Ken Burns: The Filmmaker; Layers on a Pearl?Make it Come Alive?What Really Happened?; The Civil War

This is the closest we've come to national suicide. The stories and the dramas occur on many many levels. And it was our attempt to sort of put our arm around this bracelet and try to carry back as much as we could not just to the larger sweep of history what's popular and call the history of the state great man presidents and generals but of ordinary people men women black and white north and south gave the whites real point is. A. Civil war has been an influential aspect in every single

one of the projects that I had subjects that I had been involved in before the Brooklyn Bridge would not have been built without the steel that the Civil War helped to sponsor this new metal. The man who built the Brooklyn Bridge Washington Roebling got his practical training as a bridge builder during the war. The shakers would not have declined so precipitously if not only economic changes but the sort of psychic and spiritual changes that took place in this country after we've murdered 650000 of our own hadn't really turned the attention of the country away from the question of a soldier's survival which was the Shakers great question. Huey Long Parish was a poor dirt farmers parish in northern Louisiana that refused to secede from the Confederacy. They thought it was a rich man's cause. The holding of slaves and that parish later became a hotbed of populism and radicalism that produced that Great Swamp Thing Huey Long that we can all sort of enjoy at a distance. The Statue

of Liberty was originally intended as a gift from the French to Mrs. Lincoln to commemorate the survival of the Union despite the death of her husband. It was only the delays and the changes afterwards that turned it into a more international symbol that it became so the Civil War continually back in us and called us and finally we decided to do it. July 14th of June 61. Washington D.C. Dear Sarah. The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days perhaps tomorrow. And lest I should not be able to write again I feel compelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.

I have no misgivings about lack of confidence in the cause and which I am engaged. And my courage does not hope for. I know how American civilization now leans upon the triumph of government and how great a debt owed to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the revolution. And I am willing perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government and to pay that debt. Share my love for you was done by me with my cable. Nothing can break my love of country comes over me like a strong bears me or is this to be with all those battles the. Memory of all the blissful moments have enjoyed with you come crowding on me and I feel most deeply grateful to God. But I've

enjoyed so more how hard it is for me to get my being burned to ashes. I hope future years when God willing we might still live together and see our boys. The honorable man if I do not return dear sir never forget how much I love you nor that my last breath escaped me on the battlefield. It was your forgive my many many names of course caused you. Plus how foolish have sometimes been but most of the dead come back sir. I'm sitting around those they love. I shall always be with you right. Stay in the dark as always. And. When the soft breeze bends your cheek it shall

be my breath Coulier your throbbing temple. Shall be my spirit passing by. I do not want me do you think I am gone. Wait for me. We shall meet again. Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later the first battle of Bull. To give you an idea of how this process goes about very haphazard and random one of our consultants Don Fehrenbach are an excellent scholar at Stanford University sent without any comment. That letter to me one day. And I remember tearing it open and reading it out loud to the secretary and my wife and a few other people were

there and by the end I had my own voice had choked and I couldn't go on and I looked up and everyone had tears beaming down their faces. It's an extra ordinary moment in the production and yet it was filled with lots of those where we'd happened on this diamond in the rough and it would turn out to be a lead and we'd follow it and would find out some excruciatingly painful thing. The little town of Winchester Virginia changed hands 72 times. The state of Missouri sent thirty nine regiments to the battle of Vicksburg twenty two from the north and 17. The state was so divided. There was a major a confederate major in Galveston Texas. Part of the defense of that port city and when a union flotilla came in he was instrumental in repelling it in fact helping to sink the lead vessel when he boarded it. He found his son a federal Lieutenant dying on the deck. Crittendon of Kentucky a senator

could be proud of two sons who had made general one for the north and one for the South. And on and on and these stories are kind of a crew and gather almost like layers on a girl and suddenly you wake up and there it is. And the research was just full of that. This is probably the most gigantic pleasure excursion ever planned. Nobody beats everything I ever saw soldiering promises to prove much richer yet. We had a campaign. All we could not eat Stalder nigger Bernard cotton gin spilled the sorghum burned in Tootsie Rolls and raised hell when. Sherman's men tore up railroad hitting the rails twisting them beyond repair. It became a trademark Sherman's neckties.

He forbade his men to plunder the homes they passed but neither he nor they took the order very seriously. I've got a regiment that can kill gut and scrape a peg without breaking ranks. They say no living thing is found in Sherman's track only chimneys like telegraph poles to carry the news of his attack backwards. Mary chesnut. I doubt if history affords a parallel to the deep and bitter enmity of the women of the South. No one who sees and hears but must feel the intensity of their hate. As far as the eye could reach the lurid flames of burning houses lit

up the heavens. I could stand out on the veranda and for two or three miles watched the Yankees as they came on. I could mark when they reached the residence of each and every friend on the road. The troops loaded slave cabins as well as mansions poke their ramrods into flower beds in search of buried valuables and burn everything in their path. A thousand pounds of meat in my smokehouse is gone. My eighteen turkeys him chickens and fowl. My young pigs are shot down in my yard. As if they were the rebels. The cruelties practiced on this campaign towards the citizens have been enough to blast our most sacred cause and ours

we hardly deserve success. So often we're just taught about the causes and then we're taught about the effects and we forget that what actually took place is the important thing. The causes will accrue our understanding of the effects of the war if we're aware of it. Can't help but be felt. But what actually happened. What did those men do. Why did the country change. Why didn't we start off before the war saying United States are plural and afterwards say the United States is singular. In fact it's an ungrammatical statement. Why did that happen. Who was that man. Abraham Lincoln. How could we have been so lucky to have benefited from someone who has enormous enormous talents and insights and then who are these minor characters too. That's the great story of the civil war and that's what we should focus on and be

less concerned with. And more to dactyl questions. They'll come they'll be answered in good time. But first know what happened on April 6th and 7th in 1862 on the banks of the Tennessee River in a place called Shiloh which is a Hebrew word meaning place of peace. The ground Grant said was so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing in any direction stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground. When the grave was ready we placed the bodies scenario to the all the monument reared to those brave men was a floor upon which I cut with my pocket knife. The words one hundred twenty five rumples. Two thousand four hundred and seventy seven men were killed at Shiloh.

There were twenty three thousand casualties overall. More than all the American casualties in all previous American wars combined. And it was only the beginning. The Civil War was a logistical nightmare to keep all of the film footage and all of the first person quotes and all of the music sound effects and the writing all straight. We really wanted with the writing and the shooting to not worry about whether there were images to fit the particular writing or whether there was writing to fit the images we would go off and film what we wanted to go off and write about what we wanted to write and not worry about that later on that made editing incredibly difficult. But we were able to really explore the war so many people start a documentary film with the idea that they know the answer that the documentary is merely a means of expression for us. It is a process of

discovery. We dont know what its going to be about. We are as curious we hope as the viewer is about what happened and use the process of making a documentary film as an exploration and thats the whole purpose of the writing is independent shooting is independent. All of this stuff is and then we get into editing and begin really long difficult process. Horse trading between these two sides seemingly disparate sides to make it all work out to tell our story his story to our best ability. When the bugles blew for the attack at 4:30 a.m. 60000 union men started toward the unseen enemy. The battle of cold Harbor had begun. I had seen dreadful carnage in Fredericksburg. But. I could see nothing to

see. It. Was not a war it was murder. This. Man you how to take a position where you can do the most killing from me was lined up there waiting hoping praying someone would come. Through. Three kosha. In approximately seven minutes six shot in. A bloody match. The only time I ever met anyone. I've always regretted the last assault Colambre was ever meant no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss which sustained. Another assault was suggested union officers rejected the idea outright.

I will not take my regiment in another such charge said in New Hampshire captain. If Jesus Christ Himself should order it. After the battle the diary of a young Massachusetts Volunteer was found spattered with blood. It last read. June 3rd 1864. Barbara Virginia was killed. Shiloh Spottsylvania wilderness cold Harbor Petersburg half a matics it is almost a poetry to the list of names and yet they become blurred and indistinct in what we wanted to do is make these places these terrible battles real for just a second with a complicated sound effects track and indeed our sound effects

track is as complicated as any Hollywood feature film layer upon layer of authentic sounds of first Burton and muskets and then Cannon and shout and wagon wheels and more canons and muskets all layered in so that for one brief moment perhaps that old photograph begins to move that instead of being an ancient 125 year old picture of the Dead at Gettysburg. Perhaps it's you that's wandering wistfully through the carnage a day or so or an hour or so after the battle. That was our intention to make it come alive. Mostly they like Shuttle mantels. Just before the battle mother. The vacant chair. All quiet along the Potomac. And home sweet home. In many cabs the men were forbidden to play a song called weeping said Julie officers considering it destructive of morale.

Both sides loved. Lorraine do. You do. You do. I have in all my films and drawn

to the power of music to communicate really complex emotional ideas. Music is not merely the wall to wall carpeting that's added on afterwards but in fact a very very important element. And I collected a number of civil war tunes the sheet music and then brought some musicians into a studio and had them play it as they felt it and then asked them to do it more joyously then divided it different responsibilities of instruments then ask them to go against the grain of a particular piece of music by playing it slow and soft a good example as the exuberant March hated throughout the South called Marching Through Georgia about Sherman's march. We play that first upbeat and it was magnificent and as the Shermans men cut their swath we played it. We played this sort of Marshall band music the way it was written. But when we turned around and tried to appreciate how the South saw this we used a minor key version of it. So it

was very soft and lilting and plaintive it became a dirge in a way which is of course how the South was receiving this unbelievable Army streaming across the stage. The music work that way and it was really collecting nearly two or three hundred different music cues very early on in the process and then experimenting with the way we'd try an image just this image of Lincoln work here. No let's try the one where he's gesturing or let's try the one of the desk. Same with the music. Can we use the battle hymn of the Republic played on a mandolin song. No let's use battlecry of freedom other Nanos. Yes that works. And it's a gradual testing. What works is what makes the past come alive that makes you think that the civil war is not some event that happened safely in the past and it's gone. That is something that is have to continue to happen and will of influence and effect. And that. Was always a great goal.

The street screw quiet. When news of Gettysburg reach Clarksville Tennessee. The. 14th Tennessee Regiment had left town two years before with nine hundred and sixty men. In the Battle of Gettysburg began only 365. By the end of the first day there were 60 men left. By the end of the battle. There were only three. We went to many of the major battle sites and filmed at precisely that same time and day of year as the battle took place so that the

leaves were right here rippling off the field on the Emmitsburg pipe where Picketts charge took place in Gettysburg would be very much like that sweltering hot day. We very much believe that ghosts sort of come up out of his attention to detail. The last five years have been incredibly difficult and challenging and there were many many darker hours it seemed than light sometimes. But the amazing thing about the civil war is that there are so many remarkable people around not just Lincoln but some of the others who are role models and examples. And it was literally possible to take strength from their hardships. What possibly

could be so difficult about making a documentary in the face of saving a union giving up your life. Of all the myriad things that went on during the Civil War. Three and a half million men went to war. Six hundred and twenty thousand men died in it. As many as and all the rest of America's wars combined. One quarter of the South's white men of military aid were dead. In Iowa. Half the men eligible to fight served in the Union Army filling 46 regiments in all. Thirteen thousand one Iowans died. Three thousand five hundred forty five hundred and fifteen prisoners of war.

Eight thousand four hundred ninety eight of disease. Those figures were typical. The fifth New Hampshire regiment started out from Concord in 1861. Twelve hundred men. When they returned to New Hampshire after Gettysburg there were only 300 Navy left. In Mississippi in 1866. One fifth of the state's entire budget was spent on artificial limbs. Millions were left with vivid memories of men who should have still been living but were not. The survivors went home and got on with the business of living. The morning after my arrival home my doffed my uniform first lieutenant put on some of my father's old clothes and proceeded to wage war on the standing court feeling our head was sort of queer.

It almost seems sometimes if I had been away a day just taking up the farm work where I had left handers to formerly Sixty first Illinois. The past is our greatest teacher it arms us with the knowledge necessary to go forward. If you don't know where you've been you can't possibly know where you're going to have inhaled the civil war as we've done over the past five years has been an enriching nutritional experience. I carry with it a sense of respect for the language and the sacrifice of Lincoln for the bravery and poise of a Robert E. Lee for the craziness of a Stonewall Jackson and Nathan Bedford Forrest for the quiet but dedicated life of Ulysses S. Grant and for all those other soldiers the common soldiers north and south who

add in some little increment to who I am and therefore what my future is I will be forever in their debt. My you way this day I can address you. Thank God for you man. I had a little trouble getting away. But the Lord led the children of Israel to the land of Canaan so he led me to a land where freedom will reign in spite of birth. Now. My dear. I trust the time will come when we can meet again. And if we don't meet on earth we will meet in heaven. When Jesus reigns. DEAR WIFE I must close. This self-content it. I am for you. Your affectionate husband kissed Daniel for me in

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