- Charge! (soldiers war cry)
(guns firing)
Come on, boys!
- McClellan had fresh troops in reserve.
Could have used them to destroy Lee.
Instead he let him him escape over the river to Virginia.
- We chased him out of Maryland.
Still a victory.
Now I can release the proclamation.
On the first day of January, all persons
held as slaves shall be then,
thenceforward, and forever free.
Where's Lee?
- Gettysburg.
- It may be the best chance to destroy his army.
- One big battle.
(guns firing)
What if Lee is thinking the exact same thing?
- [Lincoln] Then we're both looking at the end of this war.
One way or the other.
- [Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen,
some of you may have heard of him.
- [Caroline] His story has been passed down
from one generation to the next.
- Four score and seven years ago.
- He felt that democracy in its
purest form is for all people.
- All persons held as slaves shall be
thenceforward and forever free.
- But there's something deeper than what he did.
It's about who he was.
- Lincoln grew up in poverty.
- Haven't done anything to make
anyone remember that I ever lived.
- He's living proof that Americans
can rise from obscurity to power.
- With that wit and that charm and that intellect.
- It's better to stay silent and be thought
a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.
- He has this deep sense of empathy.
- He takes the Declaration of Independence.
- All men are created equal.
- And turns it into a nation's moral compass.
(glass breaking) (men shouting)
- As the country is breaking apart,
there's a turning point where
he's gonna have to take a stand.
- Charge!
- Blood will be on your hands!
- Blood is already on my hands!
- He had to learn how to be a commander in chief.
- We can't have a war on two fronts.
- He was willing to admit he was wrong and to change.
- We can attack immediately.
- [Historian] He was the right person at the right time.
- If we let this stand for one minute longer
we might as well say goodbye to the whole thing.
Union.
Democracy.
All of it.
(dramatic sting)
(tense music)
- In 1863, Lee swings north again.
What he hoped was that having moved swiftly
into Pennsylvania, the Union Army would play catch up
in a disorganized and bedraggled fashion.
And then he would have them.
- When Lee crossed into Maryland and then Pennsylvania,
Lincoln was ecstatic that Lee was in Union territory
because he said this is our chance to bag Lee.
Lincoln believes that destroying that army
would in effect destroy the Confederacy.
- By the end of the day on July 1st,
on the Gettysburg battlefield,
the Union Army had taken a real shellacking.
(clicking)
(soldiers rallying) (bombs exploding)
- Where the hell is Sickles and the Third Corps?
Find them!
- Yes sir.
- Move!
- From General Warren.
- Give it here, give it here!
- On the morning of July 2nd, 1863,
Robert E. Lee makes the decision to test
both flanks of the Union Army of the Potomac.
At a place called Little Round Top.
- And on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg
Meade sends General Dan Sickle's
Third Corps off to the left flank.
- Sickles moved his corps and it
created a gap in the Union line.
This opening creates this existential threat.
- Brigadier General Warren fears
Little Round Top may be exposed.
- What does that mean for the line?
- If Lee's army takes that hill.
We might not stand a chance.
- During Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln
almost lived in the war department offices
close to the telegraph operators.
He was about as closely involved in monitoring
the operations of an army in the field
as maybe any president had ever been.
- You wonder what Lincoln had to shore him up
emotionally and psychologically.
As he went through all these different decisions
he had to make and the crisis that took place.
- Do you have news?
- Not of the battle.
Mr. President.
- Reinforcements have been sent to Little Round Top.
- We don't know how old that information is.
We have to wait and see.
- Mr. President.
Mr. President, it's Mrs. Lincoln.
She was in the presidential carriage.
They were going downhill when the seat
came loose and they lost control.
- Is she all right?
- She had to jump from the carriage.
It's a head injury.
It looks like somebody removed the screws that fasten
the driver's seat to the body of the carriage.
Somebody was trying to kill you, sir.
- [Operator] This is from General Meade.
- Mrs. Pomeroy's tending to her.
Shall I tell her you'll be around?
- They still got the hill.
- [Messenger] Mr. President.
- Tell Mrs. Lincoln I'm sorry.
I can't possibly leave now.
Ask Robert to go to her.
- All hell seemed to be breaking loose.
Lincoln was faced with the consequences
that someone had tampered with
the carriage in order to do him in,
and his wife had become collateral damage.
- On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg,
Robert E. Lee would launch his 12,500 men
across nearly a mile wide field.
And they would strike the Union position.
- This comes to be known as Pickett's Charge.
It becomes a huge bloodletting.
The casualties mount for both Confederate and Union armies
as Lee's men are storming the center of the Union line.
- On and on it went.
Confusion, no certain information.
Through July 2nd.
Through July 3rd.
- And while the Battle of Gettysburg is going on,
Ulysses S. Grant is now laying siege
to the Confederate Army inside of Vicksburg.
- [Caroline] Vicksburg was the last portion
of the Mississippi River the Confederates still held.
- Everybody knows the importance of the Mississippi River
for commerce and military movements.
And the primary goal of the Vicksburg campaign
is to open the Mississippi River.
On July 3rd Lincoln will stay at the telegraph office.
Spending all night waiting on reports from the army.
(telegraph machine tapping)
- It's from General Meade.
"The battle has been successfully concluded.
"Lee's retreating."
(group cheers and applauds)
- After Gettysburg, Lincoln is thrilled with Meade.
Here we've had the first decisive victory
for the Army of the Potomac over Lee's army.
This is a victory in no uncertain terms.
Unlike Antietam, it is clear that
the Union Army has won this battle.
- The patriotism and cheers going in offices.
And in Washington, DC hardly any work gets done that day.
The president gets serenaded at the white house.
The idea that if it isn't the end,
it is the beginning of the end,
this is prevailing throughout the north.
- Gettysburg has been the largest battle
of the war up until that time,
will remain the largest battle of the war.
Somewhere around 50,000 casualties.
Lee has lost a third of his army on this venture north.
And he has clearly been defeated.
- Send this message to General Meade.
Go after Lee's army now.
While they're vulnerable.
Imperative you attack before they cross the Potomac.
- Lincoln believes that the aftermath
of Gettysburg could have been the end
of the army in Northern Virginia.
- [Thomas] Papa!
- How's mother?
- It was a terrible fall.
She's been asking for you.
So we've won at Gettysburg?
- Yes.
But there's much work ahead.
(tense music)
- You're here.
I overheard the doctor speaking to Mrs. Pomeroy.
Is it true that someone was trying to hurt you?
- Don't you worry.
You need to rest.
- Is your life in danger?
(knocking)
- Mrs. Lincoln.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Sir.
I just received a message from General Grant.
Pemberton surrendered.
Vicksburg is ours.
- That's great news.
That's great.
Well we must congratulate Grant.
I had my doubts, but he done it.
Any word from Meade?
- Progress is slow.
- He can't let Lee retreat now.
If Meade completes the work the rebellion will be over.
He has orders to attack now doesn't he?
- Those are the orders.
- Please stay with your mother.
You must rest.
- He learns of the capitulation of Vicksburg
the same day as the last battle of Gettysburg.
- You can just see the joy on Lincoln's face
when he gets the news of Vicksburg on top of Gettysburg.
And he said it couldn't be better.
It just couldn't be better.
- Lincoln had said early on Vicksburg is the key.
The war can never be brought to a close
until that key is in our pocket.
Ulysses S. Grant delivered the key to Lincoln.
- This is a turning point in the war.
Vicksburg and Gettysburg,
it's the high tide of the Confederacy.
Never again would they have that much initiative,
never again when they have that much momentum,
never again would they have that much numbers.
- After the victory at Gettysburg, Lincoln just assumed
that General Meade would be able to capture
General Lee's army and the war would be over.
And telegrams had been sent to him
to make sure that Lee's army doesn't escape.
- George Gordon Meade has filled almost every
branch in the army except for the calvary.
Arguably one of the most qualified
people to lead an army.
- But George Meade is a cautious man,
so his pursuit of Lee is careful.
When Lee's army retreats to the Potomac at Williamsport,
he finds the Potomac has been swollen by incessant floods.
And Lee suddenly realized he had
no way to get across the river.
The Army of the Potomac could close in
on him here and crush him.
(thunder booming) (tense music)
- General.
- I've got orders from Washington to march on Lee.
But I won't do the damn thing unless we can
agree here we have a fighting chance to beat him.
- His army's whipped.
Most are wounded.
We can take him.
- General, a wet deserter told us Lee's army's
still mostly intact with plenty of fight left in it.
Probably planning a counterattack right now.
- He probably planted that deserter just to buy time.
Backs to the river.
Strapped.
- That could be for us.
- All right.
We'll hold off for now.
- But General--
- I said we'll hold off!
- General.
- What is Meade talking about?
He says he'll attack the enemy tomorrow.
Unless something intervenes?
This is the time.
He can't let Lee get away.
- But Meade does not arrive at Williamsport
for a number of days.
(tense music)
And when on the morning of July 14th
he is finally ready to attack Lee
he finds that in the night Lee, his engineers
have improvised, the pontoons, the bridges,
the materials, have slipped away across the Potomac
back into Maryland, back into Virginia.
And they're gone.
- Lee was entrenched, all right.
Now he's gone.
His army escaped across the Potomac.
- Meade had him in his grasp.
How could that be?
- He says they've driven the invader from our soil.
- "Driven the invader from our soil"?
Will our generals never get that idea out of their heads?
The whole country is our soil.
(sighs)
What does it mean?
McClellan.
And now Meade.
There's bad faith somewhere.
Our army held the war in the hollow
of their hand and yet they would not close it.
(tense music)
(dramatic music)
I need a second opinion.
"General Meade.
"I am very, very grateful
"for the magnificent success at Gettysburg.
"But I am also immeasurably distressed.
"By the magnitude of misfortune involved in Lee's escape.
"He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed
"upon him would in connection with our
"other late successes have ended the war.
"As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely."
Meade was like an old woman trying
to shoot the rebels across a crick.
That's not how we win this war.
- "As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely."
It's very...
Well, direct.
- There's 50,000 casualties at Gettysburg alone.
50,000.
- More of them on their side.
- They are all Americans.
- Meade did win the battle.
With Vicksburg, things have shifted in our favor.
- Everybody's sick of this war.
Perhaps because of my proclamation.
- Yes.
But you will find the right path forward.
- Don't worry.
I won't send it.
- Lincoln writes this letter to Meade,
which he never sends, in which he says
this was your chance, this was your opportunity.
You had him.
And yet you failed to end this war at this moment.
He never gave up the belief that war
could have been ended in the summer of 1863.
- When he found out that Lee's army had escaped,
that was one of the lowest moments of the war.
Because he felt we had victory within our grasp.
It was in the hollow of our hands.
And then it meant that the war was gonna go on
month after month, year after year.
- McClellan had done this to him after Antietam.
He didn't want to see Meade do it to him.
He didn't want to relive this experience of so many
dead Americans not buying anything with their lives.
- In the north, there was initially this idea,
okay, we've got to maintain the Union.
For most northerners, the war wasn't about slavery.
There was this idea among many people in the north
that this is a war we shouldn't be fighting.
- Lincoln has changed the character of the war.
Which now becomes about emancipation.
Along with this idea means that it also opens up
the opportunity on January 1st, 1863 to now start
to recruit African Americans to serve in uniform.
That they might fight for their own freedom.
- Frederick Douglas has been advocating to allow free men,
and these now contraband enslaved men, to join the army.
And Lincoln agrees.
So the emancipation proclamation actually
establishes the United States colored troops.
Lincoln is moved to understanding and belief
in what the nation could and should be despite
his own prejudices and concerns when he starts.
He is wise enough to know that he has them.
And wise enough to know that his nation
needs to move beyond them.
The fear is if we have trained black men,
who then have the potential to train other black men,
we have insurrection and that's how the south viewed it.
When they sent their response
to the emancipation proclamation,
they issued it as you have fomented
insurrection among our Negroes.
Therefore, any slaves who dared do this,
they were caught, were gonna be put to death.
- And this led Lincoln to issue his strong
retaliatory order against the Confederacy.
- Lincoln made the decision that for every
black person that was captured,
who was being executed, that there
would be one Confederate that had been
captured and would be executed.
- But Douglas is frustrated that Lincoln
is not really enforcing his retaliation order.
- Frederick Douglas understood that black men
would fight with the power because
they're fighting for their own freedom.
- But they didn't get equal pay until 1864.
They were not able to command their own units.
Those us colored troops were commanded by white men.
- Douglas was unhappy about the mistreatment
of black soldiers in the Union Army.
And so he said I'm gonna go and talk to the president.
(footsteps approaching)
- [Secretary] Mr. Douglas.
The president will see you right away.
(tense music)
- Mr. President.
I'm Frederick--
- I know who you are, Mr. Douglas.
I'm glad to see you.
Have a seat.
I read your recent article.
About the tardy, hesitating, vacillating policy
of the President of the United States.
Tardy and hesitating perhaps, but vacillating?
- I tend to speak my mind.
- Well I admire that.
I expect it's what you're here for.
- It is.
Mr. President, when I persuade men to enlist,
I want to do it with my heart.
But I cannot in good conscience recruit
for the Union Army any longer.
First there was the issue of pay.
Now the retaliatory order.
And your response?
It's too little too late.
My own sons are fighting as if they
have halters around their necks.
- I am in a difficult position, Mr. Douglas.
If I could find the rebels responsible
for acting out those orders I could execute them.
But to kill just any captured rebel?
You'll agree that there's a difference between
stating a principle and putting it into practice.
And had I issued the order any sooner
there would've been a public outcry against the measure.
But now that the black soldiers have proven
themselves at Milliken's Bend and Fort Wagner,
public opinion's changing.
So you see, I had to wait.
- You say all this, but I hear only one word.
Wait.
Wait for equal pay.
Wait for justice.
When we're done waiting, what will be left of us?
- You're right, Mr. Douglas.
But you must know.
It will come.
Once I take a position, I never retreat from it.
(tense music)
(crowd chatter) (dramatic music)
(crowd applauds)
Hello.
Pleasure to meet you as well.
Hello, what's your name?
- Emiya.
What a beautiful name.
Hello.
How's it's going?
Good to see you.
Hello.
Pleasure to meet you.
Hello.
- You're even taller than they say.
- And better looking.
I hear you had the rebels here this past summer.
Did you fight them any?
- I had three sons fighting them.
- They come home?
- Two of them.
- Thank you.
You have done our country a great service.
- Thank you.
- Gettysburg will always remain a kind of,
bright moment for Lincoln.
A great victory just when it was so badly needed.
And when, in the wake of the battle,
people at Gettysburg begin planning
for the creation of a national cemetery
for the fallen Union soldiers there,
they extended an invitation to him to participate.
And he agrees.
Now Lincoln very rarely strayed outside of Washington, DC.
That he would take the trouble to come to Gettysburg
to speak said a great deal about
how important Gettysburg was to him as a symbol.
He arrived there on November 18th.
Already the town was swollen with crowds.
10 to 15,000 people packed into
this little town of no more than 2,500.
A great platform had been constructed.
And the next day, crowd formed a great
half circle around the platform.
There was music, there were choirs.
The United States Marine band played.
And the master of ceremonies simply said
"The President of the United States."
- Four score and seven years ago, our fathers
brought forth on this continent a new nation.
Conceived in liberty, and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal.
(audience applauds)
Now we are engaged in a great civil war.
Testing whether that nation, or any nation
so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion
of that field as a final resting place.
For those who here gave their lives
that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate.
We cannot consecrate.
We cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here
have consecrated it far beyond
our poor power to add or detract.
(audience applauds)
The world will little note,
nor long remember what we say here.
But it can never forget what they did here.
(audience applauds)
It is for us the living, rather,
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work.
Which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated.
To the great task remaining before us.
That from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave their last full measure of devotion.
We here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain!
That this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom!
And the government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
(audience applauds)
- It's this tiny little speech, 272 words,
yet it distilled all of the truths
that he'd been thinking about,
including the tragic truth that a great
many brave young men on both sides
killed each other to make this a better country.
And the best way to honor their sacrifice
is to recognize that democracy, in its purest form,
is for all people no matter what their background is.
- Lincoln took people to the past, to 1776,
and the Declaration of Independence
and its proposition.
Then to the present, to this great Civil War
that we are engaged in, testing whether
that nation or any nation so conceived
and so dedicated can long endure.
And a proposition that all men are created equal
irrespective of their birth, their class,
their nation, their religion, their language.
Can a nation dedicated to that proposition
really, really seriously survive?
And with this crucial phrase "a new birth of freedom"
he was signaling not only the emancipation proclamation,
but he seemed to be confessing a new birth
of something inside of him too.
A little bit like a religious rebirth.
You see a Lincoln who is dragging his feet about slavery
at the beginning of his presidency was in fact
promising not to touch it where it existed,
and was always disappointing Frederick Douglas
or white abolitionists, is now moving pretty quickly.
- Lincoln has changed the character of the war.
It now becomes an idea of emancipation.
(dramatic music)
- There were so many people dying, from being killed
on the battlefield and from the illnesses that people had,
that there was an aura of sadness and stress
that Lincoln was under for the entire time of the war.
- Lincoln is experiencing the losses
on the southern side of this equation, in his own family,
because Mary's family came from the south.
And her people were fighting on the Confederate side.
Mary's sister Emilie has lost her husband Ben
whom Lincoln was very close to.
He was in the Confederate Army, and she comes
to visit Washington in the winter of 1863.
- [Senator] So where are you visiting from, Mrs. Helm?
- My daughter and I were living in Selma, Alabama.
- Alabama?
- Yes.
Her husband was killed at Chickamauga.
- My condolences.
He was a soldier?
- A Confederate general.
- Well I heard we whipped the rebels so good at Chickamauga
they went running like scared little rabbits.
(men chuckling)
- Perhaps they were following the example
of your brave federals at Manassas.
- Ah, Mr. President.
I see your sister-in-law has quite a sharp tongue.
- Well she is tired after all.
- But tell me again why Robert isn't fighting.
- Because I won't let him.
I value education above all else, General.
- Todds have suffered a great deal in this war.
- It's not a war.
It's a rebellion.
I only have the one son.
And he's fighting.
Even if I had 20, they'd all be out there.
Fighting the rebels.
- Rest assured Senator, if I had 20 sons
they would all be opposing yours.
You Yankees talk about freedom, but take ours.
- You rebs talk freedom, but you keep slaves.
- Honestly, Mr. President, I don't know why
you let a woman like this in your house.
- General Sickles, my wife and I are quite capable
of choosing our own guests without any help.
- He's able to see what the war
is doing to the Southern people,
to feel that himself, in a way that
a lot of people in the border states did
'cause they had families that were divided.
So that empathy that he always feels
for other people's points of view that's in him
as a child is amplified in a way by having
to experience Mary's pain when her sister comes.
It just gives him an extra dimension
that I think allows him to understand
what's happening on all sides of the country.
- And Robert from the very outset
of the war had wanted to serve.
This was a battle between Abraham Lincoln and his wife.
She had already lost a son before
they came to the White House.
After she lost Willie she was even wilder
because Robert, he was determined to enlist.
Mary put a stop to it.
Told his father he could not allow this.
- Lincoln is trying to balance a lot
of different pieces of the puzzle.
After Vicksburg, after Gettysburg,
he's elated to some extent.
He sees that it's possible that the war
may be able to come to an end.
- We tend to think of the Civil War's
decisive areas as in the east,
but the west arguably was more decisive.
And out of the west rose one general, Ulysses Grant.
Grant was almost everything that McClellan wasn't.
He was very, very aggressive.
Grant believed that you had to pummel
the south into submission because they had proven
that they were not gonna give up.
- Out in the Western Theater, the Army of the Cumberland
will lose at the battle of Chickamauga.
They'll be driven back into Chattanooga.
Confederate Army will advance and cut them off.
To rescue that army, the responsibility
is given to Ulysses S. Grant.
He will counterattack and drive the Confederates back,
now opening an invasion to the deep south.
Grant's ability to combine the activities
of three armies together is really the last
metric that Lincoln needs to go
that's the man we need to run the war.
And he will bring him east in March of 1864.
To be anointed the first
Lieutenant General of the regular army.
The first since George Washington.
- It's Ohio isn't it?
- [Ulysses] Yes sir.
Spent time in Missouri too.
- Oh.
What did your father do?
- He was a tanner, Mr. President.
He owned a tannery.
Can't say I liked it much.
The smell.
- Yeah, I shot a turkey as a boy.
I hated it.
I vowed never to do it again.
So you don't care for the smell of blood,
and I don't like the sight of it, yet here we are.
You've worked around animals, you know
as well as anyone that a quick end
is far better than a long and painful one.
Some of my generals don't seem
to understand that philosophy.
Now I've been studying for a while now, General.
Discuss various plans with how we can stand.
I'd like to start with a campaign engagement--
- Mr. President, I appreciate
all this, but I have my own plan.
We have better numbers, better artillery.
We control ports.
We're also fighting for the better cause.
What we must do is attack from these positions.
All at once.
Army of the Potomac will March on Lee in Central Virginia.
Butler will move on in from the James.
Sherman will move into Georgia and Siegel
will work the Shenandoah cutting off supplies.
- Yes.
Pin them down on all sides.
Anybody who can't do the skinning will hold the leg.
- I believe that will give you the quick end you want.
- Well I have heard promises before from my generals.
- Maybe so sir, but I mean it.
I have no desire for this war to go on
a minute longer than it has to.
- Well we have that in common.
I have a feeling I won't be needing these anymore.
- [Barton] Abraham Lincoln goes through
six generals before he finds Ulysses S. Grant.
- They're both from the Midwest.
They're both incredibly practical.
They quickly adapt.
Ulysses S. Grant is a man who takes responsibilities
and doesn't ask for any more than he can give.
I think in that sense they see the world very much the same.
The idea that somebody is rebelling
and gonna tear the nation apart.
This Grant has no time for.
Neither does Lincoln.
- Lincoln really appreciated
the way Grant thought about war.
To Grant, it wasn't a gentleman's game.
The point of war was to win.
- [Barton] Grant attaches himself
to the Army of the Potomac.
And at the beginning of May, 1864,
they fight a vicious battle in the wilderness
of Spotsylvania Courthouse in Northern Virginia
as Grant begins what becomes
known as his Overland campaign.
(dramatic music)
- Sir.
Should I instruct General Hancock to fall back?
- No.
We're gonna send his corps in and assault them at the angle.
- All 20,000, sir?
Of course, sir.
I'll let him know.
And Washington is waiting for any news.
- I don't have news.
- The president himself is asking, sir.
- Send this.
- Yes sir.
- [Caroline] In the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse,
there was such a massive bloodletting.
- [Barton] You see some of the worst
and most deadly fighting of the American Civil War.
Hand-to-hand combat.
You have utter viciousness on a level that had
not been previously even seen in the Eastern Theater.
- What does Grant write?
Are there many casualties?
- There are a great many casualties.
And writes he proposes to fight it out
on this line if it takes all summer.
But he's not gonna come back until it's done.
(tense music)
- [Barton] 100,000 casualties roughly occurred
in the span of six weeks' time
between the Union and Confederate armies.
This brings the northern war effort to its knees.
- The losses that are suffered.
The casualty figures.
He says "If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it."
And he wondered out loud to others.
Whether he would live very long beyond the war.
Given how much the war had taken out of him.
- After the Overland campaign, Wilderness,
Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor.
This is the campaign in the Eastern Theater
Lincoln hopes will help him win the election of 1864.
However, as those casually lists are going home,
voters are seeing those casualty lists.
And you'd have to ask yourself is Lincoln
closer or further from winning the election.
Arguably he's further.
He can't sustain these kind of casualties.
- [Mary] Grant sent those men to their death.
- He's the first real General I've had.
- So many boys, he just throws them in.
- That's war, Mary.
- Well then there must be a smarter way to win it.
To achieve a victory than through cold-blooded murder.
- What are you trying to tell me?
- I don't blame you.
- Glad to hear it.
- But I am thinking of all the young men out there.
And of Robert.
- Is Robert gonna be a soldier?
- No.
I know he'll ask you again.
- And what can I tell him?
Other men in Washington have sons fighting.
- But other women haven't lost two sons already.
Please don't let him go.
(tense music)
- The pressures that Lincoln
is under in that period are enormous.
He couldn't sleep at night, and his only
solace was to be able to pardon soldiers.
Somehow by being able to pardon a soldier
who was going to be killed or hanged
for having run away from battle,
or having fallen asleep on picket duty,
he would know the happiness that the pardon
would bring to his family and it would give
the soldier a second chance to get his respect back,
go back in the army, and have served his cause.
- After Cold Harbor Grant changes his approach.
Crosses over the James, will threaten
both Richmond and Petersburg.
It will now have to turn into a siege.
If he can pin Robert E. Lee down,
Robert E. Lee who can't maneuver
is not a dangerous Robert E. Lee.
- Now Lee understands that he had to do
something to put pressure on the north.
- [Doug] On June 13th, 1864, Robert E. Lee unleashed
Major General Jubal Early up the Shenandoah Valley.
If the Confederates could threaten Washington DC,
it would force Ulysses S. Grant to pull Union troops
from their efforts around Richmond and Petersburg.
- It's a very very scary moment for the north.
And so Lincoln goes to Fort Stevens
to inspire not only his troops, but the north
that was more and more down on the war.
He really could've been shot.
So for Lincoln to go up there and actually
expose himself reveals that old frontier guts.
There was a side of Lincoln that was fearless.
(gunfire)
- Gentlemen.
Hello boys.
Hello.
- We should be far enough removed from the rebels.
But we'll start the battery soon enough.
- Soldier.
- [Soldier] Sir?
- That a Springfield?
- Yes sir.
- 68 caliber?
No, it's the 58 with a rifle barrel.
And it's more accurate at a distance, sir.
- How accurate?
- You can hit someone maybe 500 yards, sir.
- That far?
- Yes sir.
(loud explosion)
- For God's sake get down!
- Take off that hat.
(tense music)
(guns firing)
(gun fire)
- Ah!
- Are you okay?
- Mr. President.
- [Advisor] Let's go!
- Come on!
- If you don't come now I'm gonna order you
an ambulance and force you outta here.
Please, Mr. President!
- All right, all right!
- Lincoln rides out to Fort Stevens.
While he is there Confederate sharpshooters
come from the north and attack this fortification.
- And bullets were whizzing by him.
Sanding up as a very tall target and being possibly shot.
It shows you his incredible courage.
And that story got out.
And it really inspired a lot of people
at an extremely low moment in the war.
- The mood of the north is really
disconsolate in the summer of 1864.
Despite the victory in Gettysburg the year before,
Grant is stuck on his way to Richmond,
the raid on Washington has shocked people in the north,
and the Republican leaders come to Lincoln
and they tell him there's no way you're gonna
win this election next November.
- There is anti-war sentiment growing in the north.
Many northern democrats don't believe
that the war is worth waging at all
and they certainly aren't on board with the emancipation.
- [Ted] Henry Raymond, the chairman
of the Republican National Committee, goes to see Lincoln.
- Beautiful day.
If the elections were held today,
you'd be beaten in nearly every state.
- So these are the glad tidings that you bring me.
(Henry chuckles)
- There is something you can do to change the tide.
But you might not like it.
People still believe the rebels are willing
to negotiate peace with reunion.
The only thing standing in the way is your emancipation.
- Not true.
Jeff Davis won't budge on independence
for his Confederacy.
I know that, you know that.
- The people don't.
What if you negotiate that?
Upon restoration of the Union, war will cease at once.
All remaining questions,
including slavery, will be resolved later.
- So force Davis to say no.
Then people will see that emancipation isn't the problem.
- That's the idea.
- Don't think I haven't thought of that myself.
- Does he always follow this close?
- Oh, only when I'm with a suspicious character.
If I turn my back on the black soldiers now,
I will be damned in time and eternity.
I understand the political merits of your idea,
but I will keep my word come what will.
- Well your word may cost you the election.
(tense music)
- Henry Raymond says every state
that we need is against you.
You're gonna lose Pennsylvania,
you're gonna lose New York.
You're gonna lose everything.
- There's no way you're gonna win
the election this November unless
you are willing to bring the south to peace talks
on the basis of restoring the Union alone
and leaving emancipation for a later time.
- His entire life is now wrapped up with bringing
this war to a just conclusion.
And the ultimate liberation
of black people on American soil.
He has climbed a steep mountain and you can't go down.
All you can do is keep going up.
- Lincoln is getting a lot of pressure and criticism,
so he calls Frederick Douglas to the White House.
- The plain truth is that I'm likely to lose this election.
- Are you so sure?
- The Democrats will nominate McClellan.
And if he wins, everything I've done will be undone.
He'll sue for peace and that'll be the end of the war.
And of emancipation of your people.
And some people in my own party would have me
turn my back on emancipation to win the election.
- Well sir, I can tell you this.
Black soldiers won't fight
if freedom isn't at the end of it.
- And they shouldn't.
I wouldn't.
Now I want to get as many slaves as possible
to freedom in the case I lose.
Frankly I was expecting more to make it
to our lines by now once the proclamation got out.
- It's a fair bet they don't know about it.
Masters know how to keep their slaves in the dark.
- This is exactly why I sent for you.
I'm asking you organize a band of scouts.
Something like old John Brown had in mind.
They could go into rebel states,
encouraged slaves to escape into our Union lines.
Then we can protect them once the worst happens.
What do you say?
- Mr. President, I'm for freedom.
Any way we can get it.
- What came out of that meeting was Douglas saw
for the first time Lincoln's hatred of slavery.
- Douglas writes an elaborate plan about sending an army
of kind of, missionaries into the deep south.
To spread the word about emancipation.
Because if a Democrat wins the presidency
he will cancel the emancipation proclamation.
- Democratic Party nominates McClellan.
Good ol' McClellan comes back to be
his opponent in this election.
And the platform of the Democratic Party
is really a compromised platform.
It's almost peace at any price.
- There's more at stake in this election than there
had been in any other election up to this point.
- He wanted a second term.
He said he wanted the second term even more than the first
because it would be an endorsement
of his administration.
And he could get to finish the job that he wanted to do.
- And then William Sherman takes Atlanta.
And suddenly the northern mood is void.
(loud explosions)
- Sherman broke the backbone of the deep south.
- The tide turns in northern public opinion.
And people start to feel good about the possibilities
of the war and that it might end soon.
- He realizes that the prospects for the Northern
victory at that time were much much greater
than they had been in the summer.
But still, for Lincoln it was a very anxious moment.
- If he loses that election, it would
be much more than a personal blow.
It would be a calamity for the country.
And the fear is that the soldiers have loved
McClellan all along and will vote for him.
- Still nothing from Grant at Petersburg.
The siege may take months yet.
- We need something big out of Grant
if we want to win this damn election.
I don't like our chances against McClellan.
People are fickle.
Atlanta's already starting to fade in their minds.
- I hear my boy Tad paid you a visit!
With his pet turkey.
- Yes sir, that's right.
Chased that turkey all over the place.
- Oh I asked him if he'd be voting alongside you boys.
(soldiers laugh)
- What did Tad say, sir?
Well he said no pa, he's not of age.
(group laughing)
Thank you boys.
- Thank you, sir. - Thank you, sir.
- Thank you.
- This is hardly the time for jokes.
- I'm not joking.
We need to make sure soldiers like those can vote.
- Sir, just because these Pennsylvania boys like you,
they live here, of course they like you.
- They believe in the war.
- Yes, but against McClellan?
- He did build the Army of the Potomac.
- And now he makes a mistake betting against it.
Democrats want the war to end
because they say we can't win it.
- Nobody wants to lose.
Especially the soldier.
- That's why I want as many of them to vote as possible.
I'd rather lose with those soldiers
behind me then get reelected without them.
- I can wire Sheridan and other generals.
Tell them to allow leave to any soldiers who want to vote.
- Especially in the border states.
Make sure that the furloughs are granted liberty too.
- And if you're wrong?
- They'll never put us in charge.
Same as white officers?
Go home.
- They might.
What do you think about that, James?
- We're fighting same as anyone.
No reason why we shouldn't be commissioned.
- Corporal James!
- Sir!
- You too, Fleetwood and Beaty.
You got orders.
Prepare your men to attack at daybreak.
- Yes sir!
Come on men!
- Grant has laid siege to Petersburg.
And Lincoln gives Grant his orders.
He tells him to go after Lee and chew and bite
and hold on with a bulldog grip, he says.
It turns into a major stalemate.
- Grant's armies are squeezing the Confederacy
and trying to get to Richmond.
- During the Petersburg campaign,
General Benjamin Butler
is one of the first generals who started
using black troops to help in any sort of way
when they were quote unquote "contraband."
So he decides he's going to put
some of his black troops front and center.
- Lincoln has developed a real appreciation
of black people serving in the Union Army.
He says we will all remember that there were
some black men with their bayonets
and their steel-hearted eyes who helped
mankind to preserve the Republic.
- All of them understand it is their opportunity
and their moment to show themselves as men
worthy of freedom and citizenship.
Not just for themselves, but for their families.
And that becomes the driving force.
- The stakes were very high because when
the Confederacy encounters black Union Army soldiers,
they don't want to treat them as prisoners of war.
They want to treat them as escaped slave rebels.
And kill them.
Or sell them back into slavery.
(guns firing)
(tense music)
- [Beaty] Do you ever get scared?
- Leave him be, Beaty.
- Be stupid not to be.
- That's what I'm saying.
I kept thinking about (indistinct).
What if I get captured?
- That's an easy one.
Don't get captured.
- Calvary ready!
Advance!
(soldiers war cry)
(guns firing)
- They are being mowed down with artillery and gunfire.
Many of their officers died.
And when their officers were killed,
the sergeants took over.
- Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood would see
the colors go down, he would grab them and rally his men.
First Sergeant Powhatan Beaty
would take command of his company.
His knapsack was shot off, his hat was shot off,
the sole of one of his shoes was shot off.
Miles James, his arms mangled by Confederate shot,
loaded and fired his rifle with one arm.
(Miles screams)
Of the 25 African Americans that would receive
the Medal of Honor during the Civil War, 14 of them
were awarded at the Battle for New Market Heights.
Including Christian Fleetwood,
including Powhatan Beaty, and including Miles James.
- There will be about 180,000 African American men
free and enslaved who will join the US Army
representing about 10% of the army.
Lincoln even says that that added
10% will make the difference in the war.
- [Doug] After the battle for New Market Heights,
the Confederates retreat up the road
and set up another defensive line.
And as fall of 1864 approaches, Grant continues
to be stalemated outside of Richmond and Petersburg,
and Lincoln is in doubt whether or not
he can win the election.
(office chatter) (tense music)
- [John] From Forney in Philadelphia.
Says we're gonna win by 10,000 in Pennsylvania.
- Forney, he's always excitable.
- This one says Baltimore goes Republican.
That can only mean you're winning.
- I'm far from being certain, John.
I wish I was certain.
(dramatic music)
(chatter)
- Reilly says we'll have New York.
New York.
And now Indiana.
You can't deny it.
(office celebratory chatter)
- [Office Worker] Congratulations, Mr. President.
- [Second Office Worker] Well done, Mr. President.
- [Third Office Worker] Well done, Mr. Lincoln.
- You did it.
- We did it, boys.
- [Office Worker] Congratulations, Mr. President.
- [Barton] Lincoln is elected in an electoral landslide.
- And he wins with the twin goals of Union and emancipation
intact because of his courage that terrible summer
when he thought he might lose the election,
but was unwilling to sacrifice
emancipation in order to do so.
It's a great moment.
What has happened over time is that people's
attitudes toward adding emancipation as a goal
to the restoration of the Union has increased.
That's what a leader does, that's what events do.
That's what movements do.
They change public sentiment.
And the extraordinary thing is that seven
out of the 10 soldiers vote for Lincoln.
They know that they may be extending the war,
they know they may be sacrificing their lives,
but by then they believe in the cause,
they believe in Lincoln, and they're willing to give
their lives for the cause that they now believe in.
- And a lot of that comes from the fact
that he had met these guys and talked to these guys.
I don't know that we've ever had someone leading
our nation that had the depth of skill that he has.
Call it political savvy, call it statesmanship,
call it just plain common sense.
Whatever it is, Lincoln has it.
And part of that is to show
his commonness with the soldiers.
Show them that he's one of them.
- After the election, Sherman is really
making swift progress as he and his army
march across the south to the sea.
- [Caroline] And it's there that Lincoln really sees
that the end of the war must be upon them.
- And he worries that if the war is over,
the emancipation proclamation, which is an executive order,
may no longer be valid because he's using
military necessity as his cover for doing it.
And that's when he begins to champion
the 13th amendment to end slavery forever.
- We need to start thinking about after this ends.
- Are you talking to him or me?
(Lincoln laughs)
- [Painter] Mr. President, you must remain still.
- Yes, of course.
I'm gonna revisit the amendment.
- We won seats in the House.
You have a better chance now than ever before.
- I will need to sway a few Democrats.
- Why not wait until the rebellion is over.
- [Painter] Mr. President.
- My apologies.
An amendment to the Constitution
winds the whole thing up.
It's done forever.
We'll need at least five to go our way.
- You'll need to offer them something real.
- Perhaps I have a longer reach than you realize.
(tense music)
- Lincoln believed that the founding fathers
had meant for slavery to end, but that they
didn't believe that they could just end it overnight.
That it was like a cancer.
So widespread you might not be able
to cut it out without damaging the patient,
but you can find ways to contain it.
But by this time he's not asking
for the consent of the people.
He's not asking for colonization.
He's not asking for anything gradual.
- Lincoln knew that saying now the war is over,
you guys go back, be slaves, was a nonstarter.
That the emancipation proclamation
was a fit and necessary war measure,
but when the war was over it was no longer a legal measure.
- And this is why you need the 13th amendment.
You have to change the Constitution.
- You've got almost four million people
who are enslaved, and there was nothing to prevent
southerners from re-establishing slavery
in the south unless this 13th amendment was issued.
He realized that something had
to be done that was permanent.
And so he is determined that this amendment
is going to pass Congress.
And it does.
- He came to recognize the inconsistency
that a nation conceived in liberty would have slavery.
- To the extent that America has any kind of standing
in the world now is in part the consequence
of people knowing about Lincoln and his views
on slavery and his views on freedom.
He has evolved in his thinking.
And it's the war that has done it.
- By the time the 13th amendment came along,
the war was dragging on and on.
More Americans died in that war than in any other.
Both sides.
And a lot had happened to him
and to the whole country by that time.
He's seen the death, he's experienced extreme
personal loss early in the war with the death of Willie.
All of this has moved him.
And he's carried the weight of a nation on him.
(dramatic music)
- All these people wiped out by the war.
He must write letters consoling those
who had lost members of families, fathers,
brothers, and all of this grinds him down.
You see it in his face.
The hollows of his cheeks sink more deeply in.
He said at one point that there was a tired spot
in him that no amount of rest could touch.
- Those photographs are haunting.
Etched on his face is a testimony,
a record of the stress that he endured.
Every president ages during their presidency,
but nothing like Lincoln
three or four years after he assumes office.
It gives you a sense of the burden that he was carrying.
- How can any human being accept
the casualties that were piling up
and take personal responsibility
without resigning or killing yourself
over this tragedy, unless you could find
a higher power that was instrumental
in causing the war to go on for so long.
And Lincoln writes a memo to himself that has
become known as a Meditation on the Divine Will.
If God wills that this contest continue, it will continue.
It must be divine providence forcing us to have
this bitter confrontation over the future of our country.
But Lincoln never joined a church.
He was not a believer in organized religion.
- As he prepared for the second inaugural address,
he wanted to make clear to everybody that he, Lincoln,
understood that the war had been a war to free the slaves.
And not just a war to save the Union.
And he wanted to make sure that everybody understood
that slavery was done forever in the country.
- Fellow countrymen.
Four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously
directed to an impending civil war.
All dreaded it.
All sought to avert it.
Neither party, expected for the war, the magnitude
or the duration, which it has already attained.
Both read the same bible.
And pray to the same God.
And each invokes his aid against the other.
- And Douglas was there in the front row
listening to Lincoln's inaugural address.
There's a great photograph.
It shows Lincoln at the lectern, Douglas with his
big hair, that's how you can recognize him,
and in the balcony is John Wilkes Booth.
- If God wills it, it continue.
Until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's
250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk!
And until every drop of blood drawn with the lash
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword!
- What you see in the second inaugural
is not a certainty of victory.
But a certainty of the rightness of the struggle.
An almost biblical, righteous, prophetic
vision of why this struggle was necessary.
- As was said 3,000 years ago.
So still it must be said.
The judgments of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.
- His consciousness of something bigger than himself
and the need to recognize that a form of pain
had existed in America for generations before
he came along and it would not instantly be solved.
- It's a statement of the need to rewire the country.
To change its moral axis.
He's now telling a new story.
About what America should be.
Who are we?
What do we believe in?
- With malice toward none.
With charity for all.
With firmness in the right.
As God gives us to see the right!
Let us strive on to finish the work we are in.
To bind up the nation's wounds.
To care for him who shall have borne the battle.
And for his widow.
And his orphan.
To do all which may achieve
and cherish a just and lasting peace.
Among ourselves.
And with all nations!
(audience applauds)
(dramatic music swells)
(crowd chatter) (tense music)
- Thank you.
I appreciate that.
- Where do you think you're going?
- In there like anybody else.
- Come on.
- What are you...
- Douglas!
Is there a problem?
- No, Mr. President.
- I saw you in the crowd today.
I'm anxious to hear your thoughts.
- I thought it was a sacred effort.
- Make sure to tell your readers.
- I might do that.
But you should know, Mr. Lincoln.
I won't let up.
You'll be hearing a lot from me.
- Well I figured as much.
- Mr. President.
- Yes.
- Congratulations.
- Oh I appreciate that very much.
Have you been met my friend Frederick Douglas?
- It's not a friendship.
It's mostly adversarial for most of the war.
Douglas certainly didn't like the way Lincoln behaved
in terms of what he saw as his slowness,
but he did have respect for the man.
- I think Lincoln's vision that America could be
for anyone who was willing to love her
and give it a chance should be open to anybody.
He predominantly meant that as white people
at the beginning of the war, but by the end of the war
he had a very different point of view.
I think no one was more surprised
by Lincoln's transformation as Douglas was.
- Frederick wanted the Civil War to be a crusade
to rid the country of this evil institution of slavery.
And I think by the time you get to Lincoln's
second inaugural address you can hear in his words
a lot of what Frederick Douglas had been fighting for.
And Frederick Douglass's influence over Lincoln.
We can credit Frederick Douglas and the abolitionists
for pushing Lincoln and not accepting
his gradual ideas about how slavery should end.
- Lincoln said don't call me a liberator.
It was the anti-slavery movement
and the Union soldiers that did it all.
- [Doug] In March of 1865,
Lee's army is trapped in Petersburg.
Sherman's now eating the innards out of the Confederacy.
- There are food shortages.
The Confederate Army and the civilians
of the south were starving.
- In the final weeks of the Civil War, Grant invites
Lincoln to his headquarters near City Point, Virginia.
He's in constant communication with Grant
and his son Robert is on Grant's staff.
And he wants to see Robert.
- Robert, Lincoln's older son, from the very
outset of the war had wanted to serve.
In the early weeks of 1865 Robert's wishes prevailed
and Lincoln not only allowed him to enlist,
he assigned him to the staff of Ulysses S. Grant.
- And so Lincoln goes on a boat trip.
He's the commander in chief of the entire military
in the final weeks of a very difficult war,
and he leaves the White House to live
on an ordinary boat at City Point.
He really loved it.
He was happy to get away from Washington.
I think it might've reminded him of his teenage years
as a flat boat builder and pilot and those
long trips down the Mississippi river.
And it's important to Lincoln to get
near the front lines in Virginia
in the final weeks of the Civil War.
- You look good.
It suits you.
- I'm glad you convinced mother.
- It wasn't easy.
- General Grant.
- We'll head over to Patrick Station
and you can review the prisoners.
- Is it mostly rebels?
- Mostly.
Lee's running out of options.
- Yeah.
- Mr. President.
(tense music)
- When Lincoln comes to meet Grant at City Point
Sherman comes up and they have
a meeting aboard The River Queen.
And it's there that Lincoln really sees
that the end of the war must be upon them.
- I must thank you for your heroic efforts.
I am much obliged to you both.
- Thank you, Mr. President.
But the war is not over.
- Lee can retreat to the Carolinas.
Maybe join forces with Johnston and stage another attack.
- Can't we avoid this?
- [Sherman] No.
- There will be at least one more
bloody battle before the war can end.
- When it's over I want peace.
I have no interest in retaliation or retribution.
The rebels will be returned home unharmed.
- That's assuming they go peacefully.
Sir, I have seen these people.
I have been watching them in Atlanta,
Columbia, Fayetteville, they are angry.
Rightfully so, they have been shamed.
They have been starved, their land
has been looted, their cotton burned.
Who do you think they're gonna blame for all of this?
- You let them alone.
You let them have their horses to plow with.
And their guns to shoot crows with.
I want no one punished.
We want those people to return to the Union.
And to submit to the laws.
There's been enough bloodshed.
- [Caroline] Lincoln's not willing to have
anything less than emancipation and complete
dissolution of the Confederate armies.
- Well what about the Confederate officials?
Let them go into exile, Lincoln says.
We don't want trials, we don't want hangings.
We want to reconstruct the country and we want it
to be done on the basis of some peace.
And some generosity.
A new country is about to take shape here.
A country without slavery.
- He's certain that slavery should end.
And he does everything in his power
to make sure that happens
with the passage of the 13th amendment.
But he is not quite ready to pull the trigger on equality.
That he is not willing to do.
Because he knows that that, at a time when there's
been so much loss, to pull that trigger
may be too much, so he starts saying
let them up easy, is what he tells Grant.
And that becomes the mantra, let them up easy.
- We've already fought the war.
We've already determined that secession is not legal.
To continue to punish the south
is to continue to look back.
And not to look forward.
- But that letting them up easy translated
to no real accountability for these actions.
- On the 2nd of April, the Union Army drives
Confederate forces out of Richmond and Petersburg.
If ever there was a hope for the Confederacy to have
its independence, it couldn't give up its capital.
That was the ultimate signal in warfare
of that day that your country was lost.
- The Confederates are forced
to evacuate Richmond and flee westward.
Lincoln determines to walk the streets of Richmond.
And I'm gonna walk through these streets
because the President of the United States
can walk through the streets safely
of a city of the United States.
It's all one country again.
- But there are buildings on fire,
there's the sound of guns off in the distance.
It's extremely dangerous.
And people begin to figure out who he is
and it's a chilling moment because it is
a group of people he means a great deal to.
It is African Americans who have lived
their entire lives in Richmond as enslaved people.
And they are no longer enslaved.
And they gather around him,
thanking him with intense emotion.
And Lincoln said I'm so happy to see all of you.
You are as free as air.
Liberty is your birthright.
Now please use it and enjoy it.
- Now the Confederate forces are on the retreat.
The Union Army of the Potomac has been
in siege now for almost nine or 10 months.
And yet with the drop of a hat,
this now professional army, they go into the pursuit.
- This is a relentless campaign.
There's very little sleep.
A lot of night marches.
They are not getting rations on either side.
And the day after the battle of Sailor's Creek
Lee's army has been badly destroyed.
Several of his generals, including one of his sons,
has been taken prisoner of war.
- That was kinda the end of Lee's army
in terms of its fighting capacity and fighting force.
- We don't have exact records of how often
Lincoln visits hospitals, but there was
no shortage of hospitals to visit.
We live with the Civil War's wounds
and the wounds it inflicts on its people.
Decades upon decades afterwards.
What a price we paid.
And all of the weight of that.
Is daily the accompaniment
that walks beside Abraham Lincoln.
- Be of good cheer, boys.
We're at the beginning of the end at last.
How do you do?
God bless you.
How do you do?
Oh, surgeon told me about you.
Said you were quite brave on that field.
I appreciate you very much.
- He was making that connection with the soldiers,
and somehow then they felt that he felt their pain.
He understood what they were going through.
And he believed in them.
And his belief in them then confirmed
their belief in themselves.
- May I read with you?
God bless you.
- How are you feeling today?
- I fought for Virginia.
- Oh that's fine.
You uh, you a farmer?
That's how I grew up.
I often wonder how we got to this place.
If I had it my way, this war would've never commenced.
God bless you.
- This thing's gonna be over soon.
And I'd liked to be able to say
I shook your hand when I had the chance.
- Well of course.
The pleasure is all mine.
God bless you.
- Mr. President?
- Yes.
- It's Secretary Seward.
- He's been in an accident.
- How does he fare?
- Secretary Stanton requests your presence
in Washington right away.
- Of course.
Thank you.
Mother.
We must go.
Thank you boys.
God bless you.
We will never forget you.
- Father.
Mr. Lincoln's here.
- Thank you, Fred.
You're back from Stedman.
- Grant is close.
He's close to the finish.
- I hope I live to see it.
- Doctor says he expects a full recovery.
- Then why'd you come so quickly?
- You've been so concerned about my safety.
You should've been concerned about your own.
- Who could've predicted that my carriage
would be more dangerous than your enemies?
- From General Grant.
- "General Lee surrendered the army
"of Northern Virginia this afternoon."
- [Edwin] It's over.
(dramatic music swells)
- Now, finally, we save the Union.
Surrender's come.
Been a lot of blood, toil, sweat and tears.
He was relieved.
Greatly relieved.
- On the morning of April 9th Lee's army
was just west of a small village
called Appomattox Court House.
And Lee thought that he only had
Union cavalry in front of him.
And they actually launched a battle
on the morning of April 9th,
and the Confederates are essentially surrounded.
And so Lee will send a note to Grant acknowledging
that the time has come to surrender his army.
- When he asks Grant what would be your terms
of surrender, Grant has an answer.
Because Grant and Lincoln,
they've already talked it through.
Officers can keep their sidearms.
And because Confederates brought their own
horses to service and they would have
to go back and start their farms,
they were allowed to keep their animals.
These were lenient surrender terms.
This was the beginning of the winning of the peace.
- Even though Lee's was only one of the Confederate armies,
it was the single biggest and most dangerous
of those armies, and when Lee surrenders that army
everyone knows it's over.
Peace is finally within our grasp.
And that's the headlines of the newspapers.
Peace.
Peace at last.
(church bells ringing)
- [Doris] April 9th, 1865.
Finally the Civil War comes to an end.
Cannons are firing, church bells are ringing,
people are celebrating in the streets.
- Absolute jubilation pervades through the north.
You can imagine the opposite reaction in the south.
But Lincoln himself is absolutely giddy.
Mary Todd will talk about how he
just seems so free all of a sudden.
How this burden has been lifted.
- He's really looking forward to the hope
that the Union can be restored
on a new basis, a different basis.
Slavery will be gone.
We're gonna have to rethink things,
we're gonna have to think anew,
but not to look back with revenge,
not to look back with resentment,
not to punish the people, but rather
to bring them along to a new Union.
- While slavery, yes, was abolished
and that's a wonderful thing, it did not deal
with the parent issue of slavery which is racism.
And we're still dealing with racism in America today.
- He has not fully begun to contemplate
what all of this looks like when it's done,
but he's beginning to draw the voices
that he needs to help him figure out what that is.
- You could be putting this government
in the hands of the enemy.
- I agree.
Who's to say they won't conspire against us?
- All rebel organizations
should be treated as null and void.
The only way their government should be restored
is under federal authority, military authority.
- Well if we treat them like insurgents
they will act like insurgents.
- Exactly.
- What about their leaders?
- You let them go.
You frighten them out of the country.
You open the gates, let down the bars.
- What if they don't go?
The fate of emancipation would be left in their hands.
It's too risky.
- The states should follow the example of Louisiana.
Abolish slavery.
Establish schools.
We were never fighting to exterminate half this country.
We were fighting to keep it together.
To prove that we can live together.
Why should that be any different now?
- He's trying to create a pathway for peace.
He's trying to create a pathway that that will mean
ending a war that doesn't devolve into guerrilla warfare.
- You recognize the need for healing.
And so his plan for reconstruction
was a fairly lenient plan.
- He envisions a nation of where it was easy
for the Confederacy to come back,
and that the retribution would not be great.
Basically say you reject succession,
you're back into the nation.
- Secretary Stanton had drawn up some new preliminary plans
looking towards the reconstruction process,
and it would be handled through
the military rather than through Congress.
It would be an executive function
rather than a legislative function
so that the full control of the peace process
would remain in the president's hands.
- He envisioned the President of the United States
appointing some governors who would figure out
some way to test who was loyal.
Then they would ask Congress
to readmit them to the Union.
- The white southerners were so devoted
to the racial hierarchy that they pushed back
against reconstruction from the very beginning.
- People like Stanton and others were outraged
that there would be no real accountability
for the carnage wrought by the south.
Aside from them losing their slaves
and he didn't feel like that was enough.
- But remember that Lincoln also said,
in what turned out to be his final speech,
that the time had come to extend
the right to vote to African Americans.
Particularly, he said, the educated
and those who had fought in the army.
It was the first time that an American president
had ever called for black suffrage.
It was so radical a concept at that moment
that someone in the audience, John Wilkes Booth,
turn to one of his Confederates and said that means
negro equality and he didn't use the word negro.
That's the last speech he'll ever make.
- April 14th, Lincoln woke up in a great mood.
Feeling probably more cheerful
than he'd felt ever in his life.
He went on a carriage ride with Mary.
And then they get back to the White House
and there's a group of his friends
who are there and they're just leaving,
but he says no stay, I want to talk to you.
And they kept talking and they were
telling stories and he's reading funny things.
He no longer needs to escape to go to the theater,
but at 8 o'clock that night
they tell him you have to go.
It has been in the newspaper that morning
that he would be at the theater that night.
And now he had to keep his word
to the people who might come to the theater
thinking that he would be there.
- It's been a perfect day.
Do you ever think about where we started?
We've been so miserable.
- Well we both deserve to be more cheerful.
- I'd like to travel.
Europe perhaps.
Or even California.
- I've always wanted to see the holy land.
The great cities of Europe.
- Let's stay here tonight.
We don't have to go to the theater do we?
- I'd much rather stay.
But we'd better go.
Word's out I'll be there.
I won't be the one to disappoint the people.
(dramatic music)
- [Delivery Man] I got medicine for Secretary Seward.
- [Frederick] My father's not seeing any visitors.
He's resting.
(violent struggle)
(ominous music)
- Little do they know, John Wilkes Booth
had planned a triple conspiracy to lop off
the entire head of the government.
The only thing that saved Seward's life
was that his jaw was wired from the carriage
accident so it didn't cut the artery.
Now some gals and mothers would go away
from a fella when they found that out,
but you done found a fortune, Miss Gussy.
- [Actress] My love, you had better go!
- [Actor] You crave affection, you do.
Now I'm no fortune,
but I'm filling over with affections.
Which I'm ready to pour out all over you
like apple sauce over roast pork.
- [Older Actress] Mr. Trenchard, you will please
recollect you are addressing my daughter.
And in my presence!
- [Actor] Yes, I'm offering her my heart
and hand just as she wants them.
With nothing in them.
- [Older Actress] Augusta, do you agree?
- [Actress] Yes, ma.
What a nasty beast!
- [Older Actress] I am aware, Mr. Trenchard,
you are not used to the manners of good society.
And that alone will excuse the impertinence
of which you have been found guilty.
- [Actor] Don't know the manners of good society, eh?
Well I guess I know enough
to turn you inside out, old gal.
(audience laughing and applauding)
(loud gunshot)
- Just think of it.
For Lincoln, finally this punishing war
has come to an end.
And he's able to feel a sense of the country
is gonna go forward, I've done my part
as a leader, and he only has five days
to appreciate that before he's killed.
It drives me crazy.
- No American president had been killed in office.
And the shock of the assassination was profound.
It just unleashed a tremendous outpouring of grief.
His coffin was carried by a new railroad car
that had just been built for his use
and was called The United States.
(train horn blowing)
If there was a chance to see the funeral train
on the way back to Springfield,
everybody wanted to be there.
And city after city there were crowds
like Americans had never seen before.
- People connected to him.
They know where he came from, how hard that fight was.
They saw a man who was a good man
who became a great president.
- Lincoln's biography is a tale of America.
At a time when it is not yet fully made.
The roughness and the self-made aspects of it.
The ambition and the hunger.
He's the living proof that Americans
can rise from poverty to triumph.
The promise of the American dream.
Which is that all men should have
an equal chance in the race of life.
- He reminded Americans of something they were forgetting.
That the Declaration of Independence
is a special piece of paper.
It obligates us to respect the human rights
of all Americans and of all people.
- That's the journey that he takes
by the time he is assassinated at Ford's Theater.
He has moved to a much higher calling, understanding,
and belief in terms of what the nation
could and should be despite his own
prejudices and concerns when he starts.
- From a contemporary lens, I think it's entirely
right and fair to look at some of Lincoln's writings
and say he was limited and constrained
by his times in ways that are disappointing.
And then I can also say yeah, but look what he did.
That was really important.
And took courage and took skill.
He was not just ahead of his time in terms of vision,
but helped to drag the country in a new direction.
- He dared to change the rationale for the Civil War
from preserving the Union to removing
the greatest stain of American democracy.
Slavery.
- Lincoln's legacy was to show us that democracies
can survive severe contests within.
And they shall not perish from the earth.
Lincoln had hoped that he could
accomplish something worthy so that
he would be remembered after he died.
It was that hope that had powered him
through his dismal childhood, his string
of political failures, and the darkest days
of the war that his story would be told.
It will be told for generations to come.
- America has to live up to the work that Lincoln started.
- [Lincoln] In giving freedom to the slave,
we assure freedom to the free.
Honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
We shall nobly save, or meanly lose,
the last best hope of earth.