Disturbing History - DH Ep:49 The Civil War

Episode Date: December 7, 2025

This is the episode we've been building toward. The one that sits at the very heart of what disturbing history means. Because nothing in the American story comes close to what happened between 1861 and 1865. Nothing. We're talking about a war that killed more Americans than every other conflict in our history combined. A war where brothers lined up across battlefields and shot each other dead. A war that reduced entire cities to ash and left a generation of young men rotting in fields from Pennsylvania to Georgia. This is the story of the American Civil War, and it is the darkest chapter this nation has ever written.The episode begins where all honest examinations of the Civil War must begin. With slavery. Not as some abstract economic system, but as the original sin woven into the very foundation of the republic. We trace the poison from 1619, when the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia, through the compromises that the Founding Fathers made with evil itself.The Three-Fifths Compromise. The Fugitive Slave Clause. The deals that kept the Union together while guaranteeing that future generations would pay the price in blood. We explore how the cotton gin, a machine that should have reduced the need for enslaved labor, instead caused an explosion in human bondage. How the South became a one-crop economy utterly dependent on the institution. How the North industrialized and began to see slavery not just as a moral abomination but as economic competition. Two nations under one flag, drifting further apart with each passing decade.The road to war is paved with failed compromises. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which drew a line across the continent and temporarily preserved the peace. The Compromise of 1850, which gave the South the monstrous Fugitive Slave Act and forced every American to become complicit in slavery's machinery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, which tore up the Missouri Compromise and unleashed guerrilla warfare in Bleeding Kansas. John Brown hacking pro-slavery settlers to death with broadswords. The Dred Scott decision declaring that Black Americans had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. And then John Brown again. Harpers Ferry. The raid that failed but lit the fuse. Brown walking calmly to the gallows, certain that the crimes of this guilty land would never be purged away but with blood. He was right.  Lincoln's election. Secession. Seven states leaving the Union before he even took office. The Confederacy forming with white supremacy as its explicit cornerstone. Fort Sumter. The first shots. And then the country descended into hell.We take you inside the reality of Civil War combat. Not the sanitized version from movies. The real thing. The soft lead minié balls that shattered bones and tore through organs. The field hospitals where surgeons worked for days straight, amputating limbs and stacking them head-high outside the doors. The disease that killed two out of every three soldiers who died. The camps where men perished from typhoid and dysentery and measles before they ever saw the enemy. First Bull Run, where Washington society packed picnic baskets to watch the battle and found themselves engulfed in a panicked rout. Antietam, where 22,000 Americans became casualties in a single day. The Sunken Road that became Bloody Lane. The cornfield that changed hands fifteen times and ended up carpeted with corpses.The Emancipation Proclamation and how it transformed the war from a fight for union into a crusade for freedom. Nearly 200,000 Black men serving in Union blue. The army becoming an engine of liberation wherever it marched.Fredericksburg, where wave after wave of Union soldiers charged up Marye's Heights into Confederate rifles and fell in rows. Chancellorsville, where Lee gambled everything on a flanking march and won his greatest victory, but lost Stonewall Jackson forever.And Gettysburg. Three days in July 1863 that decided the fate of the nation. Little Round Top and the desperate bayonet charge that saved the Union left. The Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard soaked in blood. Pickett's Charge, twelve thousand men marching across a mile of open ground into the teeth of the Union line. The high-water mark of the Confederacy, reached and broken at a stone wall on Cemetery Ridge. Vicksburg falling on July 4th. The Mississippi in Union hands. The Confederacy cut in two. We don't look away from the horrors behind the lines. Andersonville, the prison camp where nearly 13,000 Union soldiers starved and sickened and died in conditions that defy description. The New York Draft Riots, four days of chaos and racial violence that required five army regiments to suppress. Families torn apart, brothers facing brothers, the social fabric of the nation shredding.Grant taking command in 1864 and beginning the relentless grinding campaign that would finally end the war. The Wilderness, where men burned alive in brushfires. Spotsylvania, where fighting was so intense that oak trees were cut down by rifle fire. Cold Harbor, where seven thousand Union soldiers fell in less than an hour. The nine-month siege of Petersburg.Sherman's March to the Sea. Total war. Sixty miles of destruction across Georgia. Columbia burning.The old South dying in flames.Richmond falling. Lincoln walking through the streets of the conquered rebel capital. Black citizens falling to their knees before the man who had freed them.Appomattox. Lee in his best uniform. Grant in his muddy boots. The surrender that ended four years of slaughter.And then, five days later, Ford's Theatre. A single gunshot. Lincoln dying in a boarding house across the street. The nation's savior taken at the moment of victory.We close with the bitter aftermath. The numbers that stagger the imagination.The betrayal of Reconstruction. The rise of Jim Crow. The ghosts that still haunt us.This episode runs long because it has to. You cannot tell this story in pieces. You cannot understand the Civil War without feeling its full weight. The suffering. The courage. The horror. The hope. This is who we are. This is where we come from. This is the war that made us and nearly destroyed us. And we are still living with its consequences today. The American Civil War. The most disturbing chapter in our history. Told in full. Told without flinching. This is the Disturbing History Podcast.

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In life, you've around 29,000 days. And those days can be full of what-ifs. Like, what if it doesn't work? But what if it does? What if you really went after it? Because life is measured in those moments. So go after everyone. Talk to AIB today, and let's see how we can turn your what-ifs into what's next.

AIB for the life you're after. Al-Aid Irish Bank's PLC is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. some stories were never meant to be told others were buried on purpose this podcast digs them all up disturbing history peels back the layers of the past to uncover the strange the sinister and the stories that were never supposed to survive from shadowy presidential secrets to government experiments that sound more like fiction than fact this is history they hoped you'd forget i'm brian investigator author and your guy through the dark corners of our collective memory. Each week I'll narrate some of the most chilling and little-known tales from history that will make you question everything you thought you knew. And here's the twist. Sometimes the history is disturbing to us and sometimes we have to disturb history itself just to get to the truth. If you like your facts with the side of fear, if you're not afraid to pull

it threads others leave alone, you're in the right place. History isn't just written by the victors. Sometimes, it's rewritten by the disturbed. Close your eyes for a moment. I want you to imagine something. It's July 1863. You're standing in a wheat field in southern Pennsylvania. The morning sun is just cresting over the ridge to the east. And the air? The air is thick, heavy. It carries the unmistakable copper tang of blood. Thousands of bodies lie scattered across this pastoral landscape. Some are still moving.

Most are not. The screams haven't stopped since yesterday. They won't stop for days. A horse lies on its side about 50 yards from where you stand. Its belly has been torn open by artillery fire. It's still breathing. Its eyes roll in terror as flies begin to gather. This is Gettysburg.

This is America at war with itself. And here's what I need you to understand before we go any further. This wasn't some distant conflict fought between strangers. This was brothers killing brothers, fathers shooting sons, neighbors who'd grown up together, who'd attended the same churches, who'd shared meals at the same tables. They were now standing across battlefields from each other,

looking down the barrels of their rifles at faces they'd known their entire lives. The American Civil War killed more Americans than every other war in our history combined. Let that sink in for a moment. Every single American who died in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, all of them together. Still doesn't match the Civil War. We're talking about 620,000 dead. Some historians now put that number closer to 750,000.

In a nation of just 31 million, people. That means roughly one out of every 50 Americans died in this war. One out of every 50. But numbers don't tell the whole story. They never do. This is the story of how the United States of America, that grand experiment in democracy, that shining city on a hill, descended into the most brutal and bloody conflict the Western Hemisphere had ever seen. This is the story of the original sin of slavery and the catastrophic reckoning that finally came due. This is disturbing history at its absolute darkest. So let's go back, way back.

Let's start at the very beginning. You can't understand the Civil War without understanding slavery, and you can't understand American slavery without going back to the very beginning. August 1619. A ship called the White Lion arrives at Point Comfort, Virginia. On board are about 20 Africans. They've been stolen from a Portuguese slave ship. They're sold to the colonists in exchange for food.

and supplies. This is typically marked as the beginning of American slavery. But here's what most people don't realize. Slavery wasn't some unfortunate side effect of American colonization. It became the economic engine that built this nation. Think about that for a moment. The wealth that built the great cities of the eastern seaboard, the capital that funded the industrial revolution in the north, the cotton that fed the textile mills of England and New England alike, all of it. Every bit of it, built on the backs of enslaved human beings. By the time the American Revolution rolled around in 1776, slavery was deeply embedded in every single colony. Yes, even the northern ones. New York had the largest enslaved population of any northern colony. Rhode Island

was the center of the American slave trade. Boston merchants grew rich shipping human cargo. So when Thomas Jefferson sat down to write those immortal words in the Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. He did so while enslaving over 600 human beings at his Monticello plantation. The hypocrisy was breathtaking,

and everyone knew it. But here's where it gets complicated. When the founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to write the Constitution, they faced a fundamental problem. They needed the southern states to ratify the document, and the southern states weren't going to ratify anything that threatened their peculiar institution. So they compromised. They made deals with the devil himself.

The three-fifths compromise counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation. Not because they had three-fifths of the rights of white citizens. They had no rights at all. It was purely about power. The more enslaved people a state held, the more representatives it got in Congress. The Constitution also included a fugitive slave clause. It required free states to return escape slaves to their owners. This turned the entire nation into a prison for black Americans.

And perhaps most damningly, the Constitution prohibited Congress from banning the international slave trade for 20 years. Until 1808, guaranteeing that hundreds of thousands more Africans, would be kidnapped and brought to American shores and chains. The founder's new slavery was wrong. Many of them said so explicitly, but they valued union more than they valued justice. They kicked the can down the road. They left the problem for future generations to solve,

and future generations would pay for that cowardice in blood. Here's something you need to understand. By the early 1800s, the United States wasn't really one country anymore. It was two distinct civilizations forced to share the same government. The North was industrializing, fast. Factories were springing up across New England and the mid-Atlantic states. Immigrants were pouring in from Ireland and Germany, providing cheap labor for the mills and foundries. Cities were growing.

A middle class was emerging. The economy was diversifying. The South? The South was going in the exact opposite direction. see something happened in 1793 that would change everything a young inventor from Massachusetts named Eli Whitney created a simple machine called the cotton gin it could separate cotton fibers from their seeds 50 times faster than human hands before the cotton gin cotton wasn't particularly profitable it was too labor intensive to process after the

cotton gin cotton became king and here's the tragedy the cotton gin should have reduced the needs for slave labor. It did exactly the opposite. Suddenly cotton was enormously profitable. Planners wanted to grow more of it, much more, and that meant they needed more land, more slaves. The Deep South opened up, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas. All of it became cotton country. In 1790, there were about 700,000 enslaved people in America. By 1860, that number had exploded to nearly four million. The cotton gin didn't free anyone. It enslaved millions more. The South became a one-crop economy. Cotton was everything. It represented more than half of all American exports. Southern planners were some of the wealthiest people in the world,

and that wealth was built entirely on the institution of slavery. This created a problem, a fundamental, irreconcilable problem. The North was developing an economy that didn't need slavery. In fact, northern industrialists saw slavery as competition. Why pay a factory worker when southern plantations could use free labor? More importantly, northern attitudes towards slavery were changing. The abolitionist movement was growing. People were beginning to say out loud what many had always known. That slavery was a moral abomination, that it was incompatible with American values, that it had to end. The South heard those voices. and the South grew afraid.

See, the southern planter class understood something clearly. Their entire way of life depended on slavery, their wealth, their power, their social structure, everything. Without slavery, the southern economy would collapse. Without slavery, poor whites might start asking uncomfortable questions about why a handful of planters

owned most of the land. So the South didn't just defend slavery as an economic necessity. They began to defend slavery. defend it as a positive good. John C. Calhoun, the brilliant and terrifying senator from South Carolina, said it plainly.

I hold that in the present state of civilization were two races of different origin and distinguished by color and other physical differences as well as intellectual, are brought together. The relation now existing in the slave-holding states between the two is,

instead of an evil, a good, a positive good. They developed elaborate pseudo-suthorpe. scientific theories about racial inferiority. They pointed to the Bible to justify chattel slavery. They convinced themselves that enslaved people were better off in bondage than in freedom. It was a lie, a monstrous, self-serving lie. But they believed it, or at least they needed to believe it.

And as the 19th century wore on, these two Americas grew further and further apart. Two economic systems, two social structures, two completely incompatible visions of what the country should become. Something was going to give. It was only a matter of time. The first real crisis came in 1819. Missouri wanted to join the union as a slave state. Now this might seem like a small thing, just another state entering the union, but it was anything but small. See, at that point, the Senate was perfectly balanced. 11 free states, 11 slave states. Each side had exactly the same number of senators. Neither side could overpower the other. If Missouri came in as a slave state, that balance would shift. The South would have a permanent advantage in the Senate.

They could block any legislation they didn't like. They could protect slavery forever. The North wasn't having it. What followed was the most vicious congressional debate the young nation had ever seen. Representatives threatened secession. Dules were nearly fought. The union itself seemed ready to tear apart. The aging Thomas Jefferson, watching from Monticello, called it a firebell in the night. He wrote that it awakened and filled me with terror. He saw what was coming. He knew this wouldn't be the last crisis. Eventually they worked out a deal. The Missouri Compromise of 1820. Missouri would come in as a slave state. Maine would split off from Massachusetts and come in as a free state. Balance maintained. But here's the crucial part.

They drew a line across the Louisiana Territory at 36 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude. Everything above that line would be free. Everything below would be open to slavery. Problem solved, right? Wrong. The Missouri compromise didn't solve anything. It just delayed the inevitable. It was a bandage on a wound that needed surgery.

For the next 30 years, that fragile peace held, but the tension never went away. It just kept building. pressure accumulating, like a volcano slowly filling with magma. And then came 1850. By 1850, the country was ready to explode. The Mexican-American War had just ended. America had won a massive chunk of territory. California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, parts of Colorado and Wyoming. All of it now belonged to the United States. And immediately, the question arose. Would these These new territories allow slavery, or would they be free? The South saw expansion as essential to their survival.

If they couldn't spread slavery into new territories, they'd eventually be outvoted in Congress, outnumbered, overwhelmed. They needed new slave states to maintain their political power. The North saw things differently. Many Northerners didn't necessarily want to abolish slavery where it already existed, but they sure as hell didn't want it spreading. They wanted the new territories for free white farmers, for opportunity, for the American dream as they understood it.

California made things even more complicated. Gold had been discovered in 1848. People were flooding in. California wanted statehood immediately, and it wanted to come in as a free state. That would break the balance. Fifteen free states to 15 slave states would become 16 to 15. The South's grip on power would start to slip. For months, Congress was paralyzed.

The debate was vicious. Southern representatives openly talked about secession. The Great Triumvirate of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster gave their final speeches. It felt like the end of the Republic. Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, pulled together one last deal. The compromise of 1850. California would come in as a free state,

but the other territories would be organized without any restriction on slavery. The people living there would decide for themselves. Popular sovereignty, they called it. The slave trade would be banned in Washington, D.C., but slavery itself would remain legal in the capital. And here's where it gets really ugly. The South demanded something in return, something that would haunt the nation for the next decade.

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Merry Sportsmas In life, you've around 29,000 days. And those days can be full of what ifs. Like, what if it doesn't work? But what if it does? What if you really went after it? Because life is measured in those moments. So go after everyone.

Talk to AIB today, and let's see how we can turn your what ifs into what's next. AIB for the life you're after. Allied Irish Bank's PLC is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This wasn't just an update to the old fugitive slave clause in the Constitution. This was something far more sinister. Under this law, anyone in the North could be compelled to help capture escape slaves. Federal commissioners were appointed to handle cases.

These commissioners got paid $10 if they ruled that an alleged fugitive should be returned to slavery. They only got $5 if they ruled the person was free. Think about that for a second. They literally paid officials more to send people into slavery than to free them. Accused fugitives had no right to a jury trial. They couldn't testify on their own behalf. Their word meant nothing. And it got worse.

Anyone who helped a fugitive escape could be fined $1,000 and imprisoned for six months. Marshals who refused to enforce the law faced heavy penalties. This law reached into the free states and made slavery everyone's problem. It made every northerner complicit in the institution. It turned the entire country into slave-catching territory. The reaction was explosive. Across the north, people were outraged, not just abolitionists. Regular people who'd never thought much about slavery

suddenly found themselves face-to-face with its horrors. They watched their neighbors dragged off in chains. They were forced to participate in the system or face prosecution themselves. Harriet Beecher Stowe was so affected that she sat down and wrote a novel. Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852. It sold 300,000 copies in its first year. More than a million copies worldwide. It showed Northern readers the reality of slavery in visceral emotional terms.

When Abraham Lincoln met Stowe years later, he allegedly said, So You're the Little Woman who wrote the book that started this great war. He wasn't entirely joking. Then came 1854, and everything fell apart. Stephen Douglas was a senator from Illinois, short, aggressive, ambitious. They called him the little giant. He wanted to organize the Nebraska Territory so a transcontinental railroad could be built through it, specifically through Chicago, his home turf. But there was a problem. The Nebraska Territory was above the Missouri

compromise line. That meant it was supposed to be free soil, and southern senators wouldn't vote for any bill that organized free territory without getting something in return. So Douglas made a deal. The Kansas-Nebraska Act would organize two territories, Nebraska and Kansas. And it would repeal the Missouri compromise entirely. Let me say that again. It would repeal the Missouri compromise. The one thing that had kept the peace for 30 years.

Gone. Just like that. Instead, popular sovereignty would determine whether these territories allowed slavery. the people would vote. This was catastrophic. The Missouri compromise wasn't just a law. It was a promise, a deal, an agreement between North and South about the rules of the game. And now Douglas and the Southern Democrats had torn it up. The North erupted in fury. The Whig Party collapsed. A new party formed almost overnight. They called themselves Republicans, and they had one overriding goal. Stop the spread of slavery.

But the real horror was yet to come. In Kansas. See, if the people of Kansas were going to vote on slavery, then both sides needed to make sure their people were the ones voting. Pro-slavery settlers flooded in from Missouri. They called themselves border ruffians. They were rough, violent men, and they weren't interested in fair elections.

Free soil settlers came from New England, funded by abolitionists who sent them guns called Beecher's Bibles. named after Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet's brother, who'd helped raise the money. The result was a bloodbath. The elections were farcical. Thousands of Missourians crossed the border to vote illegally. They established a pro-slavery legislature that passed laws making it a crime to even speak against slavery. Helping a slave escape was punishable by death.

The free soil settlers refused to recognize this government. They set up their own. Two governments. Two constitutions. One territory. Then the killing started. Pro-slavery forces attacked the free-soil town of Lawrence. They burned the hotel, destroyed the newspaper, looted homes. Three days later, a man named John Brown decided to respond. Brown was a fierce Old Testament abolitionist. He believed God had called him to destroy slavery by any means necessary. He believed in blood atonement. On the night of May 24,

1856, Brown and a small group of followers rode to Potawatomi Creek. They dragged five pro-slavery settlers from their homes. They hacked them to death with broadswords, right in front of their families. The Potawatomi massacre set Kansas ablaze. For the next several years, the territory descended into guerrilla warfare. Raiders crossed back and forth between Kansas and Missouri. Farms were burned. Families were murdered. An estimated 200 people died. They called it Bleeding Kansas, and it was a preview of what was coming for the entire nation. Just when things couldn't get worse, they did. In 1857, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford.

Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Maryland slaveholder, wrote the majority opinion. Dred Scott was an enslaved man who'd been taken by his owner into free territory, Illinois and Wisconsin. He argued that by living in free territory, he'd become free. The court disagreed, spectacularly. Taney ruled that black Americans, whether free or enslaved, could never be citizens of the United States. They had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. Those are his exact words, burned into American legal history.

But Taney didn't stop there. He ruled that the Missouri compromise had been unconstitutional all along. Congress had no power to ban slavery from any territory. Slavery could spread anywhere. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. The decision was supposed to settle the slavery question once and for all. It did exactly the opposite. Northerners were apoplectic.

The ruling seemed to confirm their worst fears. The slave power, they called it. A conspiracy of slaveholders who controlled the government, who controlled the courts, who would stop at nothing to spread their institution across the entire continent. The Republican Party exploded in growth. They now had proof that the system was rigged, that compromise was impossible, that only political victory could stop slavery's advance. And in Illinois, a gangly little-known lawyer named Abraham Lincoln was paying

very close attention. October 16, 1859. John Brown was back, and this time, he wasn't just going to kill a few people. He was going to start a war. Brown had spent three years planning his grand design. He would seize the federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. He would arm the enslaved people of the region. He would retreat into the Appalachian Mountains. And from there, he would wage a guerrilla war that would bring the entire institution of slavery crashing down. It was audacious.

It was insane. And it almost worked. Brown and 18 followers captured the armory without firing a shot. They took hostages. They waited for the slaves to rise. They didn't come. Word spread quickly. Local militia surrounded the armory.

Brown and his men barricaded themselves in the engine house. For 36 hours, they held out. Shots were exchanged. Men died on both sides. Then the Marines arrived, led by a colonel named Robert E. Lee's men stormed the engine house. Brown was beaten and captured. Ten of his men were killed. Five escaped.

Seven were taken prisoner. Brown was tried in Virginia. He was convicted of treason, murder, and inciting slave insurrection. He was sentenced to hang. On December 2nd, 1859, John Brown walked calmly to the gallows. He handed a note to one of his guards. It read, I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land

will never be purged away, but with blood. The South was terrified. They saw Brown as proof that the North wanted to murder them in their beds. that abolitionists would stop at nothing, that the only safety lay in separation. The North was more complicated. Many condemned Brown's methods, but many also admired his conviction, his willingness to die for what he believed. Henry David Thoreau called Brown an angel of light. Ralph Waldo Emerson said Brown would make the gallows as glorious as the cross. Church bells rang across the North when Brown was executed. He became a martyr, a prophet.

a symbol of the coming storm. The country was coming apart at the seams, and the final act was about to begin. The election of 1860 wasn't really an election. It was more like four separate elections happening at once. The Democratic Party split in two. Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas, still pushing his popular sovereignty solution. Southern Democrats walked out and nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, who demanded federal protection for slavery in all territories. A new party called the Constitutional Union nominated John Bell of Tennessee on a platform of pretending the problem didn't exist. They just wanted everyone to calm down and follow the Constitution, whatever that meant. And the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln

of Illinois. Lincoln was a compromise candidate. He wasn't the most radical. He wasn't the most famous. But he was acceptable to all factions of the party, and he could carry the crucial states of the Midwest. Lincoln's platform was clear. No expansion of slavery. Period. He wasn't calling for abolition where it already existed. Not yet. But slavery would not spread one inch further. The South heard that message loud and clear, and they made their intentions known. If Lincoln won, they would leave the Union. On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th President of the United States. He won every free state. He won not a single southern state. In most of the Deep South, his name wasn't even on the ballot. Lincoln got less than 40% of the popular vote,

but he won the electoral college decisively. The system had spoken, and the South kept its promise. South Carolina was first. They'd been itching for this for decades. On December 20th, 1860, just six weeks after Lincoln's election, South Carolina voted. to leave the Union. Their declaration of causes was brutally honest. They weren't pretending this was about states' rights in the abstract. They said exactly what it was about. An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations. They went on and on. Slavery. That's what this was about. That's all it was ever about. Mississippi followed on January 9, 1861. Their declaration

was even more explicit. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. Florida seceded on January 10th, Alabama on January 11th, Georgia on January 19th, Louisiana on January 26th,

Texas on February 1st, seven states, all of them in the deep south, all of them cotton states, all of them utterly dependent on enslaved labor. On February 4th, 1861, representatives from these seven states met in Montgomery, Alabama. They formed a new nation, the Confederate states of America.

They elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as their president, Alexander Stevens of Georgia as their vice president. Stevens gave a speech in Savannah that March. He explained exactly what the new nation stood for. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone, rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. The cornerstone

speech, that's what they called it, no ambiguity, no pretense. White supremacy was the explicit foundation of the Confederacy. Meanwhile in Washington, chaos reigned. President James Buchanan was a lame duck, weak, indecisive. He believed secession. was illegal but also believed he had no power to stop it. Federal property across the south was seized. Forts, arsenals, mints, custom houses. The stars and bars flew over installations that had flown the stars and stripes just days before. Lincoln wouldn't be inaugurated until March 4th.

There was nothing he could do but watch. And in Charleston Harbor, a tiny garrison of federal soldiers held out on a man-made island, a place called Fort Sumter. They were running low on supplies, and the Confederates were surrounding them with guns. The countdown to war had begun. April 12, 1861, 4.30 in the morning. Major Robert Anderson and his 85 men had been holding Fort Sumter for months. They were out of food, out of options. Confederate batteries surrounded them.

Guns pointed at them from every direction. The night before, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard had sent a final demand for surrender. Anderson refused. He said he would evacuate in two days, if not resupplied. That wasn't good enough. Beauregard gave the order. At 4.30 a.m., a single mortar shell arced across the dark sky. It exploded directly over Fort Sumter, the signal. And then everything opened up. From James Island, from Morris Island, from Sullivan's Island, from floating batteries in the harbor. Forty-three guns began pounding Fort Sumter. 34 hours of continuous bombardment.

The fort's walls crumbled. Fires broke out. The barracks burned. Hot shot. Cannonballs heated in furnaces until they glowed red, slammed into the wooden structures inside the walls. Stay tuned for more disturbing history. We'll be back after these messages.

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Get the facts, be drinkaware, visit drinkaware.aware.com. In life, you've around 29,000 days. And those days can be full of what-ifs. Like, what if it doesn't work? But what if it does? What if you really went after it? Because life is measured in those moments. So go after everyone.

Talk to AIB today, and let's see how we can turn your what-ifs into what's next. AIB, for the life you're after. Aladarish Bank's PLC is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Anderson and his men fought back as best they could. but they were outgunned and outmanned. They had no hope of reinforcement, no hope of victory. On April 13th, with the fort in ruins and his men exhausted, Anderson surrendered. Remarkably, not a single man on either side had been killed in the bombardment.

The only death came when a union cannon exploded during the surrender ceremony. But make no mistake, the civil war had begun. The news spread like wildfire. across the south jubilation. Church bells rang, crowds gathered. They thought they'd won. They thought the north would just let them go. They were wrong. Lincoln responded immediately. On April 15th, he called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion, just 90 days of service. He thought that would be enough. He was spectacularly wrong about that too. But the call had an unintended consequence. Four more southern states now had to choose sides. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas.

They'd been on the fence. Many of them had rejected secession in their initial votes, but they weren't going to fight against their fellow Southerners. They weren't going to send troops to invade their neighbors. One by one they seceded. Virginia went first on April 17th. Then Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee. The Confederacy now numbered 11 states. nearly as large as the Union in land area. And Virginia brought something crucial with it. Richmond, just a hundred miles from Washington, became the new Confederate Capitol.

The two capitals stared at each other across the Potomac. Virginia also brought Robert E. Lee. Lee was perhaps the finest military mind in America, a hero of the Mexican War, the superintendent of West Point. Lincoln had offered him command of the Union armies. Lee agonized over the decision. He hated slavery.

He hated secession. But he couldn't raise his sword against his home state. I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children, he wrote. Lee resigned from the United States Army. He accepted command of Virginia's forces. He would become the symbol of the Confederacy, the military genius who kept the rebel nation alive for four long years. Meanwhile, in Washington, Lincoln was scrambling.

The capital was practically defenseless. Virginia had seceded to the south. Maryland, a slave state with strong Confederate sympathies, surrounded it to the north and east. When the 6th Massachusetts Regiment marched through Baltimore on April 19th, they were attacked by a pro-Confederate mob. Four soldiers were killed, 12 civilians, first blood. For terrifying days, Washington was cut off.

No troops could get through Maryland. There were rumors that the Confederates would attack at any moment. Lincoln paced the White House, staring out the windows. Why don't they come? he kept asking. Why don't they come? Finally, reinforcements arrived. The Capitol was secure, but the reality was setting in. This wasn't going to be a 90-day excursion.

This was going to be a war. By July, the northern public was demanding action. The newspaper screamed on to Richmond. The rebels had to be crushed, quickly, before their revolution could take root. Lincoln pressured his commanders. General Irvin McDowell protested that his army wasn't ready. The troops were green. They'd barely trained, but politics demanded action.

On July 16th, McDowell marched 35,000 men out of Washington toward Manassas Junction, Virginia. A key railroad hub about 30 miles away. If they could take it, they'd have a clear path to Richmond. Confederate General Beauregard was waiting with about 22,000 men. General Joseph Johnston was rushing reinforcements from the Shenandoah Valley. The first major battle of the Civil War was about to begin. And here's the thing that still blows my mind. People came out from Washington to watch.

Senators, congressmen, society ladies. They packed picnic baskets. They brought champagne. They set up on hillsides overlooking the battlefield. They thought they were going to watch a great, patriotic spectacle. On the morning of July 21st, 1861, they got something very different. The battle started well enough for the Union. McDowell's plan was complex but workable. His troops swept around the Confederate left flank. They pushed the rebels back.

By midday, it looked like a Union victory was at hand. But the Confederates rallied. A Virginia Brigade under Thomas Jackson stood like a stone wall against the Union assault. There stands Jackson like a stone wall, another general shouted, rally behind the Virginians. Stonewall Jackson, the name stuck, and so did his brigade. Johnston's reinforcements arrived by train at the critical moment. Fresh troops slammed into the exhausted Union forces. The Confederate line stabilized.

Then it began to push forward, and then the Union Army broke. It started with a few units, confused, exhausted, terrified. they started walking to the rear then more joined them then the walk became a trot the trot became a run panic spread like a disease thirty five thousand men became a mob they threw away their weapons they abandoned their artillery they ran for their lives toward washington and they ran straight into those picnickers imagine it congressmen and their wives sitting on blankets with their champagne suddenly engulfed in a stampede of terror terrified soldiers. Carriages overturned. People screaming. Horses rearing. The elegant picnic became a nightmare in moments. The Confederates didn't pursue effectively. They were too disorganized by their own victory. If they had, they might have taken Washington itself. The Union lost about 3,000 men killed, wounded, and captured. The Confederates about 2,000. Small numbers by the standards of what was to come. But the shock was enormous.

This wasn't going to be a quick war. This wasn't going to be easy. The rebels could fight. They could win. Lincoln didn't sleep that night. He sat at his window watching the shattered army straddle back into Washington. The next morning he called for 500,000 more volunteers. For three years of service this time.

The real war was just beginning. I need to stop here for a moment. Because I need you to understand what Civil War combat was actually like. not the sanitized version from movies, the real thing. The standard infantry weapon was the rifled musket. It fired a 58 caliber minier ball, a soft lead bullet about the size of your thumb. When it hit human flesh, it didn't just punch a neat hole. It flattened.

It tumbled. It shattered bones into fragments. It tore through organs like a buzzsaw. Civil war surgeons had never seen wounds like these. They didn't know what to do. So they did the only thing they could. They amputated. If you were shot in the arm or leg, your limb was almost certainly coming off.

Surgeons would set up tables in barns, churches, anywhere they could find space. They'd work for days straight, cutting and sawing. The piles of amputated limbs outside field hospitals would grow head-high. Anesthesia existed, chloroform mostly. But supplies were limited. Sometimes they ran out. You can imagine what happened then. And even if you survived the surgery, infection was almost certain.

Doctors didn't understand germs. They'd used the same instruments on patient after patient without cleaning them. They'd wipe their bloody hands on their coats and call it good. Gangrene. Blood poisoning. Tetanus. These killed more men than the bullets did. Two out of every three Civil War deaths came from disease, not combat.

The camps themselves were death traps. Tens of thousands of men crowded together with, with no sanitation. Typhoid, dysentery, malaria, measles, smallpox. Men who'd never left their rural farms had no immunity to these diseases. They died by the thousands. And then there was the fighting itself. Picture a civil war battle. Two lines of men standing in the open, firing at each other from a hundred yards away. The noise was indescribable, hundreds of rifles firing at once. Artillery shells screaming overhead, men shouting, men screaming. The smoke was so thick you often couldn't see the enemy. You just pointed your rifle in the general direction and fired.

Loaded and fired. Loaded and fired. Until you ran out of ammunition or the order came to charge. The charge. That's when the real killing happened. Men would advance across open ground, directly into enemy fire. Canister shot. Ten cans filled with lead balls would tear through their ranks. Men would fall in rows like wheat before a scythe. If they made it to the enemy line, it became hand-to-hand combat, bayonets, rifle butts, fists. Men would fight like animals killing and dying in the mud. And here's what made it even worse. This wasn't two foreign armies fighting. This was Americans killing Americans. Men who spoke the same language, worshipped the same God, believed in the same constitution. Brothers really did

face brothers across these battlefields. The Crittenden family of Kentucky had two sons who became major generals, one for the Union, one for the Confederacy. Senator John Crittenden had desperately tried to preserve the peace. He watched his sons try to kill each other. Mary Todd Lincoln, the president's wife, had brothers fighting for the South. The war divided families in ways, that would never fully heal. This was civil war in its truest, most terrible sense, a nation tearing itself apart. By the fall of 1862, the war was going badly for the Union.

The peninsula campaign had failed. Lincoln had brought in a new commander, George McClellan, who'd built a magnificent army but seemed allergic to actually using it. The Confederates had won another major victory at Second Bull Run, and now Robert E. Lee was invading the north. Lee had about 55,000 men. He crossed the Potomac into Maryland in early September. His goals were multiple.

Win a victory on northern soil. Encourage the border states to join the Confederacy. Maybe even bring Britain and France into the war on the southern side. McClellan pursued with about 87,000 men. He moved slowly, as always. But then he got the luckiest break in military history. On September 13th, a union soldier found three cigars wrapped in paper near an abandoned Confederate camp. The paper turned out to be a copy of

Lee's battle orders. Special Order, 191. The entire Confederate plan laid out in detail. McClellan finally knew exactly where Lee's army was, and he knew it was divided. Lee had sent Stonewall Jackson to capture Harper's Ferry. The Confederate forces were scattered across 25 miles of Maryland countryside. A more aggressive general would have destroyed the army of northern Virginia right there. But McClellan waited. He fretted. He assumed the Confederates had twice as many troops as they actually did. He moved with his usual glacial caution. By the time he finally attacked on September 17th, Lee had managed to consolidate most of his army near a little town called Sharpsburg, along a creek called Antietam. What followed was the bloodiest

single day in American history. The fighting started at dawn and a cornfield north of town. Federal troops advanced through the standing corn. Confederate rifles cut them down in waves. The corn was mowed flat, not by scythe, but by bullets. The fighting surged back and forth, that cornfield changed hands at least 15 times. When the sunset, there were so many bodies you could walk across the field without touching the ground. At mid-morning, the fighting shifted to a sunken road in the center of the Confederate line. The Confederates had reached, reinforced this natural trench. It became a death trap for the advancing Federals. But eventually, the Union broke through. They got above the sunken road and poured rifle fire down into it.

The Confederates were caught in a kill zone. They died in heaps. So many bodies that the sunken road got a new name. Bloody Lane. Meanwhile, on the Union left, General Ambrose Burnside was trying to cross a stone bridge over Antietam Creek. A handful of Georgia sharpshooters held him off for hours. When Burnside finally got his men across, he pushed toward Sharpsburg. The Confederate line was crumbling, and then AP Hill arrived. His division had been left at Harper's Ferry to handle the surrender there. They'd marched 17 miles and seven hours. They slammed into Burnside's flank at the critical moment. The Union attack collapsed. By nightfall, both armies were exhausted. Neither had won. Neither had lost. They'd simply bled each other white.

The numbers are staggering. 22,717 Americans were killed, wounded, or captured that day. More than 22,000 in a single day. That's roughly equivalent to the entire American death toll in the Revolutionary War. In one day. Lee withdrew to Virginia. He'd failed to win his northern victory. McClellan didn't pursue.

Lincoln was furious, but Antietam was enough. Enough for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. enough to keep Britain and France from recognizing the Confederacy, enough to change the nature of the war forever. Lincoln had been waiting for this moment. He'd had the proclamation written for months, but he needed a victory, or at least something that wasn't a defeat,

Antietam would have to do. On September 22nd, 1862, five days after the battle, Lincoln issued the preliminary emancipation proclamation. It gave the Confederate States until January 1st, To return to the Union, stay tuned for more disturbing history. We'll be back after these messages. Have you recently purchased a new vehicle from Frankine Volkswagen?

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If they didn't, all enslaved people in those states would be declared forever free. On January 1st, 1863, the final proclamation went into effect. Now let me be clear about what the Emancipation Proclamation actually did. and didn't do. It didn't free all the slaves, not even close. It only applied to states in rebellion. Border states like Kentucky and Missouri, which had stayed in the union, were exempt. So were areas of the Confederacy already under union control, like occupied New Orleans. In other words, it freed slaves in precisely those areas where Lincoln had no power to enforce it, and it left slavery intact where he did have power. Critics called it meaningless.

a paper proclamation that freed nobody. They were wrong. The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the war. It made clear, once and for all, that this was a war about slavery, not just union, slavery. The United States was now fighting to end the institution, not just contain it. It also authorized the enlistment of black soldiers in the Union Army. This was revolutionary.

By the war's end, nearly 200,000 black men would serve in the war. United States colored troops. They fought in every theater of the war. They proved their valor at places like Fort Wagner and the crater and Nashville. And here's the thing that doesn't get talked about enough. Every inch of ground the Union Army occupied became free soil. Every enslaved person who reached Union lines became free. The army became an engine of liberation. Word spread through the slave quarters of the South. The Yankees were coming, and when they came, bondage would end. Enslaved people didn't wait to be freed.

They freed themselves. They fled to union lines by the thousands. They provided intelligence about Confederate movements. They worked as laborers and teamsters and cooks. They made themselves indispensable to the Union war effort. Frederick Douglass called January 1st, 1863, a day for poetry and song. He was in Boston when the news came through. church bells rang, cannons fired, people wept in the streets.

We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree, Douglas wrote. The war for Union had become a war for freedom. There was no going back now, but freedom would have to be won on the battlefield. And the battlefield in late 1862 and early 1863 belonged to Robert E. Lee. Lincoln had finally fired McClellan after Antietam. He'd given the army to Ambrose Burnside. the same general who'd bungled the bridge at Antietam. Burnside honestly didn't want the job.

He knew he wasn't ready. He was right. December 1862. Fredericksburg, Virginia. Lee had positioned his army on the high ground behind the town, Mary's Heights. At the base of the heights was a sunken road, lined with a stone wall. Confederate infantry packed behind that wall, four ranks deep. Burnside's plan was simple.

Cross the river. Take the heights. It was suicide. On December 13th, wave after wave of union soldiers charged up that slope. They made it to within a hundred yards of the wall. No closer. Confederate rifles cut them down in rows. Cannon fire sighed through their ranks. One Confederate artillery officer watching the slaughter said, It is well that war is so terrible. Otherwise, we should grow too fond of it. His name was Robert E. Lee. The union lost 12,600 men at Fredericksburg. The Confederates lost 5,300. Burnside was destroyed, emotionally, professionally, completely. Lincoln relieved him in January. The new commander was Joseph Hooker, fighting Joe, aggressive, confident, perhaps overconfident.

He rebuilt the army. He developed a brilliant plan. He was going to destroy Lee once and for all. 1863, Chancellor'sville. Hooker had nearly 130,000 men. Lee had about 60,000. Hooker planned to pin Lee in place with one force while swinging around to hit his flank with another. It was a good plan. It fell apart almost immediately. When Hooker's flanking force encountered Confederate resistance, something broke in him. His confidence vanished. He pulled back into defensive positions around a crossroads called Chancellor'sville. Lee saw his opportunity, and he took perhaps the greatest gamble of the war. He divided his already outnumbered army. He sent Stonewall Jackson with 28,000 men on a long march around the Union right flank. Lee kept just 14,000 to hold the line

against Hooker's vastly superior force. If Hooker had attacked during the march, it would have been over. Lee would have been crushed, but Hooker did nothing. He sat. He waited. On the evening of May 2nd, Jackson's Corps burst out of the woods and slammed into the Union right flank. The 11th Corps, mostly German immigrants, never knew what hit them. They broke and ran. The entire Union Right collapsed. Only Nightfall stopped the route.

That night, Jackson rode out to reconnoitered the Union lines. On his way back, his own men mistook his party for enemy cavalry. They opened fire. Jackson was hit three times. His left arm had to be amputated. When Lee heard the news, he said, He has lost his left arm. I have lost my right.

Eight days later, Stonewall Jackson died of pneumonia. He was 39 years old. Lee won the battle. Another masterpiece of maneuver and daring. Another humiliating union defeat. But the cost was irreplaceable. Jackson was gone. The Confederacy would never fully recover.

Summer 1863. Lee decided to invade the North again. His army was at its peak. Morale was sky high after Chancellor'sville. He had 75,000 veteran troops, confident and experienced. He moved north through the Shenandoah Valley, crossed into Pennsylvania. Lee hoped for many things from this invasion, a decisive victory on northern soil. Peace Democrats in Congress might demand negotiations. Britain might finally recognize. recognized the Confederacy. The war might end on southern terms. He did not expect what he found at a little crossroads town called Gettysburg. The battle began almost by accident. Confederate infantry, looking for shoes in Gettysburg, ran into Union cavalry on the morning of July 1st.

Both sides rushed reinforcements forward. By afternoon, it was a full-scale battle. The first day went badly for the Union. Two corps were driven back through the town itself. thousands were captured in the chaotic street fighting but the survivors took up positions on cemetery hill and culps hill south of town good defensive ground by the morning of july second both armies were fully concentrated lee had about 75,000 men the new union commander george mead had about 90,000 the federals held a fish hook-shaped line along the ridges south of gettysburg lee attacked on july second. He sent Longstreet's core against the Union left.

Little Round Top. Devil's Den. The Wheatfield. The Peach Orchard. The fighting was savage. At Little Round Top, the 20th Main, out of ammunition, fixed bayonets and charged downhill into the attacking Confederates. It was just enough to hold the line.

On the Union right, fighting raged around Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. Again, the line held. Barely. By nightfall, had failed to break the union position, but he wasn't done. July 3rd, the third day. Lee believed one more push would break the union center. He massed about 12,500 men for a direct assault across nearly a mile of open ground. The target, a little copse of trees on Cemetery Ridge.

At 1 p.m., Confederate artillery opened the greatest bombardment of the war, over 150 guns firing simultaneously. The noise was heard in Pittsburgh, 150 miles away. The bombardment was supposed to soften the Union line. It mostly went over the defender's heads. The Union artillery stopped firing to conserve ammunition. The Confederates thought they'd silence the guns. At 3 p.m., the infantry stepped off. Imagine it. Twelve thousand men in gray and butternut, emerging from the tree line on Seminary Ridge. Flags flying. Officers shouting. Drums beating. They formed their lines. They began to march. A mile of open ground. Union artillery opened up. Canister. Shell. Solid shot. Men fell in clusters. They kept coming. At 200 yards, the Union infantry opened fire.

Menier balls tore through the Confederate ranks. Men dropped by the hundred. They kept coming. A handful made it to the stone wall at the top of Cemetery Ridge, hand-to-hand fighting, bayonets and rifle butts. General Lewis Armistead, his hat on his sword, led his men over the wall. He fell, mortally wounded with his hand on a Union cannon. That was the high water mark of the Confederacy. Right there. That stone wall.

That copse of trees. The attack collapsed. The survivors staggered back across that bloody field. Lee rode out to meet them. It's all my fault, he told them. It is I who have lost this fight. Pickett's charge cost the Confederacy about 6,500 men. Overall, Gettysburg cost Lee 28,000 casualties, a third of his army.

The Army of Northern Virginia retreated to Virginia. It would never threaten the North again. While Lee was bleeding at Gettysburg, something equally important was happening a thousand miles away. Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Gibraltar of the Confederacy. Vicksburg sat on high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. As long as the Confederates held it, they controlled the river. They could move men and supplies between the eastern and western parts of their nation. Texas beef, Louisiana sugar, Arkansas cotton. All of it flowed through Vicksburg. Union General Ulysses S. Grant had been

trying to take Vicksburg for months. He tried coming down from the north. He tried digging canals to bypass the city. Nothing worked. In the spring of 1863, Grant made a desperate gamble. He marched his army down the Louisiana side of the river. Navy gunboats ran past Vicksburg's batteries at night. Grant crossed below the city and came at it from the south and east. For the next 18 days, Grant's army marched over 200 miles. They fought five battles. They won all of them. They drove the Confederate Army back into Vicksburg. Then Grant, laid siege. For 47 days, the city was surrounded, cut off, starving. The soldiers ate mules, then horses, then rats. The civilians dug caves into the hillsides to escape the

constant bombardment. They called them prairie dog villages. Children played among the shells. On July 4th, 1863, the day after Pickett's charge, Vicksburg surrendered. Nearly 30,000 Confederate soldiers laid down their arms. It was the large largest surrender of American troops until World War II. A week later, Port Hudson, Louisiana, the last Confederate stronghold on the river, fell as well. The Mississippi was entirely in union hands. The Confederacy was cut in two. The father of waters, Lincoln said, again goes unvexed to the sea. Grant became a national hero. He would be brought east to take command of all Union armies. The strategy that would win the war was about to take shape. I need to

to tell you about the prison camps. I need you to understand what they were. Both sides operated prisoner of war camps, and both sides' camps were horrific. The Union's Elmira in New York was called Helmira by the prisoners. The death rate there was nearly as bad as the worst Confederate prisons, but nothing compared to Andersonville. Camp Sumter, near Andersonville, Georgia, was opened in February 1864. It was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners. By August, it had to have been, held 33,000. Imagine a stockade. About 26 acres. Inside, nothing but bare ground. No shelter, no trees, no shade. The prisoners dug holes in the earth to get out of the sun. A small stream ran through the camp. The guards used the upstream portion as a latrine. The downstream portion

was the prisoner's only water source. They drank it anyway. They had no choice. Rations were almost non-existent. A few ounces of cornmeal a day, some salt pork when available, which wasn't often. Men starved to death, slowly, painfully. Their bodies wasted away until they were nothing but skin stretched over bone. Disease ran rampant, dysentery, typhoid, scurvy. Men died by the dozen every day. There was a line drawn around the inside of the stockade, about 20 feet from the walls. This was the deadline. Any prisoner who crossed it was shot.

Guards used this rule liberally. A group of prisoners formed a gang called the Raiders. They attacked other prisoners, stole their food, their clothes, their blankets, murdered those who resisted. Eventually other prisoners organized and caught them. Six were hanged with the guards' blessing. In 14 months, nearly 13,000 men died at Andersonville.

That's 29% of all prisoners held there, almost 1 and 3. After the war, the camp's commandant, Henry Wirtz, was tried for war crimes. He was convicted. He was hanged. The only Confederate executed for war crimes in the entire conflict. But here's the thing you need to understand. Wirtz wasn't some unique monster. He was operating in a system that had broken down completely.

The Confederacy couldn't feed its own soldiers by 1864. certainly couldn't feed its prisoners. Stay tuned for more disturbing history. We'll be back after these messages. The Go Mile, supported by AIB, has been helping families around the world for over 40 years. This year, we are asking you to step up together with your community to continue one of Ireland's favorite Christmas traditions.

Search AIB GoMile to see where you, your family and your friends, find your local Gold Mile event. AIB, for the life you're after. On the many days of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee. A visit filled with festivity. Experience the story of Ireland's most iconic beer in a stunning Christmas setting at the Guinness Storehouse. Enjoy seven floors of interactive exhibitions and finish your visit with breathtaking views

of Dublin City from the home of Guinness. Live entertainment, great memories and the gravity bar. My goodness is Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse. Book now at ginnestorehouse.com. Get the facts, be drinkaware. Visit drinkaware.com. You hurl your hearts out for the people who know you inside out.

Giants on the football pitch make everyone who knows them feel 10 feet tall. When you put the ball over the bar, you put the parish on the map. And one man's 60 minutes can be a whole town's finest hour. Because when it's Club, it lives forever.

This is the AIB GAA Club Championships. GAA, where we all belong. The Union had suspended prisoner exchanges in 1863. Grant calculated, cold-bloodedly but accurately, that exchanges benefited the South more than the North. The South was running out of men. Every prisoner released would be back in the Confederate Army within weeks, so the exchanges stopped.

and the prison camps filled up, and men died, in their thousands, on both sides. This was the reality of the Civil War, not just battles, not just glory, disease and starvation, and casual brutality, Americans dying in American prison camps, surrounded by American guards. The war was also tearing the home front apart, literally. By 1863, both sides had been forced to implement conscription. The volunteer spirit of 1861 was long gone. Men weren't lining up to fight anymore. They had to be compelled.

But the draft laws were deeply unfair. In the union, a drafted man could pay $300 for an exemption, or he could hire a substitute to take his place. This meant that wealthy men could buy their way out of service. Poor men could not. A rich man's war and a poor man's fight. That's what they called it. In New York City, the resentment boiled over.

July 13, 1863. The draft lottery had just begun. A mob attacked the draft office on 3rd Avenue. They set it on fire. And then the riot spread. For four days, New York descended into chaos. The mob wasn't just angry about the draft. They were angry about everything.

The war, the economy, the emancipation proclamation. And they took that anger out on Black New York. Yorkers. The rioters burned the colored orphan asylum to the ground. They lynched black men in the streets. They beat black women and children. They were shouting that they would not be drafted to fight for niggers. The official death toll was 119. The actual number was probably much higher. Many bodies were never recovered. It took five union regiments pulled directly from the Gettysburg battlefield to restore order. For days, New York City, the largest city in America was effectively in a state of war. This was the home front. This was what the war

was doing to the nation. Even in the heart of the Union, the violence was consuming everything. I want to tell you some stories, individual stories, because sometimes the only way to understand a catastrophe is to look at the human beings caught in it. The Terrell family of Virginia, four brothers, two fought for the Union, two for the Confederacy, all four died in the war all four the hudder family of pennsylvania two brothers thomas fought for the union henry for the confederacy they met once during the war accidentally when henry was captured and thomas was his guard they spoke briefly through the prison bars they never saw each other again the goldsboro family of maryland one brother became a union naval officer another became a confederate

congressman. They spent the war trying to destroy each other's government. Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky, who'd spent his career trying to preserve the peace, watched as his sons became generals on opposite sides. When his union son died in 1862, his Confederate son couldn't even attend the funeral. Women suffered too, in ways that rarely made the history books. Wives watched their husbands march away. Many never returned. Others came back, broken, missing limbs, minds shattered, mothers buried children, sometimes multiple children. Mary Todd Lincoln lost her son Willie in the White House in 1862. She never fully recovered. Sisters became spies. Rose O'Neill Greenhow passed information to the Confederates that helped

them win First Bull Run. She drowned in 1864, fleeing a union ship, weighted down by gold, sewn into her clothes. Women ran farms alone, raised children alone, buried the dead alone. And in the South, as the war dragged on, they starved.

The Confederate economy collapsed. Inflation made money worthless. Food became impossible to find. In Richmond, in 1863, women rioted for bread. The Civil War didn't just happen on battlefields. It happened in homes, in families.

in hearts. It tore apart the fabric of American life in ways that would take generations to repair. In March 1864, Lincoln brought Ulysses S. Grant East to take command of all Union armies. Grant was a different kind of general. He didn't worry about what the enemy might do to him. He worried about what he was going to do to the enemy. Grant's strategy was simple, brutal, effective. He would use the Union's overwhelming advantage in men and material to attack the confederacy everywhere simultaneously. Sherman would march through Georgia. Other forces would strike at the periphery and Grant himself would go after Lee, not Richmond. Lee. The Army of Northern Virginia was the target, destroy it, and the Confederacy would collapse. Grant

understood something his predecessors hadn't. The war would be won by attrition. The North had more men, more factories, more food, more of everything. If the war, War became a contest of endurance the North would win, so Grant attacked and kept attacking and never stopped. May 1864, the wilderness. Grant crossed the Rapidand River with 120,000 men. Lee had about 65,000. They met in the same tangled woodland where Lee had crushed Hooker the year before. The fighting was horrific. The brush was so thick you couldn't see the enemy. Men fired at muzzle flag, trees caught fire. Wounded men burned to death, screaming. Grant lost about 18,000 men in two days. Previous Union commanders would have retreated after such losses. Grant didn't.

I proposed to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer, he wrote to Washington. The Army headed south, toward Richmond. The soldiers cheered. Finally, a general who wouldn't quit. But Lee was waiting at Spotsylvania Courthouse. For two weeks, the Army's flashed around a complicated series of fortifications. The most intense fighting came at a position called the Mule Shoe. On May 12th, Union forces broke through. What followed was 20 hours of continuous hand-to-hand combat in the pouring rain. The fighting was so intense that oak trees were cut down by rifle fire alone.

Not artillery, rifle fire. You can see one of those trees at the Smithsonian today. Men fought until they dropped from exhaustion. They stood in trenches filled with dead bodies and kept fighting. One Confederate officer said he'd never seen anything like it. It was not war, he said. It was murder. Grant lost another 18,000 at Spotsylvania.

He kept going. Cold Harbor. June 3rd, 1864. Grant ordered a frontal assault against entrenched Confederate positions. It was a mistake. He knew it almost immediately. In less than an hour, the Union lost 7,000 men. 7,000. In an hour. Some of the soldiers sewed their names onto their uniforms before the

attack. They knew what was coming. They wanted their bodies to be identified. I regret this assault more than anyone I've ever ordered, Grant wrote later. But he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. The only way out was through. Grant tried one more maneuver. He slipped his army across the James River and headed for Petersburg, a railroad hub south of Richmond. If he could take Petersburg, he could cut off Richmond's supply lines. Lee barely got there in time. The Confederates dug in, and both armies began the longest siege in American history. For nine months, from June 1864 to April 1865, the two armies faced each other in an elaborate network of trenches. It looked like a preview of World War I. Trenches, dugouts, artillery barrages, raids and counter raids.

Life in the trenches was miserable for both sides. Mud, rats, constant danger. Sharpshooters killed anyone who showed themselves above the parapet. Men learned to keep their heads down. The Confederates were slowly starving. Their supply lines were being strangled. Desertion became epidemic. Men simply walked away, heading home to try to save their families.

The Union tried to break the stalemate in July 1864. Pennsylvania coal miners dug a tunnel under the Confederate lines and packed it with explosives. The resulting explosion killed or wounded nearly 300 Confederates and created a massive crater. But the assault that followed was a disaster. Union troops poured into the crater instead of around it. They were trapped. Confederate counterattacks slaughtered them. The Union lost nearly 4,000 men.

The siege dragged on. Through the summer, the fall. The bitter winter of 1864 to 1865, Grant kept extending his lines to the west, forcing Lee to stretch his own lines thinner and thinner. Something had to give. While Grant ground down Lee in Virginia, William Tecumseh Sherman was cutting a swath through the south. Sherman captured Atlanta in September 1864. It was a crucial victory, not just militarily, but politically.

The presidential election was coming. Lincoln was facing a challenge from George McClellan, running on a platform of negotiated peace. If Sherman hadn't taken Atlanta, Lincoln might well have lost, and if Lincoln had lost, the war might have ended with Confederate independence, with slavery preserved. But Sherman took Atlanta, and Lincoln won, and the war went on. In November, Sherman did something extraordinary. He cut his own supply lines. He marched 62,000 men from Atlanta to Savannah,

living off the land, destroying everything in his path. Sherman's march to the sea was total war. His men tore up railroad tracks. They burned factories. They slaughtered livestock. They freed enslaved people by the thousands. They didn't fight many battles. The Confederates couldn't muster enough troops to stop them.

Sherman's army simply marched 60 miles wide through the heart of Georgia, leaving ruin in their wake. War is cruelty, Sherman famously said. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueller it is, the sooner it will be over. He meant it, and he proved it. Sherman reached Savannah on December 21st, 1864. He presented the city to Lincoln as a Christmas gift.

Then he turned north into South Carolina. South Carolina, where secession had begun. Sherman's men had special hatred for South Carolina. Columbia, the state capital, burned to the ground. Arguments still rage about who started the fire. By March 1865, Sherman was in North Carolina. The Confederate armies were collapsing everywhere. It was only a matter of time.

April 1st, 1865. Grant's forces finally broke through at Petersburg. The Confederate line stretched to the breaking point, simply snapped. Lee sent word to Jefferson Davis. Richmond had to be evacuated. That night, the Confederate government fled. They took what they could carry and ran. The capital of the rebellion was falling.

Richmond burned. Confederate soldiers set fire to warehouses and bridges to deny them to the enemy. The fires spread. The arsenal exploded. By morning, whole blocks were nothing but ash. On April 3rd, Union troops entered Richmond. Among them were black soldiers. former slaves, now in uniform,

liberating the capital of the Confederacy. The symbolism was overwhelming. The next day, Abraham Lincoln came to Richmond. He walked through the streets of the fallen rebel capital. The black population mobbed him. They fell to their knees. They reached out to touch him. Lincoln was uncomfortable.

Don't kneel to me, he told them. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will enjoy here at. after. But to them, he was a kind of God, the man who had freed them. Father Abraham. Lincoln sat in Jefferson Davis's chair in the Confederate White House. He'd won. After four years of blood and suffering, he'd won. Lee's army was finished. Everyone knew it. Lee knew it. He'd retreated west from Petersburg, hoping to link up with other Confederate forces. But there were

no other forces left. Union cavalry cut off his escape routes. Union infantry pressed from behind. On April 9th, 1865, Palm Sunday, Lee found himself surrounded near a little Virginia village called Appomattox Courthouse. He had fewer than 30,000 men left, starving, exhausted, nearly out of ammunition. There's nothing left for me to do but go and see General Grant, Lee said, and I would rather die a thousand deaths. The two generals met in the parlor of Wilmer McLean's house. Grant arrived dusty and disheveled, his uniform muddy from the road. Lee was immaculate in his best uniform, a ceremonial sword at his side. They talked for a while. Old Army stories. Mexico. The conversation wandered. Finally, Lee reminded Grant why they

were there. The terms were generous. Lee's soldiers would be paroled. They could go home. They wouldn't be tried for treason. Officers could keep their sidearms. Any man who owned a horse or mule could keep it. They'd need them for spring planning. Lee signed the document. The Army of Northern Virginia was disbanded. As Lee rode back to his army, Union soldiers began to cheer. Grant stopped them. The war is over, he said. The rebels are our countrymen again. Over the next few weeks, the other Confederate armies surrendered as well. Joseph Johnston to Sherman and North Carolina. Richard Taylor in Alabama. Edmund Kirby Smith in Texas.

Stay tuned for more disturbing history. We'll be back after these messages. The Go Mile, supported by AIB, has been helping families around the world for over 40 years. This year, we are asking you to step up together with your community to continue one of Ireland's favorite Christmas traditions. Search AIB GoMile to see where you, your family and your friends

can find your local Goal Mile event. AIB, for the life you're after. On the many days of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee, a visit filled with festivity. Experience a story of Ireland's most iconic beer in a stunning Christmas setting at the Guinness Storehouse. Enjoy seven floors of interactive exhibitions

and finish your visit with breathtaking views of Dublin City from the home of Guinness. Live entertainment, great memories and the gravity bar. My goodness is Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse. Book now at ginnestorehouse.com. Get the facts.

Be Drinkaware. Visit drinkaware.com. You hurl your hearts out for the people who know you inside out. Giants on the football pitch make everyone who knows them feel 10 feet tall. When you put the ball over the bar, you put the parish on the map.

And one man's 60 minutes can be a whole town's finest hour. Because when it's club, it lives forever. This is the AIB GAA Club Championships. GAA, where we all belong. The bloodiest war in American history was over. The union was preserved. Slavery was dead.

But so was Abraham Lincoln. April 14th, 1865. Good Friday. Five days after Appomattox. The war was over. Washington was celebrating. Lincoln and his wife went to Ford's theater that evening. They were going to see

a comedy called Our American Cousin. Lincoln was tired. He almost didn't go. But he felt obligated. John Wilkes Booth was a famous actor. He was also a Confederate sympathizer. He'd been planning for months. Originally, he'd wanted to kidnap Lincoln.

Now, he wanted him dead. Booth knew the theater. He knew the play. He knew exactly when the biggest laugh line was coming. At 10.13 p.m. as the audience roared with laughter, Booth slipped into the presidential box. He shot Lincoln in the back of the head, a single shot from a 44 caliber derringer. Then he jumped to the stage. He broke his leg in the landing, but managed to shout Six Semper Tyrannis, thus always to tyrants, before escaping through the back. Lincoln never

regained consciousness. He died at 722 the next morning, in a boarding house across the street from the theater. He was 56 years old. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton stood by the bedside. Now he belongs to the ages, Stanton said. Or maybe, now he belongs to the angels. Witnesses disagreed. It didn't matter. Lincoln was gone. The man who'd held the union together through four years of hell, who'd freed four million enslaved people, who'd preserved the American experiment when it seemed certain to fail. Gone. just when the nation needed him most. Let me give you the numbers one more time,

because numbers matter. The Civil War killed between 620,000 and 750,000 Americans. The most recent scholarship puts the number at about 750,000. That's more than American deaths in all other wars combined. One in three southern white men of military age was killed or wounded. Entire communities lost a generation of young men. The South was devastated. Cities burned. Railroads torn up. Farms abandoned. Wealth destroyed. The slaves who'd represented the largest single capital investment in the American economy were now free.

The old order was gone. And what came next? Reconstruction. An attempt to rebuild the South and integrate the freed slaves into American life. It was noble. It was necessary. And it was ultimately betrayed. For a few brief years, black Americans voted, held office, built schools, created communities, former slaves became congressmen, state legislators, judges, and then it was torn away. White supremacist violence, the Ku Klux Klan and its allies, terrorized black voters. The federal government withdrew its protection. Jim Crow laws institutionalized segregation. Black Americans were stripped of their rights and forced into a new form of subjugation that would last nearly a century.

The Civil War ended slavery. But it didn't end racism. It didn't end injustice. It didn't end the struggle. That struggle continues to this day. I want to take you back to where we started. That wheat field at Gettysburg. It's quiet now.

The screams have faded. The smoke has cleared. The blood has long. since seeped into the earth. Every year, millions of people visit Gettysburg. They walked the same ground where 50,000 Americans became casualties in three days. They look at the monuments. They read the plaques. Most of them, I think, don't really understand what happened there. How could they? How could anyone understand who wasn't there? But sometimes people say they hear things. cannons in the distance, drums, voices, the sound of men dying.

I don't know if I believe in ghosts, but I believe in memory. I believe in history. The Civil War isn't just something that happened. It's something that's still happening. Its echoes still reverberate through our politics, our culture, and our lives. When you see a Confederate flag flying, you're seeing the legacy of that war. When you see debates about monuments to Confederate generals, you're seeing that legacy. When you see arguments about voting rights and racial justice and who gets to tell America's story, you're seeing a conflict that's been going on since 1865. We are still fighting the Civil War.

In some ways, we've never stopped. The question is whether we'll ever truly win it. So let me leave you with this. The Civil War was the most disturbing chapter in American history. bar none. Nothing else comes close. Not because of the death toll, though that was staggering. Not because of the suffering, though that was immense. It was disturbing because it revealed who we really are. A nation founded on contradictions. A people capable of incredible idealism and incredible cruelty. A democracy that nearly destroyed itself over the question of whether human beings could

be property. We tell ourselves stories about the civil war. Some of them are true, many of them are lies. The truth is uncomfortable. The truth is that this country was built on slavery. The truth is that we fought a war to determine whether that would continue. The truth is that the right side won, but the victory was incomplete. The truth is that we're still living with the consequences of decisions made before any of us were born. And we'll be living with them for generations to come.

That's the real story of the Civil War, not battles and generals. not dates and statistics, the story of who we are, where we come from, what we're willing to do to each other, and what, maybe, we can become. This is the disturbing history podcast, and this has been the American Civil War, a nation torn apart. Until next time. The go ahead, your skin, I've got a taste for you. Your head, I'm seeking, watch out and coming for you. The Go Mile, supported by AIB, has been helping families around the world for over 40. years. This year, we are asking you to step up together with your community to continue

one of Ireland's favourite Christmas traditions. Search AIB Gold Mile to see where you, your family and your friends can find your local Go Mile event. AIB, for the life you're after. On the many days of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee, a visit filled with festivity. Experience a story of Ireland's most iconic beer in a stunning Christmas setting at the Guinness Storehouse. Enjoy seven floors of interactive exhibitions and finish your visit with breathtaking views

of Dublin City from the home of Guinness. Live entertainment, great memories and the gravity bar. My goodness, it's Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse. Book now at ginnestorehouse.com. Get the facts, be drinkaware. Visit drinkaware.awe.e. The Gold Mile, supported by AIB, has been helping families around the world for over 40 years.

This year, we are asking you to step up together with your community to continue one of Ireland's favourite Christmas traditions. Search AIB Go Mile to see where you, your family and your friends can find your local Go Mile event. AIB, for the life you're after. You hurl your hearts out, for the people who know you inside out. Giants on the football pitch make everyone who knows them feel 10 feet tall. When you put the ball over the bar, you put the parish on the map.

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