The Glenn Beck Program - August 08, 2026


New Birth of Freedom： Gettysburg, Lincoln, and the End of the Civil War ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 17


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53 minutes

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142.19

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7,595

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548

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5

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 The White House is supposed to be the safest house in America.
00:00:07.000 But on this freezing February evening of 1862, death had already slipped past the centuries.
00:00:14.000 Nearly one year into the Civil War, the nation is bleeding out on battlefields from Bull Run to the Mississippi.
00:00:20.000 Yet right now, the most urgent battle, to the Lincolns at least, is happening upstairs.
00:00:27.000 Seven-year-old Willie Lincoln is burning typhoid fever, likely poisoned by the filthy water from
00:00:33.660 the Potomac River that supplies all the water to the White House. His little brother, Tad,
00:00:38.920 lies sick in another room, fighting the same invisible killer. Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln,
00:00:46.260 they've been taking turns at Willie's bedside for days. They know this road too well. Twelve years
00:00:52.640 earlier, they buried their second son, Eddie, when he was just three years old. Now, the family circle
00:00:58.960 is about to shrink again. At five o'clock in the afternoon of February 20th, 1862,
00:01:06.100 Willie draws his last labored breath. Lincoln stands over the rosewood bed,
00:01:12.700 his face buried in his hands, his tall frame shaking. Mary's assistant, Elizabeth Keckley,
00:01:18.380 is in the room and later records the words
00:01:21.580 that she hears Lincoln utter through his tears.
00:01:25.020 My poor boy, he was too good for this earth.
00:01:30.120 God has called him home.
00:01:32.500 I know that he is much better off in heaven,
00:01:34.980 but then we loved him so.
00:01:38.280 It is hard, hard to have him die.
00:01:41.500 Mary collapses.
00:01:43.400 She'll not leave her bed for weeks
00:01:45.060 and she'll never again set foot in the room
00:01:47.840 where her favorite son died.
00:01:50.480 The grief is so complete that even seasoned White House staff fear for her sanity.
00:01:56.520 The war outside and the sorrow inside merge into an almost unbearable weight,
00:02:02.520 but the president, he can't collapse.
00:02:05.060 The war is unrelenting.
00:02:07.620 In the months that follow, Lincoln wrestles with the unbearable question,
00:02:11.380 why?
00:02:12.320 Why this gentle beloved boy?
00:02:14.480 Why this merciless war?
00:02:16.800 Why does God allow both?
00:02:20.120 By September 1862, around the time of the bloody Battle of Antietam,
00:02:24.940 he sits down in private to write,
00:02:27.500 grappling with deep thoughts about the mystery of divine will.
00:02:31.580 They are thoughts he never intends anyone to read.
00:02:34.700 The will of God prevails.
00:02:37.600 In great contests, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God.
00:02:43.700 Both may be, and one must be, wrong.
00:02:48.720 God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.
00:02:54.580 In the present civil war, it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party.
00:03:02.620 And yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to affect His purpose.
00:03:10.580 I am almost ready to say that this is probably true, that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet.
00:03:22.940 By his mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, he could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest.
00:03:33.160 Yet the contest began, and having begun, he could give the final victory to either side
00:03:41.440 any day.
00:03:43.020 Yet the contest proceeds.
00:03:46.760 This is a man searching for meaning in the midst of chaos.
00:03:51.200 He's a father mourning his son, and a president questioning destiny.
00:03:56.320 Nearly a year and a half after Lincoln scratched those words into his private journal, the
00:04:01.900 contest is still undecided. It could still go either way, and it is about to erupt in the
00:04:08.660 largest battle of this excruciating war. This is the American story, The Beginnings,
00:04:17.580 adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton.
00:04:24.080 Episode 17, New Birth of Freedom, Gettysburg, Lincoln, and the End of the Civil War.
00:04:31.900 Robert E. Lee
00:04:36.700 He was the kind of officer that made other soldiers straighten their spines
00:04:40.520 just by walking into the room.
00:04:42.680 West Point graduate in 1829, second in his class,
00:04:45.900 decorated hero of the Mexican War,
00:04:47.740 and by 1861, a colonel in the U.S. Army.
00:04:51.840 He had a reputation for flawless engineering,
00:04:55.560 iron discipline, and quiet grace.
00:04:59.280 Lee wasn't flashy.
00:05:00.400 He didn't crave glory.
00:05:02.380 Men who served under him described him as courteous and humble, almost fatherly.
00:05:07.000 Yet when the moment came, he could be ruthlessly decisive on the battlefield.
00:05:12.740 Now Lee loved the Union.
00:05:14.220 He had sworn to defend it.
00:05:15.500 But when Virginia seceded in April 1861, something deeper pulled him.
00:05:20.900 His home, his family, his entire world was there in the South.
00:05:26.100 He and his wife inherited Arlington House from her parents in 1857, along with the plantation's
00:05:32.580 196 slaves. The property was just a few miles from the White House. President Lincoln offered
00:05:39.380 Lee command of the entire Union Army, but Lee turned it down. In letters written from Arlington
00:05:45.860 House, he explained his torment. With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty
00:05:52.100 and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand
00:05:59.120 against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the army
00:06:07.200 and save in defense of my native state with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be
00:06:14.300 needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword. When Virginia seceded
00:06:21.960 from the Union in May 1861, the Lees left Arlington House, never to return. The U.S. 0.80
00:06:29.600 Army then took control of their estate, and first they built forts on it. The rising toll
00:06:35.020 of U.S. troops killed in action prompted the Army to turn the property into a military
00:06:39.900 burial ground. Today, Robert E. Lee's house is known as Arlington National Cemetery.
00:06:46.580 By May 1863, Lee had just pulled off one of the most audacious victories of the war at Chancellorsville.
00:06:54.580 His army of Northern Virginia was riding high, but Virginia's farms were picked clean and the men were ragged.
00:07:01.580 So Lee made a fateful call, we have to invade the North again.
00:07:05.580 The plan was classically another bold offensive gamble.
00:07:10.580 He would take the war to Pennsylvania's untouched fields for food and supplies,
00:07:15.580 draw the Union Army out of Virginia, threaten Washington, D.C. or Harrisburg,
00:07:21.580 and just maybe shatter the northern morale so badly that Lincoln would have to pursue peace.
00:07:27.580 Lee believed that one more decisive blow on northern soil would actually end it all.
00:07:34.580 Lee's army crossed the Potomac late June.
00:07:39.580 june july 1st major general henry heth's division marched into a sleepy crossroads town called
00:07:47.660 gettysburg in south central pennsylvania heth sent men ahead to search for supplies especially
00:07:54.380 shoes because so many of the men were just marching barefoot or in rags when they got
00:07:59.020 there they were expecting nothing more than a quiet foraging run instead they ran straight
00:08:05.420 into Union cavalry under Brigadier General John Buford,
00:08:10.000 who had deliberately dismounted his troops
00:08:12.100 on the ridges west of town to buy time
00:08:15.400 for the Army of the Potomac.
00:08:17.700 The first shots cracked across the fields of Gettysburg
00:08:21.000 almost by surprise.
00:08:24.300 What started as a skirmish erupted into a raging battle.
00:08:28.380 More Confederate and Union divisions poured in all day.
00:08:31.940 By late afternoon, the Confederates drove 0.91
00:08:34.540 The blue folks threw the streets of Gettysburg
00:08:37.300 in chaotic house-to-house fighting,
00:08:39.880 but the Union troops clawed their way
00:08:42.220 on to the vital high ground,
00:08:44.460 Cemetery Hill, Culp's Hill, and the Long Ridge beyond.
00:08:50.260 Lee arrived on the field and saw the opportunity
00:08:53.220 he was seeking for a decisive blow.
00:08:56.420 The accidental collision quickly escalated
00:08:59.540 into the biggest battle of the entire war.
00:09:02.060 Day two of Gettysburg, July 2nd, Lee ordered James Longstreet's I Corps to smash the Union's
00:09:11.060 left flank.
00:09:12.060 The fighting around the peach orchard and Devil's Den was savage, but the hinge of the
00:09:18.060 entire line was a rocky, wooded knob called Little Round Top.
00:09:23.060 The very end of the line on the Union's left was defended by the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry,
00:09:30.060 commanded by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
00:09:33.780 He was a college professor of rhetoric in modern languages
00:09:36.840 who had taken leave from his job to fight.
00:09:40.140 Tall, walkish, with a methodical mind and a preacher's voice,
00:09:44.960 Chamberlain was the last man anyone expected to become a battlefield legend.
00:09:50.580 He was ordered, hold your position at all costs.
00:09:54.640 Chamberlain's 358 men faced continuous waves of Confederate troops
00:09:59.440 trying to roll up the Union flank.
00:10:02.220 For hours, they poured fire down the slope
00:10:04.580 until their ammunition ran almost dry.
00:10:08.580 When Chamberlain saw Confederate regiments
00:10:11.280 swinging around even further to his left,
00:10:14.540 he knew one more push would break his exhausted unit.
00:10:18.040 So he did something insane.
00:10:21.680 He yelled, fix bayonets,
00:10:24.100 and the command rippled down the line.
00:10:26.420 With a wild yell, the 20th Maine charged downhill in a sweeping move straight into the enemy's face.
00:10:34.720 The shock of the bold bayonet assault.
00:10:38.580 Men running, screaming, steel flashing froze the Confederate momentum.
00:10:43.600 Little Round Top held, and so did the Union line.
00:10:48.640 Chamberlain's desperate gamble saved the Army's flank.
00:10:52.160 By nightfall on the second night, both armies were hemorrhaging.
00:10:58.280 Lee, convinced the Union's center had been weakened, decided the moment had come for the killing stroke.
00:11:04.500 He would hit Cemetery Ridge head-on across nearly a mile of open ground.
00:11:09.920 General Longstreet, his most trusted lieutenant, argued against it with every ounce of his stubbornness.
00:11:15.340 Longstreet had seen the Union guns and the stone walls.
00:11:19.360 He knew what massed artillery and rifles could do to men in the open.
00:11:23.440 He told Lee,
00:11:24.940 General, I have been a soldier all my life.
00:11:28.640 It is my opinion that no 15,000 men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.
00:11:34.640 He pleaded for a flanking maneuver instead,
00:11:37.360 but Lee would not be moved, insisting,
00:11:40.120 The enemy is there, and I am going to attack him there.
00:11:46.120 Longstreet obeyed his general, but his heart wasn't in it.
00:11:51.920 July 3rd, the final day of battle.
00:11:57.540 After a two-hour artillery duel that shook the earth, Major General George Pickett's 13,000 men stepped out of the trees and began that long, terrible march.
00:12:10.080 three-quarters of a mile across open field.
00:12:14.520 It became known as Pickett's Charge.
00:12:17.600 The Union guns opened up,
00:12:19.800 firing canister shot that tore the Confederate division all apart.
00:12:24.480 Canister was what it sounds like,
00:12:26.720 a tin can packed with lead or iron balls and sawdust
00:12:30.900 and then fired out of a cannon at relatively close range,
00:12:34.280 under 400 yards.
00:12:36.680 It was like a giant shotgun.
00:12:38.580 When the enemy was even closer, artillerymen would load two or three canister rounds into the same cannon and fire them all at once.
00:12:47.020 Canister shot likely killed more soldiers in the Civil War than all other types of artillery rounds combined.
00:12:54.160 Pickett's men, they dropped by the hundreds.
00:12:57.640 Still, 200 of them managed to reach the short stone wall in front of the Union position,
00:13:03.780 where the two sides clashed in a nightmarish hand-to-hand brawl.
00:13:08.580 Pickett's charge was over in less than an hour.
00:13:15.580 Over 5,500 of Pickett's men, more than half his force, killed, wounded, or captured.
00:13:23.900 As the survivors staggered back, General Lee told Pickett to reorganize his division in
00:13:27.900 a defensive position, to which Pickett replied,
00:13:30.900 General Lee, I have no division.
00:13:34.500 Lee rode out among the remaining Confederate soldiers, taking all the blame himself.
00:13:39.960 This has all been my fault.
00:13:43.040 Pickett's charge marked the end of the Battle of Gettysburg.
00:13:46.660 Late the next day, July 4th, the Confederate Army began its long retreat south in heavy rain.
00:13:53.440 With a combined total of over 165,000 troops engaged,
00:13:59.120 with 23,000 Union casualties versus 28,000 for the south,
00:14:04.500 Gettysburg was the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere.
00:14:10.760 Lee's gamble failed.
00:14:12.860 He lost over a third of his army just to Gettysburg.
00:14:16.180 He offered his resignation to Jefferson Davis, but Davis refused it.
00:14:20.520 And the war would grind on.
00:14:22.700 But Gettysburg turned the tide in the Union's favor.
00:14:26.580 It was actually the beginning of the end of the Confederacy.
00:14:34.500 Just two days after the guns fell silent at Gettysburg, President Lincoln and his 10-year-old
00:14:39.720 son, Tad, went to visit Major General Daniel Sickles. On the second day at Gettysburg,
00:14:46.000 a cannonball shattered Sickles' leg and it had to be amputated. Colonel James Rustling,
00:14:51.860 one of Sickles' staff officers, was there, and as the men talked, Lincoln, obviously burdened by
00:14:57.420 the war, opened up about the darkest hours. Rustling later wrote that Lincoln told them,
00:15:03.680 In the pinch of the campaign up there, when everybody seemed panic-stricken and nobody could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went into my room one day and locked the door and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to him mightily for victory at Gettysburg.
00:15:25.760 I told him that this was his war, and our cause his cause, but that we couldn't stand
00:15:33.060 another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville.
00:15:36.420 And I then and there made a solemn vow to Almighty God that if he would stand by our
00:15:42.680 boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by him.
00:15:46.980 And he did.
00:15:48.760 And I will.
00:15:50.740 after that, I don't know how it was, and I can't explain it, but soon, a sweet comfort
00:15:56.820 crept into my soul that things would go all right at Gettysburg.
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00:17:21.820 There was nothing inevitable about Ulysses S. Grant. There was no shining pedigree or polished
00:17:28.300 reputation, no aura of greatness, at least not at first glance. He was short, rumpled, cigar usually
00:17:34.980 hanging out of his mouth. He was the kind of man you'd pass on the street without a second glance.
00:17:39.600 Born in 1822 in Ohio, he graduated from West Point in the middle of his class.
00:17:44.140 He had fought bravely in the Mexican-American War, but afterward, his life kind of unraveled.
00:17:50.340 He resigned his commission in 1854 amid rumors of heavy drinking, and then he essentially
00:17:56.520 vanished into obscurity.
00:17:59.060 He had failed at farming, failed at business.
00:18:02.480 At one point, he was reduced to selling firewood on a street corner in St. Louis, Missouri.
00:18:07.720 By 1860, he was clerking in his dad's leather store in Illinois, staring down middle-aged
00:18:13.740 with nothing to show for it. But when the Civil War erupted in 1861, Grant didn't hesitate. He
00:18:20.580 returned to the army because he desperately needed it. The war gave him something he hadn't had in
00:18:26.440 years. Purpose. The man that re-entered military service was quiet and unassuming. He wasn't one
00:18:34.200 for big speeches. He was fiercely loyal to his troops. He was a strategist who saw the whole
00:18:39.280 board when others were fixated on one little square. He hated waste, he despised pomp, and he
00:18:46.160 showed almost an eerie calm under fire. Officers who served under him said he treated the enemy
00:18:52.960 like fellow humans once the shooting stopped. He wasn't flashy, but he was effective and relentless
00:19:00.700 once he made a decision. He moved and didn't stop. It didn't take long for that quality to
00:19:07.080 make him stand out. And that's how he earned his nickname. In 1862, Fort Donelson in Tennessee,
00:19:15.040 after being defeated by Grant's forces, Confederate General Simon Buckner tried to
00:19:19.440 negotiate terms of surrender, but Grant famously sent this written reply. No terms except unconditional
00:19:26.240 and immediate surrender can be accepted. And just like that, U.S. Grant became
00:19:32.140 unconditional surrender grant in the press. By the way, that S in his name actually doesn't
00:19:38.540 stand for anything. It was the result of a clerical error when he applied to West Point
00:19:42.960 with the S perhaps a reference to his mother's maiden name of Simpson, but his real name was
00:19:49.140 Hiram Ulysses Grant. But once he was in the army records as Ulysses S. Grant, he eventually just
00:19:56.100 gave up trying to correct it. By 1863, the Union military had its eye on a vital town on the
00:20:02.440 Mississippi River called Vicksburg. Perched high on the bluffs overlooking a hairpin turn in the
00:20:08.480 river, Vicksburg was a nightmare fortress. Artillery batteries lined the heights, trenches
00:20:15.100 snaked across ridges, earthen forts packed with artillery, with the whole place earning the
00:20:21.140 Nickname, the Gibraltar of the Confederacy.
00:20:25.420 But if the Union could conquer Vicksburg,
00:20:28.180 it could control the Mississippi.
00:20:29.720 It would split the Confederacy in two.
00:20:32.520 Lincoln understood this strategic importance,
00:20:35.320 telling his inner circle.
00:20:36.760 Vicksburg is the key.
00:20:39.500 This war can never be brought to a close
00:20:41.860 until that key is in our pocket.
00:20:44.500 An earlier Union attempt to take Vicksburg had failed,
00:20:47.500 but Grant tried several alternative approaches to the town.
00:20:51.340 But the surrounding landscape was choked with swamps
00:20:54.640 and tangled terrain that stalled his force in mud and disease.
00:20:59.040 Finally, Grant tried something different and daring.
00:21:02.940 He moved further south,
00:21:05.080 cutting himself off from his own supply lines.
00:21:08.100 He crossed the Mississippi River below Vicksburg,
00:21:11.780 slipping past the Confederate defenses at night.
00:21:14.820 Then, he drove inland, and he drove fast.
00:21:18.400 His first major target? Jackson, the Mississippi State Capitol.
00:21:22.560 It was the railroad hub, the lifeline between Vicksburg and the rest of the Confederacy.
00:21:27.580 Grant struck hard.
00:21:29.000 On May 14th, Union forces captured Jackson and destroyed the railroad tracks.
00:21:34.020 Vicksburg was now alone.
00:21:35.840 Grant moved his 50,000 troops and surrounded Vicksburg, trapping 31,000 Confederate troops inside the town.
00:21:44.220 Grant tried to storm the city's forts twice and failed with over 4,200 Union casualties.
00:21:50.720 The dead bodies of the Union troops were piled at the foot of the bluffs,
00:21:55.160 decomposing in the harsh May sun and the stench was so overpowering
00:21:58.880 that Confederate General Pemberton sent a message asking Grant for a brief ceasefire to remove the dead.
00:22:06.260 Determining that Confederate defenses were too strong for direct assaults,
00:22:09.980 Grant began a 47-day siege of Vicksburg.
00:22:13.840 Over those weeks, Union artillery rained over 20,000 shells on the town.
00:22:19.720 Residents dug caves into the hillsides, spending so much time in them that some were actually furnished with rugs and chairs.
00:22:27.340 As the Union noose tightened, starvation gripped Vicksburg.
00:22:31.840 People were eating horses and mules.
00:22:35.420 And then they resorted to cats and dogs and even rats.
00:22:39.940 Grant had sealed off every single escape route.
00:22:43.140 Confederate resupply and reinforcements were impossible.
00:22:46.880 And finally, by July 3rd, Confederate General Pemberton knew it was over.
00:22:52.640 He tried to negotiate a surrender, but Grant again refused.
00:22:57.140 The next day, Independence Day, Pemberton officially surrendered.
00:23:02.600 Grant was convinced by his officers to parole the Confederate soldiers rather than take them all prisoner.
00:23:08.640 They were all allowed to go home on their word not to fight again.
00:23:13.140 As Union troops filed into Vicksburg and interacted with the emaciated Confederate soldiers,
00:23:19.140 Grant noted,
00:23:19.700 I myself saw our men taking bread from their haversacks and giving it to the enemy
00:23:25.000 they had so recently been engaged in starving out.
00:23:29.180 Only later would Grant and his men find out that their capture of Vicksburg
00:23:32.860 came on the same day as the Union victory at Gettysburg.
00:23:37.960 But Jefferson Davis dispaired.
00:23:39.820 He considered the loss of Vicksburg worse than the Gettysburg defeat.
00:23:43.140 He said,
00:23:44.020 We are now in the darkest hour of our political existence.
00:23:48.860 Meanwhile, in Washington, Navy Secretary Gideon Wells burst into the White House,
00:23:53.820 clutching the telegram, and Lincoln, usually so measured, couldn't contain himself.
00:23:58.020 He hugged Wells and said,
00:23:59.760 I cannot, in words, tell you my joy over this result.
00:24:04.640 It is great, Mr. Wells. It is great.
00:24:08.000 For the first time in the war, the tide seemed to be turning,
00:24:11.800 and General Grant was a rising star in the effort.
00:24:16.020 One northern journalist embedded with Grant's force during the Vicksburg campaign wrote,
00:24:20.880 Nothing like this campaign has occurred during this war.
00:24:24.500 It stamps General Grant as a man of uncommon military ability,
00:24:28.740 proves him the foremost one in the West, if not in the nation.
00:24:33.660 President Lincoln concurred, saying about Grant,
00:24:36.540 He isn't shrieking for reinforcements all the time.
00:24:39.880 he takes what troops we can safely give him
00:24:42.820 and does the best he can with what he has got.
00:24:46.360 Grant is my man, and I am his the rest of the war.
00:24:52.040 Grant never gloated after his wins.
00:24:55.760 After Vicksburg, he said,
00:24:58.220 While a battle is raging, one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand,
00:25:03.080 or the ten thousand, with great composure.
00:25:06.440 But after the battle, these scenes are distressing.
00:25:09.880 and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as a friend.
00:25:17.120 Lincoln understood that compassion.
00:25:19.800 The twin hammer blows of Gettysburg and Vicksburg
00:25:22.700 had him thinking beyond victory now towards a healed union.
00:25:27.200 His first big chance to voice that vision came four months later on November 19, 1863,
00:25:32.660 at the dedication of a new military cemetery at Gettysburg.
00:25:37.140 The story you may have heard, that Lincoln dashed off the Gettysburg address in the back of an
00:25:44.020 envelope during the train ride. But it's wrong. He had already drafted much of the speech at the
00:25:49.840 White House. He traveled to Gettysburg, and then that night, by lamplight, he refined and finished
00:25:55.760 it. The next day, at the cemetery dedication, the featured speaker was Edward Everett. He was a
00:26:02.680 renowned orator, famous Harvard president, and former Secretary of State. He delivered his speech
00:26:08.920 from memory. It took two hours. And then Lincoln stood. He spoke for two minutes. 271 words.
00:26:20.700 The most famous speech in American history. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
00:26:29.060 They have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
00:26:34.060 And the world will little note nor long remember what we say here.
00:26:38.200 But it will never forget what they did here.
00:26:41.860 It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
00:26:48.060 fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
00:26:51.960 It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.
00:26:57.500 that from these honored dead
00:26:59.840 we will take increased devotion
00:27:02.040 to that cause for which they gave
00:27:04.000 their last full measure of devotion
00:27:06.180 that we here highly resolve
00:27:08.760 that these dead shall not have died in vain
00:27:11.640 that this nation under God
00:27:14.180 shall have a new birth of freedom
00:27:15.960 and that the government of the people
00:27:18.380 by the people and for the people
00:27:20.340 shall not perish from the earth.
00:27:24.840 When he finished
00:27:26.940 Nothing.
00:27:28.860 The crowd sat still, almost confused.
00:27:34.460 Was that it?
00:27:36.660 And then slowly applause rolled across the field.
00:27:40.520 For many of them, it would take time for the power of those words to sink in.
00:27:45.240 But Edward Everett, he understood immediately.
00:27:49.380 The next day, he wrote to Lincoln.
00:27:51.120 I should be glad if I could flutter myself,
00:27:53.860 that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.
00:28:01.900 The war still had much too far to go,
00:28:04.300 but Lincoln had planted the first fragile seeds of healing for the nation.
00:28:12.020 Turning 65 feels like you've been dropped into a constant stream of mailers and calls and ads
00:28:17.500 telling you something different about Medicare, and most of it just makes things more confusing.
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00:28:27.640 you need to get the care that you have to have, and not pay for a plan that doesn't fit your life.
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00:28:39.500 and they help you find a plan that actually works for you.
00:28:42.820 Over the last year, they have helped people in this audience save $1.5 million just by finding better-fitting plans.
00:28:50.280 And it's really sometimes not even about the money.
00:28:52.860 I heard about a guy named Mark.
00:28:54.360 Chapter stepped in, helped him get the care he needed.
00:28:56.920 He said they were absolutely spectacular.
00:28:59.580 So give them a call.
00:29:00.400 The call is free.
00:29:01.560 They've helped thousands in my audience, and they can help you too.
00:29:04.780 Dial pound 250.
00:29:05.800 Say the keyword chapter.
00:29:06.920 It's pound 250, keyword chapter.
00:29:11.860 After Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the Confederacy was severely wounded, but not yet broken.
00:29:17.240 that meant another brutal year of fighting had to follow. At the center of the storm in 1864
00:29:24.160 stood a calm, determined figure, Ulysses S. Grant. In March, President Lincoln promoted Grant to
00:29:31.100 command the entire Union Army, and Grant believed in constant grinding pressure. And now, for the
00:29:37.480 first time in the war, he turned that pressure directly onto the South's most formidable defender,
00:29:43.060 Robert E. Lee. What followed was a vicious sequence of battles in northern Virginia.
00:29:48.820 As Grant pushed forward, the Union losses began to pile up again, but Grant kept pressing,
00:29:54.900 refusing to let Lee breathe. It was relentless, exhausting pace for Grant's troops,
00:30:00.340 one that led them into a nightmare at a small crossroads called Cold Harbor.
00:30:05.980 It was just nine miles northeast of Richmond. Grant believed one decisive battle could shatter
00:30:12.800 Lee's Army, open a direct path to Richmond, and end the Confederacy for good. But the Union troops
00:30:19.760 knew Lee's Army was dug in around Cold Harbor, artillery deep trenches, lines reinforced with
00:30:26.240 timber. Grant planned a frontal assault for early in the morning of June 3rd. His men,
00:30:33.440 they knew what was coming. They pinned scraps of paper to the backs of their uniforms,
00:30:38.480 The names, hometowns, next of kin scribbled in pencil so their bodies could be identified.
00:30:44.640 They all knew they weren't coming back.
00:30:47.980 At 4.30 a.m., the order came.
00:30:52.340 15,000 Union troops surged forward.
00:30:56.300 They ran straight into a wall of fire.
00:31:00.120 The Confederate gunfire was so thick that Union troops took cover on the ground behind the dead bodies of their fellow soldiers.
00:31:07.660 In the first hour alone, Grant's men suffered over 7,000 casualties.
00:31:13.080 Lee's army lost just 1,500.
00:31:16.620 It was really more of a slaughter than a battle.
00:31:20.280 Later, among the dead, a diary was found that belonged to a soldier from Massachusetts.
00:31:26.340 The pages were stained with blood.
00:31:28.840 The final entry read simply, quote,
00:31:32.940 June 3, 1864, Hold Harbor, Virginia.
00:31:36.920 I was killed.
00:31:39.580 Grant sat in his tent that night,
00:31:44.060 staring the unending casualty list.
00:31:48.000 To an aide, he admitted,
00:31:49.440 The hardest part of this general business
00:31:52.360 is the responsibility for the loss of one's men.
00:31:56.320 I can see no other way out of it, however.
00:31:59.480 We've got to keep at them.
00:32:01.820 But it is hard, very hard,
00:32:04.680 to see all these brave fellows killed and wounded.
00:32:08.980 It means aching hearts back home.
00:32:12.740 Lincoln stood solidly behind Grant,
00:32:15.740 but even he was distressed by the soaring death toll.
00:32:20.220 During Grant's Virginia campaign that May in June,
00:32:23.540 the Union had over 65,000 casualties.
00:32:27.480 That's about what we lost in Vietnam.
00:32:31.200 Discussing Grant, Mary Lincoln snapped.
00:32:33.860 He is a butcher and is not fit to be at the head of an army. 0.84
00:32:38.420 Grant heard the whispers. 0.98
00:32:40.160 The newspapers branded him Butcher Grant.
00:32:42.800 To another aide, he confessed,
00:32:44.540 They call me a butcher, but you know I sometimes could hardly bring myself to give an order of battle.
00:32:51.160 When I contemplated the death and misery that were sure to follow, I stood appalled.
00:32:56.840 Cold Harbor haunted Grant the rest of his life.
00:32:59.860 In his memoirs, he wrote,
00:33:01.080 I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made.
00:33:06.600 No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained.
00:33:13.380 Just days after the Cold Harbor disaster, the Republican Convention in Baltimore re-nominated Lincoln for president.
00:33:21.620 But a giant cloud of doubt hovered over the proceedings.
00:33:25.700 Worry grew about Lincoln's ability to win a second term.
00:33:29.300 To try to broaden support, they chose a Southern Democrat who was pro-Union, Andrew Johnson, as Lincoln's running mate.
00:33:36.120 They were trying to send a signal that this war was about restoring the Union, not just defeating the South.
00:33:43.200 Meanwhile, Grant shifted his focus to Petersburg, a vital railroad hub just 22 miles south of Richmond.
00:33:50.660 If it fell, Richmond would suffocate.
00:33:54.880 But Lee had turned Petersburg into a fortress.
00:33:58.820 Grant tried lightning attacks, four days, 12,000 more Union men lost, and not a single breakthrough.
00:34:06.280 So, Grant dug in for another long siege.
00:34:10.420 During this grim stalemate, Lincoln came to visit Grant.
00:34:13.680 While there, the President rode through the camp of black Union troops.
00:34:18.160 The men erupted, cheering, weeping, reaching out to touch his horse and his clothes.
00:34:23.640 Lincoln, had in hand, tears in his eyes, saluted them back.
00:34:27.860 He was deeply moved by these soldiers who were fighting for their own freedom.
00:34:32.600 Yet, even in combat, they were treated as subhuman by the Confederates.
00:34:37.340 During one of the battles around Petersburg,
00:34:39.560 wounded black troops in the field were bayoneted by Southern soldiers.
00:34:44.480 In July, Grant gave Ambrose Burnside permission to attempt an unusual attack.
00:34:50.820 Among Burnside's men were miners from Pennsylvania,
00:34:53.760 who dug a tunnel beneath the ground separating the Union and Confederate lines at Petersburg.
00:34:59.760 Then, they stuffed it with explosives.
00:35:02.760 Burnside wanted to redeem himself for his failure at Fredericksburg earlier in the war.
00:35:07.760 So, around 5 a.m. on July 30th,
00:35:13.760 that blast blew a crater 30 feet deep and 170 feet long.
00:35:19.760 Rifles, equipment, human limbs rained down as over 300 Confederates were killed in an instant.
00:35:27.680 The explosion ripped a giant path through the Petersburg defenses.
00:35:35.000 But the attack that followed under Burnside was completely mismanaged.
00:35:40.160 Union troops poured through into the crater instead of going around it.
00:35:44.360 They became trapped targets.
00:35:46.640 What could have been a game-changing operation
00:35:48.980 instead turned into another 4,000 Union casualty.
00:35:53.980 Grant was dismayed beside himself.
00:35:56.640 He accepted part of the blame.
00:35:58.480 He had left the operation to subordinates who, as it turned out, were not up to the task.
00:36:04.220 So the siege dragged on.
00:36:06.420 But Lee knew the longer the war took, the more it favored the North.
00:36:12.340 Unless some measure can be devised to replace our losses,
00:36:15.860 The consequences may be disastrous.
00:36:19.420 In the North, disillusionment was rampant.
00:36:22.260 Democrats demanded peace.
00:36:23.640 Republican newspaper editor Horace Greeley declared,
00:36:26.620 Mr. Lincoln is already beaten.
00:36:29.040 He cannot be elected.
00:36:31.120 The Republican National Committee met in New York
00:36:33.360 and then sent an emissary to tell Lincoln
00:36:35.700 that his re-election was hopeless
00:36:37.860 and that he had to start peace talks with the South,
00:36:40.840 even if it meant letting slavery survive.
00:36:43.400 But Lincoln refused.
00:36:45.860 on august 31st the democrats nominated george b mcclellan for president the very general lincoln
00:36:52.900 had fired two years earlier their platform called the war a total failure demanded an immediate
00:37:00.020 ceasefire and a convention to negotiate peace with the south politically it seemed like the war
00:37:06.420 effort was unraveling but outside of virginia the union was slowly breaking apart the confederate
00:37:13.140 Army piece by piece. Grant had a like-minded partner in the West, William T. Sherman, a man
00:37:21.140 he trusted completely. Just two days after McClellan's nomination, Sherman captured Atlanta.
00:37:27.440 When Atlanta's mayor begged him not to force civilians out of the city, Sherman replied,
00:37:32.140 War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm
00:37:38.580 as against these terrible hardships of war.
00:37:41.580 Sherman's victory flipped the perception
00:37:43.580 in the North on its head.
00:37:45.580 Suddenly, the Republicans rallied behind Lincoln.
00:37:48.580 McClellan frantically distanced himself
00:37:51.580 from his own party's peace platform.
00:37:54.580 And two months later, Lincoln won re-election.
00:37:57.580 It was a landslide, 212 electoral votes
00:38:00.580 and 55% of the popular vote.
00:38:03.580 Grant's grinding siege at Petersburg
00:38:06.580 had done its quiet work, pinning Lee down so he couldn't rush to save Atlanta or strike elsewhere.
00:38:13.000 The Confederacy grew desperate. Jefferson Davis even backed a plan to buy 40,000 slaves and arm
00:38:21.320 them to fight for the South. Meanwhile, Sherman marched to the Atlantic Ocean, carving a path of
00:38:27.620 destruction across Georgia. His troops destroyed anything that could be used by the South in the
00:38:32.860 war effort. In December, he captured Savannah and sent Lincoln this telegram. I beg to present you
00:38:40.020 as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition.
00:38:48.440 Also about 25,000 bales of cotton. The end was finally in sight. Here's a question that I want
00:38:56.660 you to ask yourself. If someone in your family got sick tomorrow or there was a medication shortage
00:39:01.540 or a natural disaster, and it kept you from getting a doctor for a few days,
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00:39:09.680 These are real possibilities now.
00:39:11.940 That's just one of the reasons I like Jace.
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00:39:56.340 For more of the history that inspired this podcast series,
00:39:59.680 be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings, by David Barton and Tim Barton,
00:40:05.880 available now at wallbuilders.com.
00:40:11.120 Through the brutal, long year of 1864, President Lincoln made something clear to his cabinet and
00:40:18.180 to his allies in Congress. Winning the Civil War was not enough. Ending slavery permanently
00:40:25.840 had to be written into the U.S. Constitution itself.
00:40:30.940 Lincoln was concerned that his Emancipation Proclamation
00:40:33.920 might not survive any peace process.
00:40:37.380 It already freed thousands of slaves, but only as a war measure.
00:40:41.540 After the war, that could be reversed.
00:40:44.660 So Lincoln pushed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
00:40:48.820 The Senate passed it in April 1864 with a required two-thirds vote,
00:40:53.680 But it failed in the House, where votes were almost entirely along party lines.
00:40:59.480 Republicans for it, Democrats against.
00:41:02.480 Yet Lincoln refused to let it die.
00:41:05.040 His annual message to Congress that December, he urged the House to reconsider.
00:41:08.900 Then, on January 6th, 1865, Ohio Representative James Ashley stood and reintroduced it. 0.91
00:41:17.560 Race was on.
00:41:19.720 Lincoln needed a handful of Democrats to flip.
00:41:22.080 Standing in the way was George Pendleton, the opposition leader,
00:41:26.020 the same Democrat who was George McClellan's vice presidential running mate just the previous November.
00:41:32.060 Pendleton rallied Democrats against the amendment, warning of constitutional overreach and political chaos.
00:41:39.240 Everybody knew the margin would be razor thin.
00:41:43.140 Lincoln himself described the moment like this.
00:41:45.640 We are like whalers who have been long on a chase.
00:41:49.840 We have at last got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer,
00:41:57.840 or with one flop of his tail, he will send us all into eternity.
00:42:04.980 On the morning of the vote, Congressman Ashley panicked.
00:42:09.100 He rushed word to the White House about rumors that Confederate peace commissioners were in
00:42:12.840 Washington ready to negotiate an end to the war. If that were true, he feared,
00:42:17.100 Democrats would argue that passing the amendment now would jeopardize peace.
00:42:21.840 Ashley feared the votes would collapse.
00:42:24.640 Lincoln responded like the veteran lawyer he was, carefully and deliberately writing,
00:42:29.280 So far as I know, there are no peace commissioners in the city, or likely to be in it.
00:42:36.720 It was technically true, but also not the whole truth.
00:42:42.300 Lincoln knew commissioners had been sent, they just hadn't arrived yet.
00:42:46.680 Inside the House chamber, there was barely room to breathe.
00:42:51.680 Every square inch was packed, lawmakers, spectators,
00:42:54.680 Supreme Court justices, members of Lincoln's cabinet.
00:42:57.680 Almost like a criminal trial,
00:42:59.680 both sides delivered closing arguments
00:43:01.680 before the representatives voted.
00:43:03.680 Then, at last, Speaker Shuler Colfax rose
00:43:07.680 and delivered the verdict.
00:43:09.680 On the passage of the joint resolution
00:43:11.680 to amend the Constitution of the United States,
00:43:13.680 the ayes have 119, the noes 56.
00:43:19.560 The constitutional majority of two-thirds
00:43:21.560 having voted in the affirmative,
00:43:23.360 the joint resolution has passed.
00:43:25.620 Lincoln's friend, journalist Noah Brooks,
00:43:28.000 captured what happened next.
00:43:29.900 For a moment, there was a pause of utter silence,
00:43:32.760 as if the voices of the dense mass of spectators
00:43:35.340 were choked by strong emotion.
00:43:37.840 Then there was an explosion, a storm of cheers,
00:43:40.500 the like of which probably no Congress of the United States
00:43:43.500 heard before. Five Democrats had flipped. Without those five votes, the amendment
00:43:49.680 would have failed. By the end of the year, the required three-quarters of state
00:43:54.000 legislators had ratified it, finally writing slavery out of the Constitution
00:43:59.100 forever. March 4th, 1865. 50,000 people gathered in the rain outside the Capitol
00:44:08.500 building. Among them, something never before seen at an inauguration. Thousands of black Americans,
00:44:16.080 including black union troops. Inside, new Vice President Andrew Johnson took the oath of office
00:44:22.440 and then delivered a rambling, slurred 20-minute speech. Earlier, he had had a few glasses of
00:44:29.740 whiskey to steady his nerves. It didn't help. But then, Lincoln stepped outside. He was on the east
00:44:37.700 Portico. Above him, the newly completed Capitol Dome. And just before he spoke, something almost
00:44:44.520 theatrical happened. Noah Brooks captured the scene. The sun, which had been obscured all day,
00:44:51.380 burst forth in its unclouded meridian splendor and flooded the spectacle with glory and light.
00:44:57.940 Lincoln spoke with the full weight of the war behind every word.
00:45:01.940 Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
00:45:12.280 Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk,
00:45:24.940 And until every drop of blood drawn with the lash
00:45:29.580 shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,
00:45:33.700 as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said,
00:45:40.480 the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
00:45:47.420 It echoed something deeper,
00:45:50.120 something he had wrestled with privately after the death of his son Willie.
00:45:52.960 and then he closed with some of the most famous
00:45:56.220 and vital presidential words ever spoken.
00:45:59.120 With malice toward none,
00:46:01.800 with charity for all,
00:46:04.960 with firmness in the right
00:46:07.200 as God gives us to see the right,
00:46:11.320 let us strive on to finish the work we are in,
00:46:16.360 to bind up the nation's wounds,
00:46:19.100 to care for him who shall have borne the battle
00:46:23.220 and for his widow and his orphan,
00:46:28.100 to do all which may achieve and cherish
00:46:31.580 a just and a lasting peace
00:46:34.600 among ourselves and with all nations.
00:46:43.800 Almost a month later,
00:46:46.220 Union General Philip Sheridan's cavalry
00:46:48.540 smashed into Confederate lines outside of Petersburg.
00:46:52.600 The next morning, General Grant hurled 14,000 men
00:46:57.300 at the dense fortification.
00:46:59.600 The combined force finally overwhelmed Robert E. Lee.
00:47:03.340 His only option was to run, try to buy more time.
00:47:07.120 So he abandoned Petersburg with his troops.
00:47:11.060 A messenger bursts into a Richmond church on Sunday morning.
00:47:15.040 Jefferson Davis was sitting in the pews.
00:47:17.540 He stood and walked out mid-service.
00:47:20.620 The Confederate capital then quickly and completely unraveled.
00:47:25.580 There was panic in the streets.
00:47:27.160 Confederate government officials fled with documents and gold.
00:47:30.300 Citizens set fire to storehouses so they wouldn't fall into Union's hand.
00:47:34.440 When Lincoln received the news that Richmond had fallen, he said,
00:47:38.020 Thank God that I have lived to see this.
00:47:41.760 It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years.
00:47:46.920 And now the nightmare is gone.
00:47:50.920 Two days later, Lincoln walked into Richmond,
00:47:53.920 protected only by a handful of soldiers.
00:47:55.920 He had to see the center of the rebellion for himself. 1.00
00:47:59.920 Almost immediately, he was surrounded by black residents,
00:48:02.920 shouting praises to God for their deliverance.
00:48:05.920 When several of them dropped to their knees before Lincoln,
00:48:08.920 he said,
00:48:10.920 Don't kneel to me. That is not right.
00:48:13.920 you must kneel to God only
00:48:17.080 and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.
00:48:22.060 I am but God's humble instrument.
00:48:25.560 Lincoln was escorted to Jefferson Davis' house and office
00:48:28.540 where he sat at his desk
00:48:30.360 and quietly put a Confederate $5 bill in his pocket as a souvenir.
00:48:35.880 He savored the moment.
00:48:37.860 The long, bloody rebellion was effectively over.
00:48:41.000 April 9, 1865
00:48:44.840 Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia
00:48:47.620 It wasn't a building
00:48:49.360 It was the name of a small village
00:48:51.960 Grant had finally cornered Lee
00:48:55.120 who said
00:48:55.940 There is nothing left me to do
00:48:58.200 but go and see General Grant 0.99
00:49:00.140 and I would rather die a thousand deaths 0.98
00:49:03.520 Grant met Lee in the parlor
00:49:05.980 of the modest brick house
00:49:07.500 owned by Wilmer McLean
00:49:10.160 McLean had once lived near Full Run Creek, but that home was wrecked in the war's opening battle.
00:49:16.540 He had moved to the quiet Appomattox Courthouse to escape the war,
00:49:21.060 only to end up hosting its final act in his own front parlor.
00:49:26.680 Lee arrived first, immaculate in his formal uniform.
00:49:30.700 Grant was self-conscious about his own rumpled field clothes and muddy boots.
00:49:35.900 He tried small talk about their shared Mexican war days, but Lee cut him short.
00:49:41.260 Grant took the hint and wrote out the terms of surrender.
00:49:45.940 Confederate soldiers would hand over their rifles, be paroled, and go home.
00:49:52.080 Those with horses or mules could keep them to farm.
00:49:55.700 After Lee read the terms, Grant asked him if they were satisfactory.
00:50:00.260 Lee answered,
00:50:00.840 Yes, I am bound to be satisfied with anything you offer.
00:50:06.220 It is more than I expected.
00:50:08.940 The papers were signed around 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
00:50:12.000 Grant later reflected,
00:50:13.420 What General Lee's feelings were, I do not know.
00:50:17.240 As he was a man of much dignity with an impassable face,
00:50:21.680 it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come
00:50:27.080 or felt sad over the result and was too manly to show it.
00:50:33.180 Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my observation.
00:50:37.880 But my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter,
00:50:43.080 were sad and depressed.
00:50:45.480 I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe
00:50:50.660 who had fought so long and valiantly and had suffered so much for a cause.
00:50:57.080 though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought
00:51:03.200 and one for which there was the least excuse.
00:51:08.900 Before they left the McLean house, Lee admitted something devastating.
00:51:14.220 His army was starving.
00:51:16.620 They had scraped by on parched corn for days.
00:51:21.280 Grant didn't hesitate.
00:51:22.200 Asking how many men needed feeding, Lee answered,
00:51:25.120 About 25,000.
00:51:27.720 Union troops, who just a few days earlier
00:51:30.260 were firing on the men in dingy gray uniforms,
00:51:33.660 now handed them meals, ladled water into their tin cups.
00:51:38.280 With malice toward none, the charity for all.
00:51:42.700 That night, Washington, D.C. erupted in colorful music
00:51:46.280 for a exuberant celebration.
00:51:49.020 And yet lurking in the shadows
00:51:50.780 was a final insult about to be added
00:51:53.840 to so much injury.
00:51:56.720 One more national heartbreak for a people
00:51:59.040 who had already endured so much.
00:52:06.600 Coming up on the American Story, The Beginnings.
00:52:11.060 As Seward rolled desperately to the floor,
00:52:14.240 Sergeant Robinson regained his senses,
00:52:16.640 rushed back into the room, and tackled Powell from behind.
00:52:19.460 they grappled with powell stabbing robinson repeatedly in the shoulder seward's daughter
00:52:26.320 fanny screamed for help waking her brother gus who was asleep in the other room she ran to the
00:52:31.540 bedroom window flung it open and screamed into the street that's when david harold mounted his
00:52:37.420 own horse and fled leaving powell's horse behind now gus rushed in with sergeant robinson they
00:52:45.260 wrestled Powell out of the bedroom and into the hallway, but Powell was tall and strongly built
00:52:50.240 and managed to punch his way out of the brawl. He finally thundered down the stairs, out the front
00:52:55.880 door, and into the night. David Harreld was nowhere to be found, so Powell threw away his bloody knife,
00:53:01.740 swung onto his horse, and rode away in the darkness. Secretary Seward, he lay in a pool of his own blood,
00:53:09.920 writhing in pain.
00:53:15.260 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast
00:53:21.680 and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.