( narrator )
America is exploding
across the continent. The economy is booming. Cotton in the South... industry in the North. But the new nation
is divided. In the land where
all men are created equal... 4 million black Americans
live as slaves. And it's tearing
the nation apart. We are pioneers...
and trailblazers. We fight... for freedom. We transform our dreams
into the truth. Our struggles
will become a nation. Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> 1825. All over the world,
the modern era is being born. It's the Industrial Revolution. America is racing
to catch up. In upstate New York, a man-made river is cutting
through the wilderness. The Erie Canal is the biggest
construction project in the Western world
in the last 4,000 years. Over 300 miles long,
dug entirely by hand, and America lacks a single
qualified engineer. The United States of America isn't about to let nature
stand in its way. I think of the spirit
of America being imagination
combined with tenacity. There's a strong
work ethic, a wonderful
freedom of creation combined with the mental muscle
and physical labor. So to me, it represents the best
of the human spirit. But the land
doesn't always cooperate. A wall of solid limestone
60 feet high. Just 30 miles from
the finish line, Lake Erie. The canal will change
everything, linking the Atlantic Ocean
to the whole middle of America. It changes where people live,
and why, and turns the North into
a global economic powerhouse. The man behind the canal is
New York's gung-ho governor, DeWitt Clinton. Born to wealth,
he won't take no for an answer. He wants to be president. Instead, he runs New York
for 20 years. ( man )
America was blessed with
many inspirational leaders, and I think DeWitt Clinton had
a real sense of how important New York could be
for America. Clinton's vision:
to make New York rich. Politically, the canal
is a huge gamble. It's savaged in the press
as dangerous and too expensive. They call it
"Clinton's big ditch." But it will change New York
forever. ( "DeWitt Clinton" )
It is a work more stupendous,
more magnificent, and more beneficial than
has hitherto been achieved by the human race. Entrepreneurship
is about doing things when you don't know what
it's gonna look like, you don't know what
it's gonna be made of, you just have this instinct that
you can do it and it'll work. Those guys had visions
and did it. 50,000 men. 11 million cubic yards
of rock. Enough to fill
the Rose Bowl 26,000 times. Crews are filled with
Irish immigrants. David Gilroy makes five times
what he can earn back home, but it's hazardous work. They're literally moving
mountains, and there's only
one way through-- gunpowder. A highly combustible mix of
nitrate, charcoal and sulfur. The wrong proportions
can be lethal. There's only one job that's
more dangerous than lighting the fuse... going back
to relight it. To cope, workers drink. Whiskey calms the nerves--
and clouds the brain. An English tourist can't believe
they're mixing alcohol and explosives. ( man )
The Irish laborers
grew so reckless of life, that at the signal
for blasting, they would just hold their
shovels over their heads. I think when you're
brought up in America, you're brought up
on the history of hard work. There are so many immigrants that have died to build
this country. That's in our bloodstream,
that's in our DNA as Americans. We don't want their lives
to go in vain. Because of that, we usually
work harder than anybody else. Eight years of digging. Nearly a thousand
lives lost. $7 million,
more than 100 million today. The Erie Canal opens in 1825,
a miracle of engineering, connecting East and Midwest. It's an instant economic
superhighway. $15 million of goods
a year flow along the canal. Villages along the canal boom
into dynamic cities-- Buffalo, Syracuse
and Rochester. Goods crash in price,
up to 95%. A frontier that
had to be self-sufficient can now buy anything
they want. Prosperity is on the move. New York City
becomes a boomtown. Wall Street takes off
as a global financial center. The city quadruples
in size... and surpasses New Orleans
as the nation's number-one port. There's so much money around, the word "millionaire"
is invented in 1840. The Erie Canal
still shapes New York today. 80% of the upstate population still lives within
25 miles of it. Hundreds of miles
to the south, a small plant is creating
another economic boom. Cotton. But this one will eventually
tear the nation apart. Cotton is native
to tropical regions, making the Southern states
of the US a perfect breeding ground. The valued part
is the soft fiber which grows tightly around
the shrub's sticky seeds. There are 30 species
worldwide. Growing it's no problem, but processing
the fiber before it can be spun into cloth
is labor-intensive. Especially,
separating the seeds. For years, it could only
be done by hand. One pound took an entire day. A simple patent filed
on March 4, 1794, changes all that. The cotton gin. It automates the process
and deeply divides the country. ( man )
The cotton gin transformed not
only America, but the world. The concept of mass production
using a machine just exploded everywhere. One man can now process
50 times more cotton. Output skyrockets
all over the South. In 1830, America is producing
half the world's cotton. By 1850, it's nearly 3/4. Called white gold, cotton supports a new lavish
lifestyle in the South. By 1850, there are more
millionaires per capita in Natchez, Mississippi,
than anywhere else on Earth. The richest man in town
owns 40,000 acres, nearly three times
the size of Manhattan Island. The South is thriving on the backs of humans owning
other humans. It's called slavery. The North is implicated
in the South's success. The industrial North is
profiting from Southern cotton, but turns a blind eye
to slavery. Many of them
slave owners themselves, the Founding Fathers assumed
slavery would soon disappear. Slavery has already been
abolished for 20 years in Britain and is outlawed
across most of Europe. But with the cotton explosion, slavery becomes critical
to the Southern economy. Each slave is now
50 times more profitable. A slave who sold for $300
before the cotton gin goes for nearly
2,000 by 1860. People don't really
realize this, but slavery was actually on the decline
in the South prior to the invention
of the cotton gin, but then once the cotton gin
made it so practical to grow cotton, all of a sudden,
every farmer in the South wanted to plant as much
cotton as possible. But overproduction
is destroying the land. Cotton heads west in search
of fertile soil, bringing slavery with it. But antislavery forces
in the North want to keep
the frontier free. The stage is set for
the first battles in the war over slavery. ( narrator )
Cotton is changing
the way Americans live. In time, it will blow
the nation apart. For the South,
cotton is a gold mine. Now the North wants a piece
of the action. It's a partnership
that makes everyone rich, based on a new machine,
the power loom. Raw cotton comes in,
finished cloth goes out. All under one roof. The modern factory is born. Lowell, Massachusetts,
is called the city of spindles, a textiles boomtown. Population explodes from
200 in 1820 to nearly 20,000
in just 15 years. More than 1/3 of the town
works in the mills. 85% are single women
between 15 and 25. Harriet Robinson is ten. When her father dies,
she goes to work at the mill. ( "Harriet Robinson" )
I can see myself now,
racing down the alley, between the spinning frames, carrying in front of me
a bobbin box bigger than I was. Women earn money
for the first time. Harriet's wages help support
her family. Industrialization
is changing everyone's lives. All the mill girls make
good use of their money. The mortgage is lifted
from the homestead, the farmhouse is painted. Mill girls help maintain
widowed mothers and drunken
or invalid fathers. We were paid $2 a week. Oh, how proud I was
when it came to my turn to stand upon
the bobbin-box. ( woman )
When women really joined
the workforce in the cotton mills
and the thread factories, I think it gave women an
opportunity to get out, be serious about being
breadwinners. And it changed
the whole fabric of America. The mills also revolutionize
how Americans dress. Mass production
of cheap cotton fabrics spawns America's
clothing industry. Previously, most families made
their own clothes. Now, people buy
ready-to-wear. Eastern fashions replace
buckskin. By 1850, men's clothing is the largest manufacturing
industry in New York City. For me, what makes me
proudest to be an American is that American spirit
of productivity, optimism, this idea that the world doesn't
have to be doom and gloom, that we can use technology
to make our lives better. Fashion isn't
the only innovation to come out of the mills. Technology developed here will
lead straight to Silicon Valley. Looms pioneer punch cards to
produce patterned fabric. Each hole in the card
tells the loom to use a different-colored
thread, a yes-no decision. It's binary code, the basis of
all modern computers. The birth of the computer
and Internet began in cotton mills
with these looms. You know, in every major
development, I think,
in the history of America, technology has been
at the center of it. Despite 12-hour shifts, the factories offer a new world
of opportunity for women. They are reading more,
talking more, educating themselves. ( "Harriet Robinson" )
Yeah, reading books on factory
time was against the rules, but we hid books in apron
pockets and wastebaskets. Sometimes we pasted poems on
our looms to memorize. And for the first time in
America, their voices are heard. October 1836. Women from the Lowell Mills
gather after work and organize. Their protest
against wage cuts is one of the first strikes
in US history. And they will win. The mill bosses back down. A generation of young women
go on to become teachers, writers and even
college graduates. Harriet Robinson will become
a leading suffragette and testify before Congress. They're the first wave
in a movement that results in
women getting the vote. Their secret meetings at night
are only possible with the light from lamps powered by an extraordinary
creature. ( man )
Whale oil
opened up the night, and like so many really
transformative technological innovations,
it expanded human freedom. It created a way for people
to get more, do more and achieve more. Crude oil won't be discovered
for another 20 years. Until then,
America runs on whale oil. ( man )
The whaling industry
helped invent part of the
Industrial Revolution and the classic American
workaholic, work-round-the-clock
kind of environment, where if you have more light
to keep you going in those dark winter days,
you could get more done, you could make more money, and you could kind of drive
the economy forward. Whales are among the largest
creatures to ever live on Earth. Up to 180 tons and more than
100 feet long. A single whale can produce
up to 3,000 gallons of oil. Even today, whale oil
is used by NASA. The Hubble
space telescope runs on it. Whaling is one of the North's
biggest industries, bringing in
$11 million a year. But the human cost
is also high. Half of all ships will
eventually be lost at sea. Few men are willing
to take the risk. But it's an opportunity for
African-Americans. 20,000 freemen and escaped
slaves take to the seas. John Thompson is a runaway
from Maryland. ( "John Thompson" )
I have a family
in Philadelphia. But fearing to remain
there any longer, I thought I would
go on a whaling voyage where I stood least chance of
being arrested by slave hunters. The equal opportunity
offered in whaling is ahead of its time. Here, a colored man is only
known and looked upon as a man and is promoted in rank according to his ability
and skill to perform the same
duties as a white man. ( man )
The whaling industry offered an
ex-slave like John Thompson the possibility of social
and economic fluidity, mobility
and acceptance in a way. Even in the North,
that was not possible for black people otherwise. ( "John Thompson" )
The man on the lookout cried
out, "There she blows !" There were four whales
in sight, not more than
3/4 of a mile distant. It takes hours to kill them. They use
state-of-the-art harpoons invented by runaway slave
Lewis Temple. The whale can only be killed by
lancing him under the fin, which is a work of much
skill and practice. A monster,
terrible in his fury, able to shiver the boat
in atoms by one stroke of his tail. And yet even the dangers at sea
are preferable to the horror
of life as a slave. Punishment is savage for those
who risk escape, but some will do
anything to be free. ( narrator )
1841, New Orleans. Ground zero
for the slave trade. It's auction day. The day every slave
fears the most. In the first half
of the 19th century, over half a million slaves
are sold at auction. It's a business worth $2 billion
to the Southern economy. Since the cotton boom, the value of slaves
has skyrocketed. Now men cost $1,000. Women, 800. Children, 500. Solomon Northup, an educated
freeman from the North, was kidnapped into slavery. You, come over here. ( "Solomon Northup" )
He would make us hold up
our heads, walk us briskly
back and forth, while customers would feel our
hands and arms and bodies, make us open up our
mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey
examines a horse, which he is about to
barter for or purchase. Scars upon a slave's back were
considered evidence of a rebellious or unruly
spirit, and hurt his sale. Take your top off. 90% of all African-Americans
are slaves, 4 million men,
women and children. ( woman )
We had based this country on everyone having inalienable
rights to freedom and equality, and yet we created
a system of abject persecution. Slaves are fattened for auction,
like livestock. Dark-skinned men
are bought for the fields, light-skinned women
for the house. Traders lie about their ages, even dye a slave's
gray hairs. ( man )
For the plantation owners, it was like just going to
your local supermarket to get sugar or flour. They had become so desensitized
to the humanity of the slave that they did not see them
as human beings. Buyers demand the most fertile
slaves for breeding. The most expensive are
light-skinned teenage virgins. Rape is common. Eliza's from
a state plantation. She's being sold, with her
two children, Emily and Randall. In Louisiana, it's illegal for
children under 11 to be taken
from their parents. Boy, come over here. It happens all the time. Show me your teeth. You know, 140 years
is not a really long time in the context of history. So it's hard for me
to believe that blacks didn't have any rights here, they weren't treated
as human beings, they were treated
like animals, essentially. Sir, please ! Over half the sales at auction
will tear a family apart. If you've ever been eight,
to think of being separated from your mother
and your father and sold and you'll never see
them again. The horror of that,
the poignancy of all of that, and yet that's the kind
of thing that happened across the South
up until the end of slavery. Okay, my final offer, I'll give you 1,000
for that man, 900 for that man. That woman there, $700. Please, buy my child ! Sir ! Sir ! ( "Solomon Northup" )
I have seen mothers kissing
for the last time the faces of
their dead offspring, but never have I seen such an
exhibition of intense grief as when Eliza was parted
from her child. Three miles outside Baltimore
heading North. A slave on the run. The risk of capture is high. At most,
1,000 a year are successful. Ears cut off, Achilles tendons
slashed, branding-- all are common
punishments if caught. Frederick Douglass
has failed twice, but won't let that stop him. Men like Douglass are
the South's worst nightmare. He has a better chance than most
of passing as a freeman. Unlike 80% of slaves,
he can read and write. ( Al )
Even in the 21st century, we're only three or four
generations away from people that not only could
not get paid for their labor, it was against the law for them
to read and write, it was against
the law for them to marry, it was against the law for them
to name their children after themselves. Ladies and gentlemen,
tickets please. Long way to go. Ticket. Black Americans must carry
documents proving they're free, or who they belong to. Frederick Douglass has papers
borrowed from a friend. ( man )
Ticket. They won't hold up
to careful examination. ( "Frederick Douglass" )
My whole future depended on
the decision of this conductor. ( chicken clucking ) Someone get
this chicken. ( "Frederick Douglass" )
This moment of time
was one of the most anxious I ever experienced. Had he looked closely
at the paper, he could not
have failed to discover that it called for a very
different-looking person from myself. Frederick Douglass makes it to
New York City-- and freedom, and becomes a leading figure
in the antislavery movement. He'll write a best-selling
autobiography. He'll meet and debate
with Lincoln in the White House. At a time when slaves are barely
regarded as people, he will become an icon,
a celebrity, the best-known
African-American in America. The best hope for
escaped slaves is the legendary
Underground Railroad and the tireless efforts of
Harriet Tubman. An escaped slave herself, she risks her life returning
South again and again to guide others to freedom. A masterful escape artist,
Tubman will do anything to avoid capture, even keeping babies quiet
with opium. That's a good boy. ( Annette )
Harriet Tubman is the Moses
of our people. She was a wanted woman,
she was a hated woman, reviled by the white South. Just imagine you've gotten out
of slavery, you've escaped, and yet you come back, you have the courage and
the care about other people to come back into a hell. ( dogs barking ) The South puts a $40,000 reward
on her head, but nothing stops her. Come on, y'all ! Come on ! Move or die. Tubman is one of America's
first civil-rights activists. In the same month she dies,
Rosa Parks is born. Frederick Douglass
and Harriet Tubman threaten everything the South
stands for. ( Al )
Tens of thousands
of slave owners had to deal with,
for the first time, the fact that these people
are going to rebel. She was far more effective as the symbol
that they feared than the few hundred
that she saved. ( dogs barking ) Nearly 60,000
slaves will escape, up to a $50 million loss
to their owners, but it symbolizes much more. Now the South has a fight
on its hands, and they're prepared
to do whatever it takes to preserve their way of life. The fight for the soul
of a nation is just getting started. ( narrator )
Midway through
the 19th century, America is entering
the modern world. In 20 years,
there'll be Levi's Jeans, chewing gum and hot dogs. But the nation is split,
being torn apart at the seams dividing North and South. Slavery became not simply
a political issue, not simply an economic issue,
but a moral issue as well. It became<i> the</i> issue that defined North and South
in the 1850s. September 1850. The Fugitive Slave Law
brings the brutality of Southern slavery
to the North. Now, no African-American
is safe, anywhere. Gentlemen,
you've made a mistake. This is a place
of business. I'm a tailor,
these are my clients. I'm a freeman. I'm not a slave, gentlemen. ( Henry )
The Fugitive Slave Law meant
that if you were a slave and you managed
to escape to the North, your master could come
and get you, and you had no recourse. Not only that,
if you were a free Negro, they still could sell you
down the river. The search for runaway slaves
had become a witch hunt. Any African-American
can be condemned simply with an accusation. Even a freeman has no right
to a trial by jury. Federal magistrates
get $10 to rule them slaves, five to set them free. Ordinary people are outraged
by the new law. Abolitionist newspapers and
literature spread like wildfire. Published in 1852,
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" becomes the best-selling
book of the century, after the Bible. A passionate antislavery novel written by
Harriet Beecher Stowe, an unknown housewife
from Connecticut. It mainly appeals to women
who are becoming politicized for the first time. Slavery is the burning issue
of the day. As America expands
across the continent, North and South face off over
each new territory. Will it be
slave-owning or free ? The Northerners began to
see that, wait a minute, they're not gonna keep
slavery just in the South, they wanna take slavery West and to turn the country
into a slave country. Americans from all over
the country are flooding into the new
territories on the frontier. Each becomes a battleground. Will it be slave-owning
or free ? It comes to a head in Kansas. A peaceful protest
turns violent. Emotions run high. Towns are terrorized,
stores robbed. Homesteads burned. North and South
are polarized. Neither side will back down. One man will stop at nothing
to abolish slavery. John Brown. A folk hero
in the North... a terrorist to the South. He thinks he's fighting
a holy war. He believes himself
to be God's chosen instrument. He will murder for his cause. ( man )
John Brown is one of those
controversial figures about whom almost
anything you can say is true. He's a terrorist,
in our modern terms. He's a revolutionary. The divide between North
and South is an open wound. Kansas bleeds for two years, more than 200 dead. America is on the road
to war. Slavery is tearing
the nation apart. America is built on a number
of distinct fault lines, one, of course,
was slavery and freedom, that was a fault line that
had to be addressed. In the South,
slavery is a way of life, even for non-slave owners. Antislavery forces
in the North threaten their right
to decide their fate. There is still,
in some areas of America, a great pride in being Southern
and holding true to the original
Southern attitude. I think our clinging to the idea
that slavery is a right and just a way of life, you know, it is a dark spot
in our history. Anger in the South grows more
passionate every day. The North claims
the moral high ground, but they are getting rich
off cotton, too. Pretty much everybody agreed
that a crisis was developing. Not everyone knew that
the crisis would include, in the end, the Civil War, but everyone
understood that a showdown between the slave South
and the free North was about to occur. John Brown
wants to light the fuse. October 1859. Passionate in his hatred
of slavery, Brown prepares to take the fight
into the heart of the South. His plan,
to capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, the biggest collection of
weapons in the South. 20,000 rifles,
muskets and pistols, worth almost $7 million today. He wants to arm Southern slaves
and lead a slave rebellion. He's fighting alongside
his five sons, all of them willing
to die for their cause. The arsenal
is poorly defended. Breaking in is a pushover. But his raid is based on
local slaves rising up
and joining the fight. He needs a small army to carry
off so many weapons. Without slave reinforcements,
it's a suicide mission. Word gets out and local
townsfolk attack the arsenal. Not a single slave joins
Brown and his men. They are trapped
and fighting for their lives. ( "John Brown" )
I wanna free all Negroes
in this state. I have possession of
the United States armory, and if the citizens
interfere with me, I must only burn the town
and have blood. ( narrator )
Radical abolitionist John Brown is trying to inspire
a slave revolt. No slaves have joined him,
and now he's trapped. At dawn,
the US Marines arrive. They storm the arsenal
under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee. Brown won't go down
without a fight. The soldiers overwhelm them. The fight against slavery
has only just begun. But John Brown's
crusade is over. His sons are dead. His trial captivates
the country. Charged as a criminal, he puts the institution of
slavery on trial. America is fatally divided. Brown is convicted of
treason and sentenced to death. A terrorist in the South,
a martyr in the North. He's executed on
December 2, 1859. As the country prepares to elect
a new president in 1860, many wonder
if the nation can survive. ( "John Brown" )
I, John Brown, am now quite certain that
the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away
but with blood. Chicago, May 18, 1860. A backwoods congressman
comes out of nowhere to grab the new
Republican Party's nomination for President. Abe Lincoln's
only claim to fame-- he's lost two elections
to the Senate. Personally,
Lincoln hates slavery, but he is desperate to hold
the country together. What I admire about
Abraham Lincoln is that he had his beliefs
and he stuck to his beliefs at a time when it wasn't
popular to do so, especially when it
was black, white and very cut-and-dry,
he stuck to his beliefs. November 6, 1860. Election Day. The stakes
couldn't be higher. Abraham Lincoln will be
elected president of a country
hurtling towards war. The South rebels, convinced
he'll abolish slavery. They threaten
to leave the Union. The battle lines
are drawn. The North is behind him. For the South,
Lincoln is the enemy. An editorial in
an Atlanta paper: ( man )
"Let the consequences be
what they may. "Whether the Potomac
is crimsoned in human gore "and Pennsylvania Avenue
is paved ten fathoms "with mangled bodies,
the South will never "submit to such humiliation
and degradation as the inauguration
of Abraham Lincoln." ( Henry )
The South knew that Lincoln
was gonna win, and it was just
a matter of time, tick, tick, tick, before
secession occurred. The South wants no part
of a Union with Lincoln
in the White House. But as he prepares
to take office, the President-elect is still
determined to avoid a civil war. Lincoln was not happy
about slavery. He did not see
that as congruent to "All men are created equal." And he had given a speech,
before he ever became president, on why that was
so important to him. And I think that was
coming to a head, and when he got elected, that was the final straw
for the South. December 20, 1860. South Carolina
secedes from the Union. The ten other slave states
soon follow. Lincoln's victory
makes war inevitable. He's prepared to fight to
preserve the Union-- and won't have to wait long. In February 1861, a few weeks
before his inauguration, the Confederate States
of America are born. ( Colin )
Lincoln's principal objective
was to save the Union and then we'll deal
with slavery, but before too long,
he had to both save the Union and deal with slavery. Abraham Lincoln
receives his first death threats before ever taking office. He'll save every one, keeping a file in his desk
labeled: "Assassination." On the journey to Washington, he'll wear a disguise,
just to be safe. He'll do anything
to avoid war, except allow
slavery to expand. It is Lincoln who explains
the case for freedom and says, "I'm not gonna
attack slavery where it is, but I'm not gonna
let it expand." At his inauguration, Abraham Lincoln reluctantly
pledges that states with slaves will be allowed to keep them, but it's too little,
too late. A virtual state of war
already exists. The South mobilizes
an army of 800,000 men against a Union army
of 2½ million. Five weeks after
Abraham Lincoln takes office, the first shots are fired in
the War Between the States. It will spark a brutal
and bloody civil war, the deadliest
in American history. In the next four years,
more lives will be lost than in all America's other
wars put together. Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> Captioned by<font color="#00FFFF">
Soundwriters™</font>
