Ken Burns: The Civil War Mini

"We believed that it was most desirable

"that the north should win.

"We believed in the principle

"that the union is indissoluble.

"We, or many of us at least, also believed

"that the conflict was inevitable

"and that slavery had lasted long enough,

"but we equally believed that those who stood against us

"held just as sacred convictions

"that were the opposite of ours,

"and we respected them as every man with a heart

must respect those who give all for their belief."

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

We are the veterans of the civil war,

'61 to '65.

This flag is of the Hawkins' zouaves,

New York.

Now salute.

As a southerner, i would say

one of the main importances of the war

is that southerners have a sense of defeat,

which, none of the rest of the country has.

You'll see in the movie patton,

the actor who plays patton saying,

"we Americans have never lost a war."

That's a rather amazing statement for him to make

as patton because patton's grandfather

was in Lee's army of northern Virginia,

and he certainly lost a war.

In 1865 in South Africa,

whites drove the basuto tribe from their land.

In Afghanistan,

Russian troop movements along the border

were a cause of great international concern.

At a monastery in Austria,

Gregor mendel established

the principle of heredity,

and in Ireland,

the poet William Butler yeats was born.

In 1865 in America,

Samuel clemens published his first short story

as mark twain.

The 13th amendment, abolishing slavery,

was formally ratified,

and the ku klux klan was formed.

In 1860,

most of the nation's 31 million people

lived peaceably on farms or in small towns.

By 1865, everything had changed.

Sharpsburg, Maryland.

Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Atlanta, Georgia.

By the beginning of 1865,

the confederacy was dying.

To the west,

only the tattered confederate army of Tennessee remained.

Its soldiers, like Sam Watkins,

worried more about food and blankets and shoes

than fighting.

Outside Petersburg,

Elisha hunt rhodes and 120,000 other union troops

were dug in,

unable to dislodge the stubborn rebel army.

Atlanta had been razed,

and Georgia and the carolinas lay helpless

in William tecumseh sherman's path.

As the new year began,

Robert e. Lee assumed command of all Southern forces

and, with it, the hopeless task

of hurling back the huge union armies

now closing in from every side.

With victory within his grasp,

Abraham Lincoln looked forward to a second presidential term

and a new challenge--

healing the nation

he had struggled so hard to reunite.

"Here was the greatest and most moving chapter

"in American history,

"a blending of meanness and greatness,

"an ending and a beginning.

"It came out of what men were,

"but it did not go as men had planned.

"Of all men, Abraham Lincoln came the closest

"to understanding what had happened.

"Yet even he, in his final backward glance,

"had to confess that something that went beyond words

had been at work in the land."

"The almighty had his own purposes."

Bruce catton.

Man, as sherman: "My aim was to whip the rebels,

"to humble their pride,

"to follow them to their innermost recesses,

and to make them fear and dread us."

"War is cruelty.

"There's no use trying to reform it.

The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."

William tecumseh sherman.

"War is all hell,"

William tecumseh sherman once said,

and it was now his aim to bring that hell

to the heart of the confederacy.

He saw from the very beginning

how hard a war it was gonna be,

and when he said how hard a war it was gonna be,

he was retired under suspicion of insanity

and then brought back when they decided

maybe he wasn't so crazy after all.

Sherman is maybe the first truly modern general.

He was the first one to understand,

in the present-day world,

that civilians were the backers-up of things

and that if you went against civilians,

you deprived the army of what kept it going,

so he quite purposely made war against civilians.

From Atlanta in late 1864,

sherman proposed to march his army

through the heart of Georgia all the way to Savannah.

His army would live off the land,

destroying everything in its path

that could conceivably aid the faltering confederacy

and a good deal that couldn't.

"I can make this march," he promised,

"and make Georgia howl."

Lincoln's advisors thought sherman's plan foolhardy.

The president approved it.

"If you can whip Lee

and I can march to the Atlantic," sherman told Grant,

"i think uncle Abe will give us 20 days' leave

to see the young folks."

"There are rumors that we are to cut loose

"and march south to the ocean.

"We're in fine shape and, I think,

could go anywhere uncle Billy would lead."

Private Theodore upson.

Before leaving Atlanta,

sherman ordered all townspeople, white and black,

out of their homes,

then directed his men to burn or destroy

anything of use to the rebels.

Civilians looted the town

and helped spread the Blaze throughout the city.

"A grand and awful spectacle is presented to the beholder

"in this beautiful city, now in flames.

"The heaven is one expanse of lurid fire.

"The air is filled with flying cinders.

"The city which, next to Richmond,

"has furnished more material for prosecuting the war

than any other in the south..."

"Exists no more as a means for injury

to be used by the enemies of the union."

Sherman began his march.

62,000 men in blue were on the move

in two great columns.

Their supply train stretched 25 miles.

A slave watching the army stream past

wondered aloud if anybody was left up north.

"The name of the captor of Atlanta, if he fails now,

"will become the scoff of mankind

"and the humiliation of the United States for all time.

If he succeeds, it will be written on the tablet of fame."

London herald.

"Reaching the hill just outside the old rebel works,

"we paused to look back.

"Behind us lay Atlanta in ruins,

"the black smoke rising high in the air,

"hanging like a pall.

"Then we turned our horses' heads to the east.

"Atlanta was soon lost behind the screen of trees

and became a thing of the past."

It had been cumulative evidence

that an army could subsist itself

on what was growing in the fields, winter or summer,

and they were a moving city, like.

They would grind their own corn

at the grist mills along the way,

butcher their own cattle.

Sherman was perfectly satisfied he could make the march

without difficulty with regard to supplies.

In fact, they ate better on that march

than they did not marching.

Sweet potatoes were particularly prized, and pork.

They had plenty to eat.

"This is probably

"the most gigantic pleasure excursion ever planned.

"It already beats everything i ever saw soldiering

and promises to prove much richer yet."

"We had a gay old campaign.

"Destroyed all we could not eat, stole their niggers,

"burned their cotton and gins, spilled their sorghum,

"burned and twisted their railroads,

and raised hell, generally."

Sherman's men tore up railroads,

heating the rails and 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.