"In the fall of 1863, the Union Army is in control of the Mississippi River. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate Army is in disarray, corrupt structures are falling apart, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with Florence Milton, an abolitionist schoolteacher,...

The nightmarish Union disaster at Fredericksburg comes to two climaxes that spring: at Chancellorsville in May, where Lee wins his most brilliant victory but loses Stonewall Jackson; and at Vicksburg, where Grant’s attempts to take the city by siege are stopped. During the episode we learn of fierce Northern opposition to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the miseries of regimental life and the increasing desperation of the Confederate homefront....

The episode begins with William Tecumseh Sherman’s brilliant march to the sea, which brings the war to the heart of Georgia and the Carolinas and spells the end of the Confederacy. In March, following Lincoln’s second inauguration, first Petersburg and then Richmond finally fall to Grant’s army. Lee’s tattered Army of Northern Virginia flees westward towards a tiny crossroads town called Appomattox Court House. There the dramatic and deeply...

The episode begins with the presidential election of 1864 that sets Abraham Lincoln against his old commanding general, George McClellan. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of the Union itself: with Grant and Sherman stalled at Petersburg and Atlanta, opinion in the North has turned strongly against the war. But 11th-hour victories at Mobile Bay, Atlanta, and the Shenandoah Valley tilt the election to Lincoln and the Confederacy’s last...

Episode six begins with a biographical comparison of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee and then chronicles the extraordinary series of battles that pitted the two generals against each other from the wilderness to Petersburg in Virginia. In 30 days, the two armies lose more men than both sides have lost in three years of war. With Grant and Lee finally deadlocked at Petersburg, we visit the ghastly hospitals north and south and follow General Sherman’s...

"From Beauregard and Custer to Lee and Sherman, twelve commanders from each side vividly describe what they and their men experienced at twelve of the war's most legendary battles from Fort Sumter to Appomattox Court House in accounts gathered from letters, memoirs, reports, and testimonies. They relate noted incidents and personal triumphs and tragedies while covering strategies and explaining battlefield decisions. Trench warfare at Petersburg and...

A tense psychological drama about love and betrayal set at the height of the Civil War. An injured Yankee soldier John McBurney is rescued by a young girl who offers him refuge at her all-girl boarding school in the south. He charms the teachers and students as they nurse him back to health, but his lustful manipulations cause them to spiral into jealous and vengeful rages against him. Feeling trapped, John realizes that his benefactress cannot be...

Presents a pictorial history of the Civil War that includes artifacts, maps, personal narratives, and historical timelines for each year of the war.