Luke Benson

Ken Burns: Civil War Review

History 220
12/11/13
The Civil War
I sincerely enjoy and appreciate all of the work that Mr. Ken Burns put into making this
documentary. Making Documentaries is a very difficult thing to do successfully. Many
documentaries have been described as boring or misleading, but this documentary is neither of
these things. Ken Burns does a brilliant job crafting a documentary that is based on fact and not
opinions, but also making it entertaining. I really have enjoyed many of his other documentaries,
and this one just adds to the list of greats by Burns.
The Civil War more than any other event in American history defines our nation and our
will to protect and preserve the rights of all men. Before the Civil War the United States was
basically just a collection of states, each with their own objectives, which made up a fairly weak
central government. After four years and six hundred thousand lives, the nation would become a
real nation where a strong central government that has more power than any state. The civil war
made us a real united nation. But how did we get there? In this review I hope to answer that
question.
It would be wrong to talk about this war without first talking about what started it. And
depending on whom you ask you may get two very different answers. Someone from the north
would say that the war was all about slavery, whereas somebody from the south may say it was
about states rights. Both of these answers could be accepted as truth because technically they are
both true. Slavery by this time had been in the Americans for around to three hundred years and
had become ingrained as an institution of labor in many states in the United States. In 1783 they
tried to abolish it but were unable to do so. Instead of creating a national crisis they choose to put
the issue off. And the issue went away, came back, went away, and came back again over the
next seventy to eighty years until it finally came to civil war. By that time the choice to be slave
or free had been left up to the individual states themselves. Most of the northern states had no
need for slaves because they had a steady supply of immigrants who came into the north to work,
and fertile land was not as prevalent so running huge plantations was folly. The south on the
other hand did not have the luxury of immigrants being guided onto their farms. The south was
great for farming and labor was expensive so slavery was an easy way to make more cash
sometimes. So the northern states abolished slavery and the southern states held onto it. This
naturally caused a regional rift between the north and the south. The right the states wanted was
the right to do with slavery as the pleased. The two answers are connected to each other because
without one you could not have the other.
There are six major players in the Civil War, two presidents and Four Generals. The First
is President Abraham Lincoln, Born in Kentucky but lived most of his life in Illinois. Lincoln is
a mans man who comes from humble origins and makes himself into a quite successful lawyer,
He later becomes one of the most, if not the most memorable President in US History. I will go
more into his presidency later on in this paper. The President of The Confederacy was Jefferson
Davis. Before the war Davis was a Senator from Mississippi who spoke out against succession
up until his state succeeded from the union. As president of the Confederacy he had they
extremely hard task of running a war as a strong central government without making it look like
he was running a strong central government, because the southern states were afraid of that. His
task was almost completely impossible because the confederate states were shooting themselves
in the foot every step of the way. The real head of the Confederacy was Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Coming into the Civil War Lee was the most promising officer in the army. He was offered the
command of the whole Union army but turned it down because he couldnt make war on his
Country (Virginia) When Lee takes over the Confederate Army of Virginia, he makes moves
that are so against any rule of proper military tactics that he takes enemies by surprise and wins
against impossible odds. These moves and the fact that he has never lost a battle lead to his
greatest downfall at Gettysburg. Although the war lasts for another two years, the confederacy
never again had as good a chance to win the whole war as they did at Gettysburg. Lees thoughts
on the war would have seen the union as fighting for a righteous cause because God had favored
them to win on the battlefield. For the Union there are three Generals worth mentioning. Gen.
George McClellan, a meticulas organizer whole turned the disgrace rabble that lost at Bull Run
into the discipline and organizer Army of the Potomac. But what McClellan offers in organizing
he lacks in military action, McClellan whether out of Fear, or love for his troops, never seems to
keen to put them into action, and when he finally is forced to go into action he moves to slow
and over estimates the enemy by tens of thousands. He runs for President in 1884 but barely
loses after Shermans victory at Atlanta. That brings us to our next General, Gen. William
Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman Became the General of the Unions western Armies in Late 1863.
As the General there he proposed a way to end a war that had not been tried before, but would be
a strategy used in almost every war since. Hitting the nations people. What he does is cause the
people of the confederacy to lose hope and fight amongst themselves as to how to stop him in his
famous March to the Sea. The last General is Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Grant joined the army in
1861, resigned and then joined up again in 1862, won a great battle at Vicksburg, and became
Supreme commander of all Union forces in late 1863. Grant was a soldier because it was the
only thing he was good at, he wasnt much for officer pleasantries and was often seen wearing an
privates coat, he was stubborn and would not retreat when defeated, when he was bored he
drank, but on the field during a battle he was calm even when things were happening all around
him. His tactics of using superior numbers to overrun and destroy the enemy was in the end what
won the war for the confederacy. These six Men are extremly important to the Civil war and for
all it was the most important time in their lives.
This war destroyed many things, houses, livestock, fields, and mens lives. Towns near
the battlefields were turned into hospitals, farm houses became headquarters, and crops in fields
were watered with the blood of dead and dying human beings. It is said that war is hell. I
imagine it as worse than even hell itself. The reason that so many people died are many fold, but
some of the main reasons are: improved technology, outdates battle tactics, and unsanitary field
hospitals. Mass production of guns with rifled barrels, the introduction of the Minie Ball that
would just turn a bone into a million little pieces and much stronger artillery made it easier for
men to kill each other. But even with these advances in technology Generals still sent there men
out in tight lines to be slaughtered in the middle of an open field, those tactics might have
worked when you couldnt hit the broad side of a barn with a rifle, but now that they were
accurate men were killed by the thousands in matters of minutes. These things coupled with the
fact that surgeons just continuously amputated limps without bothering to clean the blades or
their hands, which lead to wide spread disease amongst the wounded men, meant many people
would die. Some Generals like Grant, Longstreet, and Lee towards the end of the war came to
understand that to save lives trenches needed to be dug and defensive battles fought. These
tactics would be seen again on a much larger level fifty years later in World War I.
Since Slaves were really the cause of the war it is important to ask what those slaves were
doing during the war. What surprises me the most is that Slaves in the end is that Slaves fought
on both sides of the war. For some reason that actually really bothers me I dont see how any
slave would fight for their master even if freedom was promised. Many slaves ran away from the
plantations the worked the second a union force came near to them. The Union army became an
army of Freedom. What really made the Civil war into a war to free the slaves was Lincolns
Emancipation proclamation. Although it freed very few slaves it turned what was just another
civil war in history into a war over the virtue of slavery. Close to two-hundred thousand black
men served in the union army and navy during the war, and served courageously and with honor
just like and sometimes more than any other men. Slavery ended after the armies of Freedom
came and saved them.
Abraham Lincoln, The man, The myth, The legend. Lincoln is all of these things. He
frees the slaves, manages a war while keeping the nation he had left intact. He worked day and
night, spent hundreds of hours at the war department receiving news from the front and sending
orders to his generals. Lincoln at one point in time said he thought of borrowing McClellans
Army of the Potomac and taking a walk to Richmond. Lincoln has to be the head of his political
party, President of the nation, and Commander of all the union forces all at the same time. This is
something that not even Washington had to do. Lincoln borrowed book after book on military
strategy so that he could be a better commander in chief. Lincoln was an amazing public speaker
who could move people with the words thats rolled off his tongue. People refer to the lost
speech were apparently the reporters didnt write down the speech because they were so
mesmerized by his speaking ability. Lincoln led this nation to become what it really was meant
to be, a land where all men were free from birth.
It only seems right to end this paper by ending the war. The war technically end at Lees
surrender at Appomatix Court House, But really the war doesnt end until the 1960s when the
civil rights act was passed. So why did it really last that long