April 9, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in our 31st episode of the Story of America Series, Dr. Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope, tells the story of the nadir of our nation's worst man-made disaster—and takes us through to its somber conclusion at a courthouse in Virginia.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next another
installment of our series about Us, the Story of America series,
with Hillsdale College professor an author of the terrific book
Land of Hope, Professor Bill McLay. By eighteen sixty two,
the Civil War was in full bloody swing. Casualties were
(00:30):
mounting by the day. No end was in sight, and America,
to many observers, looked as if it would soon become
permanently divided. Today Bill shares the story of the Civil
War from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg and to Appomattox. But first
a reading of Abraham Lincoln's lyceum speech from the Ken
(00:53):
Burns documentary The Civil War.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Quhence, shall we expect the approach of Dane? Shall some
Transatlantic giants step the earth and crush us at a blow?
Never all the armies of Europe and Asia could not
by force take a drink from the Ohio River, or
make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial
(01:19):
of a thousand years. If destruction be our lock, we
must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation
of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
It took one battle to reveal the depths of Burnside's problems.
Fredericksburg twelve thousand Union casualties to the Confederates five thousand.
By the close of eighteen sixty two, the morale of
the Union forces was very low. They found them entrenched
in a war that had lasted longer and was much
(02:03):
bloodier than even the sharpest prognosticator could have predicted, and
there was little hope of a short or easy path
to victory. Burnside found himself replaced by General Joseph Hooker.
Hooker was a tough character. He didn't earn the nickname
Fighting Joe for nothing. He was ambitious, which is what
(02:26):
you want.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
In the commander of an army.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
But he was also mean spirited and vindictive, which meant
the odds of things looking up for the Union Army
under his leadership were not great. In early May of
eighteen sixty three, these odds would be put to the
test in Chancellorsville, Virginia, where he encountered Lee's army, and
he did so with nearly one hundred and thirty thousand
(02:50):
Union troops, the largest assembly of troops in a battle
thus far in the war, but numbers alone don't win battles,
and those numbers didn't in Chancellorsville either. Hooker suffered a
terrible loss. If there was any good news at all,
it was that the Confederacy suffered more casualties thirteen thousand
(03:11):
than they experienced at Antietam. Perhaps a bigger loss for
the Confederates was the loss of one of their great
military talents, General Stonewall Jackson, who died from what is
known in the fog of war as friendly fire. General
Lee considered Jackson not just his top general but nearly irreplacement.
(03:34):
Jackson's death was a profound loss militarily, but even worse,
it was a profound blow to the morale of the
Confederate army. On the Union side, Chancellorsville was a shocking setback,
no doubt about it, But the impact on the Confederacy
and the massive losses they experienced were beginning to take
their toll also, and the most decisive moments of the
(03:56):
Civil War were soon to come. In July eighteen sixty three,
the Confederacy suffered two huge defeats, both of which would
change the outcome of the world. To the west, there
was Vicksburg, the Union had as its goal the control
of the mighty Mississippi River. By the spring of eighteen
(04:19):
sixty three, that was nearly complete. New Orleans had been
captured by the Union army and much of the river
had been also. What remained Vicksburg heavily fortified and standing
atop bluffs, which were when the river was low, nearly
two hundred feet in height. After a brutal seven week siege,
(04:43):
Grant captured Vicksburg on of all days, July fourth. The
Confederacy for all purposes had been effectively split in two.
Arkansas and Texas were now isolated, cut off from the Confine,
all but lost. The next big battle was in the
(05:03):
east at Gettysburg. General Lee had decided to take a
big gamble and once again invade the North.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
If he could win there, not far from a.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Great northern city like Philadelphia, and even closer to Washington
d c. Eighty five miles away, he might discourage enough
Northerners and make them willing to seek peace or even
OUIs Lincoln come the election of eighteen sixty four. The
three Day Battle would become the most important of the
(05:34):
Civil War and mark its turning point. A number of
efforts by General Lee including General Pickett's charged with fifteen
thousand troops, did not break Meads Union line. Lee's Confederate
army had suffered a monumental glow. Nearly four and a
(05:56):
half months later, on November nineteenth, President Lincoln visit Gettysburg.
It was the dedication ceremony for the Soldiers National Cemetery
near the Gettysburg Battlefield, and Lincoln delivered perhaps the greatest
speech of his presidency, one of the greatest speeches in
American history, one of the greatest.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Of all time.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
A mere two hundred and seventy two words long, it
was a masterpiece, a reverent and elegant statement of national
purpose and of national identity too. It was an urgent
plea to continue the war, providing the reasons why Americans
should continue the war. It provided a deeper and higher
(06:42):
meaning to the effort because the loss of life, the
massive loss of life, had to mean something. It was
a war to preserve the very idea of the democratic
republic that America symbolized and embodied and symbolized to the world.
(07:02):
Rather than talk more about this speech, I want to
let Lincoln's words do the work.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Here.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
(07:33):
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield
of that war. We've come to dedicate a portion of
that field as a final resting place for those who
here gave their lives that that nation might live. It's
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But
in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. We cannot consecrate,
(07:57):
We cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and
dead who struggle here have consecrated it far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note nor long remember what we say here, but it
can never forget what they did here. It is for us,
(08:19):
the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here and thus are so
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause
(08:40):
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,
that we here highly resolved that these dead shall not
have died in vain, that this nation under God shall
have a new birth of freedom, and the government of
the people by the people or the people, shall.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Not perish from the heroine.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Reports vary on the audience's reaction to the speech that
day in Gettysburg. Many newspapers didn't even mention it, but
over time it would become recognized as one of the
great speeches ever given. Sir Richton Churchill, himself a great
writer and no mean orator, would many years later called
(09:37):
the Gettysburg Address the ultimate expression of the majesty of
Shakespeare's language.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Very high praise that.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
When we come back more of the story of us,
the story of the Civil War. Here on our American stories,
and we returned to our American stories and the story
(10:12):
of the Civil War as part of our Story of
America series with Professor Bill McLay. When we left off,
Bill told the story of various generals. Lincoln had gone
through none with the right fit for the job. However,
he'd find his man in one of the most unlikely candidates,
Ulysses S.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Grant. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
He was not a brilliant general from central Casting, that's
for sure.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
He didn't look the part. He didn't dress the part.
He didn't even have the posture of the part.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
To his unimpressive look, routinely had stubble in his face, slouched,
often with cigar ashes all over.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
The front of his uniform.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
At West Point, he had the distinction of being in
the bottom half of his graduating class, And though he
served ably in the Mexican War, he ended up resigning
from the army with.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Rumors of alcohol problems.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
His return to civilian life was equally inauspicious.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
He failed at almost everything he tried.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
This great man of history during this time of his
life would end up selling leather goods at his father's
company in Illinois, but his destiny was not in sales.
Has God given talent leading men decisively in war. Grant
(11:46):
left his work at his father's company with the outbreak
of the war, and the rest, as they say, is history.
With all of that, and all of his well known
talents and victories, the man himself was something of a
mystery to the people around him. The great Civil War
historian Bruce Catton had this to say about the subject.
Most men who saw us Grant during the Civil War
(12:09):
felt there was something mysterious about him. He looked so
much like a completely ordinary man, and what he did
was so definitely out of the ordinary, that it seemed
he must have profound depths that were never visible from
the surface. Even General Sherman, who knew him as well
(12:29):
as anybody, once remarked he did not understand Grant, and
did not believe Grant understood himself. And that may indeed
have been what made Grant great, just as Lincoln's melancholy
nature may have allowed him to suffer through the calamities
of the war and prosecute it anyway. But one thing
(12:50):
is certain, Grant's effectiveness in battle is not up for dispute.
There was nothing fancy about Grant's approach to war.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
His was a brutal player. Fight.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Wear the enemy down, destroy your enemy's supply lines, starve
the enemy truths.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
This is war.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
This means the use of large masses of troops, pounding away.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Relentlessly at any resistance.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
And Grant refused to retreat, and he would, if necessary,
abandoned his own supply lines and live off his enemies
land and crops. Just to keep the momentum going, to
keep on offense, and Grant understood that winning would also
mean taking real casualties on his own side, but with
the purpose of relentlessy, moving forward and eroding the abilities
(13:46):
of the enemy to fight and reducing the enemy's capabilities
and his will until they were destroyed. This approach could
not even have been imagined when the Civil War began,
but this is what was needed victory. The goal of
this war was eventual reunification of the opposing sides, and
(14:07):
for that to happen, the war had to end, and
Grant and his tactics where the weight ended. This was
the first glimpse into what war would become.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
War as a.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Total mobilization of the entire talents and resources of every
society engaged in war. I mean total the economy, the
transportation system, the social capital, even the culture.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Of the society. The goal of war.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
From the Civil War on was not merely defeating the
opposing army in the field of battle. It was the
destruction of his willingness and capacity to fight. Grant was
insistent nothing would deter him from driving his troops southward.
(14:57):
While Grant was taking the fight to these, Army General Gherman,
with a force of nearly one hundred thousand, left Chattanooga, Tennessee,
for Atlanta, Georgia, and then across that state to the
port city of Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean. It would
later become known as Sherman's March, and it was a
textbook operation from beginning to end, filled with the logistics
(15:19):
and logic.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Of total war.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
And few generals understood that logic and those logistics better
than Sherman, who cut a swath across the peach Stree
State nearly sixty miles wide. Well, all of this was
happening another presidential election, the election of eighteen sixty four
was impending. Talk about a high stakes election, and given
(15:46):
America's constitutional system, not even a civil war could throw it.
An upcoming election, Lincoln could not, by any means assume
a victory, let alone take victory for granted. Far from it,
become a lightning rout of sorts, taking heat from a
public that was weary of this war. Even in his
(16:06):
own Republican party, there was dissent to the more radical
wing of the party saw Lincoln as compromised or at
least insufficiently pro abolition and worried that he'd allow the
South to return to the Union and do so without
an absolute end of slavery. Luckily for Lincoln, the Democratic
Party was split two. The pro war Democrats were not
(16:28):
after Lincoln's vision, but merely a win and a return
to the America of eighteen sixty. The Copperhead portion of
the party, named after the venomous snake, hated the war
and wanted it ended abruptly.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
They were quite.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Willing to do so on terms of South would agree to.
They saw Lincoln as a kind of tyrant, and some
of the Copperheads were borderline Confederate sympathizers.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
That insult to injury.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
The Democrats nominated General McClellan, whom Lincoln had hired and
fired as commander of the Union Army.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
But despite the near crack.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Up in the Democratic Party in its profound divisions, a
Lincoln victory was not of oregone conclusion. Indeed, before Grant's
win in Petersburg and Sherman's victory in Atlanta, Lincoln was
convinced he would lose, which must have been one tough
fact to face. That all he'd been through, all he
in the country, had suffered might have been for nothing.
(17:26):
Jo only proves that as we study history, we must
always remind ourselves that, just as today, nobody knows what's
going to happen next. Luckily for Lincoln, that string of
victories by Grant and Sherman could not have come at
a better time, and by November of eighteen sixty four
his reelection worries had all but vanished. Indeed, he did
(17:49):
something quite brilliant. Though he ran as a Republican, he
ran actually as a National Union candidate, a name he
concocted to win Democrats voters along the border states who
could not and would not vote for a Republican, And
as part of this, Lincoln cleverly chose as his running
mate a Democrat, a Tennesseean named Andrew Johnson as his
(18:13):
vice president, and Lincoln won in a landslide. Though Lincoln
is almost universally admired today, that was not the case
in eighteen sixty four. And it wasn't just the Southern
Whers who hated him. Even some of his own people
and associates found his temperament a bit on the dull side.
(18:36):
Many more poked fun at him for his crude sense
of humor. Some went so far as to call him
a first rate second rate man, and others described him
as a baboon. Real life heroes don't look like those
we see in Hollywood movies. There are no glamorous love partners,
(18:57):
no sweeping sunsets and lush orchesss, no standing ovations accompanying
Lincoln's or deals. It must have been a very hard, lonely,
and sad business, much of the time being Abraham Lincoln
in a personal sense.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
When we come back more of the story of us,
the story of the Civil War here on our American stories,
(19:38):
and we returned to our American stories and the final
portion of our story of the Civil War from Fredericksburg
to Gettysburg to Appomattox. It was part of our Story
of America series with Professor Bill McLay let's return to
the story Take it Away, Bill.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Though the war was not yet over, victory was near
by the close of eighteen sixty four, Sherman had captured
Savannah and soon thereafter marched his troops to Columbia, South
Carolina and burned the city down. He kept pressing and
advancing and staying on offense relentlessly through North Carolina. While
(20:20):
Grant continued to put pressure on Lee in Petersburg. The
Confederacy was not merely on the defensive. It was all
but helpless against the overwhelming and relentless attacks of the
Grant led Union army. In early March of eighteen sixty four,
Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
And it was another classic.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
In it, he pondered the larger meaning of the Civil
War and began to lay the foundation for what would
come afterward.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
We know that.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Lincoln was becoming increasingly reflective about what God's will might
have been. In all of this, Lincoln had searched the
Bible for answers to the very big questions about destiny
and meaning. Rather than discuss the speech here it is
weighing in at a mirror seven hundred and one words.
(21:13):
But what profound and well crafted. Once here's how it began,
fellow countrymen. At this second, appearing to take the oath
of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an
extended address than there was at the first. Then a
statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued
seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four
(21:36):
years during which public declarations have been constantly called forth
on every point and phase of the great contest, which
still absorbs the attention and grosses the energies of the nation,
little that.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Is new could be presented.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends,
is as well known to the public as to my elf,
And it is I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to
all with.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
High hopes for the future.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
No prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the
occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war, all dreaded it,
all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was
being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the
(22:29):
Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking
to destroy it without war, seeking to dissolve the union
and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but
one of them would make war rather than let the
nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than
(22:51):
let it perish, and the war came. One eighth of
the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over
the Union, but localized in the southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
(23:14):
that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.
Their strength and perpetuate and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the union, even
by war. While the government claimed no right to do
more than restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party
expected for the war the magnitude or duration which it
(23:36):
has already attained. Neither anticipated the cause of the conflict
might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease.
Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less
fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray
to the same God, and each invokes his aid against
(24:00):
the other. It may seem strange that any men should
dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their
bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let
us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers
of both could not be answered. That of neither has
(24:22):
been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. Woe
unto the world because of offenses, For it must needs
be that offenses come, but woe to that man by
whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American
slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence
of God must needs come, but which having continued through
(24:46):
his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that
he gives to both north and South this terrible war,
as the woe do to those by whom the offense came.
Shall we discern the in any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe
(25:06):
to him. Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet if God wills that it continue, until all the
wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years
of the unrequited toil shall be sung, and until every
drop of blood drawn with a lash shall be paid
(25:29):
by another drawn with the sword. As was said three
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous, altogether, with
(25:50):
malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right, as God gives us to see the right
let us strive to finish the work we are in,
to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow
and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and
(26:12):
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with
all nations. A mere month after that speech, Richmond fell
in early April, and mere days later, on April ninth,
after a final flurry of Confederate resistance, Lee did what
(26:34):
any good general would do in his place, a surrender.
The scene was dignified and sad, and brought together two
men who'd known one another but had not seen each
other in over twenty years. Lee arrived first, wearing his
best and most elegant uniform, and was soon joined by Grant,
(26:57):
less helegant, always a bit un There was respect shown
on both sides and courtesies too, and Grant graciously allowed
Lee's officers to keep their side arms and allowed the
men to keep their horses for the spring plantings at
their family farms. Four days later, Lee's army of twenty
(27:19):
eight thousand men marched in and surrendered their arms. General
Joshua Chamberlain wrote about that moment many years later before us,
in proud humiliation, stood the embodiment of manhood, men whom
neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster,
nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve, standing before us,
(27:43):
now thin, warm and famished, but erect, with eyes looking
level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as
no other bond. Was not such manhood to be welcomed
back into the Union, and so tested and assured on
our part. Not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll
(28:06):
of a drum, Not a cheer, nor a word, nor
whisper of vainglorying, nor motion of man standing again at
the order, but an odd stillness rather, and breath holding,
as if it were.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
The passing of the dead.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
The Civil War remains to this day the bloodiest and
deadliest conflict in American history, a million and a half
casualties on both sides and at least six hundred and
twenty thousand deaths. Quite possibly even more, it's the equivalent
of six million deaths today's population, staggering. One in four
(28:49):
soldiers who went to war never came home for years
and decades to come. In every hamlet, in village and
city in America one with encounter men bearing the scars
and wounds of war, a reminder of the price paid
to end the worst man made disaster in American history.
But the celebrations would not last long. Just as the
(29:18):
Moses of the Bible was denied entry into the Promised Land,
Lincoln would not get a chance to heal a broken
nation and watch in healing and witness a new birth
of freedom for which he had labored and suffered for
so very long. What would Lincoln's leadership have looked like
after the war. We'll never know the answer to that question.
(29:42):
We did know that winning the war would have been
impossible without him, but winning the piece that task would
prove to be just as hard, maybe even harder.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
And a special thanks as always to Professor Bill McLay
who teaches at Hillsdale and he's the author of the
terrific book Land of Hope and also the Young Readers edition.
Go to Amazon wherever you buy your books, get one,
get two copies and read them to your kids, read
them yourself. The story of us here on our American
Stories
And we returned to our American stories. Up next another
installment of our series about Us, the Story of America series,
with Hillsdale College professor an author of the terrific book
Land of Hope, Professor Bill McLay. By eighteen sixty two,
the Civil War was in full bloody swing. Casualties were
(00:30):
mounting by the day. No end was in sight, and America,
to many observers, looked as if it would soon become
permanently divided. Today Bill shares the story of the Civil
War from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg and to Appomattox. But first
a reading of Abraham Lincoln's lyceum speech from the Ken
(00:53):
Burns documentary The Civil War.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Quhence, shall we expect the approach of Dane? Shall some
Transatlantic giants step the earth and crush us at a blow?
Never all the armies of Europe and Asia could not
by force take a drink from the Ohio River, or
make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial
(01:19):
of a thousand years. If destruction be our lock, we
must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation
of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
It took one battle to reveal the depths of Burnside's problems.
Fredericksburg twelve thousand Union casualties to the Confederates five thousand.
By the close of eighteen sixty two, the morale of
the Union forces was very low. They found them entrenched
in a war that had lasted longer and was much
(02:03):
bloodier than even the sharpest prognosticator could have predicted, and
there was little hope of a short or easy path
to victory. Burnside found himself replaced by General Joseph Hooker.
Hooker was a tough character. He didn't earn the nickname
Fighting Joe for nothing. He was ambitious, which is what
(02:26):
you want.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
In the commander of an army.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
But he was also mean spirited and vindictive, which meant
the odds of things looking up for the Union Army
under his leadership were not great. In early May of
eighteen sixty three, these odds would be put to the
test in Chancellorsville, Virginia, where he encountered Lee's army, and
he did so with nearly one hundred and thirty thousand
(02:50):
Union troops, the largest assembly of troops in a battle
thus far in the war, but numbers alone don't win battles,
and those numbers didn't in Chancellorsville either. Hooker suffered a
terrible loss. If there was any good news at all,
it was that the Confederacy suffered more casualties thirteen thousand
(03:11):
than they experienced at Antietam. Perhaps a bigger loss for
the Confederates was the loss of one of their great
military talents, General Stonewall Jackson, who died from what is
known in the fog of war as friendly fire. General
Lee considered Jackson not just his top general but nearly irreplacement.
(03:34):
Jackson's death was a profound loss militarily, but even worse,
it was a profound blow to the morale of the
Confederate army. On the Union side, Chancellorsville was a shocking setback,
no doubt about it, But the impact on the Confederacy
and the massive losses they experienced were beginning to take
their toll also, and the most decisive moments of the
(03:56):
Civil War were soon to come. In July eighteen sixty three,
the Confederacy suffered two huge defeats, both of which would
change the outcome of the world. To the west, there
was Vicksburg, the Union had as its goal the control
of the mighty Mississippi River. By the spring of eighteen
(04:19):
sixty three, that was nearly complete. New Orleans had been
captured by the Union army and much of the river
had been also. What remained Vicksburg heavily fortified and standing
atop bluffs, which were when the river was low, nearly
two hundred feet in height. After a brutal seven week siege,
(04:43):
Grant captured Vicksburg on of all days, July fourth. The
Confederacy for all purposes had been effectively split in two.
Arkansas and Texas were now isolated, cut off from the Confine,
all but lost. The next big battle was in the
(05:03):
east at Gettysburg. General Lee had decided to take a
big gamble and once again invade the North.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
If he could win there, not far from a.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Great northern city like Philadelphia, and even closer to Washington
d c. Eighty five miles away, he might discourage enough
Northerners and make them willing to seek peace or even
OUIs Lincoln come the election of eighteen sixty four. The
three Day Battle would become the most important of the
(05:34):
Civil War and mark its turning point. A number of
efforts by General Lee including General Pickett's charged with fifteen
thousand troops, did not break Meads Union line. Lee's Confederate
army had suffered a monumental glow. Nearly four and a
(05:56):
half months later, on November nineteenth, President Lincoln visit Gettysburg.
It was the dedication ceremony for the Soldiers National Cemetery
near the Gettysburg Battlefield, and Lincoln delivered perhaps the greatest
speech of his presidency, one of the greatest speeches in
American history, one of the greatest.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Of all time.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
A mere two hundred and seventy two words long, it
was a masterpiece, a reverent and elegant statement of national
purpose and of national identity too. It was an urgent
plea to continue the war, providing the reasons why Americans
should continue the war. It provided a deeper and higher
(06:42):
meaning to the effort because the loss of life, the
massive loss of life, had to mean something. It was
a war to preserve the very idea of the democratic
republic that America symbolized and embodied and symbolized to the world.
(07:02):
Rather than talk more about this speech, I want to
let Lincoln's words do the work.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Here.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
(07:33):
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield
of that war. We've come to dedicate a portion of
that field as a final resting place for those who
here gave their lives that that nation might live. It's
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But
in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. We cannot consecrate,
(07:57):
We cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and
dead who struggle here have consecrated it far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note nor long remember what we say here, but it
can never forget what they did here. It is for us,
(08:19):
the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here and thus are so
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause
(08:40):
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,
that we here highly resolved that these dead shall not
have died in vain, that this nation under God shall
have a new birth of freedom, and the government of
the people by the people or the people, shall.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
Not perish from the heroine.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Reports vary on the audience's reaction to the speech that
day in Gettysburg. Many newspapers didn't even mention it, but
over time it would become recognized as one of the
great speeches ever given. Sir Richton Churchill, himself a great
writer and no mean orator, would many years later called
(09:37):
the Gettysburg Address the ultimate expression of the majesty of
Shakespeare's language.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Very high praise that.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
When we come back more of the story of us,
the story of the Civil War. Here on our American stories,
and we returned to our American stories and the story
(10:12):
of the Civil War as part of our Story of
America series with Professor Bill McLay. When we left off,
Bill told the story of various generals. Lincoln had gone
through none with the right fit for the job. However,
he'd find his man in one of the most unlikely candidates,
Ulysses S.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Grant. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
He was not a brilliant general from central Casting, that's
for sure.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
He didn't look the part. He didn't dress the part.
He didn't even have the posture of the part.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
To his unimpressive look, routinely had stubble in his face, slouched,
often with cigar ashes all over.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
The front of his uniform.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
At West Point, he had the distinction of being in
the bottom half of his graduating class, And though he
served ably in the Mexican War, he ended up resigning
from the army with.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Rumors of alcohol problems.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
His return to civilian life was equally inauspicious.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
He failed at almost everything he tried.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
This great man of history during this time of his
life would end up selling leather goods at his father's
company in Illinois, but his destiny was not in sales.
Has God given talent leading men decisively in war. Grant
(11:46):
left his work at his father's company with the outbreak
of the war, and the rest, as they say, is history.
With all of that, and all of his well known
talents and victories, the man himself was something of a
mystery to the people around him. The great Civil War
historian Bruce Catton had this to say about the subject.
Most men who saw us Grant during the Civil War
(12:09):
felt there was something mysterious about him. He looked so
much like a completely ordinary man, and what he did
was so definitely out of the ordinary, that it seemed
he must have profound depths that were never visible from
the surface. Even General Sherman, who knew him as well
(12:29):
as anybody, once remarked he did not understand Grant, and
did not believe Grant understood himself. And that may indeed
have been what made Grant great, just as Lincoln's melancholy
nature may have allowed him to suffer through the calamities
of the war and prosecute it anyway. But one thing
(12:50):
is certain, Grant's effectiveness in battle is not up for dispute.
There was nothing fancy about Grant's approach to war.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
His was a brutal player. Fight.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Wear the enemy down, destroy your enemy's supply lines, starve
the enemy truths.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
This is war.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
This means the use of large masses of troops, pounding away.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Relentlessly at any resistance.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
And Grant refused to retreat, and he would, if necessary,
abandoned his own supply lines and live off his enemies
land and crops. Just to keep the momentum going, to
keep on offense, and Grant understood that winning would also
mean taking real casualties on his own side, but with
the purpose of relentlessy, moving forward and eroding the abilities
(13:46):
of the enemy to fight and reducing the enemy's capabilities
and his will until they were destroyed. This approach could
not even have been imagined when the Civil War began,
but this is what was needed victory. The goal of
this war was eventual reunification of the opposing sides, and
(14:07):
for that to happen, the war had to end, and
Grant and his tactics where the weight ended. This was
the first glimpse into what war would become.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
War as a.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Total mobilization of the entire talents and resources of every
society engaged in war. I mean total the economy, the
transportation system, the social capital, even the culture.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Of the society. The goal of war.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
From the Civil War on was not merely defeating the
opposing army in the field of battle. It was the
destruction of his willingness and capacity to fight. Grant was
insistent nothing would deter him from driving his troops southward.
(14:57):
While Grant was taking the fight to these, Army General Gherman,
with a force of nearly one hundred thousand, left Chattanooga, Tennessee,
for Atlanta, Georgia, and then across that state to the
port city of Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean. It would
later become known as Sherman's March, and it was a
textbook operation from beginning to end, filled with the logistics
(15:19):
and logic.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Of total war.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
And few generals understood that logic and those logistics better
than Sherman, who cut a swath across the peach Stree
State nearly sixty miles wide. Well, all of this was
happening another presidential election, the election of eighteen sixty four
was impending. Talk about a high stakes election, and given
(15:46):
America's constitutional system, not even a civil war could throw it.
An upcoming election, Lincoln could not, by any means assume
a victory, let alone take victory for granted. Far from it,
become a lightning rout of sorts, taking heat from a
public that was weary of this war. Even in his
(16:06):
own Republican party, there was dissent to the more radical
wing of the party saw Lincoln as compromised or at
least insufficiently pro abolition and worried that he'd allow the
South to return to the Union and do so without
an absolute end of slavery. Luckily for Lincoln, the Democratic
Party was split two. The pro war Democrats were not
(16:28):
after Lincoln's vision, but merely a win and a return
to the America of eighteen sixty. The Copperhead portion of
the party, named after the venomous snake, hated the war
and wanted it ended abruptly.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
They were quite.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Willing to do so on terms of South would agree to.
They saw Lincoln as a kind of tyrant, and some
of the Copperheads were borderline Confederate sympathizers.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
That insult to injury.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
The Democrats nominated General McClellan, whom Lincoln had hired and
fired as commander of the Union Army.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
But despite the near crack.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Up in the Democratic Party in its profound divisions, a
Lincoln victory was not of oregone conclusion. Indeed, before Grant's
win in Petersburg and Sherman's victory in Atlanta, Lincoln was
convinced he would lose, which must have been one tough
fact to face. That all he'd been through, all he
in the country, had suffered might have been for nothing.
(17:26):
Jo only proves that as we study history, we must
always remind ourselves that, just as today, nobody knows what's
going to happen next. Luckily for Lincoln, that string of
victories by Grant and Sherman could not have come at
a better time, and by November of eighteen sixty four
his reelection worries had all but vanished. Indeed, he did
(17:49):
something quite brilliant. Though he ran as a Republican, he
ran actually as a National Union candidate, a name he
concocted to win Democrats voters along the border states who
could not and would not vote for a Republican, And
as part of this, Lincoln cleverly chose as his running
mate a Democrat, a Tennesseean named Andrew Johnson as his
(18:13):
vice president, and Lincoln won in a landslide. Though Lincoln
is almost universally admired today, that was not the case
in eighteen sixty four. And it wasn't just the Southern
Whers who hated him. Even some of his own people
and associates found his temperament a bit on the dull side.
(18:36):
Many more poked fun at him for his crude sense
of humor. Some went so far as to call him
a first rate second rate man, and others described him
as a baboon. Real life heroes don't look like those
we see in Hollywood movies. There are no glamorous love partners,
(18:57):
no sweeping sunsets and lush orchesss, no standing ovations accompanying
Lincoln's or deals. It must have been a very hard, lonely,
and sad business, much of the time being Abraham Lincoln
in a personal sense.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
When we come back more of the story of us,
the story of the Civil War here on our American stories,
(19:38):
and we returned to our American stories and the final
portion of our story of the Civil War from Fredericksburg
to Gettysburg to Appomattox. It was part of our Story
of America series with Professor Bill McLay let's return to
the story Take it Away, Bill.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Though the war was not yet over, victory was near
by the close of eighteen sixty four, Sherman had captured
Savannah and soon thereafter marched his troops to Columbia, South
Carolina and burned the city down. He kept pressing and
advancing and staying on offense relentlessly through North Carolina. While
(20:20):
Grant continued to put pressure on Lee in Petersburg. The
Confederacy was not merely on the defensive. It was all
but helpless against the overwhelming and relentless attacks of the
Grant led Union army. In early March of eighteen sixty four,
Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
And it was another classic.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
In it, he pondered the larger meaning of the Civil
War and began to lay the foundation for what would
come afterward.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
We know that.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Lincoln was becoming increasingly reflective about what God's will might
have been. In all of this, Lincoln had searched the
Bible for answers to the very big questions about destiny
and meaning. Rather than discuss the speech here it is
weighing in at a mirror seven hundred and one words.
(21:13):
But what profound and well crafted. Once here's how it began,
fellow countrymen. At this second, appearing to take the oath
of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an
extended address than there was at the first. Then a
statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued
seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four
(21:36):
years during which public declarations have been constantly called forth
on every point and phase of the great contest, which
still absorbs the attention and grosses the energies of the nation,
little that.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Is new could be presented.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends,
is as well known to the public as to my elf,
And it is I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to
all with.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
High hopes for the future.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
No prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the
occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war, all dreaded it,
all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was
being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the
(22:29):
Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking
to destroy it without war, seeking to dissolve the union
and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but
one of them would make war rather than let the
nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than
(22:51):
let it perish, and the war came. One eighth of
the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over
the Union, but localized in the southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
(23:14):
that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.
Their strength and perpetuate and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the union, even
by war. While the government claimed no right to do
more than restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party
expected for the war the magnitude or duration which it
(23:36):
has already attained. Neither anticipated the cause of the conflict
might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease.
Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less
fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray
to the same God, and each invokes his aid against
(24:00):
the other. It may seem strange that any men should
dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their
bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let
us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers
of both could not be answered. That of neither has
(24:22):
been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. Woe
unto the world because of offenses, For it must needs
be that offenses come, but woe to that man by
whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American
slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence
of God must needs come, but which having continued through
(24:46):
his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that
he gives to both north and South this terrible war,
as the woe do to those by whom the offense came.
Shall we discern the in any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe
(25:06):
to him. Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet if God wills that it continue, until all the
wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years
of the unrequited toil shall be sung, and until every
drop of blood drawn with a lash shall be paid
(25:29):
by another drawn with the sword. As was said three
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous, altogether, with
(25:50):
malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right, as God gives us to see the right
let us strive to finish the work we are in,
to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow
and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and
(26:12):
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with
all nations. A mere month after that speech, Richmond fell
in early April, and mere days later, on April ninth,
after a final flurry of Confederate resistance, Lee did what
(26:34):
any good general would do in his place, a surrender.
The scene was dignified and sad, and brought together two
men who'd known one another but had not seen each
other in over twenty years. Lee arrived first, wearing his
best and most elegant uniform, and was soon joined by Grant,
(26:57):
less helegant, always a bit un There was respect shown
on both sides and courtesies too, and Grant graciously allowed
Lee's officers to keep their side arms and allowed the
men to keep their horses for the spring plantings at
their family farms. Four days later, Lee's army of twenty
(27:19):
eight thousand men marched in and surrendered their arms. General
Joshua Chamberlain wrote about that moment many years later before us,
in proud humiliation, stood the embodiment of manhood, men whom
neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster,
nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve, standing before us,
(27:43):
now thin, warm and famished, but erect, with eyes looking
level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as
no other bond. Was not such manhood to be welcomed
back into the Union, and so tested and assured on
our part. Not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll
(28:06):
of a drum, Not a cheer, nor a word, nor
whisper of vainglorying, nor motion of man standing again at
the order, but an odd stillness rather, and breath holding,
as if it were.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
The passing of the dead.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
The Civil War remains to this day the bloodiest and
deadliest conflict in American history, a million and a half
casualties on both sides and at least six hundred and
twenty thousand deaths. Quite possibly even more, it's the equivalent
of six million deaths today's population, staggering. One in four
(28:49):
soldiers who went to war never came home for years
and decades to come. In every hamlet, in village and
city in America one with encounter men bearing the scars
and wounds of war, a reminder of the price paid
to end the worst man made disaster in American history.
But the celebrations would not last long. Just as the
(29:18):
Moses of the Bible was denied entry into the Promised Land,
Lincoln would not get a chance to heal a broken
nation and watch in healing and witness a new birth
of freedom for which he had labored and suffered for
so very long. What would Lincoln's leadership have looked like
after the war. We'll never know the answer to that question.
(29:42):
We did know that winning the war would have been
impossible without him, but winning the piece that task would
prove to be just as hard, maybe even harder.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
And a special thanks as always to Professor Bill McLay
who teaches at Hillsdale and he's the author of the
terrific book Land of Hope and also the Young Readers edition.
Go to Amazon wherever you buy your books, get one,
get two copies and read them to your kids, read
them yourself. The story of us here on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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