The Civil War (documentary)

"By the summer of 1861, Wilmer McLean had had enough. Two great armies were converging on his farm and what would be the first major battle of the Civil War, Bull Run, or Manassas as the Confederates called it, would soon rage across the aging Virginian's farm: a Union shell going so far as to explode in the summer kitchen. Now McLean moved his family away from Manassas, far south and west of Richmond, out of harm's way, he prayed, to a dusty little crossroads' called Appomattox Court House. And it was there in his living room, three and a half years later, that Lee surrendered to Grant. And Wilmer McLean could rightfully say, "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.""

"The Civil War was fought in ten thousand places, from Valverde, New Mexico and Tullahoma, Tennessee, to St. Albans, Vermont and Fernandina on the Florida Coast. More than three million Americans fought in it. And over six hundred thousand men, two percent of the population, died in it."

"What began as a bitter dispute over Union and State's Rights, ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America."

"No day ever dawns for the slave," a freed black man wrote, "nor is it looked for. For the slave it is all night — all night forever." One white Mississippian was more blunt: "I'd rather be dead," he said, "than be a nigger on one of these big plantations."

"A slave entered the world in a one-room, dirt-floored shack. Drafty in winter, reeking in summer, slave cabins bred pneumonia, typhus, cholera, lockjaw, and tuberculosis. The child who survived to be sent to the fields at 12 was likely to have worms, rotten teeth, dysentery and malaria. Fewer than four in a hundred lived to be 60."

"There was never a moment in our history when slavery was not a sleeping serpent. It lay coiled up under the table during the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention. Owing to the cotton gin, it was more than half awake. Thereafter, slavery was on everyone's mind, though not always on his tongue."

"Here before God, in the presence of these witnesses, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery."

"We are separated because of incompatibility of temper. We are divorced North from South, because we hated each other so."

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

"John Brown, John Brown...very important person in history. Important, though, for only one episode. Failure in everything in life, except he becomes the single most-important factor, in my opinion, in bringing on the War. The militia system in the South, which had been a joke before this, before then, becomes a viable instrument, as the Southern militias begin to take a true form and the South begins to worry about Northerners agitating the Blacks to murder them in their beds."

"It was the beginning of the Confederate Army."

"The bird of our country is a debilitated chicken, disguised in eagle feathers. We have never been a nation. We are only an aggregate of states, ready to fall apart at the first serious shock."

"In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern Independence. But I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve the Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche."

"On the day Sumter fell, the Regular Army of the United States consisted of fewer than 17,000 men, most of whom were stationed in the Far West. Only two of its Generals had ever commanded an army in the field, and both were long past their prime. Winfield Scott, the hero of the Mexican War, "Old Fuss and Feathers," was too fat even to mount a horse."

"Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of the Negro servants. ... They make no sign. Are they ... stupid? Or wiser than we are; silent and strong, biding their time?"

"I tell you that if I were on by death bed tomorrow and the President of the United States should tell me that a great battle was to be fought for the liberty or slavery of the country, and asked my judgment as to the ability of a commander, I would say with my dying breath, let it be Robert E. Lee!"

"To preserve the Constitution, Lincoln had for three months gone beyond it: waging war without Congressional consent; seizing Northern telegraph offices; suspending habeas corpus. To keep the border states from seceding, Lincoln sent troops to occupy Baltimore and clapped the mayor and 19 secessionist legislators in jail, without trial. Chief Justice Taney ruled that the President had exceeded his power. Lincoln simply ignored him. "More rogues than honest men find shelter under habeas corpus," he said, and even contemplated arresting the Chief Justice."

"Little did I conceive of the greatness of the defeat, the magnitude of the disaster which has been entailed on the United States. So short lived has been the American Union that men who saw it rise may live to see it fall."

"December 31, poor old 1861 just going. It has been a gloomy year of trouble and disaster. I should be glad to see its going were it not that 1862 is likely to be no better."

"It was almost inconceivable that anything that horrendous could happen. [..] If we had ten percent casualties in a battle today it would be looked on as a blood bath. They had thirty percent, in several battles. And one after another, you see."

"I always shot at Privates. It was they who did the shooting and killing and if I could kill or wound me a Private, well my chances were so much the better. I always looked on Officers as harmless personages."

"Secretary of State William H. Seward hoped to replace Lincoln. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase wanted to replace Seward. Mary Todd told her husband to get rid of both of them."

"February 9, 1862. Dear Mr. President: General McClellan has almost ruined your administration and the country. He is a do-nothing. He is thinking of the presidency in '64. He is placating the Rebels—that’s what ails him. Depend upon it."

"What shall I do? The people are impatient. Chase has no money and tells me he can raise no more. The General of the Army, McClellan, has typhoid fever. The bottom is out of the tub. What shall I do?"

"Washington. Dear Ellen: I went to the White House shortly after tea, where I found "the Original Gorilla", about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!"

"In the midst of all his troubles, the President delighted in his sons. The oldest, Robert, was away at Harvard, but Willie, 11, and eight-year-old Thomas, known as Tad, had the run of the White House. Willie was studious, liked to compose verse and memorize railroad timetables. He had raised a boys’ battalion from among his schoolmates and invaded Cabinet meetings with his "troops." In February, he developed what the doctor called bilious fever. His parents sat up night after night to nurse him. On February 20, Willie died. For three months, Mary Lincoln veered between loud weeping and silent depression and sought to communicate with her dead child through spiritualists."

"The War left Lincoln little time to mourn. He was soon back working 18 hours a day."

"From the moment those two ships opened fire that Sunday morning, every other navy on earth was obsolete."

"News stories described him coolly smoking under fire, and admirers shipped him barrels of cigars. A delighted Northern public now thought they knew what the initials in his name stood for: they called him "Unconditional Surrender Grant.""

"Once more, let me tell you: it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow...I have never written to you, nor spoken to you, in greater kindness than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you...But you must act."

"Shiloh had the same number of casualties as Waterloo, and yet when it was fought there were another twenty Waterloos to follow; and Grant shortly before Shiloh said 'I consider this war practically over and they're ready to give up', and the day after Shiloh he said 'I saw this was going to have to be a war of conquest if they were going to win'. Shiloh did that, and it sobered the nation up something awful with the realization that they had a very bloody affair on their hands."

"Years afterward, a Union veteran said the most a soldier could say of any fight was "I was worse scared than I was at Shiloh." Shiloh is a Hebrew word, meaning "place of peace.""

"April 11, 1862. I firmly believe that, before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day, science shall have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world."

"The Minié ball could kill at half a mile and was accurate at 250 yards, five times as far as any other one-man weapon. The age of the bayonet charge was over, though most officers did not yet know it when the war began. And some had still not yet learned it when the war was over."

"A law was made...allowing every person who owned 20 negroes to go home. It gave us the blues. We wanted 20 negroes...there was raised the howl of "rich man’s war, poor man’s fight." From this time on till the end of the War, a soldier was simply a machine: a conscript. All our pride and valor had gone and we were sick of war and cursed the Southern Confederacy."

"A worried Jefferson Davis now prepared for a siege of Richmond, relying more and more on the advice of his close military adviser, Robert E. Lee. When Davis asked Lee where Lee though the South’s next defensive line should be drawn once Richmond fell, Lee said, "Richmond must not fall. It shall not be given up." Still, George McClellan refused to attack. Though his army still outnumbered the rebels, he remained convinced the opposite was true. One observer noted that McClellan had a particular faculty for "realizing hallucinations.""

"We talk of the irrepressible conflict and practically give the lie to our talk. We wage war against slaveholding rebels and yet protect and augment the motive, which has moved the slaveholders to rebellion. We strike at the effect and leave the cause unharmed. Fire will not burn it out of us. Water cannot wash it out of us—that this war with the slaveholders can never be brought to a desirable termination until slavery, the guilty cause of all our national troubles, has been totally and forever abolished."

"He would have a man shot at the drop of a hat, and he would drop it himself."

"He who does not see the hand of God in this is blind, sir, blind."

"I have been reading so much about the Yankees, I was very anxious to see them. The whites would tell their colored people not to go to the Yankees, for they would harness them to carts and make them pull the carts around in place of horses. I asked Grandmother one day if this was true. She replied, "Certainly not!," that the white people did not want slaves to go over to the Yankees and told them these things to frighten them. I wanted to see those wonderful Yankees so much, as I heard my parents say that the Yankees was going to set all the slaves free."

"His name might be audacity! He will take more chances and take them quicker than any other General in this country, north or south."

"All but one of the battles of the Seven Days were Union victories, yet McClellan treated them as defeats, continuing to back down until he reached the safety of federal gunboats at Harrison’s Landing on the James River. Union officers urged a counterattack. Lee had lost 20,000 men. McClellan refused. One officer suggested his commander was motivated either by "cowardice or treason"."

"In just one week, Lee had completely unnerved the Union general, and demonstrated for the first time the strengths that would make him a legend. Surprise, audacity, and an eerie ability to read his opponents mind. In just seven days, McClellan had been totally out-generalled."

"He could not let himself be made a fool, the Union be made a fool, by standing up for principles that could not be vindicated on the battlefield."

"Sunday, a Soldier of Company A died and was buried. Everything went on as if nothing had happened. Death is so common that little sentiment is wasted. It is not like death at home."

"They were the dirtiest men I ever saw. A most ragged lean and hungry set of wolves. Yet there was a dash about them that our northern men lacked."

"Before the sunlight faded, I walked all over the narrow field. All around lay the Confederate dead, clad in butternut. As I looked down on the poor pinched faces, all enmity died out. There was no secession in those rigid forms, nor in those fixed eyes staring at the sky. Clearly, it was not their war."

"It had been the bloodiest day in American history. The Union lost 2,108 dead, another 10,293 wounded or missing, double the number of casualties of D-Day, 82 years later. Lee lost fewer men, 10,318 casualties. But that was a quarter of his army."

"We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. We have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire."