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