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00:00As 1863 began, the war showed no sign of ending.
00:30Hundreds of thousands of Union troops were shivering in winter camp.
00:37Every day, more than a hundred men deserted,
00:40and hundreds more were dying of disease.
00:45There was nothing Abraham Lincoln could do about any of it.
00:53The Lincoln of 1863 was a badgered, harried, tired,
00:59and often desperately worried president.
01:02There was great criticism that he wasn't managing things well,
01:06and pretty much everybody had a feeling that he was incompetent.
01:10Open opposition to the war had begun to spread.
01:15Some in the North resented Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
01:20They did not want to fight a war to free black slaves.
01:23Many blamed Lincoln personally for all the Union casualties.
01:28One newspaper called him an awful ass and a damn fool.
01:35A prominent Republican said that the president
01:39has hardly a friend here in Washington.
01:42If a national convention were held now to re-nominated him,
01:47he wouldn't get a vote.
01:49If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it.
02:07A year after the death of her son Willie,
02:10Mary Lincoln was still mourning,
02:12still plagued by nausea and migraines.
02:17Only those who have passed through such bereavements
02:20can realize how the heart bleeds
02:23at the return of these anniversaries.
02:30Mary could no longer lift her overburdened husband's spirits,
02:34and Lincoln, preoccupied and protective,
02:37did not share his burdens with her.
02:40They were moving in different worlds.
02:47they were moving in better and dulu.
02:48They were moving in better and life.
02:49They were moving, they were moving, so they were moving.
02:50The
02:59grandpa of the son lizzie saying that they had her own
03:03and they had her own.
03:05They were moving, they had her own show.
03:08A spring rain turned roads to mud as the Union army moved forward in Virginia.
03:34Lincoln badly needed a victory, and his new general had promised him one.
03:43Joseph Hooker was known as Fighting Joe for the headstrong courage he'd shown during
03:48the Peninsula Campaign, and again at Antietam, and he was full of self-confidence.
03:56Lincoln hoped he had finally found a commander who understood that southern armies had to
04:01be destroyed, not just defeated.
04:07Hooker had sent his army on a long, secret march to trap Robert E. Lee's Confederates
04:13at a place called Chancellorsville.
04:16Union forces outnumbered the rebels two to one.
04:20May God have mercy on General Lee, Hooker told the president, for I will have none.
04:33The battle began at midday on May 2nd.
04:37Lincoln sat by the telegraph waiting for news.
04:40With only a shadowy picture of what was happening on the battlefield, he wired the army, where
04:49is General Hooker?
04:53For four days, he heard almost nothing.
04:59Finally, he got his answer.
05:11Robert E. Lee had routed the Federal Army and once again gotten away clean.
05:20My God, my God, Lincoln said.
05:37What will the country say?
05:40What will the country say?
05:43It's a low moment for the Union, and at moments like this, Lincoln has to convince his country
05:49that it must stay in the field and carry this thing through.
05:52Lincoln said early in the war, I'm not leaving the table till the last card is played.
05:58Harriet Beecher Stowe once visited the president, and she came away and she said, you know,
06:02he's a strong man, but he's not strong in an aggressive way.
06:07His strength is not like that of a cement buttress.
06:12She said, his strength is that of a wire, she says, a strong wire cable.
06:18And that wire cable gives and gives.
06:21There's democratic pressure here and southern pressure there and popular pressure here,
06:26but the wire holds.
06:40On the morning of July 2nd, 1863, Mary Lincoln was making her way to the White House from
06:46the soldier's home.
06:52Somewhere along the way, the carriage turned over.
07:07The driver and Mrs. Lincoln were both thrown to the ground.
07:11Mary cut her head on a rock.
07:16The wound soon became infected.
07:23A nurse had to stay with Mary round the clock for three weeks.
07:27She had always suffered from headaches.
07:30Now she would never again be free of them.
07:33Later, a rumor spread that someone had unscrewed the driver's seat in hopes of killing the president.
07:41Lincoln had little time to comfort Mary.
07:49On the morning of her injury, two momentous battles were underway.
07:55General Ulysses S. Grant had been laying siege to the Mississippi river town of Vicksburg
08:00for more than six weeks.
08:03If Vicksburg fell, federal troops would control the Mississippi, the South's most important
08:08waterway, and split the Confederacy in two.
08:14At the same time, General Robert E. Lee had invaded the North again with an army of 75,000
08:20men and confronted Union forces at a Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg.
08:27Lee believed that if he could win here, he could carry the war deeper into Union territory, and pressure
08:32Lincoln to make peace.
08:36Lee's blood was up.
08:38He thought that this was a chance to strike the blow that he needed to win the Civil War.
08:44To stop Lee, Lincoln turned to still another commander, General George Gordon Meade.
08:51Meade was himself from Pennsylvania, and could therefore be expected, Lincoln said, to fight
08:56well on his own dunghill.
08:59Meade's troops were well dug in and commanded the high ground.
09:09Lee's men would be hard put to move them.
09:18Lincoln waited and worried.
09:29For two days, the Confederates threw themselves against the Union lines.
09:38Again and again, they nearly broke through.
09:39But in the end, Union soldiers managed to hurl them back.
09:46Then, at about 1 p.m. on July 3rd, Confederate artillery shells began raining down on the Union
09:54center.
09:58From the distance, Lee's army was assembling for one more massive assault.
10:10To the Union men, it looked like suicide.
10:15Confederate soldiers marching across a mile of open ground, right into their guns.
10:22Union fire blew them to pieces.
10:50Swedish!
10:53ADDITIONhmlä
11:04цій
11:08It's been a solid
11:14Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the war.
11:2951,000 men on both sides were killed, wounded, or captured in just three days.
11:39But Meade had won.
11:41The Confederate invasion of the North had been stopped.
11:45And Lee had suffered such losses that it seemed doubtful he would ever be able to mount another.
11:51This victory marked a real turning point in the Civil War.
11:56Lee was obliged to retreat, and that was the last major invasion of the North.
12:02On the evening of July 4th, the White House was lit with candles in honor of the victory at Gettysburg, and Vicksburg had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant that morning.
12:21When the Secretary of the Navy brought Lincoln the news, the President leaped up and hugged him.
12:27I cannot tell you in words my joy over this result, Lincoln said.
12:32It is great. It is great.
12:35If General Meade can complete his work, the rebellion will be over.
12:39But Lincoln soon received devastating news.
12:46Meade had failed to catch the crippled Confederate Army.
12:50As Lincoln said later, we had them in the hollow of our hands, and we didn't close the hand.
12:58That evening, Robert Lincoln dropped by the President's office.
13:04He found his father alone, his head resting on his desk.
13:09When Lincoln looked up, his eyes were filled with tears.
13:13By the summer of 1863, black soldiers had joined the struggle against the rebel armies.
13:33The colored population, Lincoln said, is the great, available, and yet unavailed-of force for restoring the Union.
13:45The President was now encouraging the massive recruitment of black soldiers.
13:51He had once been reluctant even to consider enlisting them.
13:54The question for him was, would Northerners fight with black men?
14:00Would white Northerners fight with black men?
14:03He didn't think they would.
14:08But Lincoln had pledged in the Emancipation Proclamation to allow African Americans to fight.
14:14And he had kept his promise.
14:18If you read that portion of the proclamation, which invited blacks to join in the struggle,
14:27he was going to enlist them as soldiers, and there to be recruited, and to come in and fight for the Union.
14:40African American troops faced their first real test on a battlefield in Louisiana.
14:4644 black soldiers died trying to take Port Hudson.
14:50One hundred and thirty-three were wounded.
14:54Their valor moved Lincoln to begin to see black Americans in a new light.
15:01He realizes that African Americans will fight,
15:06and I think it creates a new respect for African American manhood
15:11that Lincoln really didn't have before.
15:13He also, however, was aware of white attitudes.
15:21He had agreed that it would be best that African Americans be paid less.
15:29So again, we are faced with this contradiction.
15:32He wanted to see them as equal,
15:35but he didn't feel the country was ready,
15:39or perhaps he himself wasn't ready.
15:41That summer, Lincoln met for the first time with Frederick Douglass,
15:48the former slave who had become the best-known black spokesman in America.
15:53Lincoln had never met an African American
15:57who was as erudite and as knowledgeable
16:00and as forward in his conversation as Frederick Douglass.
16:06Douglass urged equal treatment for African American fighting men,
16:10equal pay, and equal opportunity for promotion.
16:14Lincoln said he had to move with caution
16:16that the enlistment of black soldiers was still
16:19a serious offense to popular prejudice.
16:24I was well satisfied with the man
16:27and with the educating tendency of the conflict,
16:30Douglass remembered,
16:31though I was not entirely satisfied by his views.
16:35Lincoln could not seem to satisfy anyone.
16:41Even some of Lincoln's supporters use terms like
16:45Lincoln has the nigger on his mind.
16:48They thought this war was all about bringing the country back together.
16:51Now it's become a war to liberate slaves.
16:56Meanwhile, Congress had passed a law
16:59calling for young men to be drafted.
17:01Americans are going to be drafted
17:03to accomplish something that they do not support,
17:07and that is emancipation.
17:08When you combine emancipation and conscription together,
17:11you get a very violent mix.
17:13That summer, mobs of poor Irish immigrants,
17:26enraged by the draft,
17:27took over most of New York City's east side for three days,
17:31burning and looting,
17:34beating and lynching African Americans.
17:36African Americans in New York City were incinerated.
17:50A black orphanage was burned to the ground.
17:57Policemen or anyone who tried to help them
18:00was also attacked.
18:02Irish immigrants don't want to fight to free black slaves
18:08who will challenge them for their jobs once they are freed.
18:19More than 100 people died before it was over.
18:24It had been the worst riot in the nation's history.
18:27Six days after the riots began,
18:34600 soldiers in the all-black Massachusetts 54th Regiment
18:39stormed Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor.
18:44More than half were killed or wounded.
18:46There will be some black men who can remember
18:55that with silent tongue and clenched teeth
18:59and a steady eye and well-poised bayonet,
19:03they have helped mankind on to this great consummation.
19:09While I fear there will be some white ones
19:12that with malignant heart and deceitful speech,
19:18they have strove to hinder it.
19:24He felt that if they're going to fight for the Union,
19:27they had a stake in the Union
19:30in a very special way.
19:31And if blacks are going to be a part of the Union,
19:41then perhaps there are some things
19:43that they're entitled to,
19:45like privilege and opportunity,
19:49maybe equality,
19:50maybe the franchise,
19:53that sort of thing.
19:54And I think those are the things
19:55which Lincoln began to think about
19:56almost immediately and seriously.
20:01He's inching along himself
20:05toward the notion that blacks can be citizens
20:09in every sense of the term.
20:13by August, Mary Lincoln had recovered
20:18of the Union
20:30By August, Mary Lincoln had recovered from the carriage accident.
20:45She traveled north with her 10-year-old son, Tad,
20:48away from the Washington heat and the fevers that accompanied it,
20:52to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
20:54Lincoln sent her the latest news, from the battlefield and from the home front, too.
21:05August 8, 1863.
21:08My dear wife, all well as usual.
21:12Tell dear Tad, poor nanny goat is lost and I am in distress about it.
21:17The day you left, nanny was found resting herself
21:21and chewing her little cud in the middle of Tad's bed.
21:24But now she's gone.
21:26The weather continues dry and excessively warm here.
21:30But enough.
21:32Affectionately, A. Lincoln.
21:43On November 18, 1863, Abraham Lincoln was on his way to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
21:51He had not wanted to leave Washington.
21:56Tad had a raging fever.
21:58And Mary, who had already lost two of her boys to illness, was terrified.
22:06Lincoln tried to push his concern about Tad from his mind.
22:11He had made a promise he was determined to keep.
22:14A military cemetery was to be dedicated on the Gettysburg battlefield.
22:20And Lincoln had been asked to say a few words there.
22:23He was asked just to make a few appropriate remarks.
22:26It was not expected that he would say anything memorable
22:29because Edward Everett, the great Massachusetts orator,
22:32was going to speak for more than two hours and make the grand oration.
22:37That evening, while a crowd sang outside his window,
22:48the president worked over the speech he had been writing and rewriting.
22:53He could make a document sound exactly as he thought it should sound.
22:57And he does it as a matter of conscious manipulation of language.
23:02Where did it come from?
23:04Less than a year's formal schooling.
23:06Not quite sure exactly when he learned how to read and write.
23:10Didn't learn polished grammar until he's in his twenties.
23:15There is, it seems to me, no accounting for exactly how he grew.
23:23But that he did is beyond question.
23:31Late that evening, a messenger knocked on Lincoln's door.
23:35He handed the president a telegram.
23:38Honorable A. Lincoln, the doctor has just left.
23:42We hope dear Taddy is slightly better.
23:44We'll send you a telegram in the morning.
23:47Mrs. Lincoln.
23:53The relieved president went to sleep.
24:09Cannon woke Gettysburg the next morning.
24:12Thousands watched Lincoln and the other dignitaries
24:15ride along the dirt road to the cemetery.
24:21Edward Everett spoke for an hour and 57 minutes.
24:30At 2 o'clock, Lincoln was introduced at last.
24:33He wanted to express in his own way the meaning of the sacrifices the Union men had made.
24:42The ground was still soggy from bodies that were buried underneath it.
24:48And he wanted to consecrate it in terms of the suffering and the death and the blood.
25:01And what the goals of the war by that point had become.
25:05Namely, preserving the Union and human equality.
25:14Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty.
25:23And dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
25:30Now we are engaged in a great civil war.
25:34Testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
25:41We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
25:47We 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.
25:57It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
26:04When Lincoln says that four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation.
26:12Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
26:16Then he is equating what's happening at that time with the founding of the nation in the Declaration of Independence.
26:24The Declaration of Independence proclaims that all men are created equal.
26:33He is saying that equality is what the civil war was about.
26:39And that the nation was going through a catharsis of holding what the Declaration of Independence stood for.
26:47And they were paying a very, very heavy price for it.
26:50But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.
27:04The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
27:13The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.
27:21But it can never forget what they did here.
27:25It 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.
27:36It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.
27:44That from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
27:52That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.
28:00That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.
28:06And that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
28:15That this nation, under God, shall not perish from the earth, shall not perish from the earth, shall not perish from the earth, shall not perish from the earth.
28:26He had spoken for only three minutes, just 10 sentences, 272 words.
28:34But Lincoln had changed the meaning of the war.
28:37It was only after the war dragged on and on and on that he began to understand that the only way it would reach an end would be by having blood spent over and over again.
28:54And once he made that commitment, he was driven to put the war on a higher moral ground.
29:01The war was not simply to reconcile the people from the south into the Union as it was.
29:09But rather, as he expressed at Gettysburg, it would be to create a wholly different, a new nation out of all the blood that had been spent.
29:21He gave the struggle a new meaning.
29:24He gave the country a new birth of freedom.
29:27In early December, a beautiful young woman in black arrived at the White House with her six-year-old daughter.
29:55She was Emily Todd Helm, Mary's younger half-sister, whose husband had been killed by Union fire just a few weeks earlier.
30:06She had tried to travel from her home in the Deep South to her mother in Kentucky.
30:12But Northern soldiers stopped her, insisting she take an oath of allegiance to the Union.
30:18Out of loyalty to the memory of her husband, she refused.
30:21Lincoln wired the officer in charge, send her to me.
30:32Mr. Lincoln and my sister met me with the warmest affection, Emily wrote in her diary.
30:37We were all too grief-stricken at first for speech.
30:42I have lost my husband.
30:44They've lost their fine little son, Willie.
30:47And Mary and I have lost three brothers in the Confederate service.
30:51We could only embrace each other in silence and tears.
30:54As the days passed, Mary and Emily comforted one another.
31:02They talked of old times and old friends, but carefully avoided talking about the war, which divided them.
31:11This frightful war comes between us like a barrier of granite, Emily wrote, closing our lips, but not our hearts.
31:22Emily soon noticed that Mary was behaving strangely.
31:35She seems very nervous and excitable, Emily wrote.
31:39And once or twice when I have come into the room suddenly, the frightened look in her eyes has appalled me.
31:44Late one night, after everyone had gone to bed, Mary confided to her sister that Willie's death had shattered her.
32:00But she had a consoling secret.
32:03The dead still lived.
32:05I want to tell you, Emily, that one may not be holy without comfort when our loved ones leave us.
32:15If Willie did not come to comfort me, I would still be drowned in tears.
32:19He lives, Emily.
32:22He comes to me every night and stands at the foot of my bed with the same sweet, adorable smile he always had.
32:31He does not always come along.
32:33Little Eddie is sometimes with him.
32:42Sister Mary's eyes were wide and shining when she told me this, Emily wrote.
32:47It is unnatural and abnormal.
32:50It frightens me.
32:58Lincoln convinced Emily to stay on as long as she could.
33:01He was frightened, too.
33:04They continued to avoid talking about the war.
33:08It was the children, Emily's daughter Catherine, and the Lincoln's son, Tad, who broke the silence.
33:15She and Tad were on the sitting room floor looking at a magazine, and Tad said, there was a picture of Lincoln. He said, oh, here's the president. And Catherine said, no, that's not the president. Jeff Davis is president. And Tad jumped up and down and said, no, Lincoln is president. Hooray for Lincoln. And she jumped up and said, hooray for Jeff Davis. And they were about to come to blows. And Lincoln was standing in the doorway. So he came over with a chuckle.
33:33And picked them up and put one on one knee and one on the other and said, well, Tad, you know who your president is. And as for Catherine, I'll just be her Uncle Lincoln.
33:54One night, Emily and the Lincolns were joined for dinner by General Dan Sickles and the blunt-speaking senator from New York, Ira Harris.
34:13Harris asked why, when the country was calling upon all its sons to defend the Union, 20-year-old Robert Lincoln was not in the Army.
34:24Mary said it was her fault. Robert wanted to go. The president had wanted him to go. She had insisted he stay in college.
34:34Harris had just one son, and he was in the Army, he said, turning to Emily. But if he had 20 sons, he would want them all fighting rebels.
34:43And if I had 20 sons, Emily shot back, they should all be opposing yours.
34:52General Sickles, who had lost a leg at Gettysburg, told the president he should not have that rebel in his house.
35:01Excuse me, General Sickles. My wife and I are in the habit of choosing our own guests. We do not need from our friends either advice or assistance in the matter.
35:13The tragedy of the Civil War was being played out in the Lincolns' own home.
35:28The divisions of the war cut right into the heart of people's personal ties.
35:35Families were being broken apart. Loved ones were being pushed in different directions.
35:40And two sisters, who wanted only to express their sadness and their loss with one another, were prevented from doing so.
35:45On December 14th, Lincoln gave Emily a pass for her trip home, and put his arms around her.
35:56I hope you do not feel any bitterness, Lincoln told her, or that I am in any way to blame for all this sorrow.
36:05Lincoln hoped she would come back the following summer.
36:08I believe if anything should happen to you, or Robert, or Tad, Emily told him, it would kill her.
36:22On March 8th, 1864, the Lincolns were holding a reception in the East Room.
36:44General U.S. Grant arrived late.
36:51He had never met the President before, never even been to Washington.
36:56Why, here is General Grant, Lincoln said.
36:59This is a great pleasure, I assure you.
37:03The next day, Lincoln made Grant a Lieutenant General,
37:07the first man since George Washington to hold that rank,
37:10and put him in charge of all the Union armies.
37:14Grant had won important victories in the West,
37:17had taken Vicksburg,
37:18and everywhere he had shown a willingness to fight and keep fighting.
37:25But there were rumors that he drank too much,
37:28and was too careless with the lives of his men.
37:32Lincoln paid no attention.
37:34The President hoped he had at last found the commander he'd been looking for since the war began.
37:40Lincoln recognized that war brought out the bulldog in Grant.
37:46It brought out the tenacity.
37:48It brought out that aggression that was needed
37:53to command the Northern armies to victory in this war.
37:58Grant proposed an all-out assault on the Confederacy,
38:02several Union armies moving simultaneously to destroy the rebel forces.
38:06I wish to express my entire satisfaction with your plans,
38:12so far as I can understand them.
38:15The particulars I neither know nor seek to know.
38:18Grant's ideas about fighting the war were Lincoln's.
38:23As the war went on, Lincoln more and more realized
38:26that you can't just wait for Southern Unionists
38:28to bring the states back in the Union.
38:30You can't just have one battle and call it over.
38:33You can't just maneuver and play games of strategy.
38:37You simply must bludgeon the Confederacy in to surrender.
38:49On May 6th, Lincoln got word that Grant's massive army
38:53was marching south toward Richmond
38:54through the tangled Virginia forest known locally as the Wilderness.
39:01Somewhere in the thickets ahead of him,
39:03Robert E. Lee and 65,000 Confederates were waiting.
39:08If you see the president, Grant said,
39:11tell him from me that whatever happens,
39:14there will be no turning back.
39:15There was no turning back.
39:28The seven weeks of fighting that followed
39:30were some of the most savage ever seen.
39:37The Wilderness.
39:44Spotsylvania.
39:45Cold Harbor.
39:52Where 7,000 Union soldiers were lost,
39:56most of them in the first 30 minutes.
40:02In one week, Grant lost 32,000 men.
40:08By June, he had lost more men
40:10than were left in Lee's command.
40:12Grant brought a new conception of warfare.
40:15He stayed on Robert E. Lee's tail.
40:20He stayed on Robert E. Lee's tail.
40:25He gets in close like a boxer,
40:28like a body puncher.
40:33He's carrying out Lincoln's wishes.
40:35Lincoln said, wherever Lee goes, you go.
40:42All along, the North possessed the resources
40:45to bring this war to closure.
40:47It was what they lacked was the will to do it
40:51and the persons to execute the will.
40:54I think Lincoln had the will.
40:56And he found in someone like Grant
40:59the person who was able to execute the plan.
41:02As news of the terrible losses spread,
41:09the country was appalled.
41:12Even the president's wife was horrified.
41:15Grant is a butcher, Mary Lincoln told her husband,
41:18and not fit to be at the head of an army.
41:20Day after day, week after week,
41:29the casualties mount and mount and mount.
41:33We can never accept casualties like that today.
41:36Never. Never.
41:38We would never fight a war like that.
41:40Those casualties are unheard of
41:42in proportion of the population.
41:44Lincoln said, we outnumber the South
41:49by more than two to one.
41:55Even if we suffer two casualties to their one,
41:59in the end, there'll be more of us left than them.
42:03The president could not sleep.
42:06He paced the White House corridors,
42:08dark rings beneath his eyes.
42:11I feel he confided to a friend,
42:14as though I shall never be glad anymore.
42:28The streets of Washington
42:29were lined with ambulances
42:31full of wounded soldiers.
42:38Lincoln was obviously moved
42:40when he saw these.
42:41He told a friend,
42:45the weight of this,
42:46the sorrow of this,
42:47is simply more than I can bear.
43:03You look at Lincoln's photographs
43:05from his time.
43:08The forward brow,
43:10those tremendous lines down his face.
43:15The anguish in those eyes.
43:19It was not easy for him.
43:21It had a tremendous cost.
43:23But Lincoln accompanied his tenderness
43:25with a desperate ferocity about ends.
43:29The end here could only be done by fools.
43:36Lincoln called for 300,000 more men
43:38to bring this thing to an end.
43:46And he called for 6,000 more men from Illinois.
43:51And there's this Illinois delegation
43:53who felt that their state
43:55had been bled dry already by the war.
43:59So they went to see the president
44:01at the White House.
44:03And basically they were saying to Lincoln,
44:05don't dip into our manpower pool
44:08for more troops.
44:10We've given enough to the country.
44:13Now, these were the men
44:14who urged him to fortify Fort Sumter.
44:18The guys that are screaming
44:20for a war of terror,
44:22that are screaming
44:23for the suppression of the South.
44:27Lincoln heard them out
44:28and turned to them,
44:30his face contorted with anger,
44:32and he said,
44:34you urged this war.
44:36You urged not only a war,
44:37but a war of terror.
44:40Now you come here and tell me
44:42that you're not going to provide
44:44the troops I need
44:46to carry through the kind of war
44:48you demanded.
44:50This is the price you have to pay
44:52for the policies you pressed on me.
44:56You go back to Illinois
44:58and send me those boys.
45:03By June 15th,
45:04Grant's men had fought their way
45:06to within sight of Richmond.
45:08Then the rebels stopped them
45:10at Petersburg.
45:12Grant had advanced 60 miles
45:14and lost 60,000 men,
45:16three for every one Lee had lost.
45:20Hold on with a bulldog grip,
45:22Lincoln wired him.
45:24Chew and choke as much as possible.
45:26With the end of the war
45:34still nowhere in sight,
45:36calls for an end to the slaughter
45:37came from every quarter.
45:40The November presidential election
45:42was only four months away now,
45:44and Lincoln was being assailed once again
45:47as inept,
45:49uncaring,
45:50a failure.
45:52His prospects looked grim.
45:54The election hinged on Union victories,
45:58but Grant was dug in at Petersburg,
46:01and the Union troops
46:02under General William Tecumseh Sherman
46:04stalled as they drove toward Atlanta.
46:08The Democrats were about to nominate
46:10the former Union commander,
46:12George McClellan,
46:13still popular,
46:14still ambitious.
46:17Lincoln believed McClellan
46:18was likely to try to end the war
46:20by promising to rescind emancipation.
46:23The Democrats thought
46:25that they had a real chance
46:26to win the 1864 election.
46:29Lincoln was a discredited leader.
46:31The North appeared to be
46:32no closer to winning the war.
46:35Cartoons appeared
46:36in Democratic newspapers
46:37portraying Lincoln
46:38as a widow-maker.
46:40That's what Democrats called him,
46:42a widow-maker.
46:44And indeed,
46:44if the election had been held
46:46in August of 1864,
46:48when Northern morale
46:49was at its low point,
46:51I'm convinced Lincoln
46:52would not have been re-elected.
46:54The Democrats were calling
46:56for an immediate armistice
46:57and negotiations with the South.
47:00The president came under intense pressure
47:02to discuss peace
47:04with Jefferson Davis.
47:06Lincoln said,
47:08I'm willing to talk
47:08to Jefferson Davis about peace,
47:10but here are my conditions.
47:12Reunion
47:12and emancipation.
47:15I'm not going to back down.
47:18People condemned Lincoln
47:19as the one reason
47:21why the war continued.
47:23Thousands of men are dying
47:25on a daily basis
47:27because this president
47:29is determined
47:29to free the slaves.
47:32Mr. President,
47:34we didn't go to war
47:35to free the slaves
47:35in the first place.
47:37Why don't you give it up?
47:38Lincoln says,
47:39I can't do that.
47:41The promise was made,
47:43and the promise having been made,
47:44it must be kept.
47:48I desire so to conduct
47:50the affairs of this administration
47:52that if at the end,
47:55when I come to lay down
47:57the reins of power,
47:58I have lost every friend on earth,
48:02I shall have at least one friend left,
48:05and that friend
48:06shall be down inside me.
48:08late one evening that summer,
48:18Mary Lincoln
48:19and Elizabeth Keckley,
48:20the seamstress
48:21who had become her confidant,
48:23sat together in Mary's room.
48:27The first lady asked Mrs. Keckley
48:30if she thought Lincoln
48:31would be re-elected.
48:33Mrs. Keckley said that,
48:35despite everything,
48:36she did.
48:39Mrs. Lincoln seemed relieved.
48:42If he should be defeated,
48:44I do not know
48:45what would become of us all.
48:47To me,
48:49there is more at stake
48:50in this election
48:50than he dreams of.
48:52She had a terrible secret,
48:58she confessed.
49:01She had once again
49:02plunged herself
49:04thousands of dollars
49:05into debt.
49:08If my husband knew
49:09that I was involved
49:10to the extent that I am,
49:12the knowledge
49:13would drive him mad.
49:15If he is re-elected,
49:17I can keep him
49:18in ignorance of my affairs.
49:19But if he is defeated,
49:22then the bills
49:23will be sent in,
49:24and he will know all.
49:27With the country's future
49:29at stake
49:29in the 1864 election,
49:31Mary,
49:32who had once
49:32so cared about politics,
49:34who had been
49:35the anchor for Lincoln
49:36through his early
49:37political career,
49:38would now find herself
49:40so obsessively concerned
49:41about the spending
49:42that had catapulted
49:43out of control
49:44that her only thought
49:45was he's got to win
49:46so that my bills
49:48will get paid
49:48and he will not find out
49:50what I have been doing.
49:53As election day
49:54drew nearer,
49:55Elizabeth Keckley
49:56remembered,
49:57Mrs. Lincoln was
49:58almost crazy
49:59with anxiety
50:00and fear.
50:02Nothing else
50:03seems to have mattered.
50:04She talked about it,
50:05she worried about it.
50:07That kind of obsession
50:08is a substitute
50:09for all of the other
50:11concerns in her life
50:14that she couldn't control.
50:16The public criticism,
50:17the distance of her husband,
50:18her own despair,
50:19and her deep,
50:20deep continued mourning
50:22over the death of Willie.
50:28On August 19th,
50:29Lincoln asked Frederick Douglass
50:31to come back to see him
50:32at the White House.
50:34He wanted Douglass
50:36to recruit black men
50:37for a daring secret mission.
50:39To make their way
50:40into the deepest South
50:42and encourage African Americans
50:44still enslaved
50:44to escape to the Union side
50:47before election day.
50:50Lincoln was afraid
50:51that if he lost the presidency,
50:54slavery's grip
50:55would be reestablished
50:56in the South,
50:57and he wanted to get
50:58as many slaves to freedom
51:00as he possibly could.
51:02To Frederick Douglass,
51:04this proved that
51:05Lincoln's concern for slaves
51:07was far more
51:08than mere politics.
51:09Douglass now saw Lincoln
51:14as the black man's president.
51:17He was the only president
51:19who had ever held audiences
51:21with African Americans,
51:22who had ever brought them in
51:24to tell them of his ideas.
51:28So he's the first president
51:30who recognizes African Americans
51:32as a people
51:33and as part of America.
51:38In Lincoln's company,
51:39Douglass wrote,
51:40I was never in any way
51:42reminded of my humble origin
51:44or of my unpopular color.
51:47Lincoln was not only
51:48a great president,
51:50but a great man.
51:51Three days after
52:01Frederick Douglass' visit,
52:03Lincoln stood on the White House lawn
52:05to review the men
52:06of the 166th Ohio Regiment,
52:09about to go home on leave
52:10after hard fighting
52:12in the wilderness campaign.
52:14Lincoln thanked them
52:15for their service
52:16and reminded them
52:17of the cause
52:18for which they fought.
52:21It is not merely for today,
52:24but for all time to come,
52:27that we should perpetuate
52:28for our children's children
52:30this great and free government,
52:32which we have enjoyed
52:33all our lives.
52:34I beg you to remember this,
52:38not merely for my sake,
52:41but for yours.
52:44I happen temporarily
52:46to occupy this big White House.
52:49I am a living witness
52:50that any one of your children
52:52may look to come here
52:54as my father's child has.
53:01But that August,
53:03it seemed unlikely
53:04that Thomas Lincoln's son
53:06would continue
53:06to occupy the White House
53:08for long.
53:12I'm going to be beaten,
53:13Lincoln told a friend,
53:15and unless some great change
53:17takes place,
53:18badly beaten.
53:21Lincoln believes
53:22he is going to lose
53:24this election.
53:26And if Lincoln loses
53:28that election,
53:29the South wins
53:30its independence.
53:32I think the future
53:33of the nation
53:33was at stake.
53:34This was the most important
53:35election in American history.
53:39After more than
53:40three years of bloodshed,
53:42the great issues
53:43of slavery
53:44and secession
53:45still hung in the balance.
53:47�D konser
54:06SORES
54:07of the
54:07SORES
54:07of the
54:12SORES
54:12of the
54:12SORES