<font color="#0000FF"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> ( narrator )
The North against South. Brother against brother. The Civil War is the bloodiest
in American history. Victory will take far more
than brute firepower on the battlefield. Technology. Communications. Logistics. It's what happens
behind the front line that will ultimately decide
this battle for America's future. We are pioneers...
and trailblazers. We fight for freedom. We transform our dreams
into the truth. Our struggles
will become a nation. Fire ! 1862. The Civil War
is at its height. North and South locked in
a bitter conflict for the future of America. A new kind of bullet
has brought this war to a terrible deadlock. Bringing death on a scale never previously
seen in warfare. ( horse neighing ) ( iron clanking ) Here at a metalworks
in Springfield, Illinois, molten lead is beginning
its journey... to becoming a lethal
instrument of destruction: the bullet known as
the Minié ball. This crude
piece of lead is the primary reason for the unprecedented levels
of slaughter in this war. Invented in France,
just an ounce in weight and half an inch across, one person can cast
3,000 Minié balls an hour. Each one of
these simple bullets can rip through a man's body
in a fraction of a second. ( horse neighing ) The Minié ball is used
by North and South alike. Demand for this killer bullet
runs so high... that an entire
industry springs up, supplying Minié balls
to the front line. In total, the North makes over
half a billion Minié balls ready to be fired
from the 2 million muskets it supplies to its men. In many ways, the Civil War
was the first modern war, because it was the first war that took place after
the Industrial Revolution had begun to transform
our country. It will take over 33 hours
for a bullet in this box to travel the 800-plus miles
to the battlefield, ready to find its target. The new musket
is much faster to reload than traditional weapons. Load the gunpowder... ram down the bullet... and it's ready to fire. Imagine warfare where your ability to
load a musket faster than the guy
with the other musket would determine if
you lived or died. Grooves on the inside
of the barrel, rifling, spin the ball toward
its target. The improved
accuracy and range are a deadly combination. One second,
everything's great, the next second, your guy's--
your buddy's head's gone, or his arm's flying off. ( Brian )
You don't wanna know what a soft-metal
musket ball does when it enters the human body. On impact... the bullet flattens out. Bone shatters
and splinters... causing further damage
to muscle and tissue. More often than not, the result of
a direct hit-- death. But for all the Minié ball's
technological edge, the army still uses
traditional military tactics. ( James )
What made it
particularly tragic was modern technology meeting
much more ancient tactics, so the death rates
were truly appalling. ( men shouting ) The troops still face
one another openly in lines across
the battlefield. But the Minié ball
is accurate over a range of 600 yards... easily spanning
this distance. And it can be
reloaded eight times faster than a traditional weapon. The effects
are catastrophic. The kill rate increases
dramatically compared to previous wars. Across the battlefield,
the results are carnage, blood and death on a previously
unseen scale. They killed
each other in droves, in lines and in piles. ( men shouting ) Soldier Alexander Hunter writes: ( "Alexander Hunter" )
One lay on his face with his
body almost in two parts. Another was shot
just as he was taking aim. One eye was still open while
the other was closed, and one arm extended in a
position of holding his rifle, which lay beside him
on the ground. The troops on both sides must live in the middle of this
untold death and suffering. Horatio Chapman records
the experience in his diary. ( "Horatio Chapman" )
The dead in some places
were piled upon each other and the groans and moans
of the wounded were truly
saddening to hear. Some were just alive
and gasping, but unconscious. Others were mortally wounded and were conscious
of the fact that they could not live long. By the time of
the North's final victory, over 600,000 men on both
sides are dead-- some 2% of
the entire US population. In current population terms, that's the equivalent of
6 million people. Almost half of the dead
remain unidentified. The fear of dying
forgotten on the battlefield leads soldiers for
the first time to begin pinning
their names and units on their uniforms. These crude, early
versions of the dog tag will make it possible to
identify their bodies after they're killed. For the first time, America's
growing postal service means soldiers can write to
their loved ones from the front. With none of today's
military censorship, it allows soldiers
like Robert Stiles to relay the terrifying realities of life
on the front line. ( "Robert Stiles" )
The sights and smells
that assailed us were simply indescribable. Corpses swollen to
twice their original size. Some of them actually
burst asunder with the pressure of
foul gases and vapors. Fueling this carnage lies the deep
political animosity that has led to this war. In a bitter conflict that has
pitted brother against brother, the South is determined to
defend its independence and its system of slavery. But the North
will not allow it to leave the Union of States. We fought and lost hundreds
of thousands of men on both sides, fighting for what they
believed was right. The unholy alliance
of new weapons and outdated battle tactics means a body count on
an industrial scale. The war is locked
in a bloody stalemate. Neither side can land
a decisive blow. In this bitter war
of attrition... victory will come to
the last man standing. ( narrator )
August 1862, over a year into the war. General Robert E. Lee's
Confederate Army is readying to launch
a wide-ranging assault against Union forces
in Virginia. Highly motivated, these men are
fighting on their home turf and are ready to die for
Southern independence, its traditions,
and its rural way of life. Its prosperity is built around
a simple crop. Cotton. Known as "white gold," the South accounts for 2/3 of
the world's supply of cotton. It brings extraordinary wealth
to the Southern states. But it is wealth
built on the backs of slaves. Now Lincoln's victory
at the ballot box threatens this
traditional way of life and the slavery it is
built on. Rather than
submit to Northern rule, the South decides
to fight. They want a separate nation. General Robert E. Lee
takes command at the head of
the newly formed Army of Northern Virginia. Lee, a brilliant graduate of
the elite West Point Academy, is already a veteran of
the Mexican War... and highly regarded
for his effectiveness on the battlefield. ( man )
Lee could intuit
the battlefield in a way that almost resembles
Rommel in World War II, or Patton,
and as a result, he could--
he could sort of almost sense where the place would be
to take the gamble and where to hit. ( horse neighing ) Manassas, Virginia, 1862. Confederate troops
gather ahead of The Second Battle of Bull Run. Lee's forces are
heavily outnumbered. But this Virginia woodland is home territory these
volunteer troops know like
the back of their hand. Rigid training and strict
discipline have turned them into
a formidable fighting force. ( man )
If you'd been
a betting man back then, you'd have bet the South
would've won. The South only
had to hold its territory. The North had to come
and take it away. The North had to be
the occupying force, which is far harder to do. ( man )
Fire ! ( men shouting ) At Bull Run, Lee easily
demonstrates his forces' superiority. ( men shouting ) In one engagement
lasting just ten minutes, the Yankee 5th New York Regiment loses more men
than any other regiment during the entire Civil War. ( horse neighing ) All told, Lee's men kill over
1,700 Union soldiers. ( men shouting ) Determination and local
knowledge give the South their greatest victory
in the war to date. But Lee and his commanders have underestimated the nature
of this conflict... and of their opponent,
President Abraham Lincoln. Because Lincoln is fighting
a totally new kind of war, and his Southern adversaries
just don't get it. ( whistle blowing ) A packed train
speeds on its way south, ready to replenish
the Union Army with fresh
troops and supplies. Lieutenant George Benedict
writes home. ( "George Benedict" )
We were stowed away in
freight cars and started
out of the city. The train took 600 other troops
besides our regiment and numbered
34 heavily loaded cars. ( whistle blowing ) The railroad, one of Lincoln's
hidden weapons in this war. In one key operation ordered
directly by the president... 25,000 fresh troops are sent on a 1,200-mile journey
to the South. ( man )
Fire ! By road, it would
take over two months. By rail, it will take these
men just seven days. Following its
introduction in the 1830s, America's rail infrastructure has gradually spread its
tentacles across the country. Lincoln realizes it
can revolutionize the speed of troop deployments. ( whistle blowing ) He strikes a deal
with the rail owners, to put the North's
railroad network under government control. It turns the railroad
into a weapon of war. Instead of armies being
limited to the speed at which they could march, all of a sudden,
you had armies being able to
move to the front by rail, and more importantly,
supplies. Supplies and troops
pour out of the North towards the battlefront. Some busy lines carry
800 tons of supplies a day, the equivalent of
80 railroad cars. In Lincoln's hands, the 24,000 miles of
rail track in the North becomes an arm of
his war machine. But the South has
a far smaller network, just 9,000 miles at the start
of the war, and it remains
under private control. In the four years
the war lasts, the North adds 4,000 miles
of new track to its network, against just 400 miles
in the South. This inability to
coordinate rail supplies will prove disastrous
for the South. Even though
they're just 30 miles from their capital
in Richmond, in the winter of 1863, poor rail links mean Southern
troops in Virginia starve. For all their brilliance
and determination in battle, the South simply lack
the logistics to deliver a decisive blow. And it isn't
simply rail. Lincoln realizes that victory
depends on mobilizing the entire
industrial might of the North behind the war effort. Production of clothing
in the North doubles during the conflict. Pitchfork manufacturers
start making swords. While the number of patents doubles in
the course of the war. Manufacturing, technology,
infrastructure. It will change
the face of America. For the first time in history, industry is put
behind the war effort... an approach to conflict that America will exploit in
the First and Second World Wars. It is the beginning of
a new, integrated economy that will be the hallmark
of the modern age. ( narrator )
In a building just across
the road from the White House is a small room. It will become Lincoln's
nerve center in this war. And at its heart, a simple device that will
transform how this war is
fought and won: the telegraph. The invention of
Morse code in 1844 turns the telegraph into
America's first tool of mass communication. Quickly encoded, the basic
system of dots and dashes is ideal for brief messages. Like Twitter today, it needs just seconds to send
them and transcribe them. Where messengers
previously took days, on horseback, over hundreds
of miles and across
every kind of terrain, now the country's 50,000-mile
telegraph network means communication
is almost instantaneous. As telegraph poles snake out
alongside the railroad lines, this vast country
begins to shrink. It will transform
the nature of this war, as information and decisions can flow backwards and forwards
at lightning speed. ( man )
It became kind of
the early version of e-mail. Suddenly it was possible
to get a message to somebody from St. Louis
to get a message to New York in a shockingly short
amount of time. Lincoln immediately realizes
the telegraph's potential as a weapon of war. He insists on the installation
of telegraph lines directly into
the War Department. And he quickly acts to place
all telegraph facilities in the Union
under military control. The Telegraph Office
becomes the central hub of Lincoln's war operation, his command-and-control
center. He even takes to sleeping
here at busy times. The Telegraph Office manager,
David Homer Bates, describes how
Lincoln obsesses over every scrap of news
from the front, sometimes reading
dispatches word by word as they are deciphered. ( "David Homer Bates" )
Lincoln's habit was to go
immediately to the drawer each time he
came into our room... and read over the telegrams,
beginning at the top, until he came to
the one he had seen on his previous visit. The North's telegraph network spreads its tentacles
far and wide, sucking information back to Lincoln and his commanders
in Washington. It gives him
a vast strategic overview, providing him an
unrivaled insight into his commanders'
tactical thinking. ( James )
Lincoln himself
was able to stay on top of, literally, hour-by-hour
developments in-- in the course of
individual battles. That had never
happened before. To the irritation
of his generals, it even allows him to
issue his own direct orders, telling them how to fight. In one campaign,
with General Lee's forces threatening Washington, Lincoln responds by
telegraphing direct orders to his generals. ( man )
The exposed position
of General Banks makes his immediate relief a point of paramount
importance. You are therefore
directed by the president to move against Jackson
at Harrisonburg. This movement
must be made immediately. In the course of the war, Lincoln sends almost
1,000 telegrams from this small office. But the South never grasps
the potential of the telegraph in creating a centralized
command-and-control system. It means Southern generals
like Lee must plan their battles without that kind of
strategic overview. As the war continues, Lincoln brings down the hammer
of his war machine. Industry, lines of
communication and supplies, manpower and firepower
are all marshaled to deliver blow after blow
to the Confederate Army. But the South, bolstered by the belief
in the rightness of its cause, doggedly refuses to give in. As a result, the death toll
just keeps rising. At Antietam in 1862, 6,000 are killed... 17,000 wounded. Over four times
as many as during World War II's D-Day landings. ( man screaming ) The carnage will trigger
a revolution in battlefield medicine. ( man screaming ) ( narrator )
3/4 of all operations
conducted by army surgeons during the Civil War
are amputations. Letters from
surgeon William Watson record what these battlefield
ERs were like. ( "William Watson" )
Day before yesterday
I performed 14 amputations without leaving the table. I do not exaggerate
when I say I have performed, at the least calculation,
50 amputations. There are so many severely
wounded through the joints. There are so many operations
yet to be performed. Surgeon Theodore Dimon
describes the hideous wounds left by weapons like
the Minié ball. ( "Theodore Dimon" )
The shattering, splintering, and splitting of a long bone by the impact
of the Minié ball is both remarkable
and frightening. An experienced surgeon
can hack off a limb in just ten minutes. Ether and chloroform
are used as anesthetics. If a bullet
doesn't kill you, an infection can. Gangrene
is the greatest killer. Deprived of oxygen, wounds become an ideal breeding
ground for clostridium... a bacteria that
releases a poisonous toxin, destroying tissue. Death can follow
quickly. Approximately
60,000 amputations are performed during
the Civil War, more than in any other
war America has fought in. Twice as many soldiers die from infected wounds
and disease as on the battlefield. This unprecedented carnage
forces a complete rethink of traditional
battlefield medicine. Looking after the well-being
of soldiers becomes as
central to the war effort as the supply of guns
and ammunition. Large numbers of women
sign up as battlefield nurses. One of them is Clara Barton. Help me, please. A saw ? Clara Barton is untrained
and unpaid. When she starts,
most nurses are men. It is a menial occupation. The remedies she proposes
for the care of the wounded are simple, but revolutionary
in their effect. ( "Clara Barton" )
They want food, clothing,
shelter, medicines, and a few calm, practical
persons to administer them. She insists the injured
have a ready supply of clean bandages. First aid. The sorting of the wounded to put the most serious
cases first. The Civil War brings
in a series of innovations that form the basis of battlefield medicine
to this day. 20,000 women sign on
as nurses during the war. Clara Barton herself goes on to found
the American Red Cross. Standards of hygiene begin to
dramatically improve with the discovery of bromine. This caustic chemical
is effective against the bacteria
that cause gangrene. As a result, nearly 3/4 of
amputees survive surgery, and gangrene becomes
rare by the war's end. With the war dragging on
without a clear end in sight... Lincoln is increasingly
forced to fight on a very different front. The war for
public opinion. The spread of
portable cameras means, for the first time, gory images of
the battlefield can now reach every home. While these simple cameras
rule out dramatic action scenes, they are ideal
for capturing the gruesome
aftermath of battle. As many as
1,500 photographers flood the battlefield. Their images are sold widely
to members of the public for as little as 25¢. ( Steven )
There was war photography
coming back from the Civil War that
captured it in a way, made it real and made
people recognize the really extraordinary
unprecedented violence. America's growing
newspaper mass media reproduces simple woodcuts
of the images. More than 200 correspondents
cover the war, filing over
100 million words of copy. This deluge of information
about the war ensures the grim
reality of this conflict is seared into the public
consciousness. Never again will politicians be able to fight wars
without public support. The war means a soldier is
five times more likely to die than a civilian. Where families used to grieve
for the dead at home, now men die
on the battlefield. It forces a fundamental shift in the rituals
surrounding death. Nat Bowditch dies on
a battlefield in Virginia. Yet his family in Boston can still say good-bye
to their son, killed 500 miles away. Are you ready,
Mrs. Bowditch ? Even though it has
taken a week for his body to travel from the battlefield, his father describes how it
is free of any signs of decomposition. ( man )
Though the marks of
closely contested battle were still upon
the face, the features were placid,
as if he was sleeping. That's because of
the new technique known as embalming. Chemicals like
arsenic and zinc chloride are injected into the corpse to halt the natural
process of decay. The business of death and the preservation
of bodies turns undertakers
into overnight millionaires. One undertaker boasts: ( man )
I would be glad to prepare
private soldiers. They were worth
a $5 bill apiece. But Lord, bless you,
a colonel pays 100. And a brigadier general,
200. If you've got the money, all sorts of new
techniques are available. Airtight coffins and embalming
are most popular. And for the wealthiest, even elaborate refrigerated
coffins packed with ice. The war drags on. Lincoln is determined
to end it and abolish slavery. In September 1862, he gives the South
an ultimatum. Rejoin the Union. He threatens to forcibly
liberate their slaves if they refuse. But the South,
having tasted independence, does not want to
rejoin a Union where slavery
would be at risk. They reject the ultimatum. Lincoln is in
no mood to negotiate. If the South won't
free their slaves, he will do it himself. ( woman )
For white Southerners,
it was a confirmation that their thoughts about
Lincoln all along, that he was
in fact somebody who was bent on destroying what
they thought was the Southern way of life. In the North,
in a sense, it gave people
a different understanding of what the war
was about. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issues a proclamation
abolishing slavery in the rebellious
Southern states. Thanks to the telegraph,
the news quickly spreads. ( man )
On the first day of January in the year of
our Lord, 1863... Lincoln had totally grown to where he said that not only
should blacks not be slaves, they should be
treated as equal citizens with full enfranchisement-- right to vote,
right to participate. ( man )
All persons held as slaves
shall be then, henceforth... and forever free. ( cheering ) ( gunshot firing ) ( men shouting ) ( narrator )
In the wake of Lincoln's
emancipation of the slaves, Black American soldiers rush
to enlist for the Union. ( men shouting ) Almost 200,000 sign up
by the end of the war. General James Blunt describes
their skill as fighters. ( "James Blunt" )
I never saw such fighting
as was done by the Negro Regiment. They make better
soldiers in every respect than any other troops I have
ever had under my command. The Emancipation Proclamation changes the dynamics
of the war. The Union Army
becomes a force for liberation, now fighting to end slavery. They understood
that saving the Union would give them some
sense of freedom, some sense of dignity. It was the dignity that "I'm a soldier, I'm not
just a servant, I'm a soldier, "I have a uniform,
I have stripes. I'm somebody." Lincoln follows the Proclamation
with his masterstroke. His address in 1863 dedicating America's first
National Cemetery for soldiers at Gettysburg is perhaps the single most
famous piece of political
rhetoric in history. ( man )
"Four score
and seven years ago, "our fathers brought forth
upon this nation... "Conceived in liberty "and dedicated to
the proposition... "That all men
are created equal. ( man )
"That we here highly resolve "that these dead shall not
have died in vain-- "that this
nation, under God, "shall have a new birth
of freedom-- "and that government
of the people, by the people, "and for the people shall not perish
from this earth." ( Annette )
It is an emotional
thing to think about people sacrificing,
giving their lives, for an ideal, and it's Lincoln at his
absolute best-- the genius, the simplicity
that conveys a great amount. ( man )
It's spiritual in a way. It's a hymn to America, and it's the hymn to
the possibilities and the great
sacrifices of this country. But in 1864,
the war remains deadlocked. ( gunshots firing ) ( men shouting ) ( horse neighing ) ( whistle blowing ) With an election looming and a challenge
coming from those who want to negotiate a peace
with the South, Lincoln knows he
needs to land a decisive blow. At some point,
somebody gets tired. Somebody blinks. Somebody makes a mistake. And when you're
talking about war, that mistake-- that's
everything. Lincoln puts the North's entire
industrial might behind one final push. The man who will lead the charge
from Chattanooga to Atlanta: William Sherman. His orders:
to stop for nothing. ( "William Sherman" )
I would make this war
as severe as possible and show no symptoms of tiring 'til the South
begs for mercy. Advancing under
the cover of night, Sherman's march is sustained by one of the greatest
logistical operations yet seen in this conflict. ( whistle blowing ) Sherman knows he needs to throw
everything he's got at the Confederate Army. While he uses his own supply
lines to maximum effect, he destroys
those of the South, ripping up their railroad and bending it
beyond use. In one day,
the North's supply lines replace 200,000 bullets. ( gunshots firing ) While the South is left
scavenging on the battlefield for spent rounds, food,
even old boots. Sherman
calls it total war-- a scorched-earth approach that becomes the trademark of
modern warfare. Finally,
with Atlanta under siege, Confederate forces set fire to
their own munitions stores... before abandoning their
city to the Union soldiers. ( all screaming ) Sherman's tactics of
total war have won out. His victory helps secure
Lincoln's election in the fall. With Atlanta in ruins,
he just keeps going, now launching what
will be his final assault: The March to the Sea. In a 19th-century equivalent
of Shock and Awe, 62,000 Union soldiers
wreak a 60-mile-wide path of destruction across Georgia, from Atlanta to
the coast at Savannah. ( all screaming ) Supply lines are cut. Villages are sacked
and crops torched. Anything of military value
is destroyed. Within six months, General Lee has tendered the
Confederate Army's surrender. The rebellion is over. The South will have to
submit to the Union and bring an end to slavery. By the act of winning, the North both
validated freedom and validated
the industrial model, and so you have an
American confidence, an American sense of
achievement, an American willingness
to go out around the world. For all the Confederacy's
commitment, its inferior
logistical infrastructure has been no match for
the North's unstoppable war machine. Its industrial heartland, its growing network
of railroads, its telegraph network, all bring
victory to the North. Within a week, Lincoln lies dead
from an assassin's bullet, but America has pulled back
from the brink. The nation
is once again united, and out of that unity now grows a modern
industrialized economy that will reach right across
this great continent. ( whistle blowing ) Captioning presented by<font color="#0000FF">
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