Short History Of... - The American Civil War (Part Two of Two)

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

In the decades since the United States declared their independence from Britain, the question of slavery had become increasingly divisive. As the nation expanded, fragile political agreements over the issue failed, and the frontier became a battleground. When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, seven Southern states chose secession from the Union over accepting limits on slavery. War followed. Eventually, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and transformed the war from a fight to preserve the Union into a struggle over freedom itself. But far from being the end of the story, emancipation marked the beginning of a new and far more dangerous phase of the war.   So what happened when Black Americans were finally allowed to fight for the Union? What would it take to resolve the bloodiest conflict ever fought on American soil? This is a Short History Of the American Civil War, Part Two of Two. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Caroline Janney, Professor of History of the American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau Centre for Civil War History. Written by Sean Coleman | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. ⁠A Short History of Ancient Rome⁠ - the debut book from the Noiser Network is out now! Discover the epic rise and fall of Rome like never before. Pick up your copy now at your local bookstore or visit ⁠⁠noiser.com/books⁠⁠ to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the 18th of July, 1863, on Morris Island, outside Charleston, South Carolina. Night presses heavy on the beach outside the city as a black Union soldier stands in line with the men of the 54th Massachusetts, the first regiment of African-American troops raised in the north. Up ahead, Fort Wagner broods on the narrow spit stretching away from the mainland and into the Atlantic. Its guns silent for now. Around the soldier, nearly 600 men wait in near silence,

surf to the right of them, marshes to the left. Some were born free in northern cities. Others were enslaved until not long ago. All now wear the same blue uniform, boots sinking slightly into wet sand. They have been chosen to lead the assault on Fort Wagner, which guards Charleston Harbour, one of the Confederacy's most vital ports. Taking the fort will open the way for Union guns to threaten the city itself,

and the 54th is being sent in first, ordered to test the defenses and prove under fire what black soldiers can really do. Shuffling his feet in the damp sand, the soldier weighs the musket in his hands. It's dark barrel glistening in the salt air. Finally, the command comes. He runs forward up the beach, carried along by his regiment, feet pounding across the sand. Almost at once, the fort erupts in retaliation. Shells detonate overhead, spraying shards of timber and bursts of sand, while musket fire stutters from the parapets.

The sound is overwhelming, but the soldier lowers his head and drives on, legs burning, the roar of waves obliterated by the by the thunder of artillery. Every step is a test of his courage and resolve, as he risks his life to fight for the nation that has not yet granted him full citizenship. At the base of the fort, the world becomes chaos. Smoke cascades down the walls in thick waves. Union men slip, climb, and haul one another upwards

through the sand and debris. The soldier scrambles up the exterior slope, gripping at roots and broken timbers as bullets flick past his shoulders. Around him shapes, surge and fall, illuminated by sudden flares of gunfire. Out of breath, he reaches the top of the slope, but only seconds later an explosion throws him backwards, and he thuds into the damp ground behind him. His ears ringing with the sound of the blast, he lets the night swallow him, knowing that he and the men he fought alongside, have done what many believed was impossible.

They will not take Fort Wagner today, but the charge of the 54th Massachusetts will echo far beyond this beach. Carried in newspapers, letters, and word of mouth, today's events will force the nation to recognize the bravery and potential of black soldiers and prove they are ready and willing to join the fight for freedom. In the decades since the United States declared their independence from Britain, the question of slavery had become increasingly divisive. As the nation expanded, fragile political agreements over the issue failed, and the frontier became a battleground.

Finally, when Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, seven southern states chose secession from the Union over accepting limits on slavery. War followed, and the conflict quickly grew bloodier and more destructive than anyone had imagined. Eventually, Lincoln took the step he had long been preparing for, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, and transforming the war from a fight to preserve the Union into a struggle over freedom itself. But far from being the end of the story,

emancipation marked the beginning of a new and far more dangerous phase of the war. So what happened when black Americans were finally allowed to fight for the Union and the cause of the abolition of slavery? How did the war change once slavery became a military target and entire societies were drawn into its destruction? And what would it take to resolve the bloodiest conflict ever fought on American soil? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is Part 2 of a special two-part short history of the American Civil War.

In the wake of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which declares enslaved people in Confederate-held territory to be free, the war changes in concrete ways. With black men now able to fight in union uniform, abolition becomes a weapon of war, and the conflict can expand in scale and purpose. By this point, two years into the conflict, it's being fought by mass armies across an entire continent, sustained by railroads, and rivers, fed by forced and free labor alike. It is also now openly tied to the question of slavery in a way that has not been explicit before. And in the summer of 1863, two battles, fought hundreds of miles apart, will come to define how the war is changing. In the West, Ulysses S. Grant, a hard-driving Union commander who has risen through the ranks since the war's early days, titans a relentless siege around Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The city, one of the South's most important, sits high on bluffs above the Mississippi River, guarding the Confederacy's last major hold on the waterway that binds its eastern and western halves together. For weeks, Grant's guns pound the city, day and night. Besieged civilians are forced to dig caves into the hillsides, to shone. shelter from the shelling. Food and supplies dwindle. Disease spreads and Confederate soldiers grow gaunt and exhausted. When Vicksburg finally surrenders on the 4th of July 1863, the psychological impact on both sides is enormous. For the Union, there is a surge of confidence from knowing the Confederacy can be broken, and for the Southerners, the loss is a profound and damaging shock.

With Vicksburg taken, the Union now controls the entire Mississippi River, splitting the Confederacy in two, and severing the Western states from the heartland. At almost the same time, hundreds of miles to the east, Union and Confederate armies collide at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy's most respected and feared commander, has brought his army north in a gamble to break Union morale on its own. soil. For three days in early July, the fighting is ferocious. The Union Army of the Potomac holds its ground, repelling repeated assaults, until it finally shatters Lee's offensive, ending his invasion of the North. But at the time, Gettysburg does not feel like the decisive moment that a modern reading of the war might suggest. Caroline Janie is Professor of History of the American Civil War and director of the John L. Now.

Center for Civil War history. One of the misconceptions of the American Civil War is that Gettysburg is a great turning point. We know now that it was the battle with the most casualties over a course of three days, 50,000 plus casualties. We know now that it was the last time the Confederates were able to make it into the North. We know now that the Confederacy paused. But in the summer of 1863, Gettysburg, was not seen as a great turning point. In fact, there would be another year and a half of war

after Gettysburg. Some newspapers in Virginia didn't even see it as a Confederate defeat. While Gettysburg will come to symbolize sacrifice and national purpose, in the summer of 1863, it is simply one of many brutal battles in a war that shows no sign of ending. Its deeper resonance emerges only later, edified by the decision to come. consecrate the battlefield as sacred ground, and by Lincoln's brief but enduring address over the graves of the men who died there. Vicksburg, by contrast, is recognized immediately for what it is. Vicksburg, however, was incredibly important because it was the last stronghold on the Mississippi River. And once the United States Army could capture Vicksburg, they could open up the entire Mississippi River

and they could fulfill a key component of what was called the Anaconda Plan, which was a plan that was proposed by the General and Chief at the beginning of the war to essentially draw a line around the Confederate States and constrict them like a snake. Vicksburg had been the last holdout, and it fell on July 4th. Gettysburg had been July 1st through 3rd. Vicksburg is July 4th. This, if you go back and look at newspapers from the summer of 1863, this was seen as much more important than what had happened at Gettysburg.

Still, by the end of the summer of 1863, the Confederacy is not only hewn in two, but also finds itself increasingly constricted by Union warships, tightening the blockade along the coast. The result is a profound strategic shift. Communication becomes limited, and men and supplies can no longer move freely between east and west. the South's ability to sustain the war begins to collapse under the weight of its own geography.

Added to that, by this point the Emancipation Proclamation has been in effect for six months, and its consequences are no longer theoretical. Black men are not merely fleeing slavery, they are actively entering the war as soldiers. Tens of thousands enlist at first, but by the war's end nearly 200,000 will serve, making up around 10% of the entire Union army. What are called the United States Colored Troops fight along the Mississippi River and in the coastal assaults of the South.

They also fight most famously at places like Fort Wagner, often alongside white Union regiments, but also as segregated units whose performance is watched more closely than any other, because they have more to prove. They are fighting a two-pronged war. They are fighting for union, but more importantly, they're fighting for emancipation. They're fighting to prove themselves as men.

They're fighting to prove that they deserve citizenship. And it's not only black men who are fighting for their place in this new society. Along the southern coast, formerly enslaved women now take part in armed union expeditions, using their knowledge of both terrain and communities to strike directly at slavery, and free hundreds of people at a time. Women like Harriet Tubman, who, before the war, already built a name for herself, helping enslaved people escape to freedom

via a secret network of sympathizers known as the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman is not just important on the Underground Railroad and leading enslaved people to freedom before the war, but she is one of the first women to take part in active combat. She is part of an expedition that goes to the Combe River and helps to free enslaved people in that region.

She's especially remarkable in that case, but she is not the only woman who is out there being part of the war effort. Susie King Taylor is a young enslaved woman. She's in her teens. When she makes her way to union lines and becomes a laundress and a nurse, and she's teaching black soldiers in South Carolina to read. The union, through the hope of emancipation, has managed to galvanize a significant,

war machine on the home front as well as in the field. White women on both sides are absolutely involved as well. Women made up more than 50% of the population in 1860, and so their contributions to the war effort span, you know, as many different women as there were. There were different ways in which they contributed. Though well-meant, not all of these early efforts are equally effective. One of the first things that happens in the summer of 1861 is across the loyal north,

women's organizations begin getting together and putting together what we might call care packages for their soldiers in the field of packing jams and jellies and socks and undergarments to send to the front. And I like to describe this as benevolent chaos. They're sending so much stuff that food is going bad and their descriptions of jars of jelly that are breaking and ruining all the newly darned socks that they had sent. As well as food parcels, there are moral welfare packages of Bibles and stationary, enabling young men to write home and reassure their families.

Other contributions by women are both highly impactful and unprecedented. They're working in ammunition factories. They are working for the federal government as treasury clerks. women are volunteering as nurses and getting paid as nurses for the first time. This is a watershed event before the Civil War. It was not proper for a middle-class, upper-class woman to touch or to see the body of a man who wasn't her husband or family member. And so the notion of women in hospitals is quite dramatic. Nursing becomes something that women do during the Civil War, taking their cue from Florence Nightingale.

And though women in the South are equally committed to supporting the war, the Confederacy, like its armies and supply lines, relies on a more haphazard system. In the Confederacy, you have many of the same things without the same level of organization, but you also have women that are nursing on ad hoc basis. If they are in a community where there has been a recent battle, their homes are being used, or they're rushing to volunteer, and the local church might be used as a hospital. But even with support from the home front, the Confederacy is beginning to buckle. Vicksburg has shattered its strategic coherence.

Gettysburg has checked its northern ambition. And soon these mounting pressures begin to tear southern society apart from within. Hi listeners. As fans of short history of, we already know you love history, especially when it's full of strange twists, unexpected characters and moments that sound too bizarre to be true, which is why we think you love our friends at the No Such Thing as a Fish podcast. Each week, QI researchers, Dan, James, Anna and Andy share the most extraordinary and hilarious

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no such thing as a fish is well worth adding to your feed. Find it wherever you're listening to this. Just search for no such thing as a fish, and remember to hit follow so you never miss an episode. As the war grinds into its third year, the cracks in the Confederacy are really starting to show. Union armies tightening their hold on southern territory and supply lines shrinking, everyday life becomes a struggle for survival.

Food grows scarce, which means that prices skyrocket. By now, the Confederacy have created their own currency, Confederate State Notes. Issued by the Richmond government have been printed in huge quantities to fund the war, but are backed primarily by faith in victory rather than gold or silver. But by 1864, though the federal currency in the north remains relatively stable, hyperinflation causes the Confederate currency to collapse, turning wages and savings into little more than worthless sheets of paper. Desperation turns to unrest. In Richmond, hungry women take to the streets, smashing shop windows, and demanding relief from a government that can no longer feed its own people,

or control the prices being charged by greedy speculators. Similar disorder spreads through other cities and towns, as the war continues to erode the social fabric of the South. While politicians urge sacrifice and patriotism, civilians face the harsh truth that their homes, farms and livelihoods are being ground down by a conflict with no clear end. Women, now running farms and plantations on their own, write desperate letters, begging husbands and sons to return, torn between duty to the cause

and duty to their households. But because the Confederacy introduced formal conscription back in 1862, leaving the army means desertion. Even so, as hardship deepens, growing numbers of Confederate soldiers slip away anyway, choosing their starving households over a collapsing state that can no longer protect them. Still, though the conditions, Confederacy may be weakening, it is not yet defeated. And President Abraham Lincoln understands that if the war is to end, it will not be through compromise. The Union needs generals willing to apply pressure everywhere all at once, until the system holding the Confederacy together finally breaks.

With the victories at Vicksburg and Chattanooga to his name, Ulysses S. Grant emerges as the Union's most effective and unflinching commander. Lincoln brings him east in 1864 to take command of all Union armies, and Grant arrives with a new strategic vision. The Confederacy, he says, cannot be beaten by capturing cities alone. What is needed is the wholesale destruction of its armies. Grant's approach is uncompromising, his confidence buoyed by the Union's overwhelming advantage in manpower.

The North can draw on a population more than the Union's overwhelming advantage in manpower. The North can draw on a population more than twice the size of the Confederacies, and its armies now outnumber their opponents in every major theater. By coordinating a series of simultaneous offensives across multiple fronts, Grant ensures that Confederate forces can no longer shift troops to meet each new threat. In Virginia, he attaches himself directly to a force so large it functions like a moving metropolis. He's going to travel with the main army that is in the east with the Army of the Potomac.

The Army of the Potomac has as many as 100,000 men. These are cities. Wherever the Army of the Potomac goes in the south, it is the second largest city in the south, second only to New Orleans. Throughout the spring and early summer of 1864, Grant drives his army straight at Robert E. Lee. The result is a grinding sequence of unimaginably costly battles. the wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor. Throughout the spring of 1864 in what will become known as the Overland campaign, Grant is going to attack, and he's going to keep attacking for six weeks.

The casualties are going to be like a first bull run, first menaces, every single day for six weeks. Between the two sides, over the course of just six weeks, nearly 90,000 men are killed, wounded. or missing. For the Union, the losses are staggering, but for the Confederacy, they make up over half of an army that can no longer be replaced. By summer, Grant has forced Lee into the trenches around Petersburg, locking the Confederate capital of Richmond into a siege it cannot sustain indefinitely. And while Grant pins down Lee in the east, the Union's other decisive figure emerges in the West. William T. Sherman, a career soldier and West Point graduate, is blunt, unsentimental and fiercely committed to ending the war as quickly as possible. Shaken by the scale

of the conflict and dismissive of romantic ideas about honorable warfare, Sherman believes the only way to stop the bloodshed is to make continued resistance impossible. He is tasked with executing the other half of Grant's strategy. Advancing south from Tennessee, Sherman Drives deep into Georgia and captures Atlanta, the Confederacy's most important industrial and rail hub in the region. With its fall, southern factories, supply lines and morale take a devastating blow. From there, Sherman pushes onward into the Confederate heartland, carrying the war directly into the fabric of southern civilian life. His campaign focuses on dismantling the infrastructure but keeping the Confederate armies alive, tearing up the railroads, destroying factories and towns,

seizing vital food, burning supplies. The advance makes the message impossible to ignore. The Confederate state itself is being made untenable. Together, Grant and Sherman represent a decisive shift in the Union's approach to warfare. They are coordinated and relentless and methodical in their campaign to break both the Confederates, Confederacy's capacity and its will to keep up the fight. And it's a campaign designed to be felt hardest by the ordinary people whose lives are bound up in the Confederate state itself.

It's the 23rd of November, 1864, in Millageville, Georgia. A weak, gray morning light filters through dusty windows as a local shopkeeper moves through his store, passing shells that are emptier than they used to be. As he opens the shop door onto the streets, there's no sign of the usual bustle and clamour to greet him. No friendly helloes. The whole town feels like it's waiting for the worst. For days now, word has been passing from farm to farm and town to town of union columns moving south.

Rail lines ripped up behind them. Towns sacked. Nothing left untouched in their wake. He steps out onto the threshold and squints up a deprined. pale sun struggling through heavy cloud. Off in the distance, he hears an eerie rumble. At first, it sounds like thunder. But as he listens, the noise resolves into the steady tread of boots and the grind of wagon wheels on dirt. Sherman's army is coming. Across the street, a young mother pulls her children indoors, hurrying to bolt the door and shutter the windows.

From his doorway, the shopkeeper watches dust rise on the distant road in a long, wavering plume. The shopkeeper doesn't bother to close the door. He's already heard that Sherman's army takes what it wants, regardless of locks or protests. Besides, there's barely anything left on his shelves to raid. As the vast army rolls in, the sound is overwhelming. This column alone seems endless, with thousands of... of blue-coated men stretching back beyond the rise. Reaching the town, the soldiers fan out, inspecting buildings, kicking open doors, claiming supplies

the Confederacy cannot replace. One group splits off to head for the courthouse, while others march toward the rail spur. Another clutch of soldiers pushes the shopkeeper aside and steps straight into the shop. They take the grain first, then the cloth. Everything he has is passed hand to hand, heaved onto the raiders' carts, and dragged away. He doesn't even bother to raise a hand to stop them. It's not worth his life. Instead, he stands nervously just inside the doorway and watches their rough, swift hands

move across the goods he once weighed and counted, carrying them out into the street without argument or apology. Their work done, the soldiers move on, like locusts through. fields. The shopkeeper watches as a team with axes fell the town's telegraph poles, and the last wire to the outside world snaps and falls into the dirt. Smoke begins to rise a few streets away as the barn of a nearby farm is set ablaze. Cattle bella and shouts ring out, but the destruction is already foregone. And as Sherman's men move on, leaving destruction and injury in their wake. The shopkeeper realizes that the Confederacy isn't only being defeated on distant battlefields. It's happening right here, town by town, where lives no longer need to be taken for worlds

to end. By late 1864, the Confederacy is in profound trouble. The steady stream of enslaved people fleeing to union lines has accelerated, draining plantations and armies of labor, and hollowing out the economic system that sustained the war. At the same time, the physical infrastructure of the South is failing. Rail lines fall into disrepair, and food shortages grip entire regions as supply depots run dry. Soldiers write home describing empty wagons and rotting uniforms, while civilians barter for flour at prices that can change by the hour. The Confederate government responds with increasingly desperate measures.

Food is impressed from farms at gunpoint, while horses, wagons, tools, and even enslaved people are seized to keep the army moving and the war alive. As troops defect or die, boys and old men are conscripted to fill the thinning ranks. Each measure deepens resentment and erodes whatever unity remains. The strain of war exposes widening rifts between generals and politicians. between civilians and the army itself. The Confederate government enrichment is almost entirely consumed by the business of survival, raising troops, finding food, and keeping armies in the field, with little capacity left to govern in any meaningful sense.

As shortages deepen and defeats mount, the Confederate President Jefferson Davis becomes a lightning rod for frustration. Newspapers argue over whether his leadership from Richmond has become too centralized to respond to local crises, or too weak to enforce its own policies, even to coordinate the war effort effectively. What remains is a government stretched thin, deeply unpopular, and increasingly unable to hold together the society it claims to lead. In the face of such adversity, even greater levels of desertion hit the army. sometimes quietly in twos and threes, sometimes in alarming waves. And in regions where Confederate authority has all but evaporated,

guerrilla violence fills the vacuum. At the same time, enslaved people inside the Confederacy continue to act as agents of their own liberation. They withhold labor, pass information, guide union troops, and seize opportunities created by the chaos of invasion. What looks like collapse from above is also resistance from below. And yet the destruction wrought, as Sherman moves through the south on his so-called march to the sea, is often misunderstood. In late 1864, Sherman leads around 60,000 Union soldiers out of Atlanta on a 300-mile march toward the Atlantic port of Savannah. The aim is not to fight major battles, but to dismantle the Confederacy's ability to resist

by sabotaging the infrastructure that keeps armies alive. This is a campaign of coercion, not massacre. While violence does occur, as homes are entered, property is seized and people are frightened and displaced. The systematic killing of civilians is not the goal, and atrocities are not the organizing principle of the march. The misconception is that it was an all-out total war, that he was burning homes, that women were raped and pillaged, that it was just an absolute half of destruction. But still, some places suffer far more than others.

The Sherman's army really lays a heavy hand in South Carolina. They believe that South Carolinians started the war. They're the first to secede. They're the ones who fire on Fort Sumter. But as soon as they turn their march and start heading into North Carolina, which happens in 1865, they pull back and they are not nearly as destructive. Because they don't see North Carolinians as culpable and as responsible as they had South Carolinians. By the winter of 1864, the Confederacy is no longer a cohesive nation under siege but a fractured society, feeling the full brunt of the military service. squeeze. It's economically exhausted, politically divided, and socially unraveling. And yet, even now,

there is no sense that the end of the war is near. The conflict that many had once believed would be over in a matter of weeks drags into its fourth brutal year. Casualty lists grow longer with every campaign, and towns and cities across the country feel the constant pull of loss. and although the Union armies are advancing, victory still feels distant and uncertain. Having driven deep into Confederate territory, but still unable to deliver a decisive blow, Grant is locked in a painful stalemate outside Petersburg,

just south of Richmond. Sherman, meanwhile, is still fighting his way towards Atlanta. The war is grinding forward, but slowly and at a terrible cost. And as the presidential election of 1864 looms, many northern voters are exhausted. Some begin to wonder whether continuing the war is worth the price. And Abraham Lincoln is not convinced the public will allow it to continue. Privately, he seriously doubts he'll even win a second term. Lincoln is so convinced that he is not going to win this election,

that he writes a memo, becomes known as the blind memo, that he says, in the event that we lose this election, we need to do everything possible to make sure that we end this war before the inauguration of the new president, because after that, it's not going to happen. Lincoln's fear is that if the Democrats win, they will offer a negotiated peace that will end the fighting without dismantling the Confederacy,

and the goal of securing emancipation will be lost. But in November 1864, Lincoln wins his re-election decisively. carrying an overwhelming majority of the electoral college. And with that victory, the meaning of the war changes once again. After Lincoln's election, things start to change the winter of 64-65. It is pretty clear that the United States has a stranglehold. Now that we have a president who's going to continue to pursue the war and not allow for peace and desertions within the Confederate Army reach a high point in February of 1865.

On the 4th of March 1865, with the war nearly won and the nation exhausted, Abraham Lincoln stands on the steps of the Capitol to deliver what will become one of the most remarkable speeches in American history. Unlike typical political addresses, he offers no triumph or self-congratulation and no easy promise of peace. Instead, Lincoln speaks plainly about the cause of the war, naming slothel. slavery as its central truth, with a clarity he avoided in the early years. Acknowledging the unimaginable suffering on both sides, he makes clear his desperation for peace. Fondly do we hope, he says, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.

But what makes the speech so extraordinary is its humility. Lincoln refuses to claim righteousness for the union alone. He insists that both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and that neither fully understood the cost they were stepping into. Yet he also leaves no doubt about the meaning of the conflict. The war, he insists, will not truly end until the nation has done justice to the millions who were enslaved, and it is an obligation that must shape whatever peace comes next. And even as he delivers that address, the final military reckonings are already underway.

By the winter of 1864 to 65, the war has become a brutal test of endurance. In Virginia, Ulysses S. Grant pins Robert Lee's army against the vital rail hub of Petersburg, and the campaign devolves into nearly ten months of trench warfare, unlike anything Americans have seen before. Soldiers on both sides dig earthworks, rifle pits and bomb-proof shelters, living in mud and freezing rain, surrounded by the constant thump of artillery. Food is scarce, clothing threadbare, and disease rampant. The Confederates hold on with remarkable tenacity, but their lines stretch thinner as casualties and desertions rise. The Union knows time is on its side. Grant, who is with the Union Army, is tightening his circle every day,

and in early April plans to cut off that last railroad. And at this point, Lee tries to fight his way out, but realizes that he can't, and he's going to have to abandon both Petersburg and the capital city of Richmond. And so on the night of April 2nd, he will send word that they're going to have to evacuate. The plan is not to surrender, but to try to leave Petersburg. and rendezvous with the other major Confederate Army in North Carolina, commanded by Joseph Johnston, one of the Confederacy's last remaining senior generals.

His plan is if he can meet up with Joe Johnston, then maybe they will have a chance of facing off against the respective Union armies. And so he's heading west. He's looking for another railroad connection to make his way down to North Carolina, but all throughout the way the United States Army is cutting off his path. And the picture is no better for Johnston.

By now, Sherman's Union force has cut a devastating path through Georgia and into the Carolinas, destroying anything that could sustain the Southern war effort. Johnston is struggling to even assemble an effective fighting force from men who are hungry, exhausted, and often barefoot. With his hopes of support dashed, Lee finds himself in an untenable position. Finally, on the night of April 8th, Lee realizes that he is surrounded on three sides by the United States Army. He's met with his men. He tells them, if we wake up in the morning and we have infantry in front of us, it's over.

And so there's a small battle the morning of April 9th becomes clear that Lee is in fact surrounded. And so he had been exchanging notes throughout the week with Grant about terms of surrender. and on the morning of April 9th, they will finally meet at Appomattox Courthouse. It is the morning of April 9th, 1865, in the village of Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. Light filters through the tall windows of a family parlor, settling across a small, oval table with plain wooden chairs arranged around it. A union officer stands just inside the doorway, hands clasped behind his back, Boots still dusted with red Virginia earth.

Union General Ulysses S. Grant enters the room first. He moves stiffly, his uniform creased and spattered from days in the saddle, the collar darkened with sweat. His eyes are rimmed with exhaustion, but his manner is calm, almost deferential as he sits and removes his hat. A moment later, the Confederate Robert Eve. Lee steps inside. Lee is immaculate, despite the chaos of the past few months. His grey coat is neatly buttoned, his sword polished to a gleam, gloves in hand. Grant rises immediately. The officer feels the tension in the air thicken as the two men greet each other with quiet courtesy. There are no raised voices, just the weight of history settling in the

into the small sunlit room. Outside, thousands of soldiers from both armies wait in near silence. But in here, there is only the creek of floorboards and the soft scratch of Grant's pen as he begins to write the terms of Lee's surrender. When he is done, he slides the paper across the table to General Lee, who reads the page slowly, his expression composed but deeply tired. explains how he is offering generous terms, including permission for the officers to keep their sidearms and parole for all Confederate soldiers, as well as permission to take their horses

home for spring planting. Their gestures meant to bind up wounds rather than deepen them, and Lee clearly recognizes them for what they are. There is no triumph in the room and no ceremony to belie the momentousness of this meeting. Only the sense of two exhausted men trying to end a nightmare with what dignity remains. Finally, Lee signs. Chairs are pushed back, and the Union officer steps aside to let the generals pass, instinctively removing his hat in deference to the moment.

Outside, Birdsong mixes with the distant murmur of troops beginning to grasp that, for the men gathered here at least, the killing is over. As the Union officer steps out into the soft April air, he realizes that this moment, so resigned and humane, is the beginning of the end of four years of relentless carnage. What Grant and Lee have agreed is not peace. It is only the surrender of a single Confederate army. Other forces remain in the field. The war is ending, but it is not yet over. Grant as a military officer cannot negotiate terms of peace.

That's a political issue for office holders to negotiate. Lincoln has told him, all you can do is compel the surrender of the army in front of you. And that's precisely what Grant will do. When word reaches Joe Johnston in North Carolina that Lee has capitulated, he too will initiate conversations with Sherman, who's the union officer, that he is up against, and they too will come to terms of surrender. But there's never a peace treaty in the American Civil War.

A peace treaty would have negated the very idea that this was a rebellion. If the Lincoln administration had offered a peace treaty, it would have recognized the Confederacy as a legitimate nation. And he spent four years saying, you're not a nation. You are a people in rebellion. A Confederate men that are sent. sent home with their horses and sidearms return as paroled prisoners of war, bound by their word

not to take up arms again. But though the main armies have surrendered, the cause remains undampant. Surrender doesn't end their commitment to the Confederate cause. And one of the really striking things is that both Union soldiers and Confederate soldiers will say that the way the war ended, it didn't quash the conflict. Confederate spirit. Union soldiers wanted one more big battle where they absolutely annihilated Confederates. Instead, the Confederates get to march home much as they marched off to war, and they are convinced, and Lee tells them that you didn't lose the war so much as you were

overwhelmed by northern resources, by Northern material and by mercennyl. And by mercenaries. This belief, voiced even as Confederate men march home under parole, allows the war to be remembered as a noble struggle tragically denied its victory by a better-resourced foe. The seed of what is called the lost cause is planted here, ready to be carried into the decades that follow. When the guns fall silent in 1865, the United States faces a challenge at least as daunting as the war itself. More than 600,000 soldiers have been killed, hundreds of thousands more wounded and much of the South lies in ruins. The question now is how to rebuild a shattered nation and define what freedom will truly mean. Out of this desolation, the period known as Reconstruction begins. With the Confederacy defeated and the Union restored, federal law is now enforced across the South,

and emancipation becomes a reality everywhere. Millions of people who had been held in bondage walk off plantations and into an uncertain freedom. Forging new lives, forming schools and churches, reuniting families and participating in politics at every level. For a brief moment, the South sees a revolution in its democracy. The path is laid for black men to vote, hold office, sit on juries and reshape local and national life. and national life. But freedom begins with almost nothing. Many are landless, penniless, with relatives sold away years before. Now they are expected to build lives from scratch in a society that has never recognized their rights. There are brief hopes that confiscated Confederate land

will be redistributed among freed families, shaped by Sherman's order of 40 acres and a mule to formerly enslaved families to help them start their new lives. But most of that land is soon returned to former slaveholders, and the promise quietly fades. And the emerging peace is dealt a devastating blow when, in April 1865, just days after Lee's surrender, Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by a supporter of the vanquished Confederacy. The man who had guided the Union through war and begun to sketch a vision for how the country might rebuild is suddenly gone. In the vacuum that follows, the backlash to emancipation is swift and often violent. White supremacist groups rise to crush any gains. Southern legislatures impose

restrictive laws, and federal commitment to reconstruction falters. Emmancipation proves to be a beginning rather than a completed victory, a promise to be fought for in the generations to come. At the same time, the way the war is remembered begins to diverge dramatically from the reality of what happened. For many white Southerners, defeat demanded an explanation for their descendants as much as for themselves. The lost cause was incredibly powerful as an explanation for white Southerners about what they fought for and why they lost. And they didn't just need to tell themselves that. they needed to tell their children and their grandchildren. And so the loss cause was about looking forward, about explaining to future generations what you had fought for and saying what you hadn't

fought for, which increasingly over the 19th century, they're going to say the war was never about slavery. We didn't go to war to protect slavery. When you look at everything they're saying in 1861, it is absolutely about slavery. So it's trying to put the best spin on it. In the decades after Appomattox, this idea of a lost cause takes root. It reframes the Confederacy as noble, slavery as secondary, and defeat as something honorable, rather than inevitable. This is something that becomes part of the ethos of the White South. This is what's in textbooks that some of the biggest segregationists are reading. This is what they learn as children.

And so we can't understand race relations in the United States in the 20th century or even in the 21st century without understanding how the way the past and especially how the discussions of slavery and the civil war have been leveraged for political and social reasons throughout that time. It didn't just end in 1865. But this is not the only memory that survives. African-American communities preserve a different recollection. centered on liberation, citizenship, and the immense cost of freedom. 25% of white southern men of military age died during the war. It was absolutely catastrophic. Of course, four million enslaved people are freed by the war.

And so there's that part, too, that gets buried and not celebrated the story of the United States colored troops. Meanwhile, union veterans insist the war. must be remembered as a struggle to preserve the nation itself, and only as the war went on to destroy slavery as well. Even Ulysses S. Grant would later reflect that, looking back, the rebellion could only truly be understood as rooted in slavery. What had once seemed like a political conflict revealed itself in the end as something deeper and more fundamental.

The American Civil War left behind competing questions of what happened, why, and what it meant. Some remember sacrifice, some defeat, some liberation. And those questions have been, and continue to be, argued not just in history books, but in classrooms, in public squares, and in the very idea of America itself. Next time on Short History of We'll bring you a short history of Bob Dylan. He's like no other singer in that he puts so much emphasis on variety of expression and so much emphasis on immediacy of communication. There's something about his voice that abolishes the gulf between the performer and the audience. You listen to one of his early solo recordings.

It's just straight through from his mouth to your ear. as it were. And he has an extraordinary ability to vocalize in such a way that in a song where he's repeating a title line, for example, at the end of each verse, he never repeats it in exactly the same way. Most people have one voice, and Bob Dylan is more like a ventriloquist. He has any number of voices. That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now without waiting and without adverts by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.com forward slash subscriptions to unlock more episodes today.

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