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00:04At the end of the Civil War's second year, Union forces in the West control all but one stretch of
00:10the nation's most important waterway, the Mississippi River.
00:15And up until then, few boats dared to test the Rebel batteries between Port Hudson and Vicksburg.
00:22It is the Gibraltar of the West, the great fortress that defends the rest of the Confederacy.
00:27But Abraham Lincoln had another name for Vicksburg.
00:32Abraham Lincoln pointed to Vicksburg and said, Vicksburg is the key and the war can never be successfully brought to
00:38a close until that key is in our pocket.
00:41And Lincoln has no doubts about who the general is for this job.
00:46Ulysses S. Grant.
00:51Today, they are vast, tranquil stretches of farm field, forest and protected land.
00:58But once these landscapes witnessed the horror of war.
01:02This is their story.
01:03This is Battlefield America.
01:14In the fall of 1862, Vicksburg is a prosperous riverfront city.
01:19Built from a plantation economy, its ready access to the Mississippi makes it a critical transit point for both people
01:26and cargo.
01:27The Confederacy understands the need to defend Vicksburg.
01:31We're talking about thousands of people living in Vicksburg.
01:33It's as large as Los Angeles was at the time.
01:36There are hills and gullies that can only be appreciated when you actually see them.
01:42And onto those hills, the Confederates use this place that seems ready-made for defense.
01:47They're going to place redoubts and forts and lunettes upon the hills guarding the roads into Vicksburg and on the
01:52Mississippi River side.
01:56It's difficult to get at it from the north.
01:57It's difficult to get at it from the west.
01:59And that means, how do you get on dry land on the same side as Vicksburg?
02:04And this has been Grant's dilemma.
02:08Lincoln's key remains firmly in southern hands.
02:12Using the Mississippi River and its major tributaries to move men and munitions remains essential to the rebel effort.
02:20But the Union Army is lurking nearby.
02:24They had recently won a series of victories in the west.
02:27And they now had a revolutionary piece of technology pushing alongside them.
02:32A fleet of ironclad riverboats.
02:35Something never seen before in warfare.
02:39By late 1862, this brown water navy and Major General Ulysses S. Grant's army were setting their sights on the
02:47city that Confederate President Jefferson Davis claimed was the nail head that held the South's two halves together.
02:55Though they used different words to describe Vicksburg, Lincoln, Davis, and Grant each deeply understood the significance of this city.
03:04With most of the South's ports now blocked by the U.S. Navy, Vicksburg's connection to the Trans-Mississippi region
03:11made it critical to the Confederacy's very survival.
03:15All the supplies from Arkansas and Texas and Louisiana and anything that comes in from perhaps Europe must come across
03:22the rail lines that lead to Vicksburg.
03:26Those rail lines carried some of the rebel army's central needs.
03:31Texas beef.
03:33Sugar, salt, and molasses from Louisiana.
03:36Ammunition manufactured in Missouri.
03:44The defense of Vicksburg in Port Hudson falls to Lieutenant General John Pemberton, a Pennsylvanian by birth.
03:51Pemberton has thrown his lot with the South, some say at the urging of his wife, a Virginia.
03:57Pemberton is given in some ways a difficult task.
04:00He needs to protect Vicksburg, but he's arguably not terribly well resourced to do that because, again, the Confederate position
04:06in the West isn't that great.
04:14In late 1862, Grant begins his campaign with a two-pronged strike, intending to lure Confederate forces from Vicksburg with
04:24the first prong, while the second, commanded by Major General William Sherman, strikes at the city's lightly held defenses.
04:32But the Confederate cavalry hits first, cutting Grant's long supply line, forcing him to fall back and allowing the Confederates
04:42to shift men by rail to repel Sherman's attacks at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou.
04:49Through the ensuing winter, Grant continues his thrusts into Vicksburg, but each ends in defeat.
04:55One of his efforts goes so far as to attempt to dig a canal to bypass the city's fortified riverfront.
05:04In the North, the press and the public are restless.
05:08Even Grant's wife, Julia, grows impatient with the lack of progress, telling Grant, why do you not move on Vicksburg
05:15at once?
05:15Do stop digging at this old canal. You know you will never use it.
05:19One way to think about Grant over the whole course of the campaign is, he keeps on trying different things.
05:26Grant's final attempt to reach Vicksburg is his riskiest.
05:32He begins to organize what will become, at that point, the largest amphibious campaign in American history.
05:46In late March, Grant orders Major General John McClernand's 13th Corps to carve a route across Louisiana's swampy river bottoms.
05:56Beyond the reach of Vicksburg's big guns, the Union force could then be ferried across the river and onto Mississippi
06:03soil.
06:06Grant's plan hinges on Admiral David Porter's fleet of gunboats and troop transports.
06:12On the night of April 16th, riding the Mississippi's current, they make a breathless dash past Vicksburg's batteries, hugging the
06:21riverbank below to protect themselves from enemy fire.
06:25Even with Porter's fleet south of Vicksburg, Grant will continue to keep Pemberton guessing as to where he'll attack next.
06:34On April 17th, Grant launches a cavalry raid into the heart of Mississippi.
06:43Then, on April 29th, Sherman faints an attack north of Vicksburg while Union gunboats shell Grand Gulf.
06:51This is where Grant wants to ferry his soldiers across to Mississippi, but he's not ready yet.
07:00Together, Sherman's fate and the cavalry raid distract Pemberton from the true threat at Grand Gulf.
07:06But Grant soon realizes that Grand Gulf's batteries are too strong for Union gunboats, so he adapts his plan and
07:13crosses at Bruinsburg instead.
07:16Then, finally, on April 30th, nearly six months after he began the effort, Grant crosses into Mississippi for good.
07:24His bold move is not without risk.
07:27Once you've gone past the river, Grant's going to have in many ways a tenuous supply line, you know, in
07:31terms of having kind of ammunition on hand and things like that.
07:35So he has to get all these things ready to get on the other side of the river and then
07:38to be able to survive in what is essentially Confederate-held territory.
07:42I'm sorry.
07:48Untethered from its supply line, for the next 17 days, Grant's army would march more than 200 miles and fight
07:55five battles in a campaign unlike any ever witnessed on American soil.
08:06Marching inland beyond the bluffs along the river's edge, McClernand's Corps hits a Confederate brigade with an early morning assault.
08:19For the next 17 hours, some 8,000 Confederates put up a spirited defense in the rugged terrain surrounding Port
08:26Gibson, holding back 20,000 Federals.
08:31By late afternoon, outflanked and low on ammunition, the Confederates fall back.
08:39The loss here triggers the Confederate evacuation of Grand Gulf.
08:44On May 2nd, with his beachhead secure, Grant drives onward towards the next phase of his plan.
08:52Pemberton assumes he will march north for Vicksburg, but Grant rejects that approach, keeping Pemberton on his back foot.
09:02So he achieves a tempo of operations that his adversary, John Pemberton, can never keep up with.
09:08It leaves Grant constantly in control of what happens next.
09:13Using the Big Black River as a shield, Grant plans to cut the rail line, which feeds Vicksburg with supplies
09:19and reinforcements.
09:20Then he will turn and trap Pemberton.
09:24It was this type of bold, indirect strategy that would become the hallmark of Grant's military career.
09:33By May 12th, joined by Sherman's Corps, Grant marches along a 10-mile front, aiming to attack the Southern Railroad
09:42the next morning.
09:43Pemberton shifts his army and rushes a Confederate brigade by rail to Jackson, with orders to strike Grant's right flank.
09:563,000 Confederates slam into Major General James McPherson's 10,000 men along the banks of 14 Mile Creek, just
10:05southwest of Raymond.
10:08The Rebels don't realize they're outnumbered three to one.
10:17After nearly six hours of combat, McPherson's artillery and numeric advantages have the Confederates retreating to Jackson.
10:28With Rebels in front of him and behind him, Grant is now the one in a tricky spot.
10:34He turns two-thirds of his army east toward the state capitol.
10:39Grant's troops cut rail and telegraph lines along the way, hindering communications between Pemberton and the one man sent to
10:47assist him, General Joe Johnston, the hero of First Manassas.
10:52Johnston arrives at Jackson on the night of May 13th.
10:55He's tasked with fixing the grim Confederate predicament in Mississippi.
10:59Within hours, however, even as his reinforcements near Jackson, Johnston wires the authorities in Richmond to tell them that he
11:08is too late.
11:09He orders the city evacuated.
11:12The next morning, Sherman and McPherson's divisions push back the Confederate artillery and roadblocks obstructing their path.
11:19And by late afternoon on May 14th, the United States flag flies once again over the state capitol.
11:30But Jackson was never Grant's target.
11:33Instead of occupying the city, he identifies Jackson's military supplies and rail lines and burns them to the ground.
11:42He then turns his army towards Vicksburg and prepares to attack from the east.
11:48Pemberton attempts to respond.
11:50As Jackson burns, he moves 20,000 men to attack Grant's supply line.
11:56Without a working telegraph, Confederate communications quickly unravel.
12:01While Johnston gathers reinforcements to the northeast, Pemberton moves southeast.
12:06On May 16th, Pemberton receives a two-day-old message from Johnston, ordering him to reverse his column.
12:14Grant closes in.
12:18Pemberton hastily deploys his divisions along a three-mile front to face two advancing federal columns.
12:25But he is unaware of a third moving toward his exposed left flank.
12:31Union Brigadier General Stephen Lee shifts his brigade to a hill owned by Sid Champion.
12:39Brigadier General Alfred Cumming moves to fill a gap
12:43and block the Union divisions closing in on the middle road.
12:48And at 10.30 that morning, at Champion Hill, Grant starts the battle destined to seal Vicksburg's fate.
12:57If Pemberton's thin left flank crumbles, Grant will control the Bakers Creek Bridge and Pemberton's escape route to Vicksburg.
13:05Seth Barton's Georgia Brigade joins the fight and strains to stop the Union onslaught.
13:11By 11.30 a.m., the fighting on Champion Hill has devolved into hand-to-hand combat.
13:18The rebels are in trouble.
13:21Until, Major General John Bowen's division savagely drives the Federals back.
13:29But they are then overwhelmed by a second U.S. assault.
13:33Confederate reinforcements led by Major General William Loring arrive too late.
13:38And Bowen's men fall back.
13:40Their retreat turns to panic as Grant's divisions converge.
13:45Their main escape route now cut off.
13:48Pemberton's men drive toward a second bridge they had managed to construct.
13:53They retreat to Edwards Station.
13:56Though not before Grant's army is able to strand Loring on the east side of Bakers Creek.
14:04Loring believes Grant has already taken Edwards and orders his 8,000-man division to Jackson, away from Vicksburg.
14:14Pemberton, meanwhile, doesn't realize that Loring has left the fight.
14:18He waits eagerly for Loring by the Big Black River Bridge.
14:24Instead, he is met the next morning by McClernand's Corps, which immediately attacks and sends the rebels running to the
14:32safety of Vicksburg.
14:33The battles at Champion Hill and Big Black River cost Pemberton dearly.
14:3825% of his army, 45 cannon, and the faith of his men.
14:4430 years ago to the day, Pemberton had accepted a cadetship to West Point.
14:50As he rode back to Vicksburg, he knows.
14:53And today, that career is ended in disaster and disgrace.
14:57But Pemberton would have one more shot to redeem himself.
15:04On May 17th, Pemberton's demoralized soldiers, reeling from the loss at Big Black River, began streaming into the city.
15:17The rebel soldiers worked through the night to harden Vicksburg's vast, defensive fortress.
15:24It's defended by almost eight miles worth of earthworks.
15:29Nine forts watching all the major roads and railroads that come into Vicksburg, connected by trench lines,
15:35defended by 172 pieces of artillery and nearly 30,000 men.
15:40They used terrain to good effect.
15:42They cut down the trees for a thousand yards in any direction to give them open fields of view and
15:46open fields of fire.
15:47It's a completely wild terrain and ready-made for defense.
15:52In fact, it almost seems to be impregnable.
15:59In the face of all these obstacles, Grant launches an attack on May 19th.
16:05After a five-hour artillery barrage, Sherman goes in.
16:09But piles of brush and sharpened tree limbs unravel his formations
16:13as Confederate crossfire and hand grenades cut his men down by the dozen.
16:19The Federals use the cover of darkness to fall back to their lives.
16:24Nearly 1,000 of Grant's men are killed, wounded or missing.
16:29Behind his stout defenses, Pemberton loses only 70.
16:36On May 22nd, Grant tries again on a much wider three-mile front.
16:45Only McLernan's Corps gains a foothold.
16:49He sends Grant a message to keep up the pressure.
16:53But they're beaten back and lose another 3,000 men.
16:58Grant realizes that he now has just one path to victory.
17:02He orders his commanders to dig in and hold firm.
17:05One of the most dramatic sieges in American history had begun.
17:09As long as we could hold our position, the enemy was limited in supplies of food, men, and munitions of
17:15war to what they had on hand.
17:17These could not last always.
17:19Ulysses S. Grant.
17:27Ulysses S. Grant tried to avoid a siege.
17:29After he won the battles at Champion Hill and Big Black River Bridge, he tried to rush on Vicksburg.
17:34But Confederate reinforcements came up.
17:36It was absolutely deadly terrain to fight over.
17:40Aided by formerly enslaved men who had escaped to Union lines, Grant's soldiers fortify their trenches.
17:46And next began shoveling out a 40-foot-long tunnel beneath a key rebel stronghold.
17:53On June 25th, after packing the tunnel with 2,200 pounds of black powder,
17:58Federal soldiers detonate their explosive cache.
18:01Soldiers pour into the blast crater.
18:03They'll fight for more than 20 hours before Grant calls off the attack.
18:08The soldiers then return to packing explosives.
18:1113 additional mines await their spark.
18:13But in the end, they won't be necessary.
18:18For 47 days, soldiers and Vicksburg citizens alike have endured a constant nightmare.
18:25Day and night, up to 220 cannons have blasted their defenses from the land.
18:31As Porter's gunboat shelled Vicksburg's batteries from the river,
18:36citizens took to living in hillside caves for shelter.
18:41Food and water grow scarce.
18:45As one Confederate soldier remembered it,
18:48Orders were issued to select the finest and fattest mules within our lines and slaughter them
18:53for the purpose of issuing their flesh as food to the troops.
18:57Besides this meat, traps were set for rats,
19:00which were consumed in such numbers that aired the termination of the siege.
19:04They actually became a scarcity.
19:08Disease flourishes.
19:10Medical supplies dwindle.
19:12Public buildings and many homes are now hospitals.
19:15Wagons make daily rounds to pick up the dead.
19:19The Civil War was never a war that targeted civilians by any means.
19:23Certainly, generals and a lot of lower-ranking soldiers did their very best to make sure that civilians were not
19:30caught in the crossfire.
19:31However, even in their best attempts to protect civilian life and not target cities or residences,
19:38they were in the path of battle or in the path of siege.
19:43Rebel soldiers' rations are down to a handful of peas and rice and a single cup of water per day.
19:50Sickness and desertion leave fewer and fewer men on the front lines.
19:56One day in late June, a note is slid under the door of Pemberton's headquarters.
20:01It reads,
20:03If you can't feed us, surrender us.
20:06Signed, Many Soldiers.
20:09Following a dire report from his subordinates that his army lacks the strength to make a breakout attack,
20:16Pemberton realizes he has no choice.
20:20He must surrender.
20:33On July 3, 1863, the air around Vicksburg is saturated with something it hasn't felt in weeks.
20:42Silence.
20:45That day, Grant and Pemberton meet to discuss the terms of surrender.
20:49With the anniversary of American independence only a day away,
20:54Pemberton hopes Grant will be in a generous mood.
20:58Instead, Grant demands unconditional surrender.
21:02Pemberton refuses.
21:04Later that evening, in a surprise twist, Grant softens his demands.
21:09Instead of taking Pemberton's soldiers prisoner, he will parole them.
21:14Pemberton accepts the rebel fighters are free to go home unarmed.
21:25So, when Grant captures Vicksburg, his identity at this point is unconditional surrender Grant.
21:31That's his initial offer to the Confederacy is an unconditional surrender.
21:34But then as he starts to think about the problem, I think he sees this as an informational aspect of,
21:39if I send those Confederates home that have been starving for the last 47 days,
21:43and they show up in their little Confederate town as a scarecrow,
21:47and everybody asks, how's the war going?
21:49They're going to know just by looking at them.
21:53And on the 4th of July, the Confederate stack arms, handing over the city of Vicksburg to the United States
22:02military.
22:05The South's Gibraltar had fallen.
22:08With the capture of Port Hudson five days later, the Mississippi River is entirely in Union hands.
22:16Grant's losses include 10,000 killed, wounded, or missing, and his forces inflict nearly as many losses on the Confederates.
22:24But aided by Porter's fleet, he has completed his mission.
22:28He has put the key to the South firmly in Lincoln's pocket.
22:31Along the way, dispersing an entire rebel army, destroying a crucial Southern supply line, severing the Confederacy itself.
22:40For Confederate civilians and the Confederate home front, in the wars, in a difficult war,
22:46this notion that the political unit that you're hoping will survive has been cut in half is not a positive
22:52thing.
22:53Once Vicksburg falls, Lincoln had to be feeling like Grant is his man.
22:58Abraham Lincoln always stuck with him. Grant was not one afraid to go at the enemy.
23:03Yet, the Vicksburg campaign is overshadowed in the press by the Union victory in Gettysburg,
23:09just a day earlier.
23:11Military strategists, however, will remember Grant's tactics far into the future.
23:17During the first Gulf War, coalition forces mimicked Grant's strategy in Vicksburg
23:22by approaching Kuwait from its inland side, severing supply lines and escape routes along the way.
23:39Over time, the story of Vicksburg became more than a story of siege and conquest.
23:44It became a story of remembrance.
23:48In 1899, the Vicksburg National Military Park was established.
23:53A promise written into the landscape to memorialize Vicksburg's place in American history.
23:59You need to be able to stand where they stood.
24:02You need to be where the history happened to be able to experience that power of place.
24:07That's why battlefield preservation is important.
24:11Today, that preservation effort continues so that the stories of both the soldiers and the civilians involved will not be
24:20forgotten.
24:31June 1863.
24:34200,000 are dead, and the American Civil War is barely half over.
24:41For much of the year, Virginia has continued to be the central battlefield in the East.
24:46But once again, Confederate General Robert E. Lee is eager to bring the fight to the North.
24:53Lee clearly also thinks that he has some kind of psychological dominance over the Army of the Potomac,
24:58and that he's going to take advantage of that by making one final push.
25:02What he wants to do is lure them out in the open, that he can annihilate them in one climactic
25:06battle,
25:07and use that as the evidence to collapse Union will.
25:10They, quite frankly, feel like this is revenge.
25:16That battle will take place in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,
25:19where Lee will be facing a new untested adversary, General George Meade.
25:24And General Meade, like those before him, will feel the pressure not only from the Rebel Army,
25:30but the President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln, as well.
25:36No matter its outcome, Gettysburg was destined to be perhaps the most important turning point in this brutal war.
25:53The Battle of Gettysburg begins during a pivotal time for the United States.
25:58In the North, a movement to end the war and restore the nation, leaving the institution of slavery intact, is
26:05growing.
26:06In the South, war-weary Virginians celebrate Lee's push into Maryland and Pennsylvania.
26:12Meanwhile, in the war's western theater, the Union Siege of Vicksburg under Ulysses S. Grant nears its end.
26:20For both armies and their leaders, it is a moment of peril and opportunity.
26:27Lee and his army aim to build on their momentum, while Lincoln and his generals, as they did at Antietam,
26:33will attempt to shield northern civilians from experiencing the war firsthand.
26:37What will be remembered of this battle, however, is far more than just the actions of Union and Rebel leaders.
26:43There will be dramatic infantry charges, heroic and disastrous alike.
26:48Cavalry fights featuring battlefield legends like Jeb Stuart and George Custer.
26:54And in the end, an iconic speech to help history make sense of it all.
27:00Neither Meade nor Lee planned for a battle at Gettysburg, but with the town forming the hub of a ten
27:06-way intersection,
27:07with connections to Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C., Gettysburg suddenly gained strategic importance.
27:15Armies must travel on roads, or they could never get anywhere.
27:18So whether it's Thermopylae or Bastogne or Gettysburg, it's the road network at Gettysburg that brings those two armies together,
27:24and this battle will begin as a meeting engagement with both armies on the move.
27:29They will run into each other, sparks fly, and then both sides will continue to feed in reinforcements and it
27:34grows like a wildfire.
27:36By the time he intercepts Lee, Meade's army is 95,000 men strong, 20,000 more than Lee's Army of
27:44Northern Virginia.
27:45The battle begins just west of Gettysburg.
27:48Union General John Buford's cavalrymen fire at the lead elements of Confederate General Henry Heath's division before falling back.
27:56As Heath advances on him, Buford holds firm near Gettysburg.
28:00When Union General John Reynolds First Corps arrives, it's infantry against infantry.
28:06The fighting intensifies on both sides of the Chambersburg Pike.
28:11As the highest-ranking Union officer on the field, Major General John Reynolds escalates the battle as he desperately tries
28:18to support Buford.
28:19But then, while ordering a Wisconsin regiment forward, he is shot in the back of the neck.
28:25With the battle barely begun, one of the Union's top generals is dead.
28:33Confederate General Robert Rhodes' division then arrives on Oak Hill.
28:37Though his division is twice the size of his opponents, Rhodes' initial attacks are repulsed.
28:47General Jubal Early's division then arrives from the northeast.
28:51The Union shifts reinforcements, but Rhodes and Early's rebels still manage to break the right flank.
28:57So far, Meade's army is undermanned and fighting a losing battle.
29:02On their left, after a savage firefight in Herbst Woods, Union soldiers fall back to Seminary Ridge.
29:09Cannons and small arms blast the attacking rebels.
29:13But with Dorsey Pender's division joining in, the numbers become too much for the Union line to bear.
29:21Some escape via an unfinished railroad bed.
29:24Others are trapped among Gettysburg's tangle of streets.
29:28The beaten soldiers reform on Cemetery Hill, where U.S. Army General Oliver Howard has left a brigade and an
29:34array of cannons.
29:36The Confederates probe, but do not attack.
29:39Although Union forces have been pushed back, they've taken command of the high ground.
29:43And with that control, the character of the Battle of Gettysburg begins to change.
29:50In terms of Civil War battlefields, Gettysburg sort of has it all.
29:54You've got a series of ridges every time you move another half a mile.
29:58It's got high ground.
30:00High ground's important for the American Civil War for a couple reasons.
30:03First of all, you could see further from high ground.
30:05Most weapons are direct fire weapons, meaning you had to see them to shoot them.
30:09If you could see them from further, you could shoot them from further.
30:11Which means if you look around the area of Gettysburg, a place like Cemetery Hill, just south of town, becomes
30:16the key piece of terrain in that area.
30:20By the afternoon, the Confederates have wrapped around the Union position.
30:24But that position is a strong one.
30:30Not only does the U.S. Army control the high ground,
30:33the fishhook shape of its lines allows me to easily shuttle in reinforcements where needed.
30:40Union General Dan Sickles moves his 3rd Corps to a peach orchard in the Emmitsburg Road,
30:45where he thinks he can gain an advantage with his artillery.
30:49But in doing so, he creates a lengthy bulge in the Union line.
30:52One that Sickles is unable to defend.
30:56This miscalculation forces General Meade to send his entire 5th Corps, as well as others, to reinforce Sickles, opening gaps
31:04in his center and on his right as a result.
31:09General Lee orders James Longstreet to attack the Union left.
31:14General Hill is to threaten the center, while General Yule is to assault the Union right.
31:21Longstreet's divisions under John Bell Hood and Lafayette McLaws line up on Seminary Ridge, along with Richard Anderson's Division of
31:29Hill's Corps.
31:30There, under the hot summer sun, they launch their assault.
31:39Advancing under a hail of fire, Hood's brigades begin to split apart.
31:44Some slam into the 3rd Corps troops at Devil's Den, while others assault Little Round Top,
31:49where a group of just arrived 5th Corps soldiers await them.
31:55Both sides feed the fight with reinforcements.
31:59The Devil's Den changes hands three times.
32:05Soldiers from Alabama and Texas charge Little Round Top again and again.
32:10Low on ammunition, and with the fate of the Union Army on the line,
32:14the defense is down to the 20th Main Regiment, who have just one option left.
32:19They fix their bayonets and send the exhausted attackers back for good.
32:25The Union's extreme left flank is secure.
32:29Meade then scrambles reinforcements from the 2nd and 5th Corps to support Sickles.
32:33The question is whether he has done enough.
32:36As McLaws' Confederate Division enters the fray, the action shifts towards the Peach Orchard, which quickly falls into rebel hands.
32:44The fight for the nearby Wheatfield is less decisive, changing hands six times in some of the battle's bloodiest combat.
32:52Hood and McLaws men then push on towards Cemetery Ridge, joined by part of Anderson's division.
32:59On Cemetery Ridge, the troops that shifted their position to reinforce Sickles have left a half-mile gap near the
33:06Union Center.
33:06It is an extremely vulnerable position for Meade's army.
33:10There is a risk that it could be cut in two, until reinforcements from the interior lines save the day,
33:17pushing the exhausted rebels back.
33:21Other Confederates renew efforts to capture Little Round Top, entering what comes to be called the Valley of Death.
33:27They, too, are thrown back.
33:31The fighting finally ceases on the south end of the battlefield.
33:38So far, the casualties number 14,000.
33:42And that number will climb as night falls.
33:53General Yule moves on the Union right.
33:57Two of Jubal Early's brigades sweep towards Cemetery Hill, which is obscured by the gathering darkness.
34:07The Union line is thinly held by battle-weary 11th Corps soldiers.
34:13A combined force of Louisiana's and North Carolinians overwhelm them.
34:19For now, control of Cemetery Hill is divided.
34:22If it falls to the rebels, then so, too, might Meade's entire army.
34:28But before Lee's army can close the deal, Union reinforcements arrive.
34:33Early's men are thrown back.
34:37General Edward Johnson's division then moves to attack Cope's Hill.
34:42Most of the breastworks on Cope's Hill are empty.
34:46Their brigades have been sent to reinforce Sickles.
34:50Only 1,300 Union soldiers under General George Sears Green remain to face Johnson's attacking 4,500.
34:58Green's men hold firm against numerous nighttime assaults.
35:03But some of Johnson's rebels do gain a foothold in the abandoned trenches on the lower hill.
35:09By 10 p.m., the day's fighting mercifully comes to a halt.
35:14Two days into the Battle of Gettysburg, the list of casualties has grown to 37,000.
35:24Those killed on the field would need to wait for the guns to quiet before they can be buried.
35:29The fate of those injured depends on a combination of courage, compassion, and the availability of medical supplies.
35:38Sometimes comrades could come and bring a wounded soldier back to safety where their own surgeons had set up temporary
35:45field hospitals where they could be triaged.
35:47But ultimately, those soldiers need to be brought to a more stationary field hospital.
35:53This is where a lot of civilians' houses and barns and even residences in town come into play.
36:00A lot of times they would be commandeered by either side and the officers would just say,
36:06we need to use this structure, this farm, to treat our wounded.
36:11Those soldiers, if they were behind enemy lines, they had no choice but to just wait out in the field,
36:17call for water,
36:18hope that the enemy soldiers would show mercy to them.
36:23While surgeons on both sides had access to anesthesia, they didn't fully understand one of the deadliest scourges of the
36:31battlefield.
36:32And so germs are spreading, disease is running rampant, disease is the number one killer of soldiers in the Civil
36:38War,
36:38not at all battlefield wounds or anything like that.
36:43One of the reasons I would offer that it's the bloodiest battle is, at this point in the war, almost
36:47all our inexperience is gone.
36:49Almost all the people who don't want to be there are gone.
36:52The only people who are left are hard-bitten veterans who have fought in other battlefields
36:56and they know the difference between success and failure is staying another minute, staying another five, and so they do.
37:02And that drives casualties.
37:07As Gettysburg's third day of battle gets underway, the air is thick and hot.
37:13Temperatures reach into the high 80s and beyond.
37:16Gun smoke clings to the humid air.
37:19By now, Gettysburg is already the bloodiest battle of the war, and neither Lee nor Meade is close to backing
37:26down.
37:27In fact, General Lee sees an opportunity, hoping to take Culp's Hill in a morning assault.
37:33He adds three brigades to bolster his left, but in the meantime, General Meade has ordered the return of the
37:40five brigades that had left Culp's Hill to aid Sickles.
37:43Lee now finds himself badly outnumbered.
37:47For seven hours, his army staves off Union attacks.
37:50But by 11 a.m., the Union's numerical advantage pays off.
37:55They force the Confederates out of their captured entrenchments.
37:59Lee responds with a new plan of attack and orders a sweeping assault on the Union's center.
38:04George Pickett leads the only fresh division in Lee's army, and under Longstreet's command, he will spearhead the rebel attack.
38:12Meade, however, already anticipates the rebel strategy.
38:15It is one of the few times that a U.S. Army commander will outwit Robert E. Lee.
38:24Lee thinks that the Union Army is on the verge of breaking, right?
38:28He thinks that he just needs to push hard one more time, and he has a fresh division, Pickett's Division,
38:33to do it with.
38:34When we think about Robert E. Lee on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, he is wearing three
38:38hats.
38:38He's the Army of Northern Virginia commander, he's a theater commander, and he's the principal military advisor to Jefferson Davis.
38:43Before they started this campaign, they looked at the map of the Confederacy, and they saw that a third of
38:47their territory had been lost out west.
38:49Six of the largest ten harbors of the Confederacy have already been lost and blocked off.
38:54It's day 46 of siege in Vicksburg.
38:56He and Davis believe that France and England are not going to come in on their side.
38:59He believes economically they can't get to their independence.
39:02It's down to this.
39:05At 1 o'clock p.m., the war's largest artillery fight heralds the beginning of Lee, Longstreet, and Pickett's gamble.
39:13Lee bombards the Union defenses with 150 cannons, hoping to soften them up.
39:19Meade responds.
39:21At 3 o'clock, the rebel army launches the second phase of the battle, what will come to be remembered
39:27as Pickett's charge.
39:30As Pickett remembered it, my brave boys were full of hope and confident of victory as I led them forth,
39:36forming them in column of attack.
39:37And though officers and men alike knew what was before them, knew the odds against them, they eagerly offered up
39:44their lives on the altar of duty.
39:4612,000 men emerge from Seminary Ridge.
39:50Between them and Meade's defensive line lies nearly a mile of open ground.
39:55I imagine charging across that field on July 3rd, 1863 would have been horrific.
40:00This is the hottest day in Gettysburg in July of 1863.
40:03Artillery flying in, friends falling to your left and right, and you have to keep moving.
40:08Union artillery opens up at long range and tears gaps into the Confederate line.
40:13From the outset, the charge was destined to leave a field of dead and dying bodies in its wake.
40:20That's going to take them anywhere from 13 to 18 minutes to cross that field.
40:24If you're an artillerist, you just do the math.
40:26Well, that'd be five rounds of solid shot, five rounds of shell, and five rounds of case shot, and three
40:31rounds of canister.
40:32The numbers are against Lee's army.
40:35Even before Meade reinforces his defense with 20,000 additional soldiers, Ohio, New York, and Vermont troops position themselves up
40:44on the flank of the Confederate advance.
40:46The Confederates are moving into a great wall of Union guns.
40:50Once they enter rifle range, those still on their feet begin to fall.
40:54But with 2nd and 3rd line troops coming up, some manage to breach the Union position.
41:00A ferocious melee ensues, but as Union reinforcements continue to pour in, it becomes increasingly clear that Lee is running
41:09out of options.
41:15Those soldiers who crossed the stone wall are either killed or captured.
41:22Scarcely half of the men who made the attack return to Seminary Ridge.
41:26But the battle is not yet over.
41:33As events unfold in the center, Confederate cavalrymen pressure the Union's flank.
41:39General Jeb Stuart's horsemen attempt to swing around the Union army.
41:44They're stopped east of Gettysburg by the Union's own cavalry, led by General David M. Grant.
41:52General George Custer, who would make a name for himself in the Union cavalry before heading west after the war,
41:58then leads a charge south of Gettysburg.
42:03They hit the Rebel flank and rear, but the charges and counter-charges failed to move either side.
42:14The Battle of Gettysburg is finally over.
42:19Lee has lost, but remains on the field, as he did at Antietam.
42:25He's daring Meade to attack, which would give him one more chance to even the score.
42:33Meade does not take the bait.
42:36At Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee is beaten like he'd never been beaten before.
42:40But it was not enough to end the Civil War.
42:42Civil War armies proved to be extraordinarily durable.
42:46You cannot simply beat an army and destroy it after one battle, or two, or three, or four, or five.
42:52That night, Lee pulls back through the mountains toward Virginia.
42:56His lumbering wagon train of wounded stretches for miles.
43:01George Gordon Meade will cautiously follow, staying between them and Baltimore and Washington.
43:06Ultimately, Robert E. Lee will cross back across the Potomac River and end the Gettysburg campaign.
43:10Now, Abraham Lincoln will write him a letter and say, you have no idea what this costs him.
43:13You had him in the palm of your hand, and all you had to do was close it and the
43:16war would be over.
43:18But I think Lincoln recognized there's a difference between war on a map and war in reality.
43:22Ultimately, the Union has its first victory in the Eastern Theater.
43:25It's won the bloodiest battle of the war.
43:27It sent Lee back across the Potomac River and shattered his invincibility.
43:34For those left behind in Gettysburg, once the battle ends, a new sense of urgency takes over.
43:41After the Battle of Gettysburg, the town, the battlefield was a place of horrors.
43:45The smells could not even be described.
43:47The moans of the wounded were absolutely terrible.
43:50Where you have 12 wounded in Gettysburg for every man, woman, and child who lives there.
43:54You've got millions, if not billions, of flies making black every white fence post.
44:00And people's farms became charnel houses.
44:03The dead were being buried. The horses were being burned.
44:06On top of that, then the second great invasion of Gettysburg happens and all the do-gooders show up.
44:09The Christian Commission and Sanitary Commission and doctors and nurses from Baltimore and Washington and Philadelphia all converge on Gettysburg
44:16to work in 175 different field hospitals.
44:19Every public barn, building, and church that is now a hospital to take care of what is a humanitarian disaster.
44:26One of those volunteers was Cornelia Hancock, who described the scene at one particular church turned hospital.
44:33Hundreds of desperately wounded men were stretched out on boards laid across the high back pews as closely as they
44:40could be packed together.
44:41The boards were covered with straw.
44:44Thus elevated, these poor sufferers' faces, white and drawn with pain, were almost on a level with my own.
44:51I seemed to stand breast high in a sea of anguish.
44:57Even at this point, local residents understand the gravity of what had happened at Gettysburg.
45:04They organized an effort to bury the Union soldiers on the battlefield they had won.
45:09Thus, the first National Cemetery on a battlefield was born.
45:153,512 fallen Union soldiers are moved to the New Soldiers National Cemetery.
45:23As the work progresses, organizers hold a dedication ceremony on November 19, 1863.
45:3115,000 people attend.
45:34Edward Everett is the main speaker.
45:37Then, President Abraham Lincoln delivers a few prepared remarks.
45:42Though just two minutes long, his Gettysburg Address will cement this moment's place in the story of America.
45:50Despite the great victory at Gettysburg, there are still people wondering, is it worth it?
45:55How many more men do we have to keep sacrificing?
45:58And so he knows that he has to explain that sacrifice and that suffering in a way that's simple enough
46:05for people to understand.
46:07Abraham Lincoln was a savvy politician. He knew an opportunity when he saw one.
46:12And when he was invited, after the fact, to deliver a few appropriate remarks in Gettysburg, he knew he was
46:18going to travel there.
46:19And he knew he was going to not only talk about what had happened, not only about what was happening,
46:24but to lay out a new vision for the country.
46:27It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored
46:34dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
46:42That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall
46:51have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not
46:59perish from the earth.
47:04After the Battle of Gettysburg, this small Pennsylvania town, built along a now famous crossroads, would transform itself into a
47:13place of remembrance and repairing old wounds.
47:17As battlefields were preserved, veterans returned to them. They erected monuments where they had fought so that we, future generations,
47:25would know what happened where, where they made their sacrifice.
47:30As this rare film footage shows, some of these veterans even lived to share their stories into the television age.
47:38They gathered at reunions, and sometimes the North and the South came together as well, shaking hands across the wall
47:44at Gettysburg, and veterans had to learn how to interact on these former places of strife.
47:51Some people go to battlefields today and think that it has to be a somber place of reflection, and that
47:56was for some veterans, but many of them had fun there.
47:58Many of them relived the past and experienced something that they hadn't expected, in some cases a reconciliation with their
48:06former opponents.
48:09One hundred sixty-five thousand soldiers engaged. More than fifty thousand casualties.
48:18There would never be another Civil War battle as bloody as Gettysburg.
48:23But until one side conceded, the death and destruction would continue.
48:38From the chaotic Battle of Shiloh to the blood-soaked fields of Antietam, the critical siege of Vicksburg and the
48:45decisive Battle of Gettysburg.
48:47Stay with us here on PBS America as we explore the pivotal battles of the American Civil War.
48:54stuff
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