The Civil War. Eps. 7-9

Episode of Series “The Civil War”.
MOST HALLOWED GROUND: The summer of 1864 is the North’s darkest hour and public opinion turns strongly against President Lincoln and the war. That autumn the presidential campaign sets Lincoln against his old commanding general, George McClellan, now the Democrat’s “peace” candidate. Even Lincoln believes his re-election unlikely, but dramatic eleventh-hour Union victories change the odds. Lincoln wins in a landslide and the Confederacy’s last hope for independence dies. WAR IS ALL HELL: The Confederacy is crumbling. Sherman and his army burn Atlanta and march eastwards. Grant breaks though the defences at Petersburg and advances on Richmond. Confederate forces set fire to their capital city and abandon it. Lee flees westward, but at Appomattox Court House, outnumbered five-to-one, he is finally surrounded by Union forces. Robert E. Lee surrenders what is left of his army to Ulysses S. Grant. The Union terms are generous; reunification of the nation has begun. THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: At Lee’s surrender, church bells peal throughout the North. The South is in ruin and despair. Unable to accept that the war is over, the actor John Wilkes Booth steals into a Washington theatre and puts a bullet into the brain of Abraham Lincoln. The nation’s grief knows no bounds; even Southerners are appalled, and the isolated fighting stutters to a halt. It is time to rebuild: “to listen”, as Lincoln implored four years before, “to the better angels of our nature”. The episode recounts the fates of the many players, great and small in the enormous drama which redefined the meaning of freedom in America. Narrated by David McCullough.