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Visit iHeartCountryTrip.com to learn more. And we return to our American stories. Up next, another installment of our series about us, the Story of America series with Hillsdale College professor and author of the terrific book, Land of Hope, Professor Bill Maclay. By 1862, the Civil War was in full bloody swing. Casualties were mounting by the day. No end was in sight. And America, to many observers, looked as if it would soon become permanently divided. Today, Bill shares the story of the Civil War from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg and to Appomattox.
But first, a reading of Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Speech from the Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War. Whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some transatlantic giant step the earth and crush us at a blow?
Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide. It took one battle to reveal the depths of Burnside's problems. Fredericksburg. Twelve thousand Union casualties to the Confederates.
Five thousand. By the close of 1862, the morale of the Union forces was very low. They found themselves entrenched in a war that had lasted longer and was much bloodier than even the sharpest prognosticator could have predicted.
There was little hope of a short or easy path to victory. Burnside found himself replaced by General Joseph Hooker. Hooker was a tough character.
He didn't earn the nickname Fighting Joe for nothing. He was ambitious, which is what you want in the commander of an army. But he was also mean spirited and vindictive, which meant the odds of things looking up for the Union Army under his leadership were not great. In early May of 1863, these odds would be put to the test in Chancellorsville, Virginia, where he encountered Lee's army.
And he did so with nearly 130,000 Union troops, the largest assembly of troops in a battle thus far in the war. But numbers alone don't win battles. And those numbers didn't prevail in Chancellorsville either. Hooker suffered a terrible loss. If there was any good news at all, it was that the Confederacy suffered more casualties, 13,000, than they'd experienced at Antietam. Perhaps a bigger loss for the Confederacy was the loss of one of their great military talents, General Stonewall Jackson, who died from what is known in the fog of war as friendly fire.
General Lee considered Jackson not just his top general, but nearly irreplaceable. Jackson's death was a profound loss militarily, but even worse, it was a profound blow to the morale of the Confederate Army. On the Union side, Chancellorsville was a shocking setback, no doubt about it. But the impact on the Confederacy and the massive losses they experienced were beginning to take their toll also. And the most decisive moments of the Civil War were soon to come. In July of 1863, the Confederacy suffered two huge defeats, both of which would change the outcome of the war. To the west, there was Vicksburg. The Union had as its goal the control of the mighty Mississippi River. By the spring of 1863, that was nearly complete. New Orleans had been captured by the Union Army, and much of the river had been also. What remained? Vicksburg.
Heavily fortified and standing atop bluffs which were, when the river was low, nearly 200 feet in height. After a brutal seven-week siege, Grant captured Vicksburg on, of all days, July 4th. The Confederacy, for all purposes, had been effectively split in two. Arkansas and Texas were now isolated, cut off from the Confederacy, all but lost. The next big battle was in the east, at Gettysburg. General Lee had decided to take a big gamble and once again invade the north if he could win there, not far from a great northern city like Philadelphia, and even closer to Washington, D.C., 85 miles away. He might discourage enough northerners and make them willing to seek peace, or even oust Lincoln come the election of 1864. The three-day battle would become the most important of the Civil War and mark its turning point.
A number of efforts by General Lee, including General Pickett's charge with 15,000 troops, did not break Meade's Union line. Lee's Confederate Army had suffered a monumental blow. Nearly four and a half months later, on November 19th, President Lincoln visited Gettysburg. It was the dedication ceremony for the Soldier's National Cemetery near the Gettysburg Battlefield, and Lincoln delivered perhaps the greatest speech of his presidency. One of the greatest speeches in American history, and one of the greatest of all time. A mere 272 words long, it was a masterpiece, a reverent and elegant statement of national purpose and of national identity, too. It was an urgent plea to continue the war, providing the reasons why Americans should continue the war.
It provided a deeper and higher meaning to the effort, because the loss of life, the massive loss of life, had to mean something. It was a war to preserve the very idea of the Democratic Republic that America symbolized and embodied, and symbolized to the world. Rather than talk more about this speech, I want to let Lincoln's words do the work here. 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. 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've 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's 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 struggle here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 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 the last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth. Reports vary on the audience's reaction to the speech that day in Gettysburg. Many newspapers didn't even mention it. But over time it would become recognized as one of the great speeches ever given. Sir Winston Churchill himself, a great writer and no mean orator, would many years later call the Gettysburg Address the ultimate expression of the majesty of Shakespeare's language. Very high praise that. When we come back, more of the story of us, the story of the Civil War, here on Our American Stories. liquid and stain resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.
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Let's return to the story. He was not a brilliant general from central casting, that's for sure. He didn't look the part. He didn't dress the part.
He didn't even have the posture of the part. He was unimpressive looking, routinely had stubble in his face, slouched often with cigar ashes all over the front of his uniform. At West Point, he had the distinction of being in the bottom half of his graduating class. And though he served ably in the Mexican War, he ended up resigning from the army with rumors of alcohol problems. His return to civilian life was equally inauspicious. He failed at almost everything he tried. This great man of history, during this time of his life, would end up selling leather goods at his father's company in Illinois.
But his destiny was not in sales. His God-given talent, leading men decisively in war. Grant left his work at his father's company with the outbreak of the war, and the rest, as they say, is history.
With all of that and all of his well-known talents and victories, the man himself was something of a mystery to the people around him. The great Civil War historian Bruce Catton had this to say about the subject. Even General Sherman, who knew him as well as anybody, once remarked, And that may indeed have been what made Grant great, just as Lincoln's melancholy nature may have allowed him to suffer through the calamities of the war and prosecute it anyway.
But one thing is certain. Grant's effectiveness in battle is not up for dispute. There was nothing fancy about Grant's approach to war. His was a brutal plan. Fight! Wear the enemy down. Destroy your enemy's supply lines. Starve the enemy troops.
This is war. This means the use of large masses of troops, pounding away relentlessly at any resistance. And Grant refused to retreat. And he would, if necessary, abandon his own supply lines and live off his enemy's land and crops, just to keep the momentum going, to keep on offense. And Grant understood that winning would also mean taking real casualties on his own side, but with the purpose of relentlessly moving forward and eroding the ability of the enemy to fight and reducing the enemy's capabilities and his will until they were destroyed. This approach could not even have been imagined when the Civil War began, but this is what was needed to achieve victory. The goal of this war was eventual reunification of the opposing sides, and for that to happen, the war had to end.
And Grant and his tactics were the way to end it. This was the first glimpse into what war would become. War as a total mobilization of the entire talents and resources of every society engaged in war.
I mean total. The economy, the transportation system, the social capital, even the culture of the society. The goal of war from the Civil War on was not merely defeating the opposing army in the field of battle. It was the destruction of his willingness and capacity to fight. Grant was insistent. Nothing would deter him from driving his troops southward. While Grant was taking the fight to Lee's army, General Sherman, with a force of nearly 100,000, left Chattanooga, Tennessee for Atlanta, Georgia, and then across that state to the port city of Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean. It would later become known as Sherman's March, and it was a textbook operation from beginning to end filled with the logistics and logic of total war.
And few generals understood that logic and those logistics better than Sherman, who cut a swath across the Peachtree State nearly 60 miles wide. While all of this was happening, another presidential election, the election of 1864, was impending. Talk about a high stakes election. And given America's constitutional system, not even a civil war could thwart an upcoming election. Lincoln could not by any means assume a victory, let alone take victory for granted.
Far from it. He'd become a lightning rod of sorts, taking heat from a public that was weary of this war. Even in his own Republican Party, there was dissent too. The more radical wing of the party saw Lincoln as compromised, or at least insufficiently pro-abolition, and worried that he'd allow the South to return to the Union and do so without an absolute end of slavery. Luckily for Lincoln, the Democratic Party was split too. The pro-war Democrats were not after Lincoln's vision, but merely a win and a return to the America of 1860. The Copperhead portion of the party, named after the venomous snake, hated the war and wanted it ended abruptly.
They were quite willing to do so in terms the South would agree to. They saw Lincoln as a kind of tyrant, and some of the Copperheads were borderline Confederate sympathizers. To add insult to injury, the Democrats nominated General McClellan, whom Lincoln had hired and fired as commander of the Union Army. But despite the near crack-up in the Democratic Party and its profound divisions, a Lincoln victory was not a foregone conclusion. Indeed, before Grant's win and Petersburg and Sherman's victory in Atlanta, Lincoln was convinced he would lose. Which must have been one tough fact to face, that all he'd been through, all he and the country had suffered, might have been for nothing.
Which only proves that as we study history, we must always remind ourselves that just as today, nobody knows what's going to happen next. Luckily for Lincoln, that string of victories by Grant and Sherman could not have come at a better time. And by November of 1864, his reelection worries had all but vanished.
Indeed, he did something quite brilliant. Though he ran as a Republican, he ran actually as a national union candidate. A name he concocted to win Democrats and voters along the border states, who could not and would not vote for a Republican. And as part of this, Lincoln cleverly chose as his running mate, a Democrat, a Tennessean named Andrew Johnson, as his vice president. And Lincoln won in a landslide.
Though Lincoln is almost universally admired today, that was not the case in 1864. And it wasn't just the Southerners who hated him. Even some of his own people and associates found his temperament a bit on the dull side. Many more poked fun at him for his crude sense of humor. Some went so far as to call him a first-rate, second-rate man. And others described him as a baboon. Real-life heroes don't look like those we see in Hollywood movies. There are no glamorous love partners, no sweeping sunsets and lush orchestrations, no standing ovations accompanying Lincoln's ordeals. It must have been a very hard, lonely, and sad business, much of the time being Abraham Lincoln in a personal sense.
When we come back, more of the story of us, the story of the Civil War, here on Our American Stories. can go straight into your wash. Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slipcovers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style. Whether you need a single chair, loveseat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered. Visit washablesophas.com to upgrade your home. Sophas start at just $699, and right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washablesophas.com. Add a little to your life. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply.
Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Indecision. Overthinking.
Second-guessing every choice you make. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Beige on beige on beige. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire.
Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Hey, it's Amy Brown from The Bobby Bones Show. Join me in supporting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for a chance to win a trip to meet Meghan Maroney at the 2025 iHeart Country Festival in Austin, Texas, on May 3rd, hosted by Bobby Bones. We're going to hook you up with tickets, flights, hotel, food credits, and a meet-and-greet with Meghan Maroney. Take action now to support St. Jude and help cure childhood cancer, and you're going to be entered for a chance to win.
Visit iHeartCountryTrip.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Purina. This is Samantha from Stuff Mom Never Told You. May is National Pet Month. It's time to reimagine how you care for the cat you love. Petivity is powered by Purina and developed by pet experts. Petivity's smart litter box monitor and app track your cat's weight and litter box behavior, alerting you to changes you may not notice on your own, so you can act sooner if something is off. Shop the Petivity smart litter box monitor to try this game-changing technology.
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Sponsor a child at WorldVision.org slash water for kids and help ensure access to life-changing essentials like clean water. And we return to our American stories and the final portion of our story of the Civil War from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg to Epimatics. It's part of our Story of America series with Professor Bill Maclay. Let's return to the story.
Take it away, Bill. Though the war was not yet over, victory was near. By the close of 1864, Sherman had captured Savannah and soon thereafter marched his troops to Columbia, South Carolina, and burned the city down. He kept pressing and advancing and staying on offense relentlessly through North Carolina while Grant continued to put pressure on Lee in Petersburg.
The Confederacy was not merely on the defensive, it was all but helpless against the overwhelming and relentless attacks of the Grant-led Union Army. In early March of 1864, Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, and it was another classic. In it, he pondered the larger meaning of the Civil War and began to lay the foundation for what would come afterward. We know that Lincoln was becoming increasingly reflective about what God's will might have been in all of this. Lincoln had searched the Bible for answers to the very big questions about destiny and meaning. Rather than discuss the speech, here it is, weighing in at a mere 701 words.
But what profound and well-crafted ones? Here's how it began. Fellow countrymen, at this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential Office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and grosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all.
With high hopes for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it. All sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war, seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.
To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated the cause the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease.
Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered.
That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come. But woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of the unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with a lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice towards 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. A mere month after that speech, Richmond fell in early April, and mere days later on April 9th, after a final flurry of Confederate resistance, Lee did what any good general would do in his place, surrender. The scene was dignified and sad. It brought together two men who'd known one another, but had not seen each other in over twenty years. Lee arrived first wearing his best and most elegant uniform, and was soon joined by Grant, less elegant, always a bit unkempt. There was respect shown on both sides, and courtesies too, and Grant graciously allowed Lee's officers to keep their sidearms, and allowed the men to keep their horses for the spring plantings at their family farms.
Four days later, Lee's army of 28,000 men marched in and surrendered their arms. General Joshua Chamberlain wrote about that moment many years later, before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood, men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve. Standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond, was not such manhood to be welcomed back into the Union, so tested and assured.
On our part, not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of a drum, not a cheer, nor word, nor whisper of vainglorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead. The Civil War remains to this day the bloodiest and deadliest conflict in American history, a million and a half casualties on both sides, and at least 620,000 deaths, quite possibly even more. It's the equivalent of six million deaths in today's population, a staggering one in four soldiers who went to war and never came home. For years and decades to come, in every hamlet and village and city in America, one would encounter men bearing the scars and wounds of war, a reminder of the price paid to end the worst man-made disaster in American history.
But the celebrations would not last long. Just as the Moses of the Bible was denied entry into the Promised Land, Lincoln would not get a chance to heal a broken nation and watch in healing and witness a new birth of freedom for which he had labored and suffered for so very long. What would Lincoln's leadership have looked like after the war?
We'll never know the answer to that question. We did know that winning the war would have been impossible without him, but winning the peace, that task would prove to be just as hard, maybe even harder. And a special thanks, as always, to Professor Bill Maclay, who teaches at Hillsdale, and he's the author of the terrific book, Land of Hope, and also the Young Readers Edition. Go to Amazon, wherever you buy your books. Get one, get two copies, and read them to your kids.
Read them yourself. The story of us here on Our American Stories. There's nothing like sinking into luxury. Anabé sofas combine ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price. Anabé has designed the only fully machine washable sofa from top to bottom. The stain-resistant performance fabric slipcovers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash, perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slipcovers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style. Whether you need a single chair, loveseat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anabé has you covered. Visit washablesophas.com to upgrade your home. Sophas start at just $699, and right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
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Learn more at discover.com slash credit card, based on the February 2024 Nielsen Report. This episode is brought to you by Purina. This is Samantha from Stuff Mom Never Told You. May is National Pet Month. It's time to reimagine how you care for the cat you love. Petivity is powered by Purina and developed by pet experts. Petivity's smart litter box monitor and app track your cat's weight and litter box behavior, alerting you to changes you may not notice on your own, so you can act sooner if something is off. Shop the Petivity smart litter box monitor to try this game-changing technology.
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