Note that all quotes are paraphrased, as I did this all from memory without looking at any sources.
That being said, it helps to have access to Ken Burns.
In 1861, the Union had come apart. The North, with its immense power and advantages, sought to destroy the Confederates with a 90 day war. The Confederates felt that they could kill 10 Yankees for every Southern death. Both sides expected a short fight.
That summer, the Army of the Potomac, which had been built up by General Irvine McDowell, marched under his command across the Potomac and into Northern Virginia, bent on destroying the Rebs. In their wake was a massive crowd of spectators, who wanted to see the first battle in what they assumed would be a short and cheerful affair. A rebel force under Joseph E. Johnson and P. T. Beauregard came up to counter them outside the town of Manassas in Virginia. The two armies clashed, and at first it seemed that Union victory was a guarantee. But as time went on, General Thomas Jackson proved to hold enough courage to stand up against the army, “like a stone wall.” The Confederates counterattacked. Terrified, the Union forces fled. Left on the battlefield was disgruntled Manassas resident Wilmer MacLean, who decided to move to avoid the war. The battle was sobering, costing the Union thousands of casualties and shocking the nation, but it was nothing compared to the bloodshed that would follow.
In 1862, as George McClellan was hired to command the Army of the Potomac, a General Ulysses S. Grant was winning battles in spite of everyone else losing. He won several small skirmishes, then attacked Fort Donelson, surrounded it, and declared unconditional surrender. It would become his nickname. Soon, Beauregard and a (different) Johnson were waiting to attack Grant when he drew near enough. Johnson saw his chance when Grant stopped near Pittsburg Landing to regroup. The Confederates drove Grant’s forces back in Shiloh, the first truly bloody and brutal battle of the Civil War, where more men fell than in the Revolution. Grant’s forces were saved due to the Hornet’s Nest, a group of soldiers who refused to retreat, even killing Johnson himself. Grant was soon reinforced by Buell’s Army, which quickly made work of the Confederate forces. Shiloh was won.
Following the rigorous training of his army, McClellan landed on the James River peninsula and sluggishly creeped to Richmond. Joseph Johnson, soon to be replaced by Lee, came to counter him. In a brilliant move, the general at Yorktown convinced McClellan that he was horrifically outnumbered. McClellan demanded more troops, and Lee saw his chance. In the 7 Days, he lost four battles, yet won against the timid McClellan. The failure of McClellan led one of his officers to declare him motivated by “cowardice or treason.” Lincoln replaced McClellan with John Pope, who quickly lost the Battle of Manassas on the same battlefield as Bull Run. Lincoln begrudgingly replaced him with McClellan.
George McClellan now held the army around Washington, keeping his troops training and preparing. Lee, seeing his chance, invaded the North with the intent to put Maryland in the Union. However, one of his clumsy aides lost the battle plans, and a Union scout discovered them lying in a field. Order 191 gave McClellan the perfect tool for fighting the Confederates, and in a stunning show of his military genius, he waited almost a day until he put them in action. When he finally did, the battle would take place along a meandering creek outside the Maryland town of Sharpsburg known as Anteitam. It was the bloodiest day in American history.
Lee attacked in three forces. The first was repelled in a cornfield. The second mowed down troops from a sunken road until artillery zeroed in on it and blew it to pieces. The final fight took place along a stone bridge, where Union troops defeated the Confederates after an entire day, only to be repulsed by evening. It was not a victory for either army, but it was demoralizing enough for Lee to retreat and for Lincoln to free the slaves.
President Lincoln had been waiting for such a battle to declare the Emancipation Proclamation in order to prevent it from being seen as an empty threat. Once declared, the proclamation freed the slaves in the Confederacy, not the border states. But what it meant took precedence over what it said. It made the fight change from Union and States’ Rights to being about the peculiar institution. This worked wonders on the war. While regiments in the North deserted and the South painted Lincoln as an anti-Christian demon, the proclamation confirmed that Europe would stay out of the war and that Black soldiers would be a likely asset.
In 1863, with the proclamation now in effect, Lincoln went about arming the Blacks. The 54th Massachusetts was formed as the first regiment. Many other regiments soon followed, with multiple cavalry and infantry division to soon bear a great deal of the fighting. The 54th Massachusetts would be pulverized at Fort Wagner, but their heroism in the battle was a major morale boost to the other Blacks. By the war’s end, 10% of the North’s military was African-American. For perspective, the North had fewer than 4%.
Anteitam had another effect on the war. General George McClellan was removed from command, permanently. Lincoln was furious with his lack of exploiting Anteitam. Instead, he hired the commander who had valiantly fought at the Bridge at Anteitam, Ambrose Burnside. Burnside invaded Virginia, searching for the Confederates. He soon reached the Rappahannock River and decided to sack Fredericksburg, a vital railroad link. Unfortunately, Lee soon found him and reinforced Mary’s Heights above the city. 14 hopeless charges later, the Army of the Potomac, crippled and exhausted, withdrew and Burnside was removed from command.
In his place, Lincoln found “Fightin’ Joe” Hooker, who had seen action in various battles before. Hooker came up with a predictable strategy: feign an attack and attack from the rear. Lee saw right through it. In a stunning move, Lee divided his army. Hooker’s forces ran right into one section in the hamlet of Chancellorsville. Hooker then went from being overconfident to downright stupid and refused to push back the Confederates, convinced that it was only a small force. Lee, sensing Hooker’s confusion, then divided his army again and sent Stonewall Jackson around Hooker’s left. Jackson’s men tore through the unsuspecting Union forces and tore the army apart. It left, battered and broken. The Confederate victory came at a price, however. Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own men while preparing for a night attack. He would die several weeks later, whispering, “let us rest under the shade of the trees.”
Lee, now overconfident from the two absolute victories, invaded the North again, pushing for Philadelphia. He entered Pennsylvania and was going towards Harper’s Ferry when there came a report of shoes in Gettysburg. It would be the largest battle in the Western Hemisphere. As units converged, the Confederates took the town while the Federals took a ridge behind a gate that read, “Any persons carrying firearms in this area will be prosecuted.” On the second day, the Union successfully repulsed attacks on Culp’s Hill, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain rose to national prominence for his daring bayonet charge on Little Round Top. On the third day, it all came crashing down on the Confederates when Lee ordered George Pickett’s division across a mile-wide field. Half of it was slaughtered. When asked to rally his division, Pickett bitterly told Lee “I have no division.” The next day, on July 4, Lee retreated in a steady rain. With that defeat came another, with equal importance: Vicksburg.
General Grant had won Shiloh, captured half of Tennessee, including Memphis, and seen Admiral Farragut advance up the Mississippi to take New Orleans without firing a single shot. Now, he needed the “key” to the river. The town of Vicksburg, high up on a series of bluffs, prevented any ships from passing via a volley of cannon fire. Grant wanted it taken. In a daring move, he crossed the Mississippi, hacked his way through swamps, sacked the Mississippi capital, and surrounded Vicksburg. For months he poured fire into the city, forcing the inhabitants to live like “prairie dogs.” Finally, on July 4, without word of Gettysburg, the commander of Vicksburg surrendered. Both battles ended Confederate hopes, nearly for good.
In the fall of 1863, Confederates under Braxton Bragg clung to eastern Tennessee, attacking the Unions sporadically. General William Rosecrans was ordered to stop them. In a series of brilliant flanking maneuvers, he drove Bragg all the way to the city of Chattanooga, which he quickly fortified. Bragg slipped back to Chickamauga Creek, where Rosecrans, urged by his men, attacked. The battle was a bloody, murderous fistfight that ended in disaster when Rosecrans opened a gap in his lines. The battle was salvaged by General George H. Thomas, whose actions would gain him of the “Rock of Chickamauga.” Lincoln replaced Rosecrans with him, and soon sent Grant over to end the war in Tennessee. Following Chickamauga, the Army of Tennessee held the high ground outside Chattanooga, known as Lookout Mountain. Grant ordered it taken. His men did so in spectacular fashion, then destroyed the Confederates the next day on an adjacent ridge. Chattanooga was won, and would serve as the launch pad for Sherman.
For this excellent victory, Grant was summoned to Washington to gain the rank of Lieutenant General. He now had control of the entire US Military, and he quickly set a plan in motion. Sherman would sack Atlanta. Sheridan would burn down the Shenandoah. And Meade and Grant would carve out a crescent of blood in Virginia. The plans were set in action. Sheridan tore through the Shenandoah, burning crops, looting towns, and destroying Jubal Earle’s cavalry. Sherman cut a path of destruction through Northern Georgia, but stalled outside Atlanta. Grant, meanwhile, was overseeing the most vicious campaign of the war.
Operation Overland was a nonstop battle between Grant and Lee along a thirty-mile crescent. Grant employed the same tactic: move by the left flank. So did Lee: bunker down and reinforce. The two armies first clashed in the vicious Battle of the Wilderness. Fought on the Chancellorsville battlefield, it was the most horrifying battle of the war. The “Wilderness” was a thicket of trees laden with skeletons of Chancellorsville. The fighting was hand-to-hand, and companies got lost and fired on their own men. At nightfall, the entire landscape caught fire, scorching men alive while both armies listened to their screams. General Grant, horrified with the battle, broke down and wept in his tent while the flames soared through the woods.
However, there was not stopping the army. Grant pushed on, despite the losses and horrors. He moved onto the next battlefield; a region known as Spotsylvania, where the two armies crippled each other. Then came the cavalry attack on Yellow Tavern, where JEB Stuart was killed. Next came the most one-sided fight, Cold Harbor, where Lee’s troops dug into an embankment and mowed down Grant’s troops, killing 7,000 in 15 minutes. It was the only mistake Grant ever admitted to. At last, Grant outwitted Lee. He feigned an assault towards Richmond, but then attacked Petersburg. Lee got there too, and the two bunkered down for a Trench Warfare siege.
It was now 1864, and Lincoln was facing a dilemma. Sherman was stuck outside Atlanta, and Grant was stuck outside Petersburg. The general populace, appalled by the Overland Campaign, was sick of war. And a man who held a grudge against Lincoln now sought election. George McClellan, the old general, ran against Lincoln in 1864. Lincoln had been attacked in the political arena for the entire war, weeding out Copperheads and being savaged by the press. Now, with his armies stalled, he feared that he would be badly beaten.
Yet fortune would soon change. McClellan’s message of peace was so uninspired, dull, and incoherent that even his beloved army voted for Lincoln. Sherman, who had been stuck outside Atlanta, finally defeated John Bell Hood and took the city. And Sheridan’s reign of terror in the Shenandoah was going exactly according to plan. McClellan, not Lincoln, was badly beaten in the election.
Sherman’s army now was let loose in Georgia. He ransacked Atlanta, burned it to the ground, and then set out for Savannah and the sea, pillaging as he went. Along the way, his men ran into several POW camps. Enraged at what they saw, Sherman’s men turned the pillaging up to 11. The army cut a swath of destruction ten miles wide. Hood, furious that he had been defeated at Atlanta, sought to distract Sherman. He invaded Tennessee, attacking supply columns, but failed to distract Sherman. “Let him go to Ohio if he wants,” Sherman mocked. “I’ll serve him rations when he gets there.” The Rock of Chickamauga, George Thomas, refused to let Hood get farther than Nashville. At Franklin, his Army of the Cumberland thoroughly savaged Hood’s army, tearing it apart after Hood made a series of disorganized charges. Hood resigned in disgrace, and the once-proud Army of the Tennessee was reduced to a mob.
Sherman’s army reached the sea, and the general presented Lincoln the city of Savannah as a Christmas present. They then rolled into South Carolina, declaring that “This is where secession began, and here it shall end!” They hacked through swamps, ransacked towns, burned Columbia, twisted rail lines, and taunted the Confederate civilians. Eventually the march reached North Carolina, where Sherman finally ended his march.
Meanwhile, Grant had finally won at Petersburg. Lee had made a desperate night attack on an earthwork. It was repelled and a counterattack broke the lines. Lee sent a letter to Richmond to evacuate the government. Chaos soon followed. The once-proud Confederate capital was looted and burned by ex-slaves, civilians, and finally, the Union troops. With the city taken, Grant now resolved to end Lee, once and for all.
Lee fled up the Appomattox Creek, with Grant right behind him. Finally, he reached Appomattox Court House, a tiny hamlet where disgruntled Manassas resident Wilmer MacLean now lived. Grant declared that Lee surrender, and met Lee in MacLean’s house. The Army of Northern Virginia was defeated.
The war was over. Jefferson Davis was captured in Mississippi. Robert E. Lee’s house was turned into Arlington National Cemetery. Joseph Johnston surrendered to Sherman. And Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
Following the war, the brotherhood sentiments that Lincoln had tried so hard to put in place were replaced by Johnson’s disastrous Reconstruction Plan. With slavery abolished, an exodus of Blacks from the South ensured that the landscape would stay forever changed. Bile and hate would rise to new levels in the South. Nathan Bedford Forrest would found the Ku Klux Klan, which would terrify the South until Grant, now president, would send in troops to quell the violence.
However, the Civil War ensured that the United States would continue to exist. It ensured that the nation would live up to what was written in the Constitution, though it would be long after the war that it finally was realized. Most importantly, the war defined the United States as one single united nation.
“Before the war, people would typically say that the ‘United States are…’ But then after the war, and still today, people will say ‘The United States is…’ And that’s what the war did. It made us an is.”
-Shelby Foote
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