The Civil War; Interview with James Symington

CAMERAMAN: July 9, 1986 Florentine Films. American Documentaries, Incorporated. Project title: “Civil War”. Sound Roll 15. Recorded flat 7 1/2 ips minus 8 db reference tone to follow. [TONE]. Room tone in the home of C. Van Woodward.

CAMERAMAN: July 14, 1986. Location: Washington, DC, home of James Symington. Interview with James Symington. Sound Test. Rolling? Yes. I think that’s pretty good. ...rolling speed. Great. Alright, almost. Tone. Good.

CAMERAMAN: July 14, 1986 Florentine Films. American Documentaries, Incorporated. Project title: “Civil War.” Camera roll 25 Sound roll 15. Cameraman: Squires.

KEN BURNS: Okay, it’s a very, very simple question. Tell me about who your great grandfather was, his name, and what happened to him in 1862.

JAMES SYMINGTON: My great, great grandfather James S. Wadsworth was a New York farmer and a politician running for governor but in 1862, he in was in Washington and in command of the defenses of the city. They said that the Republicans went south to fight and the Democrats stayed North to vote. He lost that election and while he was in command of offenses, rather interesting encounter he had, he had a fellow named Patrick McCracken, he was a Virginian who was accused of spying. He was brought before my ancestors and he had the power of life and death over him. He said, “You’re a spy?”, he said, “No, sir. I’m a farmer.“ “Oh? That's what I do.” So they talked farming for about an hour and turned to his orderly and he said, “Release this man, he’s a farmer not a spy. Go back home and grow some food.” And so that men went back into Virginia and that was the year 1862.

KEN BURNS: I understand two years later, McCraken enters the picture again, this time Wadsworth is not in Washington.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Two years later, at the Battle of Wilderness, in 1864 May, my, my, great, great grandfather Wadsworth in charge of a division and he charge into a thicket occupied by some South Carolinians, members of Kershaw’s Brigade, and he was killed. And as he was, well he was mortally wounded, he lived a couple days with a bullet in his head, and as he lay dying in the tent, word went out into the community that a federal officer was shot his name was Wadsworth. This was within two or three miles of Patrick McCracken’s farm. He heard about it, he instantly came to the tent and he asked permission, as Wadsworth had expired, to take his remains and all effects, and then bury them by his house. He wrote a letter to Ms. Wadsworth telling her that he had the body and some weeks after that, a truce was declared, a truce team sent in, and the Wadsworth was removed; uniform and effects up to Genesee, New York where he lived and buried today. And for that act of kindness and courtesy, the young Austin Wadsworth, who was a Major in the Union Army, went down to visit the family and I think put them all in business after the war. Various businesses.

KEN BURNS: What does this tell us about the Civil War? I mean it’s just so incredibly poignant...

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well, it tells me that but for the war, that these men were like any other possible friends. You can remember the Thomas Hardy's poem, “Had he and I but met by some old ancient inn, We might sit down to wet right many a nipperkin. But raged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. Strange and curious as war is, you shoot a fella down, you treat to where any bar is, or help to half a crown.” Isn't that it, especially in our own our own society, where these men shared a common history, men and women, shared a common love of liberty? Gave it slightly different English as it spun through their lives, but at the same time, when death came and there was no more to fight about, the sort of ocean of love and respect closed over them again and they were together. And I think that's really what happened in this one instance. You know I’ve met, I searched for McCracken and it’s been quite a search, a hundred and some more years, twenty or so, found him. Deputy Sheriff of Loudon County Virginia, wonderful man, family man, and he and I have gone over to the battlefield together. Discovered the, what we think the old farmhouse was, and we sat down and had a nipperkin, and traded memories and reflections.

KEN BURNS: That’s wonderful. Can you tell me a little bit about, you told me a story about Lincoln and McClellan and Sewad’s observations about the generals and things. Do you remember that story?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well, Lincoln was not a military man and I must say I’m sure that had he lived to write his memoirs he would say, “Deliver me from military men because of their jealousies, that the internecine strife between them, especially McClelland, who had at one time I think Lincoln observed to John Hay, that he wants Pope to fail, General Pope to fail. Because of course that would validate his strategies, and for, and Seward understood this as well and complained to Hay one-time, bitterly, about the relationship between the generals, “Why can't they all work together in a common cause after all this war isn’t for their benefit, it’s for the nation’s benefit.” And Lincoln suffered enormously under these tensions.

KEN BURNS: And don’t we have sort of a humorous example of that with Pope?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well, General Pope was on the retreat a good deal of the time, they had hoped he might do a little better than McClelland, I’m not too sure that the accounting doesn't show him even doing worse. He constantly sent messages to Lincoln during his retreat and they were signed, “Pope. Headquarters in the Saddle.” And finally, Lincoln turned to turned to Hay, or one of his aids and said, “You know, that’s the trouble with Pope, his headquarters are where his hindquarters ought to be.”

KEN BURNS: But we do the example of real heroics in the case say of MacArthur’s ancestors. Can you repeat that story very briefly?

JAMES SYMINGTON: There was an enormous amount of heroism in the war and some of it is remembered, almost, down to our own time. Not too many years ago, as history's measured, when I was in the Justice Department, I went to see General MacArthur. We were trying to interest him in helping to resolve some differences in the athletic world, believe it or not, because of his name and prestige. And there he was sitting, profiled against the sunlight of his window, wearing this marvelous kind of all the pantsuit and I think he knew how he looked against the setting sun, and reminisced a lot, and one of the things that he told us was that his father's heroism that won him the congressional medal. He said that his father was Missionary Ridge under Sheridan and they had to take the ridge and he said there wasn't a piece of scrub on that hillside big enough to hide your foot and they had to go all away up under shotgun shells, and his colleagues said, “Well, we can't possibly do that, we’ll get shot.” He said, “Yeah, well think of what Sheridan will do to us if we don’t go?” So up they went, he and his friend, and I believe his friend was killed, the flag bearer fell, and the troops faltered, and MacArthur’s still not hit grabbed the flag, course making him the center of attention, the focus of all the firing, picked it up and somehow stumbled to the top of the ridge and then the troops came up. He remembers a sword being brought down on him and having that man blow just as he was about to hit him and then he fainted, he thinks. All he knows is he woke up in the arms of a man he thinks may have been Sheridan, who said, “Take care of this boy. Treat him gently he’s just won the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

KEN BURNS: Wonderful. Can we get a slate, please?

CAMERAMAN: And keep rolling after?

KEN BURNS: No.

CAMERAMAN: Tail One. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: Head two.

KEN BURNS: You know, you think of our Capitol as this very suave place, but in 1861 it was not. What was Washington like then?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well of course I wasn’t there, or here, but my great grandfather John Hay was; he was Lincoln’s private secretary, one of two of them during the war. He had come with Lincoln in 1861 right after the election and he had a girl back in Warsaw, Illinois. She must have written him saying, “Boy, it must be great to be in that exciting, marvelous town, I bet you’re going to forget us.” And he wrote something to the effect of, “Warsaw, dull? Compared to this miserable little village, Washington, it's a social paradise.” I think he said it, thinks it’s a great city because it’s wicked. Like a little boy who smokes and drinks to be a man. He said, “Give me Warsaw, Illinois any day.”

KEN BURNS: And it’s true, in fact there was another war going on, besides the battles with the armies and such. Lincoln had war back home, really, the political work. Can you describe what it was like?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well, it was obvious from the beginning that Lincoln came to Washington over the protests of a great many people and those who supported him naturally began quickly to criticize his handling of the war, even people in his own cabinet like Stanton, he couldn’t ever quite be sure of; that they weren't conniving with a politician somewhere out into the country for the next election in 1864. Naturally every defeat that he suffered was reflected in a parallel echo of agony as to what the political consequences would be and I think that his, the Hay diaries and other papers of the time reflect this her very clearly. Sanders, fella like Vanlandingham, who started what in effect became the Ku Klux Klan, he was pretty active in that period.

KEN BURNS: So it was really difficult for Lincoln?

JAMES SYMINGTON: It was enormously difficult for Lincoln, fortunately he had a pretty good sense of humor. He dreamt one time a little colloquy that’s been reported since about his life and times, and his manner, his personality, and that it was in a dream that he said that he was approached by some people who he heard speaking that, “Lincoln is a very, very common man,” and that he had reflected pretty good for a dream the Lord must have loved common people that's why he made so many of them. So we could always bring himself and the situation down to the ground and in common terms.

KEN BURNS: Great cut sound please. Run out. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: July 14, 1986, Florentine Films. American Documentaries, Incorporated. Project title: “Civil War.” Camera Roll 26, Sound Roll 15. Recorded flat 7 1/2 ips minus 8 db reference tone to follow. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: Continuation of interview with James Symington.

KEN BURNS: What was Lincoln’s reach when he heard of Wadsworth’s death?

JAMES SYMINGTON: President Lincoln was deeply grieved when he heard his friend, Wadsworth, was killed. They were close personal and political friends. I’d like to read, if I may here, from the Hay diary May 14, you know that the Battle of Wilderness was four, five, and six May, and he died of the sixth, I think. On the 14th of May, John Hay writes in his diary, “I have not known the President so affected by a personal loss as by the death of General Wadsworth. While deeply regretting the loss of Cedric,” he added, “Cedric’s devotion and earnestness were professional but no man has given himself up to the war with such self-sacrificing patriotism as General Wadsworth. He went into the service not wishing or expecting great success or distinction in his military career and profoundly indifferent to popular applause actuated only by a sense of duty, which he neither evaded nor sought to evade.” Not a bad comment on the old man.

KEN BURNS: Tell me about Gettysburg, after Gettysburg, the comment about Lee.

JAMES SYMINGTON: After Gettysburg, there was a convocation of generals at the White House to discuss both the bottle itself and the unfortunate disappearance of General Lee and all his troops. Someone said, I think it was the President, “Why did Lee escape?” And General Wadsworth said, “Because no one stopped him.” He said the Union Officers have not yet forgotten their fear of Southern Superiority they learned at West Point.

KEN BURNS: What is that ‘Southern Superiority’?

JAMES SYMINGTON: I take it that in those days the brightest and the best of the Southern families went to West Point, perhaps it wasn’t that much else for them to do with their skills, their drive, their patriotism. There was not that much business or industry that the North was seething with invention and progress, and change, and challenge, and the South was still rather serenely moving along, but to take on the “Sea of fortune,” as Hammond would say, you go into the Army. You go to West Point. And so what the Union boys found, the Northern boys, was young Southerners absolutely gleaming with desire to succeed and to prevail. And this showed all through the Mexican War and on into the Civil War.

KEN BURNS: Speaking of Southern officers, I understand that you have other relatives.

JAMES SYMINGTON: My father's grandfather was Major Stuart Symington, CSA, he was first described as a refugee from Maryland seeking a commission in the Army of Northern Virginia, and eventually the Confederate Army. He fought throughout the war, winding up as Pickett's Personal Aid. He charged at Gettysburg, horse was shot out from under him a couple of times. Managed to get through the war. He declined to take the Loyalty Oath. You had a choice as an Officer of the Confederate Army, you either took that oath, or you went to jail, or you left the country. Well he said that’s easy, so he and his brother Thomas took-off. Went to Germany for a couple of years and they stayed in the household of Arros Von Bork, a Prussian officer who had run out of wars in Europe and had joined up with the Confederacy and fought with Jeb Stewart throughout the war, and went home afterwards and opened his doors to the Confederate expatriates. Interesting on the question of amnesty, because two years later Andrew Johnson declared an amnesty to bring home all these fellows, both the officers and men. Thousands had gone overseas, many of them stayed, but the amnesty brought a good many of them back. There was a relevance in my own life to this question because when I served in Congress from St. Louis, Missouri, it was during the Vietnam War and there was a great deal of talk about amnesty. People would come up to me in the corridors and in my office, and out on the street, and say, “Where do you stand on amnesty?” and I would say, “If you can just bare with me a moment,” tell them the story, and then I would say, “you know you realized that if my great grandfather hadn’t received amnesty, I might have fought in the Wehrmacht.”

KEN BURNS: Tell me, in a change of scene, tell me what you think was going through Lincoln’s mind, or help us to understand Lincoln during the war. Who is this man? How can we understand him better? What kind of man was he?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well I think he wasn't a modest man about himself, and yet he was absolutely gut sure of the right in his cause. I think his self-effacing humor must have been the thing that sustained him throughout because he had agonies of every description with dying child, a wife who was quite a difficult woman, I think, at times for him, you know complaining worrying...

KEN BURNS: ...spending money.

JAMES SYMINGTON: I suppose. And the generals who fought one another almost as hard as they fought the enemy. The members of his Cabinet that were beginning to knick away at his policies and maybe form other allegiances, he could never quite be sure. All of these things bore in on him, plus the fact that the South had a strong army and a good leadership. But then he would pick up a Richmond newspaper and he’d say, “Here's what they're saying about Jeff Davis down here. You know I don’t look so bad.” Because the South had a free press too, and he realized that Jeff was not doing any better than he was, as far as he was concerned. He read Shakespeare all the time. He was absolutely devoted to the writings of Shakespeare. And he also like to read lite comedy. One time Hay reports that Lincoln came into Hay’s room, at night, in his tail shirt – he wore a short night shirt – and he started reading from this book of comedy, but Hay said, “Seeing him standing there in his night shirt, it looked kind of like an ostrich with its plume stretching behind. It was far funnier than anything that Lincoln had to read from the book. But Lincoln could amuse himself like that. He could lose himself. One of his favorite works was Lear and the sitting down of the kings and contemplating their sad fate. He would read those passages. He would read to Hay for hours and others at night from Shakespeare and from some other of the great classics. That's how he kept his mind clear and clean, and with a perspective that it had to have to face each day. Each difficult day.

KEN BURNS: Tell me about the Emancipation Proclamation. Can we get inside Lincoln’s mind for that? It’s really his political document, too.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well, I think the Proclamation was something he'd had on his mind a long time because of course that was the some-and-substance of what he really wanted to achieve beyond Union. And the idea of half-slave and half-free was one he couldn’t conjure with. So, I think initially, his cabinet was a very cheery of taking that move. He had more confidence in the American Black to assume his position in society then a great many of his colleagues and countryman did. And he knew it would take some time, you know, to work into the general society and we know it's taken lots of time and it's a two-way effort, always. But he was willing, to think in his time, to make that move. I think that it was the most courageous move of the war outside of the battlefield. Then the world applauded it, too. He spent some time with Fred Douglas and demanded for whom he had the greatest respect, and he must've learned from him how an educated, cultivated black man could feel about a society that totally rejected him. So, on the one hand, the unfairness, but on the other hand the loss of the opportunity to have such a person as a contributing citizen.

KEN BURNS: Let me also change directions for us a little bit and say you were in 1861 and had the ability to witness one event, to be that fly on the wall, where would you have liked to have been in 1861, do you think?

JAMES SYMINGTON: In ’61? I suspect I would like to have been moving into the White House with Abe, just like my great grandfather and taking our first look around as a Mid-westerner. Getting the ground under my feet.

KEN BURNS: In the whole of the Civil War, one place that you might've been, one place something you might have witnessed, where would you have liked to have been? In the whole Civil War?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well, outside of all the battlefields I certainly would only wanna be a spectator at, and there must've been some glorious acts of courage to witness. But I think to be aside Lincoln when he delivered the Gettysburg’s address to that crowd, knowing what I now know about the impact of those words throughout history and knowing it then, some knew it. Hay could tell these lines were written for the ages, but not everyone realized that and of course it was an enormous crowd. He couldn’t be heard some of them, he followed a two hour, three hour speech by this fella, Everett. But I think just to see him craft that language, that healing language, and then have the inner pleasure -- because he must have known -- of delivering it to mankind virtually. I think that would be the moment I’d like to have seen.

KEN BURNS: Great. We ran out a little bit. That was wonderful though. Great.

CAMERAMAN: Camera run out. That was camera run out.

CAMERAMAN: July 14, 1986, Florentine Films. American Documentaries, Incorporated. Project title: “Civil War”. Camera Roll 26, Sound Roll 17. Recorded flat 7 1/2 ips minus 8 db reference tone to follow. [TONE].

CAMERAMAN: A continuation of interview with James Symington. Sounds rolling. Speed. Head slate, four.

KEN BURNS: I’d just like you to go over in a very brief and sort of succinct way where you would most like to be in the Civil War, if you could be that fly on the wall, where would you like to be?

JAMES SYMINGTON: I think if I had my choice of all the moments to be present at that, in that war period, it would be at Gettysburg during Lincoln’s delivery of his speech. Maybe to have seen him craft those beautiful words, those marvelous healing words, and then deliver them. They were for everyone for all time. They subsumed the entire war, all in it. It showed his compassion for everyone. His love for his people. That’s where I’d like to be.

KEN BURNS: If you could be at a battle, one battle, what moment in a battle from the Civil War do you think you would like to have witnessed?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Early in the war, the Union troops charged at Fredericksburg. Lee, who was a man of grand stature and soul, saw the carnage there -- it's not the carnage I would want to see but I would like to have heard those immortal words that he spoke then, “It is well war so horrible, else we should grow too fond of it.” A professional soldier but also a human being.

KEN BURNS: I understand after Gettysburg, Lincoln was in a great mood.

JAMES SYMINGTON: He felt much better after Gettysburg. I’d like to read from Hay’s diary on that point. This was August 7, 1863, just a month after Gettysburg and Hay is writing in his diary, “The tycoon is in fine whack. I’ve rarely seen him more serene and busy. He is managing this war, the draft, foreign relations, and planning a reconstruction of the Union, all at once. I never knew with what a tyrannous authority he rules the cabinet, till now. The most important things, he decides, and there is no cavil. I’m growing more convinced that the good of the country absolutely demands that he should be kept where he is till this thing is over. There is no man in the country so wise, so gentle, and so firm.”

KEN BURNS: That’s wonderful. That he does have a littler side, from the diary of John Hay.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Yes. It was Lincoln’s humor that kept him going. Listen to this from the diary of John Hay... I’ll do that again, because I lost the point where did it go...

KEN BURNS: Shall we cut?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Yes, cut, cut and I’ll be with you in a moment. I’m sorry.

CAMERAMAN: Sounds rolling. Speed. Head slate number five. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: Slate, too soon.

KEN BURNS: Could you just begin this reading by saying, “From the diary of John Hay.”

JAMES SYMINGTON: From the diary of John Hay, May 14, 1864, “A little after midnight, as I was writing these lines, the President came into the office laughing with a volume of comedy in his hand. Seeming utterly unconscious that he with a short shirt hanging about his long legs and setting up behind like the tail feathers of an enormous ostrich, was infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was laughing at. What a man it is.”

KEN BURNS: You’ve got another great reading from John Hay’s diary, actually it’s a letter, I guess, home to his girlfriend, about Washington DC?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Yes, but...

KEN BURNS: ...keep going.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Can I read something else here?

KEN BURNS: Sure, go ahead.

JAMES SYMINGTON: On the same thing on, ‘...what a man it is...,’ “Occupied all day with matters of vast moment, deeply anxious about the fate of the greatest army in the world, with his own plans and future hanging on the events of the passing hour, yet he has such a wealth of simple bon ami and good fellowship, that he gets out of bed and perambulates about the house in his shirt to find us, that he can share with us some jokes.”

KEN BURNS: Can you read the letter now?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Here is from the Hay diary shortly after he got to Washington, to his young galfriend back in Warsaw, Illinois. “Warsaw doll? It shined before my eyes like a social paradise compared with this miserable sprawling village, Washington -- which imagines itself a city because it is wicked as a boy thinks he is a man when he smokes and swears. I wish I could by wishing find myself in Warsaw, Illinois.

KEN BURNS: Can you tell me who John Hay is and what his relationship to Lincoln was? What did he think of Lincoln?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Hay was a youngster from Springfield, Illinois. Graduate of Brown University. Worked in Lincoln’s office -- a law office, or rather next door to Lincoln’s law office -- helped him in his campaign, got to know the man, asked if he could come to Washington with him, got permission, and served the entire four years of the war with Lincoln. He was a man of 22 years old. A youngster.

KEN BURNS: Saw him everyday...

JAMES SYMINGTON: ...but saw him everyday. And the President was enormously found of him. Trusted him, gave him many commissions. Went down to Florida, for example, to take the Oath of Loyal Citizens, a young man of 22. He sent him all over the place, even up to Canada with a fella that thought he had a deal with the South, and he wanted Hay to vet that to see if it was honest.

KEN BURNS: What did Hay feel about like...

JAMES SYMINGTON: ... and Hay, at first, I think, Hay thought -- Hay was a very cultivated young man, he loved to read Greek and Latin and French and all – and I think he probably at first thought that Lincoln was a little different, but it wasn't a day into the White House life that he didn't develop an absolutely enormous respect for Lincoln as a man, as a human being. It was clear that he adored him, that he would have done anything for him. He was by his side throughout the war. He saw him in his tough moments and he saw him in his happy times, and he saw the men grow and become the leader of this country in a very, very short time.

KEN BURNS: John Hay has himself a distinguished future.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Hay indeed, when Lincoln saw how Hay was developing, he wanted him to be a diplomat. And he signed his commission to go to Paris as Secretary of Legation, which Hay did do after Lincoln’s death, and he did become the Secretary of State under Roosevelt McKinley -- McKinley and Roosevelt -- and had a great diplomatic career. His public life spans the last half of the 19th century.

KEN BURNS: You have other relatives though, on the other side.

JAMES SYMINGTON: My father's grandfather, Major Stewart Symington, was a major in the Confederate Army and he fought through the war with Pickett at Appomattox. He declined to take the Loyalty Oath -- you had your choice of going to jail, taking it, or leaving the country. He and his brother Thomas left the country, went to Germany and stayed as guests of Haros von Bork, a Prussian officer. There was an amnesty, Andy Johnson's amnesty, brought him back and he raised seven sons, but it sometimes occurs to be, if there hadn’t been that amnesty for my ancestor, I myself night have fought in the Wehrmacht.

KEN BURNS: What figure in the whole of the Civil War are you drawn to the most and why?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well can it be anyone than Lincoln that any of us could be drawn to as the central figure of the war. Because in a way, he comprehended both sides. “We must not be enemies. We must be friends,” remember those immortal lines at his inaugural address. His ability in the heat of battle to be generous to the enemy. To be thoughtful of an individual in his office which was open practically all day, every day to the public. An unbelievable soul and that, I think, is the one place I would like to be and follow throughout the war -- in Lincoln’s company.

KEN BURNS: Why should we care about the Civil War? What is the lesson of the Civil War? Why should we remember it?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well, it’s not so much ‘why’ we should remember it, but how impossible it is that we should ever forget that brothers can be so divided by politics. I think that we should remember that the powers of reconciliation should never be exhausted. That was an awful war to prove that point. Mind you, you could never reconcile the institution -- that the war was fought to end, but there may have been. I think of my two ancestors, if they had met, surely, I think of them, “You two fellas could work this thing out. Neither one of you has any use for the institution of slavery and there must be a way over time to win our soul back as a free country.” We did win it back without bloodshed and we now are one country -- that is the legacy of the war, but I would hope and pray that we never had to, either as nation or a world, go through such a conflict again simply to bring ourselves together. The Lord says, “You have that power now without a fight.”

KEN BURNS: It seems so incredibly necessary, the war seems so incredibly necessary, and yet there is the fact that this was not a foreign enemy, we murdered each other.

CAMERAMAN: Run out.

KEN BURNS: Oh run out, that’s good enough. We’ll reload. There’s going to be a longer break. This is really wonderful. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: July 14, 1986 Florentine Films. American Documentaries, Incorporated. Project title: “Civil War.” Camera roll 28, Sound roll 18. Recorded flat 7 1/2 ips minus 8 db reference tone to follow. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: Continuation of interview with James Symington. Speed and slate. Slate number six.

JAMES SYMINGTON: From the diary of John Hay, “In a few days, the tension being relieved,” Hay writes, “Three Indians of the Potawatomis called today upon their great father. The President amused them greatly by airing the two or three Indian words he knew. I was amused by his awkward efforts to make himself understood by speaking bad English, for example, ‘Where live now?’, ‘When go back Iowa?’”

KEN BURNS: Great, changing completely directions, that was wonderful.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Was that alright?

KEN BURNS: Tell me about the scene in the McLean Farmhouse there at Appomattox? In the surrender. What strikes you about these two men confronting each other?

JAMES SYMINGTON: They knew each other. Grant remembered Lee very well. Lee didn't quite remember Grant. That was understandable from the time that they were acquitted back in the early days. But I think it was the sensitivity that the two men had for each other and for the moment. Enormous dignity and yet the necessary informality. Grant, not wanting to get to the point to quickly, Lee bringing him up shortly to the point of why they are together. Lee dressed in his last good uniform. Grant apologizing that he was rushing from the field and didn't have time to change. The scribe being unable to hold the pen steady and having it taken by another soldier. That from Lee’s point-of-view, awful moment, and from Grant’s point-of-view, glorious moment, and yet for the two of them a sad and quiet moment. And Lee taking his leave and doffing his hat from a traveler and riding back to his troops after securing those reasonable terms. It was the beginning of the unification of the country.

KEN BURNS: We speak of the Civil War... cut. Cut.

CAMERAMAN: Sounds rolling. Speed. Head slate. Slate number seven. [TONE].

KEN BURNS: You know we talk about the Civil War with all its heroics, and all its glories, and all the battles, and all the heroes, and we completely ignore the people and the institution that it was fought to end. What happened to slavery? Why do we still push that out of the way? Talk to me about slavery. The Civil War was to end imprisonment of human beings by one another.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well, I think that the formal institution of slavery obviously was an anachronism, as far as I’m concerned -- at any time in history -- but certainly in America in her first century of declaring liberty for people. So the institution had to be terminated and that meant folding the victims of it into the general public with all the rights and privileges that accrue. And that is what formally occurred in a series of Constitutional changes following the war. I suppose that slavery is merely the horrible statutory expression of a deeper rift between people based on race and that is what we struggle still to heal. I think the significance of Lincoln’s life and his victory was that that we will never again enshrine these concepts into law, but now let's see what we can do to erase them from the hearts and minds of people.

KEN BURNS: Thank you. Cut. That was great.

CAMERAMAN: Sounds roll. Speed. Head. Slate number eight. [TONE]

KEN BURNS: Tell me about Lincoln’s relationship with the press. Was it a problem?

JAMES SYMINGTON: Enormous problem because the press then, as today, felt that it had answers just a little bit ahead more correct than many of the public figures. And it wasn't that long into the war, I think even in the first few months the Northern newspapers were demanding the resignation of his cabinet. The New York Times thought that he should resign and told him so, and he joked about The Times suggestion that he should be deposed. Horace Greeley of The Tribune, he thought he knew how to end the war. He wrote letters to Lincoln. He wanted to negotiate with the South and at one point Lincoln said, “Ok try it.” And Greely was greatly humiliated by the results of the little foray that he made up to Canada to see a couple of nuts that said they had the “peace plan” in hand. I think like every President he had his problems with the press -- and the press you know -- being people who have good ideas but not necessarily the responsibility for carrying them out would frequently get under his skin.

KEN BURNS: Could he manipulate them at times?

JAMES SYMINGTON: I don't think he was in that business. In fact, I don't think he ever did that. If they tended to mock him for his humor, then he told another joke. In other words, he wasn’t trying to get around them and under them. The voice of more recent Chief-of-State have done. He just accepted it as a condition of his leadership.

KEN BURNS: I heard that Mark Twain said that Abraham Lincoln invented American humor. That he was the first American humorist.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Well, he was a great American humorist. He did read the humor of Artemus Ward who was one of Twain’s predecessors. He enjoyed it enormously and the humor of America was, I think, well established by the time Abe picked it up in his books in Kentucky there.

KEN BURNS: Great. Let’s cut and let’s move to some readings.

CAMERAMAN: Sounds rolling. Nine head. Slate. Second sticks. [TONE]

KEN BURNS: Okay, have fun.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Hay got a kick out of the President at every turn. Here he writes in diary very early in the war when the tension of the recent defeat has been somewhat relieved, he writes, “Three Indians of the Potawatomis called today upon their great father. The President amused them greatly by airing the two or three Indian words he knew. I was amused by his awkward efforts to make himself understood by speaking bad English, for example, ‘Where live now?’, ‘When go back Iowa?’”

KEN BURNS: Cut.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: Ten head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “They did not hang him in the jail or the square. The two white horses dragged the rattling cart out of the town. Brown sat upon his coffin. Beyond the soldiers lay the open fields, earth colored, sleepy with unfallen frost. The farmer’s eye took in the bountiful land. ‘This is a beautiful country,’ said John Brown.”

KEN BURNS: One more time.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “They did not hang him in the jail or the square. The two white horses dragged the rattling cart out of the town. Brown sat upon his coffin. Beyond the soldiers lay the open fields, earth colored, sleepy with unfallen frost. The farmer’s eye took in the bountiful land. ‘This is a beautiful country,’ said John Brown.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Wonderful.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Eleven head. [TONE]

JAMES SYMINGTON: “Fort Sumter. A smoke-stained stars and stripes droops from a broken toothpick and ninety tired men march out of fallen Sumter to their ships. Drums rattling and colors flying. Their faces are worn an angry, their bellies empty and cold, but the stubborn salute of a gun fifty times repeated keeps their backs straight as they march out and answer something stubborn and mute in their flesh.”

KEN BURNS: Cut.

CAMERAMAN: Sounds rolling. Speed. Slate. Twelve head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet, a lank man; knotty and tough as a hickory rail. Whose hands were always too big for white kid gloves. Whose wit was a coon skin sack of dry tall tales, whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field. Abraham Lincoln who patted up and down the sacred White House in night shirt and carpet slippers, and yet could strike young worshiping Hay as dignified.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. One more time.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “They did not hang him in the jail or the square. The two white horses dragged the rattling cart out of the town. Brown sat upon his coffin. Beyond the soldiers lay the open fields, earth colored, sleepy with unfallen frost. The farmer’s eye took in the bountiful land. ‘This is a beautiful country,’ said John Brown.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. That is a good one.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. Thirteen head. [TONE]

JAMES SYMINGTON: “Georgia, New York, Virginia, Rhode Island, Florida, Maine. Piney woods squirrel hunter and clerk with a brand new gun. Thus, they were marshaled and drilled while Spring turned Summer again, until they could stumble toward death at Garter Snake Crook at Bull Run.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. That is a good one.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. Fourteen head. [TONE]

JAMES SYMINGTON: “The situation is this: a wide western river, a little lost land with a steamboat store, a post office where the roads and the landings meet, a plank church three-miles inland called Shiloh Chapel. An undulating and broken table land roughened into a triangle by bordering creeks. Each side of the triangle runs about four miles long and scattered in camps from the tip of the triangle to the base of the landing are thirty-three thousand men, some fairly seasoned in war but many green sticks – Grant’s army of the Tennessee.”

KEN BURNS: Beautiful, but we had a run-out though. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: July 14, 1986, Florentine Films. American Documentaries, Incorporated. Project title: “Civil War.” Camera roll 29, Sound roll 19. Recorded flat 7 1/2 ips minus 8 db reference tone to follow. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: Continuation of interview with James Symington. Sound’s rolling. Speed. Head 15. Slate.

KEN BURNS: Go ahead.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “The situation is this: a wide western river, a little lost land with a steamboat store, a post office where the roads and the landings meet, a plank church three-miles inland called Shiloh Chapel. An undulating and broken table land roughened into a triangle by bordering creeks. Each side of the triangle runs about four miles long and scattered in camps from the tip of the triangle to the base of the landing are thirty-three thousand men, some fairly seasoned in war but many green sticks – Grant’s army of the Tennessee.”

KEN BURNS: Cut.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Sixteen head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “The situation is this: a wide western river, a little lost land with a steamboat store, a post office where the roads and the landings meet, a plank church three-miles inland called Shiloh Chapel. An undulating and broken table land roughened into a triangle by bordering creeks. Each side of the triangle runs about four miles long and scattered in camps from the tip of the triangle to the base of the landing are thirty-three thousand men, some fairly seasoned in war but many green sticks – Grant’s army of the Tennessee.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Perfect, perfect.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. Seventeen head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “The head of the snake is captured. The tale gripped fast. But the body in-between still rise and resists. Vicksburg is still unfallen. Grant not yet master.”

JAMES SYMINGTON: “For there are the two defended King’s of the board. Muddy Washington, with its still unfinished capital -- sprawling, badly paved, beset with sharp hogs that come to the very doorsteps and grunt for crumbs. Full of soldiers and clerks, full of the baggage of war. Bomb proof officers, veterans back on leave, recruits, spies, spies on the spies, politicians, contractors, reporters, slackers, ambassadors, bands and harlots. Negro boys who organize buying matches to please the recruits. Tattooers and fortune tellers. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, and one most lonely man in a drafty white house.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Wonderful. Very nice. Very nice.

CAMERAMAN: Speed. Slate. Eighteen head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “A hundred miles away in an arrow line lies the other defended king, the giant chess. Broad streeted Richmond. All the baggage of war is here as well: the politicians, the troops, the editors who scream at the government, the slackers, the good and the bad, but the flavor is different. There’s something older here, and smaller, and courtlier. The trees in the streets are old trees used to living with people. Family trees that remember your grandfather's name. It is still a clan city, a family city. A city that thinks of the war on the whole as a family matter. A woman city devoted and fiercely jealous.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Whoa, is it a great reading!

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. Nineteen head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “Army of the Potomac, advancing army. Alloy of a dozen disparate alien states: city boy, farmhand, bounty man, first volunteer, old regular, drafted, recruit, page substitute.”

KEN BURNS: Cut.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. Twenty head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “Two brothers lay on the field of Fredericksburg after the assault had failed. They were unwounded, but could not move. A sharpshooter’s cover that patch of ground too well. They had a breast work to hide them from the bullets, a shelter of two dead men. One had lost his back, scooped out from waist to neck with a solid shot. The other's legs were gone -- they made a good breast work; the brothers lay behind them flat in the mud.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Wonderful.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. Twenty-one head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “Two brothers lay on the field of Fredericksburg after the assault had failed. They were unwounded, but could not move. A sharpshooter’s cover that patch of ground too well. They had a breast work to hide them from the bullets, a shelter of two dead men. One had lost his back, scooped out from waist to neck with a solid shot. The other's legs were gone -- they made a good breast work; the brothers lay behind them flat in the mud.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Wow.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. Twenty-two head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “For he will smile and give you with unflinching courtesy: prayers, trappings, letters, uniforms, and orders. Photographs, kindness, valor, and advice. And do it with such grace and gentleness that you will know you have the whole of him, pinned down, mapped out, easy to understand, and so you have. All things except the heart. The heart he kept a secret to the end from all the pick-locks of biographers.”

KEN BURNS: Wonderful. Could you read it one more time?

JAMES SYMINGTON: “For he will smile and give you with unflinching courtesy: prayers, trappings, letters, uniforms, and orders. Photographs, kindness, valor, and advice. And do it with such grace and gentleness that you will know you have the whole of him, pinned down, mapped out, easy to understand, and so you have. All things except the heart. The heart he kept a secret to the end from all the pick-locks of biographers.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Perfect.

CREW: Much better the second time.

CREW: Speed. Is it still twenty-two or twenty-three?

CAMERAMAN: I thought I changed it?

KEN BURNS: Yeah, I think it has changed.

CAMERAMAN: Okay, just asking. Still rolling. And slate. Twenty-two head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave. Bury the bygone South together with this man. Bury the minstrel with the honey mouth. Bury the broad sword virtues of the clan. Bury the unmachined. The planter’s pride. The courtesy in the bitter arrogance. The pistol hearted horseman would ride like jolly centaurs under the hot stars. Bury the whip. Bury the branding bars. Bury the unjust thing that some tamed into mercy, being wise, but could not starve the tiger from its eyes or make it feed where beasts of mercy feed. Bury the fiddle music and the dance, the sick magnolias of the false romance, and all the chevalier that went to seed before its ripening.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Wonderful.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. Twenty-three head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave. Bury the bygone South together with this man. Bury the menstrual with the honey mouth. Bury the broad sword virtues of the clan. Bury the unmachined. The planter’s pride. The courtesy in the bitter arrogance. The pistol hearted horseman would ride like jolly centaurs under the hot stars. Bury the whip. Bury the branding bars. Bury the unjust thing that some tamed into mercy, being wise, but could not starve the tiger from its eyes or make it feed where beasts of mercy feed. Bury the fiddle music and the dance, the sick magnolias of the false romance, and all the chevalier that went to seed before its ripening.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Wonderful. Wonderful.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. Twenty-four head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “Out of his body grows revolving steel. Out of his body grows the spinning wheel -- made up of wheels, the new mechanic birth no longer bound by toil to the unsparing soil or the old furrow-line, the great metallic beast expanding west and east. His heart, a spinning coil. His juices burning oil. His body serpentine. Out of John Brown’s strong sinews the tall skyscrapers grow. Out of his heart the chanting buildings rise. River and girder, motor and dynamo. Pillar of smoke by day and fire by night. The steel faced cities reaching at the skies. The whole enormous and rotating cage hung with hard jewels of electric light -- smoky with sorrow, black with splendor, dyed whiter than damask for a crystal bride with metal suns. The engine-handed age, the genie we have raised to rule the Earth -- obsequious to our will, but servant master still. The tireless surf already half a god.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Great. Even the airplane’s appropriate.

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: Twenty five head.

JAMES SYMINGTON: “Out of his body grows revolving steel. Out of his body grows the spinning wheel -- made up of wheels, the new mechanic birth no longer bound by toil to the unsparing soil or the old furrow-line, the great metallic beast expanding west and east. His heart, a spinning coil. His juices burning oil. His body serpentine. Out of John Brown’s strong sinews the tall skyscrapers grow. Out of his heart the chanting buildings rise. River and girder, motor and dynamo. Pillar of smoke by day and fire by night. The steel faced cities reaching at the skies. The whole enormous and rotating cage hung with hard jewels of electric light -- smoky with sorrow, black with splendor, dyed whiter than damask for a crystal bride with metal suns. The engine-handed age, the genie we have raised to rule the Earth -- obsequious to our will, but servant master still. The tireless surf already half a god.”

KEN BURNS: Cut. Great. I think you should roll on out. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: July 14, 1986 Florentine Films. American Documentaries, Incorporated. Project title: “Civil War.” Camera roll 30, Sound roll 20. Recorded flat 7 1/2 ips minus 8 db reference tone to follow. [TONE]

CAMERAMAN: Continuation of interview with James Symington. Sound’s rolling. Speed.

JAMES SYMINGTON: [playing guitar] John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on. [Whistling] John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on. Glory, glory hallelujah. Glory, glory hallelujah. Glory, glory hallelujah. His soul goes marching on. [Whistling]

KEN BURNS: Wonderful. Let’s now just continue on with the singing.

JAMES SYMINGTON: [Playing guitar] When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah. When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah. ..hmm, what’s next... it’s.. the men will cheer, the boys will shout... When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah. When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah. The men will cheer, the boys will shout, the ladies they will all turn out and, there’ll be such joy when Johnny comes marching home. [Whistling]

KEN BURNS: Wonderful, now slow.

JAMES SYMINGTON: When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah. When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah. The men will cheer, the boys will shout, the ladies they will all turn out, and there’ll be such joy when Johnny comes marching home. [Whistling]

KEN BURNS: Wonderful. Wonderful, now slate? [TONE] Twenty-six head. [TONE]

KEN BURNS: Twenty-seventh head. Now, I understand that John Hay was quite a poet as well.

JAMES SYMINGTON: John Hay was a poet...

CAMERAMAN: Sound’s rolling. Speed. Slate.

KEN BURNS: Twenty-eight head. Try one more time.

JAMES SYMINGTON: John Hay wrote some poetry in between jobs and in some of the jobs. Right after the war there was an incident in Illinois, his home state, that set him to writing a poem called “Banty Tim” – Banty Tim would be young black boy from his area of Illinois called Spunky Point. And some fellas wanted Tim to get out of town and he said, “Don't try that.” He recalled the time when Banty Tim saved his life in the war. He had said, “When the rest retreated,” this is from Vicksburg, “I stayed behind for reasons sufficient to me with a rib caved in, a leg on strike, sprawled against a dead oak tree.” And then Banty Tim came to save him. “The rebel seen him as quick as me and the bullets buzzed like bees, but he jumped for me and he shouldered me though a shot brought him once to his knees. But he staggered up and picked me off with a dozen stumbles and falls till safe in our lines he dropped us both, his black hid riddled with balls. So, my gentle gazelles, there’s my answer. And here stays Banty Tim. He trumped...

KEN BURNS: We’re still rolling.

JAMES SYMINGTON: Banty Tim. “I reckon I get your drift, gents. You allow the boys shan’t stay, this is white man country and you’re Democrats, you say. In whereas, and seen, and wherefore the times being all out of joint, this fella’s got to mosey from the limits of Spunky Point. Let’s reason a thing a minute. I’m an old Democrat too, though I laid my politics out of the way for to keep till the war was through. But I come back here allowin’ to vote as I used to do. Though it gravels me like the devil to train along such fools as you. Now dog my cats if I can see in all the light of the day what you’ve got to do with the question if Tim should go or stay. And further than that, I give notice if one of you touches the boy he can check his trunks to a warmer clim that he’ll find in Illinois. Why I blame your hearts, just hear me, you know that ungodly day when I left, struck, Vicksburg Heights and how ripped, and torn, and tattered we lay. When the rest retreated, I stayed behind for reasons sufficient to me with a rib caved in, a leg on strike, sprawled against a dead oak tree. Lord, how the hot sun went for us, and broiled and blistered and burned, and how the rebel bullets whizzed around when a cussin’ death grip turned. Till along toward dusk I seen a thing I couldn’t believe for a spell, that black boy Tim was crawling to me through that fireproof guilt edged hell. The rebels seen him as quick as me and the bullets buzzed like bees, but he jumped for me and he shouldered me. A shot brought him once to his knees. he staggered up and packed me off with a dozen stumbles and falls. Till safe in our lines he dropped us both, his black hid riddled with bullets. So, my gentle gazelles, there’s my answer, and here’s days Banty Tim, he trumped death ace that day. And I’m not going back on him. You may resolute till the cows come home, but if one of you touches a boy, he’ll waste his hash tonight in hell, so why not just enjoy.”