America Past; D24; The Civil War

[beeping] [whooshing] [buzzing] Brother James. The further the regiment moves into the south with General Sherman, the more I wonder where you are and how things are with you. This has been a long and bitter

conflict and I hope that, even though our loyalties have been divided, we may enjoy the comradeship we once knew when all this turmoil is over. That letter is typical of thousands written during the Civil War. It symbolizes the true tragedy of that sort of a conflict. Not only is the nation divided by the formation of the Confederate States, but families were divided. In any civil war you have that situation; a father on one side, his son on the other and one brother on one side, another brother on the other, not to mention the numerous cousins it split up. Particularly the border states, states like Kentucky and Tennessee, where loyalties were divided, one might go to one side, one son might go to the other. So in the battle, you might not know, but what you were shooting at one of your own relatives. All wars are terrible, but civil wars add that particular horror of splitting up families. [sounds of drums] Now, you remember Lincoln was elected in November of 1860.

What happens then? He's not going to take office until March. Today presidents take office in January. In those days, it was still in March. So you have three months before he takes office. What happens? Well, the Southern states start pulling out. South Carolina had said that if Lincoln were elected, they would secede from the Union. They made good on that promise. They pulled out almost immediately. By the time Lincoln is inaugurated, seven states are out. He was not in a position to say, "How can I keep states from leaving the Union?" They were gone. He's not in a position of getting them back and of trying to keep other states from joining them. That was the situation. There was a Confederate States of America. They had a president, Jefferson Davis. The thing was set up, it was organized, it was ready to go. What had President Buchanan done about it? Nothing. He had said that states really didn't have a right to secede, but he didn't know what he could do about it, which means the state couldn't secede unless, of course, it wanted to. That says something about Buchanan's character. Can you imagine

Andrew Jackson saying that? He'd have been down there doing something. Somebody would have been hanged if states tried to pull out on Andrew Jackson. But Buchanan was cut from a different mold of cloth. So by the time Lincoln comes in, the states are out. Now as they pulled out, they took over federal property in those areas. They seized arsenals with weapons, they took over United States forts in the south, and they had taken all but two of those forts. One of the two that had not been seized was in Charleston, South Carolina. That was Fort Sumter. That's where the war is actually going to begin. That fort had Union troops in it, but unfortunately very little Union supplies. Now, as president, do you send them more supplies? If you do, the South is going to try to prevent that, and they'll go ahead and attack the fort. But if they do that, then they've started the war. So, if you are interested in placing blame for starting something, that wouldn't be too bad. Go ahead, send the supplies, let them shoot at it, and you can say, "Well, all I did was send

supplies to the United States Army, in the United States fort, on United States' property and you fired at it." So Lincoln made that decision. He's been criticized for it, of course, that he should have negotiated further. But maybe they decided that there was no point any longer. He sends the supplies, the Confederates did attack the fort. 4:30 in the morning, April 12th, 1861, they opened fire, and that began the Civil War. [gunfire] It's going to end almost exactly four years later on April the 9th, 1865. 4 years and 600,000 thousand deaths later. That's more than have been killed in any American war. In fact it's almost as many as have been killed in all the other American wars put together. Of course in this war, we count both sides as Americans, you see, so the number seems higher, but 600,000 thousand deaths greater than World War 2 for example, with all the high powered bombs available then.

The war will end in Virginia, in the little town of Appomattox Court House. Grant will meet Robert E. Lee, and Robert E. Lee will surrender the Army of Northern Virginia, thus ending the civil war. Now you don't go into a war, I suppose, without expecting to win. Nobody just declares war, saying, "We're going to get whipped. But let's let's do it anyway." You have some expectation of winning the thing. Now if you were sitting up above looking down at this war and placing bets, there's no doubt who'd you bet on, you'd bet on the North. Of course this time you would have been right. Why? Well, they had nearly all the men, nearly all the supplies, nearly all of the money. That helps a great deal in a war. They knew they always could count upon a two to three to one advantage in the army. For one thing they used black troops much sooner than the South did. The South did have a few, strangely enough. you know that may seem. About 10 to 12 percent of the Union Army was black.

Twenty two medals of honor will be given to black troops. While blacks participated in all American wars, this is by far the most extensive use. The North's population is about two to one in their favor, so they had that. They had three fourths of the nation's wealth, virtually all of the industry, about three fourths of the railroads. They also had an organized government. There was a government of the United States. They didn't have to set it up. They had an army. They had a navy, they had a president, they had a cabinet. The South was trying to put all that together. They had no problem getting volunteers, but they all wanted to be generals. If you're a southern planter, you're not going to be any private. You're going to be at least a colonel or forget it. The North had that. They also had a navy. And they're going to use that navy very effectively in the war. Well, why did the South think they could win? Well you sometimes wonder, but they were convinced it would be a short war. We're going to win this thing and get it over pretty quickly. For one thing the North isn't that serious about it. They'll make a little show of force, but they really don't want to fight a war, an extended war just to keep us in. They've never liked us anyway. They'll give it up, and Yankees can't fight. Those, those guys are alright for running shoe stores in Boston,

but they're not gonna come down here and fight with us. We're used to riding horseback and shooting and living outdoors. Man for man the Confederate Army would be far superior. Well, it might be true, but they weren't fighting man to man. They were fighting one man to two or three. That's going to make a little difference. They also were sure that they would get foreign aid. This was their ace in the hole. England's gonna want southern calm and in order to get that they're going to help the South in this war. That doesn't pan out. And then they're fighting a defensive war. All they had to do was sit back and let the North come get them, a tie, the South could win or tie, and that would be considered a victory. The North has to come down there, defeat the South and drag it back into the Union. So, the South looked at that, and they decided this isn't all that bad; we have a chance at this. Now how are you going to win it? You have to have some sort of plan. We said the South intended to win it by fighting defensively and getting foreign aid. How does the North expect to win it? Well, we're going to use that Navy and we're going to blockade the southern coast. We can't do it

completely, but we'll come close enough and we'll keep the English from helping them that way, cut off their trade with a blockade. Then we're gonna control the Mississippi River. That's very significant. When we get control of that thing; so we move ships up and down Louisiana and that area of the south off and invade them from that direction. At the same time we'll come down from the North or capture Richmond and we'll just slug through there and capture them. Sooner or later, [horns blaring] fine strategy goes out the window and you just line up, outnumber them two to one, and kick the daylights out of them. That's essentially the plan. Well, the Civil War is kind of interesting because it's sort of the last of the old wars and the first of the new. The last of the old wars and you still fought in battle lines. There was a chance for individual valor, follow me, that sort of thing. Generals still sat on their horses [horse naying] and watched the battle down below. That was not real common in Vietnam for example. Civilians could, in the first part of the war, could come out and watch the battles. You didn't attack civilians, you didn't

attack houses. The guys out there, they're playing their little military game and the rest of us are fairly safe. Well, time out, that was a curious thing and they would have a break and they'd go out and swap tobacco and talk about their new relatives. Then go back and shoot at each other. That wasn't real common in recent wars either. Now what was new about it? All sorts of new inventions, railroads are used for the first time in the war, primarily by the North. A southern railway was described as two strips of rust and a right of way. But the North used some telegraph wires; no longer do you have to send a rider over here with a message, get the message and bring it back. You had telegraphs. The North uses that very effectively. Barbed wire entanglements; you dig a trench, you put this barbed wire in front of it. Somebody tries to get in there, uncomfortable to say the least, particularly if you're shooting at him at the same time. The submarine, I guess you could say that was used in the war. It wasn't very effective. The first ones would go down, that was no

problem. The coming up was the problem and that made it difficult to recruit volunteers to man these submarines. Balloons? Do you want to know where the enemy is? You fill a balloon, go up and see you. Walt Disney has done some programs on those things, you've seen them, and they worked all right except they gave your position away, suddenly a balloon pops right up. Guys down below are shooting at it. You suddenly hear air escaping; that could be a little distracting. Ironclad ships during the Civil War, the Monitor and the Merrimack being the first ones. But the Union had quite a number of wooden ships that they put sheets of iron on and using that against a wooden ship it was no match. One of these, a Cairo has recently been raised from the river near Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Gatling gun the forerunner of the machine gun. You could now shoot more than once [gunfire noise], you could shoot a number of times. There weren't a great many of those in the war but it's used for the first time, plus the concept of total war. We'll talk about that in a minute. The Civil War is probably the best recorded war in history.

Everybody that was in it felt that they had to write about it. They're political histories, military histories economic histories, state histories. There's even a history of Robert E. Lee's horse. His name is Traveller. Good movies, bad movies, good, bad novels, everything. Civil War buffs. No war has the number of buffs that the Civil War does. I never heard of a War of 1812 buff. But Civil War buffs are everywhere, and they prowl over the battlefields, and they look for belt buckles and buttons and old bullets, and they camped in the soldiers camps, and they re-enact these battles. The Civil War has this great attraction to large numbers of people. The names are household words; everybody's heard of Robert E. Lee, the,the archetypical gentleman soldier, sitting on his horse, overlooking the battle in his gray uniform, stern but fatherly. The religious fighter, Stonewall Jackson traipsing up and down the Shenandoah Valley driving for George McClellan absolutely out of his mind. Jeb Stuart, a cavalry leader going into battle with a big plume in his hat.

A sharpshooter eventually took note of that. [sounds of drums] William Tecumseh Sherman general for the North. Some say he was the first truly modern warrior; had this concept of total warfare. You don't just try to kill the enemy. You try to destroy his will to fight, and you do that by burning his towns, by burning his homes and burning his crops; that's demoralizes them, now it may work exactly the opposite. But that was a theory at any rate, march through Georgia, capture Atlanta, march through Georgia to the sea. [sounds of horns playing] One of the best known songs of the war for the North was the song Marching Through Georgia. He burned a pass 60 miles wide, so if a crow flew across, it was going to have to carry its own lunch. George McClellan, bright, capable, good organizer, good driller of man, George McClellan. He could do everything with an army except fight with it. He just wouldn't do it. Lincoln said, "McClellan has the slows."

He eventually removed him from command. Ulysses S. Grant is going to get credit for winning the war, he's going to become the big northern hero, he's going to be elected president afterwards. But in the early days people had their doubts about Grant. He was a sloppy, messy looking thing and graduated near the bottom of his class at West Point. The story circulated that he was a drunkard, that somebody followed him around to hide the bottle when he was planning campaigns. Now there's no real evidence of that, but that's what people thought. Lincoln supposedly replied, "We'll find out what he drinks." I'll give some to every general in the army. Because he wins. And Lincoln refused to fire him and he says, "I can't spare this man. He fights." The names of battles are also well-known; Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg. People have heard of those places. Now we're not going to fight them all. But just to point out a few of the really well known ones. We mentioned Fort Sumter. The first pitched battle was at Bull Run which is right outside of Washington D.C. in the area of Dulles Airport. In fact people from Washington went out to watch the battle with a picnic basket. They thought it would be kind of a lark.

And the North started losing. Picnic baskets, eggs flying every which way. That battle showed the North that they were going to be in for a fight. The South only invaded the North twice during the war. The first time. was in Maryland, where Robert E. Lee ran into General George McClellan on the banks of Antietam Creek. The fighting began at dawn September 17, 1862, a day that was destined to be the bloodiest day of the Civil War. The attack came to Miller's Cornfield. This field exchanged hands 15 times during the day. When it was all over, General Hooker described the scene... Every stock of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut, As closely as could have been done with a knife. [voices yelling] And the slain lay in roads. Precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before. [sounds of shooting]

The Confederate Army took up a well fortified position and what was called the Sunken Road and that would have worked real well except the Union Army got at the end of that road and was able to shoot straight down it. Four hours later 4000 men were dead. And Sunken Road has ever since been called Bloody Lane. The best known landmark at the battlefield of Antietam is Burnside's Bridge, known then as Lower Bridge. The Union General Burnside was ordered to take this bridge. On the other side, on the bluffs were 400 Georgia rifleman. Over here were about 4000 Union troops. [sounds of yelling] For three hours they poured troops into that bridge which is very narrow and the Georgian's had set up there and mowed

them down. One of the curious questions is, why did they try to go over the bridge? This is a fairly narrow stream. Why not just wade it. The Confederates wondered that. Nobody knows the answer. The Burnside poured men into a slaughter pit over there, trying to cost and capture Burnside Bridge which they finally did. Now what is the significance of the battle Antietam? In a sense it was a draw. Twenty three thousand men were killed or wounded here. But the southern troops did pull back. So the Union claimed a victory. And Lincoln was waiting for that victory. Not just because he wanted a victory, but because he wanted it for a particular purpose. He was waiting for a victory before he issued the famous Emancipation Proclamation. He had decided to issue a proclamation freeing the slaves and the states that were currently in rebellion. But it would look silly to do that when the North looked like they might lose the war. So he wanted a victory before he would free the slaves in the states in

rebellion. He considered Antietam to be that victory. So after the battle, he issues the Emancipation Proclamation. What is its significance? It really frees no slaves at the time. He freed the slaves and states in rebellion which means virtually no slaves at all, because the South didn't recognize Lincoln as having that authority. But it did do one thing, it turned the war into a crusade. It was now obvious to everybody that slavery would not survive this war. But when the war ended, slavery would end too. The war is no longer just a war to preserve the Union. It is now a crusade against slavery. It was also significant because England and France were considering aiding the Confederacy. But once it became a war against slavery, they were unwilling to aid a slave power against a free power. They were convinced that the English people would not allow that. Most English people did not have the ballot, but they had the brick and the English government was unwilling to take that chance. So after Antietam you get the Emancipation Proclamation, you

get European countries backing off a support from the South and you get the war a crusade against slavery. That is why in Antietam is considered one of the most significant battles of the Civil War. General Lee invaded the North one other time. [drums sounding] On that occasion he wandered into southern Pennsylvania during July of 1863 and he encountered General Meade. near the sleepy farming community of Gettysburg. A town no one had ever heard of before, or very few people had ever heard of. And there, they will fight what some people would consider to be the greatest battle on the North American continent. [cannon sounds] Roughly 160,000 men will be engaged over three days in the battle of Gettysburg. Thousands and thousands of losses. Cemetery there of course was dedicated by President Lincoln. He went there to dedicate the cemetery for people who were killed in that battle.

At Gettsyburg, you get the Union Army lined up along Cemetery Ridge. The Southern Army facing them across a very shallow valley on Seminary Ridge. [sounds of yelling] And they simply battered at each other for three days. [shots fired] The battle is climaxed by the charge of General Pickett; some consider it one of the outstanding military moments in American history. Some see it as pure folly of Pickett's charge across there of which 50 percent of his men were killed in that one charge. When the battle of Gettysburg ended, Robert E. Lee headed south and the Confederacy had certainly passed its high water point. Now the very next day, the Union got word of the surrender by the South of Vicksburg. Vicksburg, sometimes called the Gibraltar of the Mississippi, is located in the state of Mississippi right on the river, on high bluff overlooking the river. Now remember part of the

North's plan was to control the Mississippi River. As long as the south controlled those bluffs, the North's plan was being thwarted. So they want to capture that city. It was difficult to do. Actually Vicksburg was not so much a battle as a siege. It was fighting prior to the siege of Vicksburg. General Grant, this will be his first big victory, surrounded the city in semicircular shaped lines and simply starved it out. They bombarded and shelled it, cut off its food supplies and waited. They waited for 47 days. The people in Vicksburg, it was full of civilians; they stayed there. They dug caves in the cliffs. Stories circulate of them running out of food. They reduced to eating rats or anything else they could get their mitts on. You can still see houses in Vicksburg that have cannon shells or cannon balls lodged in their walls during that siege. But eventually Vicksburg fell, and the Mississippi River was now open. As Lincoln put it, the Father of Waters can now flow unvexed to the sea.

So what did the Civil War achieve? Six hundred thousand people have died. If that happens, people want to be able to say, well at least they died for something, they've accomplished something. What was it?. One, they preserved the Union, that had been the original goal of the war, and it was accomplished. Never again will anyone seriously promote the idea of forming two countries in the United States. So that goal was achieved. Secondly, it expanded our ideas of freedom. It expanded our ideas to include the slaves. During the war, the Emancipation Proclamation had been an issued. Shortly after the war, you get the adoption of the 13th Amendment, freeing the slaves. Now sooner or later the slaves almost certainly would have been free. But it's also certain that it probably would not of happened at that time if it had not been for the Civil War. So the war does preserve the Union. And it does lead to the freeing of the slaves. [yelling]

Now we know a lot about what famous people have said about the war; the generals, the commanders, the newspaper correspondents. I want you to listen for a little bit to what the average person, the average soldier had to say about fighting that war. Canward Hospital August 9, 1864. How do the cadets like the change from play soldier to soldiering as it is. Well the Ninth Corps ran against a snag at Petersburg and used them up pretty badly. I hope you'll not be called upon to do any fighting while you're out. It's a mighty disagreeable kind of business to be engaged in. [drum sounds] The more you're engaged in it, the less you want to be. If I was well, had a whole leg, I wouldn't object to going back to the regiment. As the Merrimack came closer, the captain passed the word to commence firing. [gunfire noise] I fired the first gun, and thus commenced the great battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack. We loaded and fired as fast as we could. I pointed and fired the guns myself. [gunfire noise]

Every shot, I'd ask the captain the effect. And the majority of them were encouraging. The captain was in the pilot house directing the movements of the vessel. I felt proud and happy then mother. I felt fully repaid from all I had suffered. When our noble captain heard the word they had retreated, he said, he was happy and willing to die since he had saved the Minnesota. [voices yelling] The 36th as you say has seen hard times lately. They lost 70 or 80 in the fight on the 6th of May at the Wilderness. About as many more on the 12th at Spotsylvania, nine were killed and 49 wounded at Cold Harbor where I was wounded. And quite a number of others in various skirmishes, so that the regiment is pretty well reduced. [sounds of drums] Near Sutherland Station, April 2nd Sunday. No fighting today for the 5th

Corps, only a hard and tiring March. We received a dispatch from army headquarters saying that Richmond was evacuated last night. To all intents, the rebellion may be said now to be over. Certainly it is on its last legs. The country here is broken into abrupt hills, but is mostly cleared. I found a superb position for my guns near a house and just where the rite of the 5th Corps joined the Army of the James. From here we could look down into the valley stretching to the north for some three miles. [sounds of guns] Immediately below lay the village of Appomattox Court House into which our skirmishing line was just driving the enemy. We received orders for a suspension of hostilities until three o'clock to arrange terms of a surrender. During this time both armies were to remain exactly as they were. Soon after three o'clock we received notice that the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia was

agreed on. So ends the great Rebel army, the Army of the Rebellion. So ended the great Rebel Army. So ended the Civil War. So ended slavery and this Union and the United States. Let us hope it has ended forever. [cheering] [playing of Taps]