October 24, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in Our 31st episode of The Story of America Series, Professor Bill McClay conveys in mercifully short order the brutal fight, and the haunting pronouncements, of the American Civil War.
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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.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
War, quence, shall we expect the approach of day? 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,
(01:17):
or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the
trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot,
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.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
They found them.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Themselves entrenched in a war that had lasted longer and
was much 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
(02:22):
Fighting Joe for nothing. He was ambitious, which is what
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.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
In early May of eighteen sixty three.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
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 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.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Hooker suffered a terrible loss.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
If there was any good news at all, it was
that the Confederacy suffered more casualties thirteen thousand than they
experienced at Antietam. Perhaps a bigger loss for the Confederacy
was the loss of one of their great military talents,
General Stonewall Jackson, who died from what is known in
the fog of.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
War as friendly fire.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
General Lee considered Jackson not just his top general but
nearly irreplacement. 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
(03:52):
beginning to take their toll also, and the most decisive
moments of the Civil War were soon to come. Fuve
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
(04:14):
goal the control of the mighty Mississippi River. By the
spring of eighteen 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
(04:34):
was low, nearly two hundred feet in height. After a
brutal seven week siege, Grant captured Vicksburg.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Of all days July fourth.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
The Confederacy for all purposes had been effectively split in two.
Arkansas and Texas were now isolated, cut off from the
all but lost. The next big battle was in the
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.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
A 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
(05:34):
the Civil War in mark its turning point. A number
of efforts by General Lee, including General Pickett's charged with
fifteen thousand troops, did not break.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Meads Union line.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Lee's Confederate army had suffered a monumental glow. Nearly four
and a half months later, on November nineteenth, President Lincoln
visit it did Gettysburg. It was the dedication ceremony for
the soldiers National Cemetery near the Gettysburg Battlefield, and Lincoln
(06:09):
delivered perhaps the greatest speech of his presidency, one of
the greatest speeches in American history, one of the greatest
of all time. 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
(06:31):
was an urgent plea to continue the war, providing the
reasons why Americans should continue the war. It provided a
deeper and higher meaning to the effort because the loss
of life, the massive loss.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Of life, had to mean something. It was a war
to preserve.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
The very idea of the democratic republic that America symbolized
and embodied and symbolized to the world. Rather than talk
more about this speech, I want to let Lincoln's.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Words do the work. 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
known 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 not
(09:02):
perish from the Eraine reports vary on the audience's reaction
to the speech that day in Gettysburg. Many newspapers didn't
(09:22):
even mention it, but over time it would become recognized
as one of the great speeches ever given. Sir Winston Churchill,
himself a great writer and no mean orator, would many
years later call the Gettysburg address the ultimate expression of
the majesty of Shakespeare's language.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Very high praise.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
That when we come back more of the story of us,
the story of the Civil War. Here on our American story,
(10:09):
and we returned to our American stories and the story
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.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
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 this unimpressive looking brutteely had stubble in his face,
slouched often with cigar ashes all over the front of
his uniform. 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 rumors of alcohol problems.
(11:16):
His return to civilian life was equally inauspicious. He failed
at almost everything he tried. 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
(11:41):
men decisively in war. Grant 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
(12:04):
say about the subject. Most men who saw us Grant
during the Civil War felt there was something.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Mysterious about him.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
He looked so much like a completely ordinary man, and
what he did was so definitely out of the ordinary,
that it seems he must have profound depths that were
never visible from the surface. Even General Sherman, who knew
him as well as anybody, once remarked he did not
(12:32):
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 is certain, Grant's effectiveness in battle is
(12:53):
not up for dispute. There was nothing fancy about Grant's.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Approach to war. This 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 relentlessly at any resistance. And Grant refused to retreat,
and he would, if necessary, abandon his own supply lines
and live.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Off his enemies.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
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
of the enemy to fight and reducing the enemy's capabilities
(13:50):
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 chief victory. The goal
of this war was eventual reunification of the opposing sides,
and for that to happen, the war had to end,
and Grant and his tactics where the way it ended.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
This was the first glimpse into what war would become.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
War as a 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 of the society. The goal of war from the
Civil War on was not merely defeating the opposing army
(14:39):
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. While Grant
was taking the fight to these army generals. Sherman, with
(15:01):
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
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,
he become a lightning rout of sorts, taking heat from
a public that was weary of this war. Even in
his own Republican party, there was dissent to the more
(16:10):
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 after Lincoln's vision, but merely a win and a
(16:31):
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. They were quite 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 US Union Army. But despite
the near crackup 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
(17:14):
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.
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
(17:38):
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
something quite brilliant. Though he ran as a Republican, he
ran actually as a National Union candidate, a name he
concocted to win Democrats and voters along the border states
(18:02):
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 vice president, and Lincoln won in a landslide. Though
(18:23):
Lincoln is almost universally admired today, that was not the
case in eighteen sixty four. And it wasn't just the
Southerners who hated him. Even some of his own people
and associates found his temperament a bit on the dull side.
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
(18:46):
as a baboon. Real life heroes don't look like those
we see in Hollywood movies. There are no glamorous love partners,
no sweeping sunsets in lush ors, no standing ovations accompanying
Lincoln's or deals. It must have been a very hard, lonely,
(19:08):
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 Appomatox. 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, and it.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
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. We know that Lincoln was becoming increasingly reflective
about what God's will might have been. In all of this,
Lincoln had served the Bible for answers to the very
(21:02):
big questions about destiny and meaning. Rather than discuss the
speech here it is weighing in it at a mirror
seven hundred and one words. 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
(21:24):
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 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
(21:47):
grosses the energies.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Of the nation.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Little that is new could be presented. The progress of
our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
well known to the public as to my and it
is I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all with
high hopes for the future. No prediction in regard to
it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four
(22:15):
years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending
civil war, all dreaded it, all sought to avert it.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
While the inaugural.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to
saving the 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
(22:46):
the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
And the war came.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
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 that this interest was somehow the cause of
the war. Their strength and perpetuate and extend this interest
(23:21):
was the object for which the insurgents would rend the
union even by war.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
While the government claimed no right to.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Do more than restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither
party expected for the war the magnitude or duration which
it 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
(23:50):
result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible
and pray to the same God, and each invokes his
aid against 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.
(24:13):
But let us judge not that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of
neither has 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
(24:35):
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 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.
(24:58):
Shall we discern in any departure from those divine attributes
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Fondly do we hope.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
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 unrequited toil shall be sung, and
until every drop of blood drawn with a lash shall
(25:29):
be paid 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,
(25:50):
with malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right, as God gives us to see the
right let us strive on to finish the work we
are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care
for him who shall have borne the battle.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
And for his widow and his orphan, to do all
which may achieve and cherish.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
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 any good general
(26:35):
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 less Hellgan,
(26:58):
always a bit unkempt. 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 eight thousand men
(27:19):
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
(27:40):
bend from their resolve, standing before us, now thin, warm
and famished, but erect, with eyes looking level into ours,
waking memories that bound us together as.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
No other bond.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
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 of a drum, Not
a cheer nor word, nor whisper or vainglorying, nor motion
of men standing again at the order, but an odd
(28:17):
stillness rather and breath holding, as if it were.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
The passing of the dead.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
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 when 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.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
We did know that winning the war.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
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 Reader's 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.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
War, quence, shall we expect the approach of day? 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,
(01:17):
or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the
trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot,
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.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
They found them.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Themselves entrenched in a war that had lasted longer and
was much 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
(02:22):
Fighting Joe for nothing. He was ambitious, which is what
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.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
In early May of eighteen sixty three.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
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 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.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Hooker suffered a terrible loss.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
If there was any good news at all, it was
that the Confederacy suffered more casualties thirteen thousand than they
experienced at Antietam. Perhaps a bigger loss for the Confederacy
was the loss of one of their great military talents,
General Stonewall Jackson, who died from what is known in
the fog of.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
War as friendly fire.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
General Lee considered Jackson not just his top general but
nearly irreplacement. 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
(03:52):
beginning to take their toll also, and the most decisive
moments of the Civil War were soon to come. Fuve
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
(04:14):
goal the control of the mighty Mississippi River. By the
spring of eighteen 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
(04:34):
was low, nearly two hundred feet in height. After a
brutal seven week siege, Grant captured Vicksburg.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Of all days July fourth.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
The Confederacy for all purposes had been effectively split in two.
Arkansas and Texas were now isolated, cut off from the
all but lost. The next big battle was in the
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.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
A 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
(05:34):
the Civil War in mark its turning point. A number
of efforts by General Lee, including General Pickett's charged with
fifteen thousand troops, did not break.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Meads Union line.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Lee's Confederate army had suffered a monumental glow. Nearly four
and a half months later, on November nineteenth, President Lincoln
visit it did Gettysburg. It was the dedication ceremony for
the soldiers National Cemetery near the Gettysburg Battlefield, and Lincoln
(06:09):
delivered perhaps the greatest speech of his presidency, one of
the greatest speeches in American history, one of the greatest
of all time. 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
(06:31):
was an urgent plea to continue the war, providing the
reasons why Americans should continue the war. It provided a
deeper and higher meaning to the effort because the loss
of life, the massive loss.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Of life, had to mean something. It was a war
to preserve.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
The very idea of the democratic republic that America symbolized
and embodied and symbolized to the world. Rather than talk
more about this speech, I want to let Lincoln's.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Words do the work. 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
known 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 not
(09:02):
perish from the Eraine reports vary on the audience's reaction
to the speech that day in Gettysburg. Many newspapers didn't
(09:22):
even mention it, but over time it would become recognized
as one of the great speeches ever given. Sir Winston Churchill,
himself a great writer and no mean orator, would many
years later call the Gettysburg address the ultimate expression of
the majesty of Shakespeare's language.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Very high praise.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
That when we come back more of the story of us,
the story of the Civil War. Here on our American story,
(10:09):
and we returned to our American stories and the story
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.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
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 this unimpressive looking brutteely had stubble in his face,
slouched often with cigar ashes all over the front of
his uniform. 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 rumors of alcohol problems.
(11:16):
His return to civilian life was equally inauspicious. He failed
at almost everything he tried. 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
(11:41):
men decisively in war. Grant 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
(12:04):
say about the subject. Most men who saw us Grant
during the Civil War felt there was something.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Mysterious about him.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
He looked so much like a completely ordinary man, and
what he did was so definitely out of the ordinary,
that it seems he must have profound depths that were
never visible from the surface. Even General Sherman, who knew
him as well as anybody, once remarked he did not
(12:32):
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 is certain, Grant's effectiveness in battle is
(12:53):
not up for dispute. There was nothing fancy about Grant's.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Approach to war. This 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 relentlessly at any resistance. And Grant refused to retreat,
and he would, if necessary, abandon his own supply lines
and live.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Off his enemies.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
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
of the enemy to fight and reducing the enemy's capabilities
(13:50):
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 chief victory. The goal
of this war was eventual reunification of the opposing sides,
and for that to happen, the war had to end,
and Grant and his tactics where the way it ended.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
This was the first glimpse into what war would become.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
War as a 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 of the society. The goal of war from the
Civil War on was not merely defeating the opposing army
(14:39):
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. While Grant
was taking the fight to these army generals. Sherman, with
(15:01):
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
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,
he become a lightning rout of sorts, taking heat from
a public that was weary of this war. Even in
his own Republican party, there was dissent to the more
(16:10):
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 after Lincoln's vision, but merely a win and a
(16:31):
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. They were quite 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 US Union Army. But despite
the near crackup 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
(17:14):
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.
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
(17:38):
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
something quite brilliant. Though he ran as a Republican, he
ran actually as a National Union candidate, a name he
concocted to win Democrats and voters along the border states
(18:02):
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 vice president, and Lincoln won in a landslide. Though
(18:23):
Lincoln is almost universally admired today, that was not the
case in eighteen sixty four. And it wasn't just the
Southerners who hated him. Even some of his own people
and associates found his temperament a bit on the dull side.
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
(18:46):
as a baboon. Real life heroes don't look like those
we see in Hollywood movies. There are no glamorous love partners,
no sweeping sunsets in lush ors, no standing ovations accompanying
Lincoln's or deals. It must have been a very hard, lonely,
(19:08):
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 Appomatox. 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, and it.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
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. We know that Lincoln was becoming increasingly reflective
about what God's will might have been. In all of this,
Lincoln had served the Bible for answers to the very
(21:02):
big questions about destiny and meaning. Rather than discuss the
speech here it is weighing in it at a mirror
seven hundred and one words. 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
(21:24):
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 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
(21:47):
grosses the energies.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Of the nation.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Little that is new could be presented. The progress of
our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as
well known to the public as to my and it
is I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all with
high hopes for the future. No prediction in regard to
it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four
(22:15):
years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending
civil war, all dreaded it, all sought to avert it.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
While the inaugural.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to
saving the 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
(22:46):
the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
And the war came.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
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 that this interest was somehow the cause of
the war. Their strength and perpetuate and extend this interest
(23:21):
was the object for which the insurgents would rend the
union even by war.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
While the government claimed no right to.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Do more than restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither
party expected for the war the magnitude or duration which
it 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
(23:50):
result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible
and pray to the same God, and each invokes his
aid against 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.
(24:13):
But let us judge not that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of
neither has 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
(24:35):
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 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.
(24:58):
Shall we discern in any departure from those divine attributes
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Fondly do we hope.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
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 unrequited toil shall be sung, and
until every drop of blood drawn with a lash shall
(25:29):
be paid 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,
(25:50):
with malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness
in the right, as God gives us to see the
right let us strive on to finish the work we
are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care
for him who shall have borne the battle.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
And for his widow and his orphan, to do all
which may achieve and cherish.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
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 any good general
(26:35):
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 less Hellgan,
(26:58):
always a bit unkempt. 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 eight thousand men
(27:19):
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
(27:40):
bend from their resolve, standing before us, now thin, warm
and famished, but erect, with eyes looking level into ours,
waking memories that bound us together as.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
No other bond.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
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 of a drum, Not
a cheer nor word, nor whisper or vainglorying, nor motion
of men standing again at the order, but an odd
(28:17):
stillness rather and breath holding, as if it were.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
The passing of the dead.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
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 when 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.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
We did know that winning the war.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
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 Reader's 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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