gettysburg was
[02:14:49] raging in Pennsylvania,
[02:14:52] the siege of Vixsburg was entering its
[02:14:54] final act.
[02:14:57] For more than six weeks, the Gibralar of
[02:15:00] the Confederacy has been cut off from
[02:15:02] the outside world.
[02:15:10] No food or supplies have reached the
[02:15:12] 30,000 soldiers and the thousands of
[02:15:14] civilians inside.
[02:15:19] Soldiers rations consist of a handful of
[02:15:22] peas and rice per day.
[02:15:31] Disease runs rampant.
[02:15:34] The water supply is almost depleted.
[02:15:38] The stifling midsummer heat only adds to
[02:15:41] the misery.
[02:15:44] I think that Grant saw the war in a
[02:15:49] different way. And this is another
[02:15:50] reason why Grant is ultimately so
[02:15:53] successful.
[02:15:55] Grant was fighting a war for a future
[02:15:59] time.
[02:16:01] It wasn't a gentleman's war.
[02:16:09] On the very day Lee orders the
[02:16:11] disastrous Pickicket's [music] charge at
[02:16:13] Gettysburg, Confederate General John
[02:16:16] Peton decides to surrender Vixsburg.
[02:16:22] The next day, July [music] 4th, 1863,
[02:16:26] Peton hands over his entire army to
[02:16:29] Ulissiz Srant.
[02:16:33] After 47 days,
[02:16:36] the siege of Vixsburg is over.
[02:16:43] At the Warren County Courthouse, the
[02:16:45] Confederate flag is lowered
[02:16:50] and the stars and stripes raised.
[02:16:54] The victory at Vixsburg knocks [music]
[02:16:57] open the lock that the Confederacy had
[02:17:00] placed on the great commercial highway
[02:17:02] of the Mississippi River [music] Valley.
[02:17:05] A relieved Abraham Lincoln says,
[02:17:09] "The father of waters flows again.
[02:17:13] unvexed to the sea.
[02:17:17] The defeat of Confederate forces at
[02:17:20] Vixsburg, the defeat of [music] Leah
[02:17:22] Gettysburg. together. The eyes of many
[02:17:25] southerners, this was an irreversible
[02:17:28] turn to defeat.
[02:17:31] The loss of Pimton's force, significant,
[02:17:35] and especially significant in terms of
[02:17:38] how it affected the psyche of white
[02:17:41] southerners.
[02:17:50] Vixsburg is a crushing defeat. Yet, it
[02:17:53] hardly sounds the death nail of the
[02:17:54] Confederacy.
[02:17:57] More than 300 m to the northeast [music]
[02:18:00] in the rugged highlands of eastern
[02:18:01] Tennessee, another campaign is underway.
[02:18:07] The coming fight will help determine the
[02:18:10] final outcome [music] of the war.
[02:18:15] 2 days after the fall of Vixsburg,
[02:18:18] Secretary [music] of War Edwin Stanton
[02:18:20] issues this challenge to Union General
[02:18:22] William Stark Rose Crayons.
[02:18:26] You and your noble army now have the
[02:18:28] chance to give the finishing blow to the
[02:18:31] rebellion.
[02:18:38] Rose Cran commands the Army of the
[02:18:41] Cumberland,
[02:18:42] some 70,000 strong.
[02:18:47] Standing in his way is the Confederate
[02:18:50] Army of Tennessee, commanded by General
[02:18:53] Braxton Bragg.
[02:18:58] 9 months earlier, Bragg's invasion into
[02:19:01] Kentucky had ended in his defeat at
[02:19:03] Perville.
[02:19:06] In January, [music] his army was again
[02:19:08] defeated near Murphy'sboro, Tennessee.
[02:19:12] This time at the Battle of Stones River.
[02:19:16] Now, the fate of the Deep South and some
[02:19:19] say the Confederacy itself
[02:19:22] lies with Bragg's ability to stop the
[02:19:24] Union advance.
[02:19:28] Of course, now Vixsburg has fallen.
[02:19:31] Gettysburg has turned into a crushing
[02:19:34] defeat for Lee. And so all the weight,
[02:19:38] all the responsibility is on Brag
[02:19:40] shoulders.
[02:19:42] Since the beginning of the war, the
[02:19:44] South has feverishly worked to create a
[02:19:46] network of arsenals and factories that
[02:19:49] now feed the Confederate war machine.
[02:19:52] And by the summer of 1863,
[02:19:56] the South industrial heartland was the
[02:19:59] central Georgia and central Alabama
[02:20:02] area.
[02:20:04] It was essentially the very essence
[02:20:07] inards and being of the south's bid for
[02:20:10] independence. And as that complex had
[02:20:12] grown in capacity, there was a growing
[02:20:15] realization on the part of leaders in
[02:20:18] the north that that military-industrial
[02:20:21] complex was going to have to be
[02:20:22] disrupted.
[02:20:25] The Union invasion comes at a time when
[02:20:28] civil unrest has [music] been spreading
[02:20:30] throughout the Confederacy.
[02:20:32] So-called bread riots in Richmond and
[02:20:35] other southern cities are the byproducts
[02:20:37] of massive inflation and food shortages.
[02:20:42] But the most serious problem affecting
[02:20:44] the home front [music] in the South
[02:20:45] during the summer of 1863
[02:20:48] is the loss of its men to the war.
[02:20:56] [music] Joshua Callaway reluctantly
[02:20:58] responds to the Alabama governor's call
[02:21:01] for volunteers.
[02:21:03] Callaway, [music]
[02:21:04] a 28-year-old school teacher from a
[02:21:06] small town near Selma, does not own any
[02:21:09] slaves.
[02:21:12] In April 1862, [music]
[02:21:14] the Confederate government had issued an
[02:21:16] order calling for men between the ages
[02:21:18] of 18 and 35 to enlist for a 3-year
[02:21:22] term.
[02:21:23] It is the [music] first conscription act
[02:21:25] ever imposed in America.
[02:21:28] By volunteering,
[02:21:30] Callaway avoids the stigma [music] of
[02:21:32] being drafted.
[02:21:34] He leaves behind two small children and
[02:21:37] wife, [music] Dulania.
[02:21:41] For a man like Joshua [music] Callaway,
[02:21:44] the decision to fight involves a number
[02:21:47] of different considerations. He's
[02:21:49] [music] not one of the younger men. He's
[02:21:51] not single. He's not without children.
[02:21:54] He's got a wife and two children. and
[02:21:58] he's been [music] working as a teacher
[02:22:00] to support them and what's going to
[02:22:03] happen to them when he goes off to
[02:22:05] fight. So it's a difficult struggle in
[02:22:09] his mind and in the minds of many other
[02:22:11] men like him
[02:22:16] [music]
[02:22:22] battalion charge bayonet. [screaming]
[02:22:26] By August 1863,
[02:22:29] Joshua Callaway has become an officer in
[02:22:31] the 28th Alabama.
[02:22:34] Right shoulder shift arm.
[02:22:36] He is amongst the thousands of
[02:22:38] Confederates ready to defend the town
[02:22:40] that has become the Union target [music]
[02:22:42] in the coming campaign.
[02:22:46] Nestled on the south bank of the
[02:22:48] Tennessee River and surrounded by the
[02:22:50] rugged southern Appalachians,
[02:22:53] Chattanooga, Tennessee is the gateway to
[02:22:55] the deep south.
[02:22:58] Intersecting in Chattanooga are
[02:23:00] railroads vital to the Confederate war
[02:23:02] effort. They are the key to the
[02:23:05] distribution of the war material
[02:23:07] produced in central Georgia and central
[02:23:10] Alabama.
[02:23:11] The Chattanooga [music] region becomes
[02:23:13] that doorway gateway passageway through
[02:23:16] the protecting mountain barrier between
[02:23:20] the northern armies and this ever
[02:23:22] growing military-industrial complex in
[02:23:25] central Georgia and central Alabama. So
[02:23:28] anyone looking at a map didn't have to
[02:23:30] be a Napoleon in the rough to be able to
[02:23:32] look at Chattanooga and to appreciate
[02:23:35] immediately its grand strategic
[02:23:38] significance.
[02:23:41] Lincoln states that taking Chattanooga
[02:23:44] is as important as taking [music] the
[02:23:46] Confederate capital of Richmond.
[02:23:49] In spite of the strong objection of
[02:23:51] Roberty E. Lee, Confederate President
[02:23:53] Jefferson Davis orders James Longreet
[02:23:56] and two divisions of the Army of
[02:23:58] Northern Virginia southward to
[02:24:01] Chattanooga
[02:24:05] to face the Union threat. Bragg will
[02:24:07] amass a force of 68,000.
[02:24:12] Outside of Chattanooga is Joshua
[02:24:15] Callaway.
[02:24:20] August 27th, 1863.
[02:24:27] My dear wife,
[02:24:30] we are now on the west side of Lookout
[02:24:32] Mountain,
[02:24:34] guarding the road that leads across the
[02:24:35] corner of it to Chattanooga.
[02:24:41] Everything is quiet now, but no one
[02:24:43] knows how soon, what moment the conflict
[02:24:46] will begin.
[02:24:52] a Confederate soldier like Joshua
[02:24:54] Callaway. [music] Yes, he was a
[02:24:56] Confederate, but he was also a husband.
[02:24:59] He's also a son, a father. And [music]
[02:25:02] those relationships were a big part of
[02:25:05] why he was fighting in this war. [music]
[02:25:07] He may have been fighting to protect
[02:25:10] slavery, but why did that matter?
[02:25:12] [music]
[02:25:13] It mattered because his family's
[02:25:15] interests and future depended on it. And
[02:25:18] his family [music]
[02:25:19] was also uh his emotional lifeline, what
[02:25:24] kept his morale up, what supported him
[02:25:27] and kept him going on a daily basis. And
[02:25:30] you can see that in Joshua's letters to
[02:25:32] Doulsonia. He needs that [music]
[02:25:34] correspondence. He craves that
[02:25:36] correspondence.
[02:25:39] Let me hear from you soon and often.
[02:25:42] Kiss the children for me. God bless you,
[02:25:45] my darling.
[02:25:48] Joshua Callaway.
[02:25:55] In mid August, Rose Cran moves directly
[02:25:59] towards Chattanooga.
[02:26:01] Three columns spread across a 40-mile
[02:26:04] front advance over the rugged Cumberland
[02:26:06] Mountains.
[02:26:08] But Rose Cran's now separated army of
[02:26:11] the Cumberland is vulnerable to attack.
[02:26:15] Just south of Chattanooga at
[02:26:17] Mcleammore's [music]
[02:26:18] Cove, Bragg orders an attack on a
[02:26:21] portion of Rose Cran's splintered army.
[02:26:26] High command in Bragg's army was
[02:26:29] dysfunctional. [music]
[02:26:30] The top subordinates of Bragg simply
[02:26:34] would not obey his orders. [music]
[02:26:36] The Federals are falling back that way.
[02:26:37] We need to be moving that way.
[02:26:39] You have your orders. You will hold this
[02:26:40] ground. According to General Mano, you
[02:26:42] will hold this ground. Let's go.
[02:26:46] Bragg had it within his power to destroy
[02:26:50] most of the middle column of Rose Cran's
[02:26:54] army.
[02:26:56] The lost opportunity to destroy part of
[02:26:59] the army of the Cumberland will haunt
[02:27:01] Bragg and his subordinates for the
[02:27:03] [music] rest of the war.
[02:27:12] For the next week, more than 100,000
[02:27:15] soldiers from two opposing armies
[02:27:18] maneuver in northern Georgia.
[02:27:21] In the words of one Confederate, Bragg
[02:27:24] and Rose Crans are playing a game of
[02:27:26] chess among these mountains and valleys.
[02:27:28] [music]
[02:27:35] Everyone on both sides realizes [music]
[02:27:37] a clash is inevitable.
[02:27:40] It's only a matter of where and when.
[02:27:45] [music]
[02:27:47] when
[02:27:49] is September 18th, 1863.
[02:27:53] Where is 8 mi south of Chattanooga along
[02:27:57] the banks of the Chikamaga, a creek the
[02:28:00] Cherokee called the river of death.
[02:28:05] Bragg's plan turned the Union Army to
[02:28:08] the south, cutting rose crayons off from
[02:28:11] Chattanooga,
[02:28:13] then pin the army of the Cumberland
[02:28:16] against the eastern wall of Lookout
[02:28:18] Mountain.
[02:28:20] But if Bragg got between Rose Cran and
[02:28:22] Chattanooga, he could cut off Rose
[02:28:24] Cran's supplies. He could cut off Rose
[02:28:27] Cran's retreat and he potentially could
[02:28:29] drive Rose Cran's back against the
[02:28:32] mountains in such a way that Rose Cran
[02:28:34] might have to surrender his army.
[02:28:38] Bragg launches the battle with a move to
[02:28:40] control two bridges crossing the
[02:28:42] Chikamaga.
[02:28:45] A small Union force, some armed with
[02:28:47] Spencer repeating rifles, puts up a
[02:28:50] stubborn fight.
[02:28:55] The Union forces withdraw
[02:29:00] and the Confederates [music] finally
[02:29:01] begin crossing the Chikamaga.
[02:29:06] The unexpected Union resistance results
[02:29:08] in yet another missed opportunity for
[02:29:11] Bragg.
[02:29:13] His main attack will have to [music]
[02:29:14] wait one more day.
[02:29:18] The delay gives Rose Cran's precious
[02:29:20] time to consolidate the scattered forces
[02:29:22] of his main army.
[02:29:26] That evening, he extends the Union line
[02:29:29] northward along the Lefayet Road.
[02:29:37] At dawn the next day,
[02:29:40] Bragg's men prepare to attack.
[02:29:44] A soldier from Tennessee remarks,
[02:29:46] [music]
[02:29:47] "The day was bright and beautiful, and
[02:29:49] the world never seemed half so [music]
[02:29:51] attractive before.
[02:29:54] now that there was a good chance of
[02:29:56] leaving it soon.
[02:30:03] A little after 7 a.m.
[02:30:09] Confederate cavalry stumble upon a few
[02:30:11] Union soldiers filling their cantens.
[02:30:16] It is an area where the Confederates
[02:30:17] expect no contact.
[02:30:22] In pursuit of the canteen detail,
[02:30:27] the Confederate cavalry themselves
[02:30:28] encounter a superior force.
[02:30:31] There's an enemy in there, sir.
[02:30:34] 2300 men of John Croxton's [music]
[02:30:37] brigade.
[02:30:40] What begins as a skirmish almost
[02:30:42] immediately escalates
[02:30:44] into what becomes known
[02:30:49] as the battle of Chikamaga.
[02:30:58] At Chikamaga, the dense canopy of trees
[02:31:02] causes the battle smoke to hang like a
[02:31:04] thick deadly fog.
[02:31:08] With the limited visibility of
[02:31:10] Chikamaga, the enemy is going to be able
[02:31:12] to close um to a very short distance
[02:31:15] before engaging at a distance where the
[02:31:18] artillery and its longer range is not
[02:31:21] going to have an advantage.
[02:31:24] [screaming]
[02:31:24] It was something that was not really
[02:31:26] anticipated by the leaders on both
[02:31:28] sides.
[02:31:40] Almost without warning, a line of
[02:31:42] Confederate infantry appears on [music]
[02:31:44] the right flank of Batterya A First
[02:31:47] Michigan Light Artillery.
[02:31:50] Get this gun.
[02:31:55] The Michigan soldiers are ordered to lie
[02:31:57] down with their knapsacks still on.
[02:32:00] [cheering]
[02:32:04] This makes it a struggle for the men to
[02:32:06] roll over and reload.
[02:32:12] The battery is commanded by George
[02:32:14] Vanpelt, the former town constable of
[02:32:17] Cold Water, Michigan.
[02:32:19] Hurry up, boys. You're right on top of
[02:32:21] us.
[02:32:27] Michigan men fire 64 rounds.
[02:32:35] Most sail over the heads of the charging
[02:32:38] Confederates.
[02:32:39] [screaming]
[02:32:41] [cheering]
[02:32:44] There they come.
[02:32:48] We got to get out of here.
[02:32:52] The Michigan battery is routed.
[02:32:59] Van Pelt refuses to abandon his guns.
[02:33:19] The confusion and bloodletting of
[02:33:21] Vanpelt's fight is typical of the Battle
[02:33:24] of Chikamaga.
[02:33:27] By late in the afternoon, neither side
[02:33:30] has gained or conceded much ground.
[02:33:34] In the thick of the fight at Chikamaga
[02:33:37] is the 15th Wisconsin Infantry.
[02:33:40] This Union regiment is composed entirely
[02:33:43] of Scandinavians.
[02:33:46] Almost all were born in Norway.
[02:33:51] The decade before the Civil War had seen
[02:33:54] a huge wave of Europeans immigrating to
[02:33:56] the United States.
[02:33:59] The vast majority [music] settled in the
[02:34:00] North. The new Americans understood
[02:34:04] political oppression [music] and
[02:34:05] religious persecution because many had
[02:34:08] experienced it firsthand.
[02:34:11] When the war comes, about 25% of the
[02:34:15] Union Army will be immigrants.
[02:34:18] They believe in the promise of America
[02:34:21] and they [music] stand firm in the right
[02:34:23] to die for it.
[02:34:25] This is the only freestanding popular
[02:34:28] government left in the world. Every
[02:34:31] other experiment in popular government
[02:34:33] either fell apart or was crushed
[02:34:36] brutally
[02:34:37] so that by 1860 the United States is the
[02:34:40] last major stronghold of this thing
[02:34:44] called democracy. If the United States
[02:34:48] proceeds to blow its brains out through
[02:34:50] secession, what are we saying to the
[02:34:53] rest of the world? We're saying
[02:34:55] democracy is a chimera. Democracy is a
[02:34:59] Greek drollery that will never work. If
[02:35:03] you want the proof, say the kings and
[02:35:05] aristocrats, if you want the proof of
[02:35:07] how unstable democracy is, just look at
[02:35:09] what the Americans are doing to
[02:35:11] themselves right now.
[02:35:15] Right now in northern Georgia, they are
[02:35:17] fighting what will become the biggest
[02:35:19] battle of the western campaign.
[02:35:26] Sam Watkins of the First Tennessee
[02:35:29] has survived Shiloh and Stones River.
[02:35:32] Now in the midst of Chikamaga, he
[02:35:35] stumbles upon his badly wounded friend
[02:35:38] Billy Webster.
[02:35:41] Come on.
[02:35:42] Billy's arm had been dressed and he
[02:35:44] seemed to be quite easy. He wished to
[02:35:47] dictate a letter to his parents. Get my
[02:35:50] shirt. Get my shirt. I want a clean
[02:35:51] shirt.
[02:35:51] Where's your shirt?
[02:35:52] He asked me to please look into his
[02:35:54] knapsack and get him a clean shirt.
[02:35:58] I went to look for the knapsack and
[02:36:00] found it.
[02:36:12] But when I got back to where he was,
[02:36:15] poor good Billy Webster was dead.
[02:36:20] He had given his life for his country.
[02:36:25] His spirit is with the good and the
[02:36:27] brave.
[02:36:29] No better or braver man than Billy
[02:36:32] Webster ever drew Breath of Life.
[02:36:36] His bones lie yonder today upon the
[02:36:39] battlefield of Chikamoga.
[02:36:45] Through the haze of the battle at
[02:36:47] Chikamaga, one thing is clear. The
[02:36:51] bloodbath along the river of death is
[02:36:54] thus far a draw.
[02:36:58] Both Bragg and Rose Crans are determined
[02:37:00] to continue the fight the next morning.
[02:37:05] [music]
[02:37:12] And there are moments in this war when
[02:37:14] the entire republic is at stake.
[02:37:19] When everything could have changed, when
[02:37:21] everything could have turned on a dime
[02:37:24] and sometimes did.
[02:37:26] What is being forged is our
[02:37:29] national story.
[02:37:32] Your Iliad in our odyssey is playing
[02:37:34] out.
[02:37:46] [music]
[02:37:56] At dawn near a creek in northern Georgia
[02:37:59] called the Chikamaga,
[02:38:02] Union forces desperately prepare for an
[02:38:04] attack
[02:38:05] that is imminent.
[02:38:12] Confederate General Braxton Bragg
[02:38:15] imagines the second day of the Battle of
[02:38:17] Chikamaga to bring destruction to the
[02:38:20] Union Army.
[02:38:23] But once again, a breakdown in
[02:38:25] communication plagues the Confederates.
[02:38:28] The southern assault will not begin
[02:38:30] until 9:30 a.m.
[02:38:35] One Union general who commanded one of
[02:38:36] the divisions on that perimeter said if
[02:38:39] the attack, the Confederate attack, had
[02:38:41] happened [music] at 6:00 a.m., it
[02:38:43] wouldn't have lasted an hour.
[02:38:46] After the war, a bitter brag will write.
[02:38:49] If not for that 3-hour delay, our
[02:38:52] independence might have been won.
[02:39:02] The previous day at Chikamaga had been
[02:39:05] as savage as any battle in more than 2
[02:39:08] years of civil war.
[02:39:16] Lord,
[02:39:19] the invading Union Army of the
[02:39:21] Cumberland, led by General William Stark
[02:39:23] Rose Crayons, is determined to gain
[02:39:26] control of the critical rail center of
[02:39:28] Chattanooga, Tennessee.
[02:39:32] Chattanooga is a gateway to the deep
[02:39:35] south, the heartland where factories,
[02:39:38] farmlands, and railroads are critical to
[02:39:40] the Confederate war effort.
[02:39:43] Is this going to land?
[02:39:46] Braxton Bragg's [music] Army of
[02:39:48] Tennessee
[02:39:50] hoped to not just stop Rose Crans,
[02:39:53] but to destroy his army of 58,000.
[02:40:08] We got to get out of here. The two
[02:40:10] armies [music] collided just 8 miles
[02:40:12] south of Chattanooga on September 19th,
[02:40:15] 1863.
[02:40:20] After the first day of fighting,
[02:40:23] the Battle of Chikamaga
[02:40:25] [screaming and crying]
[02:40:26] is a draw.
[02:40:30] [music]
[02:40:36] It was an an unbelievably
[02:40:39] savage knockdown dragout fight in the
[02:40:43] woods. I would say that it's almost like
[02:40:45] Shiloh multiplied by two.
[02:40:54] They're coming over. [cheering]
[02:40:58] Now, less than 3 months after the
[02:41:01] devastating Confederate loss at
[02:41:02] Gettysburg, the Army of Tennessee
[02:41:05] resumes a battle they believe can
[02:41:08] reverse the fortunes of the Confederacy.
[02:41:12] Among the first to challenge the Union
[02:41:14] defenses at Chikamaga
[02:41:17] is the Kentucky Orphan Brigade,
[02:41:22] commanded by Brigadier General Benjamin
[02:41:24] Helm. When the war began, Helm was
[02:41:27] offered a position with the Union Army
[02:41:29] by his brother-in-law, a high-ranking
[02:41:31] official with the US government.
[02:41:35] Helm instead chose to fight for the
[02:41:38] Confederacy.
[02:41:39] Fighting under Helm's command is
[02:41:41] 22-year-old Johnny Green.
[02:41:47] A perfect shower of great tour through
[02:41:49] our ranks.
[02:41:55] We fired a volley and rushed upon them.
[02:42:07] FOR GOD'S SAKE, THE BATTLE.
[02:42:10] Our beloved and gallant General Helm
[02:42:12] fell mortally wounded.
[02:42:13] COME HERE, TRENCHER.
[02:42:15] Leading his brigade, which he knew would
[02:42:17] never falter.
[02:42:21] Surgeons realize Helms's wound is fatal.
[02:42:26] The Confederate general clings to life
[02:42:28] for several more hours, but dies the
[02:42:31] next morning.
[02:42:34] Since the battle began, the two forces
[02:42:37] have been slugging it out along a
[02:42:39] four-mile [music] front a stride the
[02:42:42] Lefayet road.
[02:42:44] The Confederate attack [music] on
[02:42:45] September 20th targets the Union left.
[02:42:49] But what will determine the outcome of
[02:42:51] Chikamaga [music]
[02:42:52] is a hole in the Union center.
[02:42:56] Miscommunication, [music]
[02:42:58] confusion, and fatigue with Rose Crans
[02:43:00] and his generals have left a gap more
[02:43:03] than a quarter mile wide.
[02:43:06] The one weakness for the Union High
[02:43:09] Command was Rose Crans himself. On the
[02:43:12] night of the the 19th, Rose Cray had not
[02:43:15] gotten any sleep. And as a result, by
[02:43:18] the time the action began on September
[02:43:20] the 20th, the Union Army commander is on
[02:43:23] the verge of physical and mental
[02:43:25] collapse. [cheering]
[02:43:29] The approaching Confederates are
[02:43:30] commanded by none other than James
[02:43:32] Longreet, the trusted lieutenant of
[02:43:35] Roberty. Lee [cheering]
[02:43:39] Long Street and 11,000 soldiers from the
[02:43:41] Army of Northern Virginia had arrived
[02:43:44] just the night before.
[02:43:46] The only time in the war that
[02:43:48] significant numbers of troops were
[02:43:51] pulled away from Robert E. Le's Army of
[02:43:54] Northern Virginia, transferred to the
[02:43:55] Western Theater to fight there. And it
[02:43:58] shows that this is the Confederacy's big
[02:44:00] effort to reverse the tide of the war in
[02:44:02] the West.
[02:44:06] And now Long Street's core, [music]
[02:44:08] eight brigades, rolled straight through
[02:44:11] that gap and directly into the rear of
[02:44:13] the Union Army.
[02:44:16] And for the Confederate troops, it was
[02:44:17] thrilling. General Bush Rod Johnson
[02:44:20] called it a scene of unsurpassed grander
[02:44:22] as they realized that for the first time
[02:44:26] in the Western theater, the Confederacy
[02:44:28] was on the verge of a magnificent
[02:44:30] victory.
[02:44:32] The stunning breakthrough effectively
[02:44:35] splits the Union army at Chikamaga.
[02:44:38] Rose CR and a third of his force leave
[02:44:41] the battlefield.
[02:44:44] The Union right soon crumbles.
[02:44:49] Company, lads.
[02:44:56] But not all the Union soldiers leave the
[02:44:58] field at Chikamaga.
[02:45:00] Troops under the command of General
[02:45:02] George Thomas quickly form a defense
[02:45:07] on Snodgrass Hill and Horseshoe Ridge.
[02:45:11] They stand firm.
[02:45:18] Ready to charge at the steep wooded
[02:45:19] slope and end the battle are nearly
[02:45:22] [music] 3,000 Confederates.
[02:45:26] Among them is Lieutenant Joshua Callaway
[02:45:29] of the 28th Alabama.
[02:45:35] 17 months earlier,
[02:45:38] Callaway [music] left his wife Dulania
[02:45:40] and two small children at their home
[02:45:42] near Selma.
[02:45:45] Almost onethird of all white households
[02:45:47] in the Confederacy own slaves.
[02:45:50] Callaway is among those who do not.
[02:46:00] Like so many others on both sides of the
[02:46:02] battlefield, the Callaways communicate
[02:46:05] through a series of letters.
[02:46:09] My dear love, I've just passed through
[02:46:12] the terrible ordeal of a hard battle.
[02:46:16] Our
[02:46:19] brigade formed at the foot of a long
[02:46:21] hill
[02:46:25] at the top of which was the enemy's
[02:46:26] line.
[02:46:29] The battle was raging all along our line
[02:46:32] as if heaven and earth were coming
[02:46:34] together. A thousand thunderstorms all
[02:46:37] turned loose could not equal the noise.
[02:46:45] Doulsonia Callaway is hearing things
[02:46:48] she's never heard before. She's never
[02:46:52] read letters from a family member in
[02:46:54] war.
[02:46:57] So, these letters are
[02:46:59] obviously going to make her fearful and
[02:47:03] very concerned about her husband's
[02:47:06] well-being.
[02:47:08] How this war was going to turn out was a
[02:47:10] big unknown. And that was a source of
[02:47:13] daily fear for a mother like Dulceia
[02:47:16] Callaway.
[02:47:24] The carnage was awful. Men were shot
[02:47:28] down all around me. I was indeed in the
[02:47:32] very midst
[02:47:34] of death.
[02:47:39] On Snodg Grass Hill, the Battle of
[02:47:41] Chikamaga reaches its culmination.
[02:47:45] The attacking Confederates taste
[02:47:47] victory,
[02:47:48] but Thomas' outnumbered defenders
[02:47:51] repulse charge after charge.
[02:47:56] Thomas' heroic defense allows the
[02:47:58] remaining Union forces to escape. For
[02:48:01] that stand, Thomas becomes known as the
[02:48:04] rock of Chikamaga.
[02:48:07] By day's end, the last of Union troops
[02:48:10] withdraw.
[02:48:18] The carnage of the battle exceeds even
[02:48:20] [music] the bloodbath at Shiloh.
[02:48:25] At Chikamaga, more [music] than 34,000
[02:48:28] from both armies are dead.
[02:48:32] wounded or missing.
[02:48:37] The combined casualties are [music] the
[02:48:38] second most of any battle in the war.
[02:48:42] Only Gettysburg exceeds the butchery
[02:48:45] [music] of Chikamaga.
[02:48:48] Though victorious,
[02:48:49] the staggering number of those lost in
[02:48:51] the ranks is a serious [music] problem
[02:48:54] plaguing the Confederacy.
[02:48:57] The Confederates have a problem.
[02:48:58] Confederates realize the arithmetic and
[02:49:01] they're not winning the arithmetic.
[02:49:04] If they expand more men, even equal to
[02:49:07] the loss in the Union armies, they will
[02:49:09] eventually cease to have the ability to
[02:49:11] put men in the field.
[02:49:18] Joshua Callaway somehow makes it through
[02:49:20] the battle unscathed.
[02:49:23] We now moved to the top of the hill and
[02:49:25] slept on the battlefield.
[02:49:28] Napoleon's sign of victory.
[02:49:33] I have now seen and experienced the
[02:49:35] horrors of war
[02:49:38] as well as the spoils and glories.
[02:49:44] I am very well. Thank God.
[02:49:49] A thousand kisses for you and the
[02:49:52] children.
[02:49:54] your loving JK Callaway.
[02:50:03] 600 miles to the north in Washington DC,
[02:50:07] President Abraham Lincoln receives
[02:50:08] [music] a telegram of the Union debacle.
[02:50:12] With the report comes devastating news
[02:50:15] about an enemy officer.
[02:50:19] Killed at Chikamaga is his
[02:50:22] brother-in-law,
[02:50:23] Benjamin [music] Harden Helm.
[02:50:28] Lincoln's trusted friend is Supreme
[02:50:30] Court Justice David Davis.
[02:50:35] I never saw Mr. Lincoln more moved than
[02:50:37] when he heard of the death of his young
[02:50:39] brother-in-law.
[02:50:41] Davis, he said, I feel like David of old
[02:50:45] when he heard of the death of [music]
[02:50:47] Abselum.
[02:50:50] I saw how griefstricken he was, so I
[02:50:54] closed the door and left him.
[02:51:05] Lincoln's grief reflects the state of a
[02:51:07] nation that is beginning to crack under
[02:51:09] the pressure of a civil war.
[02:51:14] Two months earlier, in July of 1863,
[02:51:17] laborers in New York City reacted with
[02:51:20] violence to a law establishing the
[02:51:22] nation's first [music] military draft.
[02:51:28] Many of the protesters are impoverished
[02:51:30] immigrants from Ireland.
[02:51:34] They're particularly enraged over a
[02:51:36] provision of the law that allows
[02:51:38] drafties the option to buy their way out
[02:51:40] of service for $300.
[02:51:47] Angry mobs roam Manhattan, killing
[02:51:49] policemen and setting the city ablaze.
[02:51:54] But the protesters venom is particularly
[02:51:56] aimed at New York's 12,000
[02:51:59] African-Ameans. [music]
[02:52:05] An orphanage for black children is
[02:52:07] torched.
[02:52:11] The 233 children inside escape before
[02:52:15] the building burns to the ground.
[02:52:19] Ultimately, northerners who descended
[02:52:22] against this conflict,
[02:52:25] they felt agrieved,
[02:52:28] misled, abandoned
[02:52:31] by a president who had turned a war for
[02:52:35] Union into a war for union and
[02:52:38] emancipation.
[02:52:40] It wasn't until the arrival of Union
[02:52:42] soldiers who just fought at Gettysburg
[02:52:45] that 5 days of rioting was finally
[02:52:47] quelled.
[02:52:49] Hundreds were killed. Some 2,000 were
[02:52:52] injured. 11 black citizens were dragged
[02:52:55] from their homes and lynched by the
[02:52:57] angry mob.
[02:53:00] Once they thought that northern boys
[02:53:04] going to die for the freedom of
[02:53:07] African-Americans,
[02:53:08] that was simply more than what they
[02:53:10] could stomach. [music]
[02:53:12] That class of individuals was seen as
[02:53:16] responsible for bringing this war on and
[02:53:20] for ultimately taking northern boys from
[02:53:22] their homes, sending them to the front
[02:53:25] lines where they were dying in droves.
[02:53:29] [music]
[02:53:31] By September 1863,
[02:53:34] northern casualties have eclipsed
[02:53:36] 400,000. [music]
[02:53:41] At the Battle of [music] Chikamaga alone
[02:53:43] are 16,000 Union casualties.
[02:53:47] [music]
[02:53:56] Chikamaga is undeniably a Confederate
[02:53:58] victory,
[02:54:00] but a hollow one.
[02:54:04] Bragg has allowed Rose Cray and his
[02:54:06] Union army to [music] escape to
[02:54:08] Chattanooga.
[02:54:13] Bragg
[02:54:15] getting lucky at Chikamaga,
[02:54:18] winning the field.
[02:54:20] They win a tactical victory, no doubt
[02:54:22] about it. But he doesn't have
[02:54:25] Chattanooga. Confederates failed to
[02:54:29] exercise any strategic potential from
[02:54:33] that victory.
[02:54:36] Bragg moves his army from the Chikamaga
[02:54:38] battlefield to the heights overlooking
[02:54:40] Union occupied Chattanooga.
[02:54:43] There he plans to lay siege to the city.
[02:54:47] Lincoln and his cabinet fear it could
[02:54:49] become Vixsburg in reverse.
[02:54:54] As summer turns to autumn, the situation
[02:54:57] for the Union forces at Chattanooga
[02:54:59] grows desperate.
[02:55:02] Bragg has in essence cut off all supply
[02:55:04] lines into the city.
[02:55:07] The trapped and now starving army of the
[02:55:09] Cumberland is not just defeated,
[02:55:13] it's demoralized.
[02:55:15] The army's ineffective commander,
[02:55:17] William Stark Rose Crans, is described
[02:55:20] by Lincoln as stunned like a duck hit in
[02:55:22] the head.
[02:55:25] On October 21st, Rose Crays is replaced
[02:55:29] and the most familiar face in the
[02:55:31] Western [music]
[02:55:32] theater assumes overall command.
[02:55:37] [music]
[02:55:38] Who arrives on the scene, I think, is
[02:55:41] arguably one of the greatest soldiers
[02:55:42] the Civil War ever produced. And that's
[02:55:44] Ulissiz Sgrant. What Grant had was
[02:55:48] nothing you could teach. Grant had a
[02:55:51] natural ability.
[02:55:56] Within days of Grant's arrival,
[02:56:00] supplies and reinforcements begin to
[02:56:02] slip into Chattanooga through a supply
[02:56:05] route called the Cracker Line.
[02:56:11] And Grant comes right in and immediately
[02:56:14] opens up the supply flow and then begins
[02:56:17] as Grant is always thinking, "How can I
[02:56:21] take the fight to the enemy?"
[02:56:24] [music]
[02:56:25] Now it's Grant's enemy that has become
[02:56:27] demoralized.
[02:56:31] By November 1863, [music]
[02:56:34] even the weather seems to be turning
[02:56:35] against Bragg and his men.
[02:56:38] For the men in the Confederate [music]
[02:56:40] trenches, the Civil War is not just
[02:56:42] about states rights or the institution
[02:56:45] of slavery.
[02:56:48] In the war's third year, it's also about
[02:56:51] defending your home and your family.
[02:56:58] In the gloom of late autumn,
[02:57:00] Bragg's men begin to realize that the
[02:57:02] victory at Chikamaga has been wasted
[02:57:07] and the opportunity to turn the tide of
[02:57:09] the western campaign
[02:57:11] squandered.
[02:57:15] Even more disturbing is this sobering
[02:57:18] reality.
[02:57:21] The struggle for Chattanooga will mean
[02:57:23] yet another battle.
[02:57:33] A reinforced grant is ready to go on the
[02:57:36] offensive against the Confederates
[02:57:37] encircling Chattanooga.
[02:57:39] Most are dug in along the crest of
[02:57:42] Missionary Ridge, a 7m long spine of
[02:57:46] soil and stone extending from just east
[02:57:49] of Chattanooga to the Georgia state
[02:57:52] line. For Grant, the key to victory
[02:57:55] depends on destroying the Confederate
[02:57:57] stronghold.
[02:58:00] His plan was to cross [music] the
[02:58:02] Tennessee River northeast of Chattanooga
[02:58:06] and get on the flank of Missionary Ridge
[02:58:10] and then advance along Missionary Ridge,
[02:58:13] rolling up the Confederate line.
[02:58:20] November 19th, 1863. [music]
[02:58:25] On the very day Lincoln gives the
[02:58:26] Gettysburg address, Joshua Callaway
[02:58:29] climbs Lookout Mountain.
[02:58:32] [music]
[02:58:34] The 2300 ft precipice towers over the
[02:58:37] Union forces in Chattanooga.
[02:58:40] [music]
[02:58:45] [music] Dear Loi, yesterday I got some
[02:58:47] fellas to go up to the top of Lookout
[02:58:49] Mountain. I could not help [music] but
[02:58:51] feel a spark of ambition,
[02:58:55] desire to make my name as immortal
[02:58:57] [music] as that of Lookout Mountain.
[02:59:01] My ambition cooled off and I began
[02:59:04] [music] to think how I'd be perfectly
[02:59:06] content to be at home with my wife,
[02:59:10] never thought of after I die.
[02:59:13] You need not be at all surprised [music]
[02:59:15] to hear of some demonstration at any
[02:59:17] moment.
[02:59:21] As ever, you're devoted JK Callaway.
[02:59:27] November 24th, 1863.
[02:59:31] On a foggy, misty day, Grant's trusted
[02:59:35] lieutenant, William Tecumsa Sherman,
[02:59:38] leads a Union force of 16,000 from
[02:59:41] Chattanooga to the northern tip of
[02:59:44] Missionary Ridge.
[02:59:48] The assault on the Confederate
[02:59:50] stronghold is about to begin.
[02:59:56] The same day, General Joseph Hooker and
[02:59:59] some [music] 10,000 Union troops attack
[03:00:02] 1,500 Confederates dug into Lookout
[03:00:04] Mountain.
[03:00:07] The all day fight becomes known as the
[03:00:10] battle above the clouds.
[03:00:12] By nightfall, the overwhelmed
[03:00:15] Confederates evacuate.
[03:00:17] But the fate of Chattanooga will not be
[03:00:19] determined at Lookout Mountain, but
[03:00:21] rather Missionary Ridge.
[03:00:31] The next morning, Sherman's assault on
[03:00:33] Missionary Ridge goes nowhere.
[03:00:38] A top the height are 4,000 Confederates,
[03:00:42] skillfully led by General Patrick
[03:00:44] Clayburn.
[03:00:48] A Confederate defender remarks, "We feel
[03:00:51] we can kill all they send after us."
[03:00:55] With Sherman's attack paralyzed, Grant
[03:00:58] turns to George Thomas, the Rock of
[03:01:01] Chikamaga.
[03:01:05] Grant orders Thomas to attack
[03:01:07] Confederate rifle pits at the base of
[03:01:09] Missionary Ridge.
[03:01:12] But Thomas' veterans do not stop there.
[03:01:16] They continue up the steep slope with
[03:01:19] one thing in mind.
[03:01:23] Redemption.
[03:01:26] Once Thomas's troops took the trenches
[03:01:29] at the base of the ridge. What the hell
[03:01:32] were they supposed [music] to do? They
[03:01:33] now were exposed to Confederate fire up
[03:01:35] the ridge.
[03:01:37] They just started moving up the Defiles.
[03:01:41] It's not much different than the guys
[03:01:42] going the shore at Omaha [music] Beach.
[03:01:46] They know they got to take the high
[03:01:47] ground eventually.
[03:01:53] [screaming]
[03:01:55] The Union attack on Missionary Ridge is
[03:01:58] one of the most dramatic moments of the
[03:02:00] entire war.
[03:02:10] Among the Confederate defenders of
[03:02:11] Missionary Ridge, the scene was
[03:02:13] pandemonium and confusion.
[03:02:18] With that, there was nothing left for
[03:02:19] the Confederates to do but get away as
[03:02:21] quick as they could, and they fled down
[03:02:24] the back slope of Missionary Ridge as
[03:02:26] fast as they could run.
[03:02:30] Colonel C. Irvine Walker of the 10th
[03:02:33] South Carolina Infantry.
[03:02:36] I don't think any feat of the war can
[03:02:39] equal their attack on Missionary Ridge.
[03:02:42] If only our men had held their ground,
[03:02:44] it would have been child's play.
[03:02:46] But instead, they fled panicstricken
[03:02:48] before the enemy. When I saw the men
[03:02:50] running, I could not believe that these
[03:02:52] were the heroes of Shiloh, Pville, Oak
[03:02:55] Hills, and Chickamonga.
[03:02:57] Bragg orders a retreat into Georgia.
[03:03:01] With a Confederate defeat at
[03:03:02] Chattanooga, the gateway to the deep
[03:03:05] south has [music] been pried open.
[03:03:08] A junior officer from Bragg's army later
[03:03:10] calls the defeat at Missionary Ridge the
[03:03:13] death nail of the Confederacy.
[03:03:25] The battles of Chikamaga and Chattanooga
[03:03:28] [music] result in 30,000 casualties for
[03:03:30] the Army of Tennessee.
[03:03:36] Some 2500 give their lives to the
[03:03:39] Confederate cause.
[03:03:49] Two weeks after the battles for
[03:03:50] Chattanooga, Dulania Callaway receives
[03:03:53] another correspondence.
[03:03:57] Mrs. JK Callaway,
[03:04:00] it now falls to my unhappy lot to write
[03:04:03] you a short letter letting you know what
[03:04:05] has become of your muchbeloved husband,
[03:04:08] Lieutenant Joshua K. Callaway,
[03:04:11] who fell in the Battle of Missionary
[03:04:12] Ridge, mortally wounded.
[03:04:16] While rallying his company, he was shot
[03:04:18] through the boughels with a mini ball.
[03:04:23] We picked him up and started off the
[03:04:25] field when he asked us to lay him down
[03:04:28] and die.
[03:04:32] I have every reason to believe he's gone
[03:04:34] to a better land where there's no more
[03:04:37] war.
[03:04:41] The company and officers deeply
[03:04:42] sympathize with you and his loss.
[03:04:45] But what is your loss and our loss is
[03:04:49] his eternal gain.
[03:04:54] WF AOK, Lieutenant Company K, 28th
[03:04:58] Alabama Regiment.
[03:05:04] With the death of her husband and the
[03:05:06] knowledge now that he's not coming home,
[03:05:09] Doulsonia Callaway has to begin
[03:05:12] envisioning a future that she is going
[03:05:15] to create for her children on her own.
[03:05:20] And she's just like so many other white
[03:05:23] women in the South because 18% of
[03:05:26] southern white men of military age died
[03:05:29] in this war. That's a significant loss
[03:05:31] and it left many widows behind. And
[03:05:34] these widows though, what choice do they
[03:05:37] have? They have to move on.
[03:05:42] By the end of 1863,
[03:05:44] the war in the east remains a stalemate.
[03:05:48] But the western theater is thus far a
[03:05:51] stunning success for Union forces.
[03:05:55] Since the war began, the North has been
[03:05:58] victorious at forts Henry and
[03:06:00] Donaldelsson, Shiloh, Corinth, Stones
[03:06:03] River, Vixsburg, and Chattanooga.
[03:06:07] To the south, the Union Navy has
[03:06:10] captured the major port of New Orleans
[03:06:12] and now controls the entire Mississippi
[03:06:15] River. Equally important is the naval
[03:06:18] blockade along the Gulf Coast [music]
[03:06:20] that is squeezing the life out of the
[03:06:22] Confederate economy.
[03:06:27] And now the armies are poised on the
[03:06:29] border of Georgia. And you can push down
[03:06:32] into not just Georgia, but Alabama. And
[03:06:35] you can you can really strike that final
[03:06:37] dagger into the heart of the Western
[03:06:39] Confederacy.
[03:06:42] That dagger [music]
[03:06:43] is now in the hands of Union General
[03:06:45] William Tecumsa Sherman.
[03:06:48] That's because Lincoln has promoted
[03:06:49] Ulysiz S. Grant to Lieutenant General,
[03:06:53] making him general and chief of all
[03:06:55] Union armies.
[03:06:57] Grant chooses to make his field
[03:06:58] headquarters with the Army of the PTOAC
[03:07:01] in its fight in Virginia.
[03:07:04] And so what Lincoln is hoping with based
[03:07:08] on his horrible experience with generals
[03:07:10] in the east that if he can bring if he
[03:07:13] can bring Grant from the west to the
[03:07:15] east, Grant is going to do in the east
[03:07:17] [music] what he did in the west.
[03:07:21] Grant understands what Lincoln's
[03:07:22] understood [music] for several years
[03:07:25] that to win this war, the Union has to
[03:07:28] attack the Confederacy simultaneously
[03:07:32] everywhere.
[03:07:34] In Virginia, Grant will attempt to do
[03:07:37] what no Union general has been able to
[03:07:39] accomplish,
[03:07:40] except the unconditional surrender of
[03:07:43] Roberty Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
[03:07:48] People in the North might have sat back
[03:07:50] and said, "Well, the war is almost over
[03:07:52] now. Victory is within reach. Grant is
[03:07:54] ready to move on Richmond. Sherman is
[03:07:56] ready to move on Atlanta. We'll just
[03:07:58] start counting the weeks now until the
[03:08:00] war ends."
[03:08:02] And then it all dried up.
[03:08:08] May 1864,
[03:08:10] a succession of battles in the confused
[03:08:12] terrain northwest of Richmond results in
[03:08:15] a bloodbath for the Union Army of the
[03:08:17] [music] PTOAC.
[03:08:21] At the battles of Wilderness,
[03:08:24] Spennsylvania Courthouse, and Cold
[03:08:26] Harbor,
[03:08:27] Grant's forces suffer a staggering
[03:08:30] 50,000 casualties.
[03:08:34] The catastrophic loss of life helps to
[03:08:37] fuel a growing anti-war movement in the
[03:08:39] North.
[03:08:42] A vocal faction of the Democratic Party,
[03:08:44] dubbed Copperheads by their Republican
[03:08:46] rivals, vehemently [music] denounce
[03:08:49] Lincoln's war policies.
[03:08:52] One New York copperhead [music] writes,
[03:08:55] "The war is murder,
[03:08:57] nothing else."
[03:09:00] If you look at how politics is being
[03:09:01] done on the ground in 1864, what's been
[03:09:04] happening
[03:09:05] in Ohio?
[03:09:07] Clement Leairard Valandigum,
[03:09:10] an Ohio Democratic congressman who has
[03:09:13] actually been arrested for anti-war
[03:09:15] activities and expelled into the ranks
[03:09:17] of the Confederacy,
[03:09:19] is now running for governor of Ohio from
[03:09:21] his vantage point across the border in
[03:09:23] Canada.
[03:09:25] And he has thousands upon thousands of
[03:09:27] people turning out in rallies to support
[03:09:30] him. The governor of New York is now a
[03:09:33] Democrat. The governor of New Jersey is
[03:09:35] now a Democrat. All of them very public,
[03:09:40] very vehement in their denunciation of
[03:09:42] the Emancipation Proclamation [music]
[03:09:43] and the Lincoln administration.
[03:09:47] The Copperheads not only demand
[03:09:49] Lincoln's ouster, but also an immediate
[03:09:52] peace treaty with the Confederacy.
[03:09:55] They will become a political force in a
[03:09:57] year when Lincoln faces reelection.
[03:10:03] While Grant's offensive stalls in
[03:10:05] Virginia, Sherman begins to move his
[03:10:07] army of 100,000 from Chattanooga into
[03:10:11] Georgia.
[03:10:12] His mission to capture Atlanta, a major
[03:10:16] manufacturing center and industrial hub
[03:10:19] of the Confederate war machine. Its four
[03:10:22] railroad lines bind together what is
[03:10:24] left of the Confederacy.
[03:10:26] The purpose of ultimately taking Atlanta
[03:10:30] was to also bring [music]
[03:10:32] havoc and destruction to the
[03:10:35] Confederacy's ability to field troops to
[03:10:39] supply them to keep their economy going.
[03:10:42] Rail lines run through Atlanta. [music]
[03:10:44] Munitions are being produced in Atlanta.
[03:10:47] Clothing is being produced in Atlanta.
[03:10:49] You have to strike that last not just
[03:10:53] vulnerable place. [music] You have to
[03:10:55] strike that last important place.
[03:11:00] Marching towards Atlanta with 111th
[03:11:03] Illinois Infantry is Austin Gilmore, a
[03:11:06] former slave from Tennessee who has
[03:11:09] volunteered to fight.
[03:11:12] Austin, however, will not serve as a
[03:11:15] soldier, but rather as a cook.
[03:11:19] Like many in the north, Sherman does not
[03:11:22] trust the fighting abilities of the
[03:11:23] African-Ameans
[03:11:25] after the war. He writes, "The Negro
[03:11:28] should be a free man, but not put on any
[03:11:31] equality with whites.
[03:11:42] But hundreds of miles west at places
[03:11:45] like Port Gibson, Mississippi and
[03:11:47] Milikans Bend, Louisiana,
[03:11:50] Africanameans have already proven
[03:11:53] Sherman wrong. to let my [singing]
[03:11:56] people.
[03:12:02] In June 1863,
[03:12:05] along the Mississippi River at Milikin's
[03:12:07] Bend,
[03:12:09] black soldiers put up fierce resistance
[03:12:12] to a Confederate attack.
[03:12:15] At Milikin's Bend, you have untrained
[03:12:17] soldiers from Mississippi who do not
[03:12:20] really know how to fire their weapons.
[03:12:23] They end up in hand-to-hand combat. They
[03:12:25] started using their bayonets and using
[03:12:27] their musketss as clubs.
[03:12:30] And once you hear the stories of those
[03:12:33] who served in combat, how they fought,
[03:12:36] then you realize they really are making
[03:12:38] a statement. They're making it with
[03:12:39] their blood.
[03:12:41] Assistant Secretary of War Charles A.
[03:12:44] Dana writes of the Battle of Milikin
[03:12:46] Bend.
[03:12:48] The bravery of the blacks completely
[03:12:50] revolutionized the sentiment of the army
[03:12:52] with regard to the employment of negro
[03:12:54] troops.
[03:12:59] But with their service has also come
[03:13:01] tragedy and controversy.
[03:13:10] As Sherman prepares for the Atlanta
[03:13:12] campaign, a detachment of Confederate
[03:13:15] cavalry attacks Fort Pillow,
[03:13:19] a Union post along the Mississippi
[03:13:21] River.
[03:13:25] It is 40 m north of Memphis.
[03:13:32] The cavalry is under command of Nathan
[03:13:35] Bedford Forest.
[03:13:39] To this day, Forest is at once reviled
[03:13:42] and revered.
[03:13:44] Before the war, he made a fortune in the
[03:13:47] slave trade.
[03:13:49] Enlisting as a private, Forest's [music]
[03:13:51] daring battlefield exploits has seen him
[03:13:54] rise to the rank of major general.
[03:13:57] Among the 500 plus defenders of Fort
[03:14:00] Pillow are 262 men of the US Colored
[03:14:03] Artillery.
[03:14:05] As they attempt to surrender,
[03:14:07] many of the soldiers are killed.
[03:14:11] Confederate Sergeant Achilles V. Clark
[03:14:13] wrote, "The poor, deluded negroes would
[03:14:17] run up to our men, fall upon their
[03:14:19] knees, and with uplifted hands scream
[03:14:22] for mercy,
[03:14:24] but they were ordered to their feet,
[03:14:27] and shot down.
[03:14:32] 200 of the 262 black soldiers at Fort
[03:14:35] Pillow are killed.
[03:14:40] A federal investigation after the war
[03:14:42] concludes most were shot after the Union
[03:14:45] garrison had surrendered.
[03:14:53] The slaughter at Fort Pillow enrages
[03:14:55] people throughout the North.
[03:14:58] In the South, the Congress of the
[03:15:00] Confederate States adopts a resolution
[03:15:02] expressing its appreciation for forest.
[03:15:06] With thousands of African-Ameans now
[03:15:08] fighting for the Union, Confederate
[03:15:11] President Jefferson Davis makes it clear
[03:15:14] that captured black soldiers will not be
[03:15:16] treated as prisoners of war,
[03:15:19] but rather as slaves to be returned to
[03:15:23] bondage.
[03:15:28] which makes the story of Emma Stevenson
[03:15:30] all the more remarkable.
[03:15:34] Like Austin Gilmore, Emma is
[03:15:36] emancipated.
[03:15:39] Now marching towards Atlanta with
[03:15:41] Sherman's army, Emma is a nurse with the
[03:15:44] 17th Army Corps.
[03:15:47] I think a part of performing that kind
[03:15:50] of work is that you want to have a stake
[03:15:53] in liberating your people and in
[03:15:55] essentially liberating yourself.
[03:15:58] That's a powerful message.
[03:16:02] And so it's very important for Americans
[03:16:05] to know that there were Emma Stevenson's
[03:16:07] in the midst of the war.
[03:16:11] [crying]
[03:16:13] In Sherman's way, 30 mi south of
[03:16:15] Chattanooga is a Confederate army of
[03:16:18] 65,000 men.
[03:16:21] Braxton Bragg has been replaced [music]
[03:16:23] with General Joseph Johnston. Johnston
[03:16:26] knows that the very future of the
[03:16:27] Confederacy depends on protecting
[03:16:30] Atlanta.
[03:16:33] Keep it moving. Keep it moving.
[03:16:35] At every opportunity, Johnston's men
[03:16:38] build miles of makeshift fortifications.
[03:16:46] For the Confederates, outnumbered almost
[03:16:48] 2 to1, trench warfare is an effective
[03:16:51] defensive strategy.
[03:16:55] One good man behind earthworks, writes
[03:16:57] [music] an officer, should prevail over
[03:17:00] four or five opponents advancing in the
[03:17:02] open without cover.
[03:17:06] The Federals respond with trenches of
[03:17:08] their own.
[03:17:12] Keep your head down, gentlemen.
[03:17:16] Often the opposing earthworks lie within
[03:17:19] a few yards of each other.
[03:17:20] Keep your head down, Jack.
[03:17:24] There he is.
[03:17:27] Sergeant Johnny [music] Green is a
[03:17:29] Confederate with the 9inth Kentucky
[03:17:31] Infantry. Anyone
[03:17:34] who shows his head above the trenches is
[03:17:37] sure to have two or three mini balls
[03:17:38] come singing around his ears. But we
[03:17:41] soon got so accustomed [music] to it
[03:17:43] that the boys grew very careless.
[03:17:49] Keep your heads down, gentlemen. Keep
[03:17:51] your heads down, man. Hit your target,
[03:17:54] but keep your heads down.
[03:17:59] For the past month in northern Georgia,
[03:18:01] Sherman and Johnston have been waging a
[03:18:04] deadly game of chess.
[03:18:06] Time and again, Sherman has tried to
[03:18:09] outflank the Confederate army. Each
[03:18:12] time, his moves have been checked by
[03:18:14] Johnston.
[03:18:16] But in the process, the Confederate
[03:18:18] general has been forced to yield
[03:18:20] precious ground. By midJune 1864,
[03:18:24] Johnston's army is [music] backed up to
[03:18:26] within 20 miles of Atlanta.
[03:18:32] Caught in a crossfire in the campaign
[03:18:34] for Atlanta are the people of Cobb
[03:18:37] County, Georgia. Population 14,000.
[03:18:44] About 1th3 of those are slaves.
[03:18:53] Most of the residents [music] are not
[03:18:54] wealthy plantation owners, but yman
[03:18:57] farmers who do not own slaves.
[03:19:00] Hurry, girls. Hurry.
[03:19:02] Lucinda Casey is a widow.
[03:19:05] That's it. Let's go.
[03:19:07] She struggles to keep the family farm
[03:19:10] while raising three children.
[03:19:13] We need to get her. So, will you help
[03:19:16] her, please? Come on, Nancy. As
[03:19:18] Sherman's army approaches,
[03:19:21] Lucinda
[03:19:22] and daughters Louisa, Nancy, and
[03:19:26] Hazeline
[03:19:29] quickly pack their belongings and flee
[03:19:31] to the safety of Atlanta.
[03:19:40] In June 1864,
[03:19:42] more than 100,000 soldiers from both
[03:19:45] Confederate and Union armies ravage Cobb
[03:19:48] County.
[03:19:52] At Lucinda Casey's home, nothing is
[03:19:55] spared.
[03:19:59] As Sherman's troops made their way
[03:20:01] through Georgia, it showed that this war
[03:20:04] had changed.
[03:20:06] It had clearly become
[03:20:09] closer to the lives of civilians. No
[03:20:12] longer was the war something fought at a
[03:20:15] distance, [screaming] something that was
[03:20:18] on some remote battlefield.
[03:20:21] That kind of distance between homeront
[03:20:24] and battlefield had collapsed. That
[03:20:26] really there wasn't much of a
[03:20:28] distinction anymore.
[03:20:30] And the war was now literally on
[03:20:32] people's doorsteps.
[03:20:36] Sherman has begun to craft this new
[03:20:38] style of warfare. One of the ways that
[03:20:41] you dominate, one of the ways that you
[03:20:43] completely control is that everything
[03:20:46] has a military objective.
[03:20:49] Everything, every jin, every barn, every
[03:20:54] horse, every cow, and every civilian,
[03:20:59] everything becomes a military objective.
[03:21:05] By mid June, Sherman's army has moved
[03:21:08] within striking distance of his
[03:21:10] objective.
[03:21:12] Only one last mountain remains between
[03:21:15] Sherman and Atlanta.
[03:21:17] Kennesaw Mountain is over 1,800 [music]
[03:21:21] ft high and 2 m long. Some call it the
[03:21:26] Gibralar [music] of Georgia.
[03:21:28] For Johnston, Kennesaw's rocky ridges
[03:21:32] are the ideal [music] place to halt
[03:21:34] Sherman.
[03:21:38] The summit is a 700 ft precipice called
[03:21:42] Big Kennesaw. To the south is a [music]
[03:21:45] spur named Pigeon Hill. Further south is
[03:21:48] a ridge soon to be known as Cheetum
[03:21:51] Hill.
[03:21:53] With an imposing 7mm line of defense,
[03:21:57] the Confederates will dare Sherman to
[03:21:59] attack.
[03:22:01] Just 20 miles beyond Kennesaw Mountain
[03:22:05] is Atlanta.
[03:22:07] So, by the time that [music] you get to
[03:22:08] Kennesaw, uh Sherman doesn't want to
[03:22:10] flank around to the west anymore. It's
[03:22:12] getting too far from this rail line. And
[03:22:14] and flanking from the east, for whatever
[03:22:16] reason, didn't seem to be much of a
[03:22:18] discussed option. And so his third
[03:22:23] option was to attack.
[03:22:29] In the pre-dawn hours of June 27th,
[03:22:33] Union officers receive special [music]
[03:22:35] field orders. Number 28.
[03:22:38] Major General Thomas will assault the
[03:22:39] enemy at any point near his center to be
[03:22:42] selected by [music] himself. Major
[03:22:44] General at Kennesaw Mountain.
[03:22:46] Sherman decides on a new tactic. Instead
[03:22:49] of flanking,
[03:22:51] he orders a frontal assault.
[03:22:53] But attack some one point of the enemy's
[03:22:55] line is near.
[03:22:56] Upon hearing the order, an officer with
[03:22:59] the 86th Illinois responds [music] by
[03:23:01] saying,
[03:23:03] "The stupidity of this order is enough
[03:23:05] to paralyze me."
[03:23:07] By order of Major General Deput Sherman,
[03:23:11] a little after 8:00 a.m., the Battle of
[03:23:14] Kennesaw Mountain begins.
[03:23:18] 5,500 federals surge up the steep slopes
[03:23:21] of Pigeon Hill.
[03:23:24] A knob just below Kennesaw Mountain.
[03:23:35] The attack is doomed from the stars.
[03:23:48] The battle of Kennesaw Mountain
[03:23:52] goes against
[03:23:54] everything that Sherman has been talking
[03:23:57] about and has been trying to do.
[03:24:02] Why does he do why does he make this uh
[03:24:04] you know assault direct assault against
[03:24:07] dug in troops
[03:24:11] on a high mountain.
[03:24:14] But why does he do this when it it's
[03:24:16] clear that this is just not going to
[03:24:18] work?
[03:24:26] Sherman orders old cooks and musicians
[03:24:28] to the Kennesaw battlefield to aid the
[03:24:30] wounded.
[03:24:33] Unarmed, Austin Gilmore attempts to save
[03:24:36] a Union soldier wounded on Pigeon Hill.
[03:24:43] The former slave is struck in the hip by
[03:24:45] a mini bowl.
[03:24:49] Yet Gilmore manages to [music] drive the
[03:24:51] soldier to safety.
[03:24:57] The Union wounded are taken to a field
[03:25:00] hospital at the base of Kennesaw
[03:25:02] Mountain.
[03:25:04] It is a crude open air facility with
[03:25:06] little regard to sanitation.
[03:25:10] [music] Antibiotics have not yet been
[03:25:12] discovered.
[03:25:14] Medical instruments go unsterilized.
[03:25:18] The overwhelmed surgeons work [music]
[03:25:20] courageously
[03:25:23] as do battlefield nurses
[03:25:25] like Emma Stevenson.
[03:25:28] She was in a hospital where there was
[03:25:31] probably not enough room for all [music]
[03:25:32] of the patients there. So it was
[03:25:35] crowded,
[03:25:36] it was loud, it was [music] horrifying.
[03:25:40] And yet she still chose this line of
[03:25:43] work.
[03:25:44] It says something about [music] her
[03:25:46] determination to become free, her
[03:25:49] determination to do what she could to
[03:25:51] ensure that the Union Army had the labor
[03:25:54] and the resources it needed to win this
[03:25:56] war.
[03:25:59] Sherman's frontal assault on Pigeon Hill
[03:26:02] is a disaster.
[03:26:04] Keep ping.
[03:26:06] Come on, [screaming] lad. Push it.
[03:26:13] An officer with the 53rd Ohio sums up
[03:26:16] the fight on Pigeon Hill by saying, "The
[03:26:19] rebels fought with a desperation worthy
[03:26:21] of a better cause."
[03:26:26] Simultaneous to the fight on Pigeon
[03:26:27] Hill, Sherman launches the other wave of
[03:26:30] his main attack. It occurs not at Big
[03:26:34] Kennesaw, but 2 miles south at Chetm
[03:26:37] Hill.
[03:26:39] In the woods below Chitham Hill are
[03:26:42] 8,000 Union soldiers.
[03:26:45] To embolden his 52nd Ohio, Colonel Dan
[03:26:48] Mcook recites a poem about warriors of
[03:26:52] ancient Rome.
[03:26:54] Outspake brave Horatius, the captain of
[03:26:57] the gate. To every man upon this earth,
[03:27:01] death cometh soon or late.
[03:27:06] And how can man die better
[03:27:09] than facing fearful odds
[03:27:13] for the ashes of your fathers
[03:27:16] and the temples
[03:27:18] of your gods.
[03:27:26] Easy boys, easy.
[03:27:28] To reach the Confederate earthworks on
[03:27:30] Chetam Hill.
[03:27:34] What?
[03:27:36] The Federals must advance across an open
[03:27:39] field in battery
[03:27:46] and up a steep incline.
[03:27:57] Come on.
[03:28:00] It is a 400yard march
[03:28:03] into certain death.
[03:28:07] Aim
[03:28:10] close enough to the works.
[03:28:14] [music]
[03:28:36] Heat. Heat.