Tag Archives: Civil War

Footnote 34 – John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (New York: The Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 2013), p. 213.

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Lincoln on Emancipation, the Bible, and God’s Will

Lincoln gave voice to his thinking on the subject in September [1862] when a church delegation from Chicago came to the White House to present a memorial endorsing emancipation… He told the delegates that religious men regularly approached him with advice. They were invariably “certain that they represent the divine will.” But they came with radically opposing views (“the most opposite opinions and advice”), and not all of them could be right. It might even be that all of them were wrong.

And there was the nub of the problem. How could one learn God’s will, and if one could not, how could one make the grave decision…? “If I can learn what it is I will do it!” Lincoln said. But God’s justice was inscrutable. “These are not,” he reminded his memorialists, “the days of miracles.” There would be no “direct revelation.” …Confederate troops were no doubt “expecting God to favor their side” just as Union men thought that God would favor theirs….

But the Chicago Christians replied with a much older idea…Unbeknownst to them, their reply followed the course Lincoln’s own thinking had been taking over the previous weeks. Moral uncertainty, they observed, could not excuse paralysis. “Good men,” they conceded, “differed in their opinions.” But “the truth was somewhere,” and men could not merely set one opinion against another and throw up their hands. The moral leader had to act, had to bring “facts, principles, and arguments” to bear and come to a conclusion as to what justice required

…[W]hen the interview closed, it was clear that Lincoln and his Chicago petitioners were not so far apart after all. “Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned these objections,” Lincoln told them. “Whatever shall appear to be God’s will I will do.”

34 John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (New York: The Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 2013), p. 213.

Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky – January 19, 1862

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Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky – January 19, 1862

Among the casualties of the Battle of Mill Springs was Cpl. Joseph Timmons of the 10th Indiana – my maternal grandfather’s great-uncle.  The 10th Indiana fought alongside the 4th Kentucky, famously led by Col. Speed Smith Fry and recruited largely from the area around Danville, KY.  Fry was born near Danville, educated at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and returned to Danville to practice law prior to the Civil War.  Fry ended the war a Major General (Brevet), and is buried in Danville’s Bellevue Cemetery.  Although disputed by some, Fry is credited in many early sources as personally killing General Felix Zollicoffer, a former newspaperman and three-term US Congressman from Columbia, Tennessee, and the commander of the Confederate forces at Mill Springs.  

Joseph Timmons was mortally wounded during the Battle, and died three weeks later. He is buried in the National Cemetery on the Battlefield.  These are personal details of long-ago historical “trivia” – unless the “trivia” affects your family, your grandfather, uncle, brother, with multi-generational impact.  On a broader scale, the Confederate retreat from Kentucky following the Battle of Mill Springs on January 19, coupled with Ulysses S. Grant’s conquest of Forts Henry and Donelson in western Kentucky on February 11-16, pushed Confederate forces out of Kentucky, allowed the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers to become superhighways deep into the Confederacy for Grant’s Union gunboats, and led to the occupation of Nashville by Union troops only a few weeks later. Of such “stuff” history is made.

Excerpts from the account at http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/mill-springs/mill-springs-history/kentucky-chaos.html —

Kentucky Chaos

THE BATTLE OF MILL SPRINGS
BY SAM SMITH

“I WILL HAVE TO MAKE THE FIGHT ON THE GROUND I NOW OCCUPY.”

Zollicoffer
Felix Zollicoffer (Library of Congress)

Old ravines meandered through the chilly landscape.  They were filled with dense timber, the ground then rising sharply into scrubby hills, or leveling into farm fields with dark split rail fences.  Through it all ran the Cumberland River, much higher and faster than the man on the northern riverbank would like it to be.

Felix Zollicoffer was a dapper man, a former Tennessee journalist and U.S. Congressman who was not foreign to a pistol-duel.  He had briefly seen Indian combat as a militia captain in the 1840s.  That slim experience won him a brigadier general’s commission in the Confederate Army during the fledgling nation’s scramble to get on a war footing.  Here, in southeastern Kentucky in January, 1862, he was the right center of a Confederate strategic line that stretched from the Cumberland Gap to the Mississippi River.

More than 5,000 Southern soldiers were with him, scattered throughout the fortified winter camp that anxious locals referred to as “Zollicoffer’s Den.”  The camp sat in a horseshoe bend of the Cumberland River, surrounded by water on three sides with a 1,200-foot line of earthworks spanning the fourth.

His fleet sat near the riverbank: a small converted paddle-steamer, the Noble Ellis, and two wooden flat-boats.  Several other boats and a pontoon bridge had been swept away by a recent storm.  A few days later, Zollicoffer’s superior, Kentucky-born Maj. Gen. George B. Crittenden, had crossed the river to give Zollicoffer a sharp dressing-down.  The horseshoe bend was not a fortress, he declared, it was a trap.  He had in fact been captured in a similar situation during the Mexican War—nowhere to run with an unfordable river in the rear.

situation

The strategic situation in January, 1862.  Kentucky’s proclaimed neutrality was first violated by the Confederate seizure of Columbus.  After the Battle of Mill Springs, Union forces would use the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers to penetrate central Tennessee.  (Library of Congress)

Zollicoffer conceded that ferrying 5,000 soldiers, 12 cannons and all of the army’s horses, wagons, and supplies across the Cumberland with only three rickety boats would be essentially impossible.  Union forces were in the area and the cavalry had been skirmishing on-and-off for days.  His position was well-known to the enemy.  Surely a withdrawal would be discovered and exploited.  The Confederate generals estimated that they were facing between 6,000-10,000 Nationals.  The thought of a surprise attack by a force that size in the middle of the ferrying operation, the 5,000 Confederates substantially divided on either side of the river with no quick way of crossing to help their comrades, was too bitter to contemplate.

They could continue to fortify—Zollicoffer had been working on that landward-facing line of earthworks during the winter.  But Crittenden strongly doubted their effectiveness.  Federals could still cross the river and bombard the Southerners from any direction they pleased, rendering the position fundamentally untenable.  Unable to move backward, unable to stay where they were, the generals turned their plans toward the attack.

………..

Zollicoffer led from the front, giving most of his attention to the 19th Tennessee on the far left of his line, and was thus unable to coordinate an overwhelming, all-in-at-once assault that almost certainly would have broken through the Union roadblock on impact.  His remaining regimental commanders were left out of his sight and without specific orders, resulting in piecemeal attacks that did not take full advantage of the brigade’s numerical superiority.

The Federals held out for the better part of an hour before the Confederates managed to use nearby ravines to outflank the position.  They withdrew “Indian style,” falling back and firing from tree to tree, using the road as a guide, as more Union troops, Col. Speed S. Fry’s 4th Kentucky Volunteers, began to move to the front.

Fry’s Kentuckians met the 10th Indiana and 1st Kentucky Cavalry at the crest of a ridge just south of the main Federal campground.  240 Indianans formed a new line astride the road.  Fry’s 400 deployed behind a split rail fence on their left, facing a belt of cleared ground that dipped quickly into a wooded ravine before rising again into a scrubby ridge some 250 yards down-range.  The remaining cavalrymen formed in a cornfield on Fry’s left flank.

“COME FORWARD LIKE MEN!”

Confederate bullets began to pepper Fry’s position before the battle line was fully formed.  The 15th Mississippi pressed forward into the ravine while the 20th Tennessee kept up a covering fire from the ridge.  Unable to see anything more than scattered musket flashes through the fog, Fry ordered his men to advance over the fence and down the ravine slope.  The Confederate shooting intensified as the Federals moved into the open. Fry quickly realized that he was outnumbered and that behind the fence was a good place to be.  He directed a hasty withdrawal which his men executed in style.

Thinking that the withdrawal signified a disorderly retreat, the Mississippians in the ravine unsheathed their long cane-knives and charged uphill after the Kentuckians.  The limited visibility worked against them now, and they scrambled to within mere yards of the fence before the deafening boom of a Kentucky volley tore through the smoke and fog.  “Our bullets were sent with unerring aim — many rebels shot in the forehead, breast, and stomach,” remembered one Union infantryman.

The surviving Mississippians tumbled back into the ravine as Fry shouted exhortations to his men along the fence.  The 20th Tennessee began to move into the ravine as well, crouching and crawling to avoid the Federal fire.  At this, Fry climbed onto a fence rail and shook his fist at the Confederates, demanding that they stand and “come forward like men!”

The secessionists charged again, with portions of the 20th Tennessee sweeping eastward to strike the Union cavalrymen as the 15th Mississippi hit Fry’s infantry.  The attackers reached the split rails and for desperate moments the two sides poured point-blank musketry into each other from either side of the fence.  The Confederates fell back, reformed, charged again, and were repulsed again.  They took cover in the ravine and kept up a hot firefight with the Kentuckians.

map2

Gen. Zollicoffer struggled to make headway against determined Union resistance.  (Hal Jespersen)

“I THEN WHEELED, FIRED, AND KILLED HIM MYSELF”

Gen. Zollicoffer was still hanging near the 19th Tennessee during the struggle for the fence.  The 19th was fighting the remnants of the 10th Indiana on the road, but the Southerners could barely see the force opposing them.  When a new group of men came into view roughly 100 yards ahead and to the right, Zollicoffer thought that they represented the left flank of the 15th Mississippi, although the direction of their shooting came dangerously close to the 19th Tennessee.  The general, concerned about friendly fire and perhaps recognizing that his offensive was sputtering, rode through the smoke to reconnect with the wayward regiment and renew the attack.

Speed Fry
Col. Speed Fry (Library of Congress)

The mysterious soldiers were not Mississippians—they belonged to Fry’s 4th Kentucky Volunteers.  Fry himself rode out to greet Zollicoffer, whose Confederate uniform was concealed by a long rain jacket.  Zollicoffer drew rein about thirty yards from the Union line and the two officers came so close that their knees touched.

“We must not shoot our own men,” Zollicoffer told the Union colonel.  Fry was plainly wearing a Federal uniform, but Zollicoffer was near-sighted.  Or perhaps he had realized his mistake, and was now bluffing for time.

“Of course not,” Fry replied, “I would not shoot our own men intentionally.”  He did not recognize Zollicoffer, but thought him to be an unmet officer from Sam Carter’s brigade, which had only recently arrived.

“Those are our own men.” Zollicoffer pointed towards the 19th Tennessee.

Now somewhat suspicious, Fry rode twenty or thirty yards past Zollicoffer to examine the situation for himself.  As he peered through the smoke, a Confederate staff officer dashed from behind a tree and called to Zollicoffer, “it’s the enemy, General!”

The unknown officer drew his pistol and shot Fry’s horse before turning to make his escape.  A Kentucky rifleman shot him down.  Zollicoffer pulled out his pistol and emptied it in Fry’s direction.  Unscathed, Fry shouted, “that’s your game, is it?” and returned fire with his Colt Navy .36, striking Zollicoffer in the chest.  Two more bullets from the Kentucky infantry killed him.

Read the complete article, with other maps and photos, at http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/mill-springs/mill-springs-history/kentucky-chaos.html

TOP HISTORIANS DISCUSS THE CIVIL WAR

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TOP HISTORIANS DISCUSS THE CIVIL WAR

The Fate of This Republic

TODAY’S TOP HISTORIANS DISCUSS THE CIVIL WAR

Read it here: http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/civil-war-history-and-scholarship/

main header

The Civil War Trust’s own Clayton Butler recently had the opportunity to sit down with four of the most distinguished scholars in the field of Civil War history – Dr. James McPherson of Princeton University, Dr. Gary Gallagher of the University of Virginia, Dr. Stephen Berry of the University of Georgia and Dr. Joseph Glatthaar of the University of North Carolina. They shared their thoughts on the state of current Civil War scholarship and the compelling nature of Civil War history for scholars and the general public alike. As these historians make clear, the field of Civil War history has only strengthened as it has expanded, and continues to be heir to an extraordinarily rich tradition of first-rate scholarship and research.

Click on the links on the Civil war Trust site to delve deeper into the thoughts, opinions and insights of some of the best Civil War minds of this generation.

“You can’t understand the Civil War – you can only pretend to – without really understanding military affairs.”
– Gary Gallagher

“I had always thought that that was a kind of duty of historians…to speak to an audience beyond the academy.”
– James McPherson

“Preserving battlefields. I think that’s the single greatest contribution of the last twenty years!”
– Joseph Glatthaar

“If you don’t think the war is at root about slavery then there’s the Flat Earth Society, who will be taking members.”
– Stephen Berry

Female Soldiers in the Civil War

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Female Soldiers in the Civil War

Female Soldiers in the Civil War

ON THE FRONT LINE

BY SAM SMITH

The outbreak of the Civil War challenged traditional American notions of feminine submissiveness and domesticity with hundreds of examples of courage, diligence, and self-sacrifice in battle.  The war was a formative moment in the early feminist movement.

Clayton
Frances Clayton disguised herself as “Frances Clalin” to fight in the Civil War. (Library of Congress)

In July of 1863, a Union burial detail at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania made a startling discovery near Cemetery Ridge.  Among the bodies covering the ground–the wreckage of the Confederate attacks during the battle–the Union men found a dead woman wearing the uniform of a Confederate private.

The burial detail had stumbled upon one of the most intriguing stories of the Civil War: the multitudes of women who fought in the front line.

Although the inherently clandestine nature of the activity makes an accurate count impossible, conservative estimates of female soldiers in the Civil War puts the number somewhere between 400 and 750.  Long viewed by historians as anomalies, recent scholarship argues that the women who fought in the Civil War shared the same motivations as their male companions.

Some women went to war in order to share in the trials of their loved ones.  Others were stirred by a thirst for adventure, the promise of reliable wages, or ardent patriotism.  In the words of Sarah Edmonds Seelye, also known as Franklin Flint Thompson of the 2nd Michigan Infantry: “I could only thank God that I was free and could go forward and work, and I was not obliged to stay at home and weep.”   Seelye holds the honor of being the only woman to receive a veteran’s pension after the war.

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Read more at http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/untold-stories/female-soldiers-in-the-civil.html

Siege of Ft. Wagner – 150th Anniversary

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Siege of Ft. Wagner – 150th Anniversary

Siege of Ft. Wagner – 150th Anniversary

1863: July 18 – September 7

Excerpts follow; read more at:

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/battery-wagner.html?tab=facts

After the successful amphibious operation against Port Royal and the stunning, long range artillery bombardment that led to the swift capture of Fort Pulaski, Brig. Gen. Quincy Gillmore was assigned to lead the 1863 campaign against the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Gillmore, who graduated first in his West Point class of 1849, was a rising star within the Union ranks.

On July 18, 1863, after the heavy land and sea bombardment subsided, Gillmore sent forward his Federal regiments. The assault was led by the 54thMassachusetts regiment; a Boston regiment filled with free African-Americans, and led by the Harvard educated Col. Robert Gould Shaw. The decision to have the 54th Massachusetts lead this dangerous attack was fraught with all sorts of political and military risk, but in the end it was Shaw’s men that led the attack up the narrow beach.

As the Federal soldiers neared the fort they were subjected to artillery and musket fire that shredded the exposed Yankee ranks. Despite their heavy losses, the remnants of the 54th Massachusetts reached and scaled the earthen walls of Fort Wagner. Descending into the fort, the 54thengaged in a bloody hand-to-hand struggle with the Confederate defenders.  Col. Shaw, shouting “Onward boys! Onward boys!” was quickly shredded by a number of Confederate bullets and died on the sandy ramparts.Facts 54th

…..

Federal casualties reached 1,515, with the 54thMassachusetts losing 42% of its ranks in the attack. General Strong and Colonels Shaw, Putnam, and Chatfield all were killed or mortally wounded in the attack. Light by comparison, Confederate losses numbered 174 men.

After this bloody repulse, Gillmore settled into their Morris Island positions for a lengthy and costly siege that finally led to the Confederate abandonment of Fort Wagner on September 7, 1863 – far later than he had hoped.

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Read more at http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/battery-wagner.html?tab=facts

This Week in the Civil War: Aug 12-18, 1863

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WalterCoffey's avatarCivil War History

Wednesday, August 12.  On the South Carolina coast, Federal cannon began firing on Confederate positions at Fort Sumter and Battery Wagner in Charleston Harbor. This was an effort to test the range of the heavy Parrott rifles, but it began a new Federal offensive against the harbor. Fort Sumter was severely damaged by the batteries.

President Abraham Lincoln refused to grant an army command to General John McClernand, who had been relieved as corps commander by General Ulysses S. Grant for insubordination. A Federal expedition began from Memphis, Tennessee to Grenada, Mississippi. Skirmishing occurred in Mississippi.

Thursday, August 13.  A Confederate army chaplain wrote to President Jefferson Davis “that every disaster that has befallen us in the West has grown out of the fact that weak and inefficient men have been kept in power… I beseech of you to relieve us of these drones and pigmies.” The recent Confederate defeats…

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‘Civil War: The Untold Story’ – Interview with filmmaker Chris Wheeler

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‘Civil War: The Untold Story’ – Interview with filmmaker Chris Wheeler

‘Civil War: The Untold Story’ – Interview with filmmaker Chris Wheeler

By Gerald D. Swick  Originally published on HistoryNet.com. Published Online: June 12, 2013  –

'Civil War: The Untold Story' examines the war in the Western Theater. Photo by Justin Koehler
‘Civil War: The Untold Story’ examines the war in the Western Theater. Photo by Justin Koehler

Civil War: The Untold Story is a five-hour documentary from Great Divide Pictures, which has produced award-winning historical documentaries such as How the West Was Lost and visitor center films for several Civil War National Parks. Currently scheduled to air in the first quarter of 2014, Civil War: The Untold Story is produced and directed by Chris Wheeler. HistoryNet talked with him recently about the project.

HistoryNet: Your documentary is titled Civil War: The Untold Story. With all that has been written about the war, and all the documentaries that have been done, what is your “Untold Story”?

Chris Wheeler: It’s really on multiple levels. Instead of focusing on the Virginia-Maryland-Pennsylvania campaign, we’re telling the story of the Civil War through the lens of the Western Theater, the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River: Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and the Atlanta Campaign. While it is not entirely an untold story, the story of that part of the war is not told very often. Many historians believe the Western Campaign is where the war was won and lost. We’re not going to ignore the East; we’ll briefly mention events there and put them in perspective within what’s happening in the West.

HN: There is a widespread belief that the seat of war was in the Virginia-Maryland-Pennsylvania region, and that everything that happened in the Western Theater was simply a sideshow. Why do you think it is that the Western Theater gets less respect?

Chris Wheeler during filiming. Photo by Justin Koehler
Chris Wheeler during filiming. Photo by Justin Koehler

CW: I think there’s no denying the Eastern Theater was very important—the catastrophic loss of life makes it tragic, and that alone brings attention to the East, and deservedly so. It would be wrong for us to ignore the Eastern Theater, but we are focusing on the West. The war in the East was fought in a highly populated area around the capitals of Washington and Richmond. The media—newspapers and magazines—had very easy access to the Eastern Theater, and so logically it was covered more extensively at the time.

The lands between the Appalachians and Mississippi River were not the frontier by that time, but it was rougher country. Journalists had to cover hundreds of miles, from Fort Donelson to Shiloh to Vicksburg, eastward to Tennessee and onward to Atlanta. So the Western Campaign didn’t get nearly the media coverage at the time the war was happening. I think that is part of the reason the West has gotten short shrift when it comes to interpreting the Civil War.

HN: Most of the photographers’ studios were in the East as well. It’s not as easy to find photos taken in the Western Theater.

Fighting in the Peach Orchard at Shiloh. Photo by Justin Koehler
Fighting in the Peach Orchard at Shiloh. Photo by Justin Koehler

CW: The reality is that there are very few photographs that cover the West. We use battle recreations in the documentary to tell the story. If we had to depend on period photos we wouldn’t have much to tell. I believe Ken Burns has been criticized for not doing more to cover the Western Theater in his series on the Civil War, but I think such criticism is unfair. You have to have images to make compelling television.

HN: We’ve seen a media release about your documentary series that says, “It’s not just about who we were then. It’s about who we are now.” Would you like to expand on that thought?

CW: This film is not just a historical retelling of arguably the most important event in our country’s history. Hopefully our series will resonate with viewers and help Americans realize that many of the issues we fought over in the Civil War are still being discussed today: states rights versus a strong centralized government; civil rights; the Constitution; issues of race. A lot of these things still remain unresolved. Hopefully, after watching, viewers will have a better understanding of these issues and understand how the history of the Civil War remains relevant to all Americans today.

HN: The series will be narrated by someone very familiar to viewers of the PBS series Downton Abbey— actress Elizabeth McGovern. What led you to approach her about being the narrator?

Elizabeth McGovern
Elizabeth McGovern

CW: I’ve worked with Peter Coyote in the past; his agent also represents Elizabeth McGovern. I heard a demo of her doing some voice work, and I thought Elizabeth struck the perfect tone for what we’re trying to get across. She has a strong delivery but also a natural empathy. Elizabeth brings a sense of calm to this story while taking viewers through the horror, the carnage of the Civil War. One hundred fifty years later, it’s still hard to get your head around how truly horrible this war was. Elizabeth is a calming presence who in essence, takes viewers on a journey through hell.

Our series includes female historians who are very good on camera, but most of the voices in our documentary, whether historians or the voices from diaries and letters of the time, are male. A female narrator such as Elizabeth McGovern, brings much needed balance to the narrative.

Civil War: The Untold Story is being distributed to public television stations by American Public Television, but stations are not required to air the series. So from a distribution perspective, having Elizabeth involved in the show will hopefully encourage PBS stations to broadcast it.

HN: Tell us a bit about your own background if you will.

CW: I started off in the television business in 1981 as a news photographer. I loved history but wasn’t sure I wanted to be a teacher. My first big project came when I was given the opportunity to create How the West Was Lost for the Discovery Channel. Since then I’ve produced films on the Korean War (Our Time in Hell: the Korean War) and a documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite on John Glenn (Godspeed, John Glenn). I’ve continued to produce documentaries on Native Americans. In recent years we’ve had the opportunity to produce visitor center films for National Park Civil War battlefields, and that has given me the chance to tell some of these stories that are so dramatic and so important to America today.

To return to your question about “What is the untold story?” we also want to bring a strong presence to the African American story in the Western Theater. At Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park in Georgia, for example, I asked staff members if they receive a lot of African American visitors, since the park is just outside Atlanta. They replied “No. Unfortunately, African Americans do not feel like they are part of the story of the Civil War.” To me, that is tragedy. And it has been a motivating factor for us to tell a produce a series that conveys to modern day African Americans that their ancestors were an important and inspirational part of the Civil War story.

HN: It is often claimed that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free a single slave, but in fact it freed Army officers from having to return runaway slaves to their owners as the armies penetrated deeper into the South, and allowed many, many thousands of slaves to find freedom by getting behind Union lines—”contrabands,” they were called. That was particularly true with the Western armies, which conquered the largest portion of Dixie.

Contrabands. Library of Congress
Contrabands. Library of Congress

CW: I really liked the story of the contrabands, which we go into in our second episode. Early in the war, slaves began escaping to Union lines. Thousands of them! No one in the North had anticipated escaping slaves seeking refuge in these kinds of numbers. It led to a Constitutional question central to the war: Lincoln never recognized the Confederacy, so Federal law still applied to rebelling states. The Fugitive Slave Act was still the law of the land, so by law, runaway slaves had to be returned to their owners. But as a Union army officer, do you want to return the escaping slaves back over to the very people with whom you are engaged with in battle?

Lincoln is credited as the Great Emancipator, and certainly he was, but the slaves themselves put Lincoln in the position where he had to do something, and that was the Emancipation Proclamation. Most people don’t realize the Emancipation Proclamation also gave African Americans the right to join the army and fight for the Union and defend their new-found freedom.

In our series, we also want to tell little-known stories about Lincoln himself. He was a man of the West, so he had a pretty good understanding of why the Western Campaign was so important—perhaps more so than most others in Washington did. Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln begins in January 1865; our documentary ends about where Spielberg’s movie begins, so The Untold Story could be considered a prequel to Spielberg’s film, showing Lincoln’s ups and downs—secession, the military campaigns, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the crucial 1864 presidential campaign.

I don’t think Americans today realize how close Lincoln came to not being reelected. His opponent was George McClellan, the popular former commander of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan represented a Democratic party that wanted to end the war, to let the Southern states keep their slaves and come back into the Union. By 1864, Northerners were tired of the war that had no end in sight, tired of seeing their sons die. One of the biggest events that turned things around was in September 1864, when Union General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta, which was the next-best thing to capturing Richmond. For the first time, people in the North now had hope this war could be won. The Battle of Atlanta plays very much into the political campaign story we tell in “Civil War: the Untold Story.” Lincoln wins in a landslide. Just a few weeks earlier he had told his cabinet, “We must prepare for McClellan to be president.”

HN: How will civilians’ stories figure into the documentary?

From a scene in the caves at Vicksburg. Photo by Justin Koehler
From a scene in the caves at Vicksburg. Photo by Justin Koehler

CW: The story of Southern civilians is a big part of the “untold story”. I don’t think a lot of people in our nation today realize that the war was fought almost entirely in the South. Civilians in places like Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Atlanta found themselves in the path of the war. Vicksburg is perhaps the most dramatic example, with the civilian population trapped there for six weeks under bombardment during the siege in 1863 by Ulysses S. Grant’s army. The experience for Southern civilians was very different than for Northern civilians. Northern civilians could read about what was happening in the war, but it was fought on Southern doorsteps, and it devastated the South for years afterward.

So in Civil War: The Untold Story, you’ll see the military story, the social story of the civilians and African Americans, and the political story of Abraham Lincoln.

HN: Is there anything you’d like to add in closing?

CW: I hope this series brings our country’s people together at a time when we are arguably as divided as we were in 1860. I hope it will bring a better understanding of the Civil War and help people to see what happens when we disagree, when we stop trying to solve our problems together. I think it is time for Americans to hear this story again, not just because it is the 150th anniversary of the war, but because of the state of our nation today. Ken Burns did a fantastic job of telling the story of the war in 1990, but it has been a generation since our nation heard the story of the Civil War. I sincerely hope a sense of healing and unity can come out of viewing this. Over 600,00 young men died from North and South. It is an American tragedy, one Americans should never forget.

Click here to watch a trailer of Civil War: The Untold Story.

See more at: http://www.historynet.com/civil-war-the-untold-story-interview-with-filmmaker-chris-wheeler.htm#sthash.CTczPLws.dpuf