The Civil War 1x9

1. Original production of "the civil war"

2. was made possible by generous contributions

3. from these funders.

4. And by the corporation for public broadcasting and by

5. contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you,

6. thank you.

7. Corporate funding for this special 25th anniversary

8. presentation was provided by.

9. Before thousands fell on the battlefield,

10. before millions were freed and before a country

11. forged its identity... A nation declared a new

12. birth of freedom, rededicating itself to the

13. proposition that all men are created equal.

14. Bank of America is proud to sponsor "the civil war,"

15. a film by Ken burns,

16. newly restored for it's 25th anniversary.

17. "Were these things real?

18. "Did I see those brave and noble countrymen of mine

19. "laid low in death and weltering in their blood?

20. "Did I see our country laid waste and in ruins?

21. "Did I see soldiers marching,

22. "the earth trembling and jarring beneath their measured tread?

23. "Did I see the ruins

24. "of smoldering cities and deserted homes?

25. "Did I see the flag of my country,

26. "that I had followed so long,

27. furled to be no more unfurled forever?"

28. "Surely they are but the vagaries

29. of mine own imagination."

30. "But hush! I now hear the approach of battle.

31. "That low, rumbling sound in the west

32. is the roar of Cannon in the distance."

33. Private Sam Watkins, company H, 1st Tennessee regiment.

34. "Strange, is it not,

35. "that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination

36. should so condense a nationality?"

37. Walt Whitman.

38. It is the event in American history

39. in that it is the moment

40. that made the United States as a nation,

41. and I mean that in different ways.

42. The United States was obviously a nation

43. when it adopted a constitution,

44. but it adopted a constitution

45. that, uh, required a war to be sorted out

46. and therefore required a war to make a real nation

47. out of what was a theoretical nation

48. as—as it was designed at the constitutional convention.

49. Before the war, it was said, "the United States are."

50. Grammatically, it was spoken that way

51. and thought of as a collection of independent states.

52. After the war, it was always "the United States is,"

53. as we say today without being self-conscious at all.

54. And that sums up what the war accomplished.

55. It made us an "is."

56. The confederate states of America had once stretched

57. from the Rappahannock to the Rio Grande.

58. Its leaders had once dreamed of a tropical empire

59. reaching ever southward

60. to Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil.

61. By April 1865, the dream was gone.

62. Richmond had fallen.

63. The confederate government, and Jefferson Davis with it,

64. had fled into the wilderness of north Carolina.

65. The confederate armies, once the terror of the union,

66. had been battered and starved almost out of existence

67. and then forced to surrender at Appomattox,

68. where Ulysses S. Grant had finally cornered Robert E. Lee.

69. In April 1865,

70. Elisha Hunt Rhodes would receive the best news of the war

71. and then the worst.

72. In the woods of north Carolina, two old adversaries,

73. William Tecumseh Sherman

74. and Joseph E. Johnston,

75. would meet on the field of battle one last time.

76. By then, confederate Sam Watkins would write,

77. "the once proud army of Tennessee

78. had degenerated to a mob."

79. In April 1861,

80. Abraham Lincoln had implored his countrymen not to go to war,

81. to listen to "the better angels of their nature."

82. Now in April 1865,

83. the bloodshed was finally coming to an end.

84. But in Washington,

85. John Wilkes booth could not accept that the war was over.

86. In four years,

87. more than a million photographs were made of the war.

88. Now no one seemed to want them anymore.

89. Mathew Brady went bankrupt.

90. Thousands of glass-plate negatives were lost,

91. mislaid or forgotten.

92. Thousands more were sold to gardeners,

93. not for the images they held, but for the glass itself.

94. In the years that followed Appomattox,

95. the sun slowly burned the image of war

96. from thousands of greenhouse glass panes.

97. "The civil war," a Harvard professor wrote at the time,

98. "opened a great Gulf

99. "between what happened before in our century

100. "and what has happened since.

101. "It does not seem to me as if I were living

102. in the country in which I was born."

103. The war was over, and it was not over.

104. "My shoes are gone. My clothes are gone.

105. "I'm weary, I'm sick, I'm hungry.

106. "My family have all been killed or scattered.

107. "And I have suffered all this for my country.

108. "I love my country, but if this war is ever over,

109. I'll be damned if I ever love another country."

110. "So Blackwood and I left the army—our army—

111. "left them there on the hill

112. "with their arms stacked in the field,

113. "all in rows, never to see it anymore.

114. "Telling Clarke and bell good-bye,

115. "we crossed the road into the fields and thickets

116. "and in a little while lost sight of all that told

117. of the presence of what was left of the army."

118. Barry Benson.

119. "Monday, April 10.

120. "Lee and his army have surrendered!

121. "Gloria in excelsis deo.

122. "They can bother and perplex none but historians henceforth,

123. "forever.

124. There is no such army anymore. God be praised."

125. George Templeton strong.

126. "Near Appomattox courthouse, Virginia.

127. "Glory to god in the highest!

128. "Peace on earth, good will to men!

129. "Thank god Lee has surrendered, and the war will soon end.

130. "How can I record the events of this day?

131. "Such a scene only happens once in centuries.

132. "General Meade rode like mad down the road with his hat off,

133. shouting, "the war is over, and we are going home.

134. "The men threw their knapsacks and canteens into the air

135. "and howled like mad.

136. "The rebels are half-starved,

137. "and our men divided their rations with them.

138. "I cried and laughed by turns.

139. "I was never so happy in my life.

140. "I thank god for all his blessings to me

141. and that my life has been spared to see this glorious day."

142. Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

143. Word of Lee's surrender spread fast.

144. A galloping rider shouted the good news

145. to Sherman's army in north Carolina,

146. and one gleeful soldier bellowed back at him,

147. "you're the son of a bitch we've been looking for

148. all these four years!"

149. Church bells rang out in every northern town.

150. The people of deer isle, Maine,

151. had followed the steady march of union victories

152. with the same joy felt by towns all over the north,

153. and when news of Appomattox got out to the islands,

154. shouting horsemen carried it from house to house,

155. but the grieving did not end.

156. Private William Toothaker succumbed to disease

157. aboard a transport ship,

158. leaving four small children

159. whose memories of him would quickly fade.

160. And a letter came, informing private Albion Stinson's wife

161. that her husband had been killed near Appomattox courthouse

162. just five days before the confederate surrender.

163. When the news reached Clarksville, Tennessee,

164. the union military governor

165. ordered a grand citywide celebration.

166. "All the storehouses were brilliantly lighted.

167. "These blue devils desecrated our churches

168. "by ringing the bells.

169. They did all in their power to a-rile us."

170. Nannie Haskins.

171. At Vicksburg, 2,000 liberated union prisoners

172. crowded onto the decks of the steamboat sultana,

173. gleeful to be on their way north at last.

174. Near Memphis, a boiler exploded,

175. and she burst into flames.

176. More than 1,200 men died,

177. still hundreds of miles from home.

178. "We are scattered,

179. stunned..."

180. "The remnant of heart left alive in us

181. "is filled with brotherly hate.

182. "Whose fault?

183. "Everybody blamed by somebody else.

184. "Only the dead heroes left stiff and stark

185. on the battlefield escape."

186. Mary Chesnut.

187. When the news of the surrender reached Edmund Ruffin,

188. the old Virginia secessionist

189. who had fired one of the first shots at fort Sumter,

190. he draped a rebel flag over his shoulders and shot himself

191. rather than live, he wrote,

192. in a restored union with members of "the Yankee race."

193. "You may forgive us,"

194. a surrendering rebel officer told Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

195. after the ceremony at Appomattox,

196. "but we won't be forgiven.

197. "There is a rancor in our hearts which you little dream of.

198. We hate you, sir."

199. April 14, 1865 was good Friday.

200. It also marked to the day

201. the fourth anniversary of the surrender of fort Sumter,

202. and within the fort's pulverized walls that morning,

203. everything was being readied for a noontime ceremony.

204. The fort's old union commander, colonel Robert Anderson,

205. was to raise the same flag

206. he had been forced to haul down in 1861.

207. An audience of northern soldiers and dignitaries

208. and some 4,000 former slaves watched.

209. Few local whites chose to attend.

210. "At first, I could not hear colonel Anderson,

211. "for his voice came thickly,

212. "but in a moment, he said clearly,

213. "I thank god that I have lived to see this day.

214. "And after a few more words, he began to hoist the flag.

215. "It went up slowly and hung limp,

216. "a weather-beaten, frayed, and shell-torn old flag

217. "not fit for much more work,

218. "but when it had crept clear of the shelter of the walls,

219. "a sudden breath of wind caught it,

220. "and it shook its folds and flew straight out above us.

221. "I think we stood up.

222. "Somebody started the star-spangled banner.

223. "And we sang the first verse,

224. "which is all that most people know.

225. "But it did not make much difference,

226. "for a great gun was fired close to us from the fort itself,

227. "followed, in obedience to the president's order,

228. "by a national salute from every fort and battery

229. that fired upon fort Sumter."

230. In Washington that same day,

231. John Wilkes booth dropped by Ford's Theatre

232. to pick up his mail.

233. A stagehand told him the president and general Grant

234. were both expected to attend that night

235. to see the actress Laura Keene

236. in a British comedy called our American cousin.

237. Booth told his band of devoted followers of a new plan.

238. He would shoot Lincoln and Grant.

239. Lewis Paine was to kill

240. secretary of state William Seward.

241. George Atzerodt was to shoot the vice president,

242. Andrew Johnson.

243. Early that evening, booth led his horse

244. out of the livery stable near Ford's Theatre.

245. A young boy was told to hold it at the stage door.

246. At the last minute,

247. general and Mrs. Grant begged off the Theatre party

248. and left the city for Philadelphia.

249. The Lincolns arrived

250. and took their seats in the presidential box.

251. With them were major Henry Rathbone

252. and his fiancee, Clara Harris.

253. What would you advise, ma?

254. Just remember, dear, he's rich.

255. Hush! here he comes.

256. Ah, Mr. Trenchard!

257. We were just saying

258. how you always seem sure of hitting your Mark.

259. The president seemed to be enjoying the play.

260. His wife held his hand.

261. Booth swallowed two brandies at a nearby bar,

262. then returned to the Theatre.

263. He waited for the laughter to rise,

264. then slipped silently into the president's box.

265. He held a dagger in his left hand,

266. a derringer pistol in his right.

267. The nasty beast!

268. Sir, your vulgarity renders you intolerable

269. in polite society.

270. Maybe I don't know the manners of polite society,

271. but I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal,

272. you sockdolagizing old man-trap.

273. Booth fired, then vaulted over the front of the box,

274. caught his right spur in the draped flag,

275. and landed on stage, breaking his left leg.

276. He waved his dagger

277. and shouted something to the stunned audience.

278. Some thought he said, "sic semper tyrannis" —

279. thus be it ever to tyrants,

280. Virginia's state motto.

281. Others heard it as "the south is avenged!"

282. For a long moment, the Theatre was still,

283. then Mary Lincoln screamed.

284. The bullet from booth's pistol

285. had entered the back of Lincoln's head,

286. torn through his brain,

287. and lodged behind his right eye.

288. A surgeon from the audience pronounced the wound mortal.

289. Soldiers carried the unconscious president from the Theatre

290. into a boarding house across 10th street.

291. "We put him on the first floor

292. "and laid him on the bed.

293. "When we took him into the room, we had to get out.

294. "They wouldn't let anybody in

295. without it was a doctor or something."

296. Private Jacob soles.

297. "The giant sufferer lay extended diagonally across the bed,

298. "which was not long enough for him.

299. "He had been stripped of his clothes.

300. "His slow, full respiration lifted the covers

301. "with each breath he took.

302. His features were calm and striking."

303. Gideon Welles.

304. The doctors could do nothing.

305. Mary implored her husband to speak to her

306. and wept so inconsolably,

307. she was finally taken into the front parlor.

308. Cabinet officers stood by helpless all night,

309. doubly shocked to hear

310. that booth's accomplice Lewis Paine

311. had stabbed secretary of state Seward,

312. then run out into the street crying,

313. "I'm mad! I'm mad!"

314. George Atzerodt had been too frightened

315. to carry out booth's order to kill the vice president.

316. Around 6:00 in the morning,

317. Navy secretary Welles stepped outside

318. and found the streets filled with silent, anxious people.

319. "A little before 7:00, I went back into the room.

320. "The death struggle had begun.

321. "Robert, his son, stood at the head of the bed.

322. "He bore himself well,

323. "but on two occasions gave way and sobbed aloud,

324. leaning on the shoulder of senator Sumner."

325. At 7:22 on the morning of April 15, 1865,

326. Abraham Lincoln died.

327. He was 56 years old.

328. Secretary of war Edwin Stanton said,

329. "now he belongs to the ages."

330. His pockets contained two pairs of spectacles,

331. a pocket knife, a linen handkerchief,

332. and a wallet.

333. In it were nine newspaper clippings

334. and a confederate $5.00 bill.

335. "Mother prepared breakfast and other meals as usual,

336. "but not a mouthful was eaten all day by either of us.

337. "We each drank half a cup of coffee. That was all.

338. "Little was said.

339. "We got every newspaper, morning and evening,

340. and passed them silently to each other."

341. Walt Whitman.

342. The telegraph carried the news

343. across the country in minutes.

344. No president

345. had ever been murdered.

346. People would remember for the rest of their lives

347. where they were and what they felt

348. and what the weather was like

349. when they heard what had happened.

350. "Near Appomattox courthouse, Virginia,

351. "Saturday, April 15.

352. "Bad news has just arrived.

353. "Corporal Thomas Parker has just said president Lincoln is dead,

354. "murdered.

355. "We cannot realize that our president is dead.

356. May god help his family and our distracted country."

357. Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

358. "I have been expecting this.

359. "I am stunned,

360. "as by a fearful personal calamity,

361. "though I can see that this thing

362. "occurring just at this time

363. "may be overruled to our great good.

364. We shall appreciate him at last."

365. George Templeton strong.

366. "On the Avenue in front of the white house

367. "were several hundred colored people,

368. "mostly women and children,

369. "weeping and wailing their loss.

370. "This crowd did not diminish

371. "through the whole of that cold, wet day.

372. "They seemed not to know what was to be their fate

373. "since their great benefactor was dead,

374. "and though strong and brave men wept when I met them,

375. "the hopeless grief of those poor colored people

376. affected me more than almost anything else."

377. Gideon Welles.

378. Lincoln's casket lay in state,

379. first in the east room of the white house,

380. then in the rotunda of the capitol.

381. He was to be buried in Springfield, Illinois,

382. his adopted home.

383. The small coffin of his son Willy,

384. who had died in Washington,

385. was disinterred to make the journey with him.

386. Mary Lincoln was too overcome with grief to go.

387. The funeral train took 12 days

388. and traveled 1,662 miles through the soft spring landscape,

389. retracing the route Lincoln had taken to Washington

390. four years earlier.

391. In Philadelphia,

392. Lincoln's coffin lay in independence hall,

393. where he had declared he would "rather be assassinated"

394. than surrender the principles

395. embodied in the declaration of independence.

396. In New York, the procession took four hours.

397. Scalpers sold choice window positions along the route

398. for $4.00 and up.

399. From his grandfather's window,

400. a young Theodore Roosevelt watched the procession pass.

401. At Cleveland, 10,000 mourners

402. passed through a specially built outdoor pavilion

403. every hour, all day,

404. despite a driving rain.

405. It ended in Springfield on may 4th.

406. The coffin rode to the Illinois state house

407. in a magnificent black-and-silver hearse

408. borrowed from St. Louis

409. and lay open in the chamber of the house of representatives

410. where Lincoln had warned

411. that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."

412. Among the thousands of people who shuffled past his coffin

413. were many who had known him in the old days—

414. farmers from new Salem,

415. law clients and rival attorneys,

416. neighbors who had nodded to him each morning on his way to work.

417. Sarah, the president's stepmother,

418. had had a premonition

419. when Lincoln left for Washington four years before.

420. "I felt it in my heart that something would happen to him,"

421. she said, "and that I should see him no more."

422. General Joseph hooker

423. led the final, slow march to oak Ridge cemetery

424. through a gentle spring rain.

425. "You white people are the children of Abraham Lincoln.

426. "We are at best only his stepchildren.

427. "Viewed from the genuine abolition ground,

428. "Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, indifferent,

429. "but measuring him by the sentiment of his country,

430. "a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult,

431. "he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

432. "Taking him all in all,

433. "measuring the tremendous magnitude

434. "of the work before him,

435. "considering the necessary means to ends,

436. "infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world

437. better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln."

438. Frederick Douglass.

439. On April 26,

440. union cavalry trapped John Wilkes booth

441. in a Virginia tobacco barn and set it afire.

442. His accomplice David Herold surrendered.

443. Booth preferred death.

444. A soldier shot him in the neck.

445. At the end, he asked to have his hands raised,

446. looked at them, and said, "useless, useless."

447. That day, in a farmhouse near Durham station, north Carolina,

448. confederate general Joseph Johnston

449. surrendered what was left of his army

450. to William Tecumseh Sherman.

451. Jefferson Davis, exhausted but still defiant,

452. fled southward,

453. hoping somehow to rally the confederacy from Texas.

454. "It may be that with a devoted band of cavalry,

455. "I can force my way across the Mississippi,

456. "and if nothing can be done there,

457. "then I can go to Mexico

458. and have the world from which to choose a location."

459. On may 10 at Irwinville, Georgia,

460. union cavalry caught up with him.

461. With the arrest of its president,

462. the confederate government ceased to exist.

463. Davis was sent north to Virginia under heavy guard.

464. Northern newspapers spread the false rumor

465. that Davis had been apprehended wearing women's clothes.

466. North and south, he was reviled as the villain of the war.

467. These misconceptions about Davis are so strange,

468. that it's as if a gigantic conspiracy was launched.

469. It was partly launched by southerners who,

470. having lost the war,

471. did not want to blame it on their generals,

472. so they blamed it on the politicians,

473. and, of course, Davis was the chief politician.

474. So it was the southerners more than the northerners

475. who vilified Jefferson Davis.

476. The northerners wanted to hang him from a sour apple tree,

477. but, uh, the southerners really tore him down after the war.

478. Davis was imprisoned at fortress Monroe

479. in a cell kept perpetually lit

480. and was made to wear chains,

481. though he protested

482. that "those are orders for a slave,

483. and no man with a soul in him would obey such orders."

484. "dear Varina, this is not the fate to which I invited you

485. "when the future was Rose-colored for us both,

486. "but I know you will bear it even better than myself,

487. "and that, of us two,

488. I alone will ever look back reproachfully on my career."

489. Scattered fighting stuttered on in Louisiana, Alabama,

490. and Mississippi, and even further west,

491. where on may 13, 1865,

492. private John J. Williams of the 34th Indiana

493. became the last man killed in the civil war,

494. in a battle at Palmitto ranch, Texas.

495. The final skirmish was a confederate victory.

496. On the morning of may 23, 1865,

497. the American flag flew at full staff above the white house

498. for the first time since Lincoln's death.

499. U.S. grant and the new president, Andrew Johnson,

500. stood side by side

501. to watch the grand armies of the Republic pass in review

502. down pennsylvania avenue from the capitol.

503. "And so it came,

504. "this glorious old army of the Potomac,

505. "for six hours marching past,

506. "18 or 20 miles long,

507. "their colors telling their sad history.

508. "It was a strange feeling

509. "to be so intensely happy and triumphant

510. and yet to feel like crying."

511. The great procession took two days.

512. General George Armstrong Custer

513. stole the show the first day,

514. galloping past the dignitaries far ahead of his men,

515. brandishing his sabre,

516. his long yellow hair whipping in the wind.

517. But the crowds cheered loudest the next morning

518. as William Tecumseh Sherman rode past

519. at the head of the great army he had led to the sea.

520. By may, most of the Yankees

521. had withdrawn from Clarksville, Tennessee.

522. What remained of the 49th and 14th Tennessee regiments

523. came home.

524. Private John J. Denny of company K

525. was not among them.

526. He had died at Chancellorsville.

527. Of the 29 Stewart college seniors who went to war,

528. 16 had been killed in battle.

529. 7 more had died of wounds and disease.

530. In September, railway service to Clarksville was resumed.

531. Deer isle, Maine, was an indirect casualty of the war.

532. When its men came home,

533. they found fishing had fallen off.

534. There was new money to be made in other industries

535. in nearby towns.

536. The old families moved away.

537. Some of the houses they left behind

538. became summer homes for vacationers,

539. most of whom were unaware of what had happened there.

540. John Wilkes booth's accomplices

541. were swiftly tried before a military commission.

542. All eight were found guilty.

543. Four were sentenced to be hanged,

544. including Mary Surratt, whose only crime may have been

545. that she owned the boarding house

546. in which the conspirators met.

547. The executions took place

548. in the courtyard of the old penitentiary building

549. on July 7.

550. The prisoners climbed the 13 steps

551. and sat in chairs while the charges were read aloud.

552. Two priests comforted Mrs. Surratt

553. and shielded her from the sun.

554. White hoods were slipped over their heads.

555. General Winfield Scott Hancock, the hero of Gettysburg,

556. clapped his hands three times,

557. and soldiers knocked the front part of the platform

558. out from under the condemned.

559. It took them more than five minutes to die.

560. A northern newspaper said,

561. "we want to know their names no more."

562. "somewhere they crawled to die alone in bushes,

563. "low gullies, or on the sides of hills.

564. "There, in secluded spots,

565. "their skeletons, bleached bones, tufts of hair,

566. "buttons, fragments of clothing

567. are occasionally found yet."

568. "Our young men, once so handsome and so joyous,

569. "taken from us—

570. "the son from the mother,

571. "the husband from the wife,

572. the dear friend from the dear friend."

573. Walt Whitman.

574. 3.5 million men went to war.

575. 620,000 men died in it,

576. as many as in all the rest of America's wars combined.

577. 1/4 of the south's white men of military age were dead.

578. In Iowa, half the men eligible to fight

579. served in the union army,

580. filling 46 regiments in all.

581. 13,001 iowans died—

582. 3,540 in battle,

583. 515 while prisoners of war,

584. and 8,498 of disease.

585. Those figures were typical.

586. The 5th New Hampshire regiment

587. started out from Concord in 1861 with 1,200 men.

588. When they returned to New Hampshire

589. after Gettysburg,

590. there were only 380 left.

591. In Mississippi in 1866,

592. 1/5 of the state's entire budget

593. was spent on artificial limbs.

594. Millions were left with vivid memories of men

595. who should have still been living but were not.

596. The survivors went home

597. and got on with the business of living.

598. "The morning after my arrival home,

599. "I doffed my uniform of first lieutenant,

600. "put on some of my father's old clothes,

601. "and proceeded to wage war on the standing corn.

602. "The feeling I had was sort of queer.

603. "It almost seemed, sometimes,

604. "as if I had been away only a day or two

605. "and had just taken up the farm work

606. where I had left off."

607. Leander still well, formerly 61st Illinois.

608. The boys who had gone off to war were old men now.

609. They walked over the old battlefields

610. with their families,

611. pointing out the places where they had once done things

612. that now seemed impossible, even to them.

613. They had a theoretical notion of having a country,

614. but when the war was over,

615. on both sides, they knew they had a country.

616. They'd been there.

617. They had walked its hills and tramped its roads.

618. Uh, they—they saw the country,

619. and they knew they had a country,

620. and they knew the—the effort that they had expended

621. and their dead friends had expended to preserve it.

622. It did that.

623. It made their country an actuality.

624. By the turn of the century,

625. monuments and memorials and statues

626. stood in city parks and courthouse squares

627. from Maine to Mississippi.

628. "Number 220— statue of American soldier.

629. "Price, $450.

630. "When used as a family monument

631. "and photos of the deceased soldier can be furnished,

632. "we will model a new head in a true likeness.

633. The extra cost will be but $150."

634. The monumental bronze company, Bridgeport, Connecticut.

635. "Hall's hill, Virginia, July 4, 1865.

636. "Another independence day in the army,

637. "and this has been my fifth.

638. "The first we passed at camp Clark near Washington,

639. "the second at Harrison's landing,

640. "the third at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,

641. "the fourth at Petersburg,

642. "and today we are back in Washington

643. "with our work finished.

644. The day has been fun."

645. Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

646. The war made Elisha Hunt Rhodes.

647. Having risen from private to colonel during the war,

648. he was promoted to brigadier general after it,

649. then went into the cotton and wool business in Providence.

650. He devoted nearly every idle hour to veterans' affairs

651. and never missed a regimental reunion.

652. "America has no north, no south, no east, no west.

653. "The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains.

654. "The compass just points up and down,

655. "and we can laugh now at the absurd notion

656. "of there being a north and a south.

657. We are one and undivided."

658. Sam Watkins.

659. Sam Watkins returned to Columbia, Tennessee,

660. ran the family farm,

661. and in the evenings worked on his memoirs,

662. company Aytch,

663. despite, he said, "a house full of young rebels

664. clustering around my knees and bumping my elbows."

665. But for the war,

666. these men were like any other possible friends.

667. You can, uh, remember the— Thomas Hardy's poem.

668. "Had he and I but met, in some old ancient inn,

669. we might sit down to wet right many a Nipperkin."

670. You know, "but ranged as infantry, standing face to face,

671. "I shot at him as he at me, and killed him in his place.

672. "Strange and curious, a war is.

673. "You shoot a fellow down you'd treat where any bar is,

674. or help to half a crown."

675. Isn't that it?

676. Especially in our own, uh—our own society,

677. where these men shared a common history,

678. men and women,

679. shared a common love of Liberty,

680. gave it slightly different English

681. as it spun through their lives,

682. but at the same time, when death came

683. and there was no more to fight about,

684. the sort of ocean of—of love and respect

685. closed over them again,

686. and they were together.

687. "I think we understand what military fame is—

688. "to be killed on the field of battle

689. and have our names spelled wrong in the newspapers."

690. William Tecumseh Sherman.

691. William Tecumseh Sherman remained a soldier,

692. fighting Indians and shunning politics

693. until his retirement in 1883.

694. "If nominated, I will not run,"

695. he told a republican delegation urging him to run for president.

696. "If elected, I will not serve."

697. He died in New York City in the winter of 1891.

698. Among the honorary pallbearers who stood bareheaded

699. in the cold wind outside the church

700. was 82-year-old Joe Johnston,

701. who had fought Sherman in georgia and the carolinas.

702. When a friend warned him he might fall ill,

703. Johnston told him, "if I were in Sherman's place

704. "and he were standing here in mine,

705. he would not put on his hat."

706. Johnston died 10 days later of pneumonia.

707. "April 1866.

708. "There are nights here with the moonlight,

709. "cold and ghastly, and the whippoorwills

710. "and the screech owls alone disturbing the silence,

711. "when I could tear my hair and cry alone

712. for all that is past and gone."

713. Mary Chesnut.

714. When James and Mary Chesnut

715. returned to mulberry plantation,

716. they found the old house stripped by union men,

717. the cotton burned.

718. Mary managed to make a little money

719. selling butter and eggs

720. in partnership with her former slave,

721. and she continued to write,

722. but she never completed the mammoth task

723. of reworking her war diary.

724. Jefferson Davis was never tried for treason,

725. nor could he ever bring himself to ask for a pardon.

726. After two years in prison,

727. he was released on bond and spent the rest of his life

728. living off the charity of a wealthy widow

729. and working on a massive memoir,

730. the rise and fall of the confederate government.

731. He died, still persuaded of the justice of his cause,

732. at the age of 81.

733. Hiram revels of Mississippi became the first black man

734. ever elected to the United States senate,

735. filling the seat last held by Jefferson Davis.

736. Vice president Alexander Stephens

737. was imprisoned briefly and then re-elected

738. to his old congressional seat from Georgia

739. as if there had never been a confederacy.

740. Mary Todd Lincoln

741. never recovered from her husband's murder.

742. Her son tad died in 1871.

743. Five years later, her eldest son Robert

744. had her committed to a mental institution.

745. She spent her last years in Springfield,

746. rarely leaving a room

747. whose curtains were never raised.

748. For Clara Barton,

749. the angel of the battlefield,

750. the grim work continued.

751. After the war, she went down to Andersonville

752. and helped arrange dignified burial

753. for thousands of the union prisoners

754. who had died there,

755. then went on to found the American red cross.

756. On November 10, 1865, Henry Wirz,

757. commandant at Andersonville prison,

758. was hanged in the yard

759. of the old capitol prison in Washington

760. for war crimes.

761. He pleaded he had only followed orders.

762. Walt Whitman published drum taps,

763. a book of civil war poems he thought his finest,

764. then turned largely to prose.

765. His writings revolutionized American literature.

766. Phil Sheridan went out west to take on a new enemy,

767. declaring that the only good Indian was a dead Indian.

768. George Armstrong Custer went west, too,

769. carrying with him his belief in his own invincibility.

770. In 1876, the Sioux and Cheyenne proved him wrong.

771. George McClellan stayed abroad for three years

772. after losing the election to Lincoln.

773. He heard no slander about himself there, he said.

774. Then he came home

775. and got himself elected governor of New Jersey.

776. The conqueror of fort Sumter,

777. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard,

778. promoted railroads,

779. managed the Louisiana state lottery,

780. and got rich.

781. Nathan Bedford Forrest

782. promoted railroads, too, but failed.

783. In 1867, he became the first imperial wizard

784. of the Ku Klux Klan

785. but quit when the Klan grew too violent even for him.

786. General Dan sickles somehow escaped court-martial

787. for his blunder at Gettysburg.

788. He had the leg he lost in the peach orchard

789. mounted in a miniature casket

790. and gave it to the army medical museum in Washington,

791. where he visited it regularly for 50 years.

792. John bell hood, who had survived

793. some of the fiercest fighting of the war,

794. died with his wife and daughter

795. in the New Orleans yellow fever epidemic of 1878,

796. leaving 10 orphaned children.

797. George Pickett never overcame his bitterness

798. over the destruction of his division at Gettysburg.

799. Suffering from severe depression,

800. he turned down offers of command from the ruler of Egypt

801. and the president of the United States

802. and ended up in the insurance business.

803. Confederate general James Longstreet

804. joined the republican party,

805. served as Grant's minister to Turkey,

806. dared to criticize Lee's strategy at Gettysburg,

807. and for all these things

808. was considered a traitor to the south

809. by his former comrades-in-arms.

810. Frederick Douglass

811. continued to fight as hard for civil rights

812. as he had against slavery

813. and became the most powerful black politician in America.

814. A young visitor once asked him what he should do with his life.

815. "Agitate!" the old man answered. "Agitate! Agitate!"

816. Julia Ward Howe

817. helped lead the American woman's suffrage association

818. for 55 years.

819. At her funeral in 1910,

820. 4,000 mourners joined in singing

821. the battle hymn of the Republic.

822. Colonel Washington Roebling

823. left the army corps of engineers,

824. finished his father's bridge at Cincinnati,

825. and went on to build

826. the greatest suspension bridge in the world in Brooklyn.

827. "I have fought against the people of the north

828. "because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the south

829. "its dearest rights,

830. "but I have never cherished toward them

831. "bitter or vindictive feelings,

832. and I have never seen the day when I did not pray for them."

833. Robert E. Lee

834. swore renewed allegiance to the United States

835. and by so doing persuaded thousands of his former soldiers

836. to do the same.

837. He was weary, ailing, and without work

838. in the summer of 1865

839. when an insurance firm offered him $50,000

840. just for the use of his name.

841. He turned it down.

842. "I cannot consent to receive pay

843. for services I do not render."

844. He ended up in the noble way you might have expected

845. after you'd learned to expect it.

846. He was, uh—didn't know what to do with himself after the war.

847. His profession was gone.

848. Even his country was gone.

849. Uh, and he was approached, with a good deal of hesitation,

850. by these people from a little school

851. called Washington college,

852. and he accepted the presidency of Washington college.

853. He had an annual salary of $1,500 and a house to live in,

854. and he spent the rest of his life

855. at what after his death was called Washington and Lee.

856. "The greatest mistake of my life," he said,

857. "was taking a military education."

858. And whenever his students

859. and those of the neighboring Virginia military institute

860. marched together,

861. Lee made a point of staying out of step.

862. He never returned to Arlington again.

863. Once, on his way to Washington,

864. he glimpsed his old home from a passing train.

865. He died in 1870.

866. In his last moments, he went back to the war,

867. ordering A.P. Hill to bring up his troops,

868. just as stonewall Jackson had

869. on his deathbed at Chancellorsville.

870. Then Lee called out, "strike the tent."

871. "for he will smile

872. "and give you with unflinching courtesy,

873. "prayers, trappings, letters, uniforms and orders,

874. "photographs, kindness, valor and advice,

875. "and do it with such grace and gentleness

876. "that you will know you have the whole of him pinned down,

877. "mapped out, easy to understand—

878. "and so you have.

879. "All things except the heart.

880. "The heart he kept... A secret to the end

881. from all the picklocks of biographers."

882. "I feel that we are on the Eve of a new era

883. "when there is to be a great Harmony

884. "between the federal and the confederate.

885. "I cannot stay to be a living witness

886. "to the correctness of this prophecy,

887. but I feel it within me that it is to be so."

888. The qualities

889. that served Ulysses S. Grant so well in war—

890. stubbornness, independence, aversion to politics—

891. deserted him in peacetime.

892. He entered the white house

893. pledged to peace, honesty, and civil rights,

894. but corruption tainted his two terms.

895. After the presidency, he settled in Manhattan,

896. where he lent his name to a wall street brokerage firm.

897. Another partner in the firm

898. stole millions from the shareholders in 1884

899. and bankrupted the Grant family.

900. Once again, U.S. Grant was penniless.

901. At almost the same moment, he was found to be suffering

902. from inoperable cancer of the throat.

903. Determined to provide for his family before he died,

904. he set to work writing his memoirs.

905. In the summer of 1885, he moved to a cottage

906. at mount McGregor in the Adirondacks.

907. Unable now to eat or speak,

908. he sat on the front porch in the afternoons,

909. laboring over his manuscript.

910. He finished it on July 16

911. and died one week later.

912. Grant's memoirs sold half a million copies

913. and restored his family's fortune.

914. In 1913, the government held a 50th anniversary reunion

915. at Gettysburg.

916. It lasted three days.

917. Thousands of survivors

918. bivouacked on the old battlefield,

919. swapping stories, looking up old comrades.

920. The climax was to be

921. are-enactment of Pickett's charge.

922. As the rebel yell rang out

923. and the old confederates started forward again

924. across the fields,

925. a moan, "a gigantic gasp of unbelief,"

926. Rose from the union men on cemetery Ridge.

927. "It was then," one onlooker said,

928. "that the Yankees, unable to restrain themselves longer,

929. "burst from behind the stone wall

930. "and flung themselves upon their former enemies,

931. "not in mortal combat, but embracing them

932. in brotherly love and affection."

933. "pageant has passed.

934. "The day is over, but we linger,

935. "loath to think we shall see them no more together—

936. these men, these horses, these colors afield."

937. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

938. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

939. was at the Gettysburg reunion,

940. still imposing at 83, despite almost constant pain

941. from the unhealed internal damage done him

942. by a confederate minie ball at Petersburg.

943. The reunion was, he said, a transcendental experience,

944. "a radiant fellowship of the fallen."

945. He had received the medal of honor

946. for his courage at little round top,

947. served four terms as governor of Maine,

948. then became president of Bowdoin college,

949. where he managed to teach every subject in the curriculum

950. except mathematics.

951. He died of his ancient wound in 1914.

952. The war was over.

953. Who won the war?

954. The union army obviously won the war

955. in the sense that they were the army left standing

956. and holding their weapons

957. when it was all over.

958. Uh, so the soldiers who fought in the union army,

959. the generals who directed it,

960. the president who led the country during it

961. won the war.

962. If we're not talking just about the series of battles

963. that finished up with the surrender at Appomattox,

964. but talking instead about the struggle

965. to make something higher and better out of the country,

966. then the question gets more complicated.

967. The slaves won the war, and they lost the war

968. because they won freedom, that is, the removal of slavery,

969. but they did not win freedom as they understood freedom.

970. I suppose that slavery

971. is merely the, uh—the horrible statutory expression

972. of a deeper—of a deeper rift between people based on race,

973. and that is what we struggle still to—to heal.

974. And, uh, I think the—the significance of Lincoln's life

975. and his victory

976. was that—that we will never again

977. enshrine these concepts into law,

978. but now let's see what we can do to erase them

979. from the hearts and minds of—of people.

980. The civil war

981. is not only the central event of American history,

982. but it's a central event in large ways for the world itself.

983. If we believe, today, in the 20th century, as surely we must,

984. that popular government is the way to go,

985. it is the way

986. for the emancipation of the human spirit,

987. then the civil war established the fact

988. that a popular government could survive,

989. that it could overcome an internal secession movement

990. that could destroy it.

991. So the war becomes—in essence, it becomes

992. a testament for the liberation

993. of the human spirit for all time.

994. Four million Americans had been freed

995. after four years of agony,

996. but the meaning of freedom in American life

997. remained unresolved.

998. "Emancipated slaves own nothing,"

999. one Tennessee planter wrote,

1000. "because nothing but freedom has been given them."

1001. Thousands of blacks wandered Southern roads

1002. searching for relatives or looking for work or food.

1003. Thousands more stayed on their plantations

1004. as hired hands or sharecroppers.

1005. The 13th amendment

1006. was followed by a 14th and a 15th,

1007. promising full citizenship

1008. and due process for all american men,

1009. white and black.

1010. But the promises were soon overlooked

1011. in the scramble for a new prosperity,

1012. and white supremacy was brutally reimposed

1013. throughout the old confederacy.

1014. The white south won that war of attrition.

1015. It would take another century

1016. before blacks gained back the ground

1017. for which so many had given their lives.

1018. I think what we need to remember most of all

1019. is that the civil war is not over

1020. until we, today, have done our part in fighting it,

1021. as well as understanding what happened

1022. when the civil war generation fought it.

1023. William Faulkner, uh, said once

1024. that history is not "was," it's "is,"

1025. and what we need to remember about the civil war

1026. is that the civil war

1027. is in the present as well as in the past.

1028. The generation that fought the war,

1029. the generation that argued over the definition of the war,

1030. the generation that had to pay the price in blood,

1031. that had to pay the price in blasted hopes

1032. and a lost future,

1033. also established a standard that will not mean anything

1034. until we have finished the work.

1035. You can say there's no such thing as slavery anymore

1036. we're all citizens.

1037. But if we're all citizens, then we have a task to do

1038. to make sure that that, too, is not a joke.

1039. If some citizens live in houses and others live on the street,

1040. the civil war is still going on.

1041. It's still to be fought,

1042. and regrettably, it can still be lost.

1043. Gettysburg's guns are still, and the dead sleep on.

1044. America's most famous battleground is a camp again

1045. with a road dividing the blue and gray.

1046. There is no other dividing line now

1047. as 2,500 veterans gather from north and south

1048. to Mark the 75th anniversary of America's Armageddon.

1049. Hello.

1050. Hello. how are you?

1051. Glad to see you.

1052. Ha ha ha! You're all right.

1053. That's the rebel yell.

1054. We think that we are

1055. a wholly superior people.

1056. If we'd been anything like as superior as we think we are,

1057. we would not have fought that war,

1058. but since we did fight it,

1059. we have to make it the greatest war of all times

1060. and our generals were the greatest generals of all time.

1061. It's very American to do that.

1062. In time, even death itself might be abolished.

1063. Sergeant Barry Benson, a south Carolina veteran

1064. from McGowen's brigade, Wilcox's division,

1065. A.P. Hill's corp, army of Northern Virginia,

1066. he had enlisted three months before Sumter,

1067. at age 18, and served through Appomattox—

1068. saw it so when he got around to composing the reminiscences

1069. he hoped would "go down amongst my descendants

1070. for a long time."

1071. Reliving the war in words,

1072. he began to wish he could relive it in fact.

1073. And he came to believe that he and his fellow soldiers,

1074. gray and blue,

1075. might one day be able to do just that,

1076. if not here on earth, then afterwards in Valhalla.

1077. "Who knows?" He asked, as his narrative drew toward its close,

1078. "but it may be given to us, after this life,

1079. "to meet again in the old quarters,

1080. "to play chess and draughts,

1081. "to get up soon to answer the morning roll call,

1082. "to fall in at the tap of the drum for drill and dress parade,

1083. "and again to hastily Don our war gear

1084. "while the monotonous patter of the long roll

1085. "summons to battle.

1086. "Who knows, but again the old flags, ragged and torn,

1087. "snapping in the wind, may face each other and flutter,

1088. "pursuing and pursued,

1089. "while the cries of victory fill a summer day.

1090. "And after the battle,

1091. "then the slain and wounded will arise

1092. "and all meet together under the two flags,

1093. "all sound and well.

1094. "There will be talking and laughter and cheers,

1095. "and all will say, did it not seem real?

1096. Was it not as in the old days?"

1097. Corporate funding for this special 25th

1098. anniversary presentation of the civil war was provided by.

1099. Before thousands fell on the battlefield,

1100. before millions were freed and before a country

1101. forged its identity... A nation declared a new

1102. birth of freedom, rededicating itself to the

1103. proposition that all men are created equal.

1104. Bank of America is proud to sponsor "the civil war,"

1105. a film by Ken burns,

1106. newly restored for it's 25th anniversary.

1107. Original production of "the civil war"

1108. was made possible by generous contributions

1109. from these funders.

1110. And by the corporation for public broadcasting.

1111. And by contributions to your PBS station from

1112. viewers like you, thank you.