The Glenn Beck Program - New Birth of Freedom: Gettysburg, Lincoln, and the End of the Civil War | The American Story | Ep 17

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

America’s Civil War reaches its bloodiest turning point as Abraham Lincoln carries private grief into a national struggle for survival. From the fields of Gettysburg and the siege of Vicksburg to the slaughter at Cold Harbor, Sherman’s march, and the desperate race to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, this episode follows Lincoln, Grant, Lee, and a nation pushed to the brink. Hear how the Gettysburg Address redefined the war, how Union victory reshaped the 1864 election, and how Richmond’s fall led to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. It is a sweeping story of sacrifice, freedom, faith, and the fragile hope of reunion. GLENN'S SPONSORS: Freespoke: With Freespoke premium, you get a completely ad-free experience that keeps you focused on what matters. Download it for free at get ⁠⁠freespoke.com/beck⁠⁠ and use promo code “Beck” for 20% off. Chapter: When it comes to Medicare, Chapter puts you first. Dial #250 and say the key word "Chapter". Jase Medical: Get your personalized emergency medical kit today. Visit https://jase.com/ and enter code “BECK” at checkout for a discount on your order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The White House is supposed to be the safest house in America. But on this freezing February evening of 1862, death had already slipped past the centuries. Nearly one year into the Civil War, the nation is bleeding out on battlefields from Bull Run to the Mississippi. Yet right now, the most urgent battle to the Lincoln's, at least, is happening upstairs. 11-year-old Willie Lincoln is burning typhoid fever, likely poisoned by the filthy water from the Potomac River that supplies all the water to the White House. His little brother, Tad, lies sick in another room,

fighting the same invisible killer. Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, they've been taking turns at Willie's bedside for days. They know this road too well. Twelve years earlier, they buried their second son, Eddie, when he was just three years old. Now, the family circle is about to shrink again. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon of February 20th, 1862,

Willie draws his last labored breath. Lincoln stands over the rosewood bed, his face buried in his hands, his tall frame shaking. Mary's assistant Elizabeth Keckley is in the room and later records the words that she hears Lincoln utter through his tears. My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven,

but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die. Mary collapses. She'll not leave her bed for weeks, and she'll never again set foot in the room where her favorite son died. The grief is so complete that even seasoned White House staff fear for her sanity. The war outside and the sorrow inside merge into an almost unbearable weight,

but the president, he can't collapse. The war is unrelenting. In the months that follow, Lincoln wrestles with the unbearable question, why? Why this gentle beloved boy? Why this merciless war? Why does God allow both? By September 1862, around the time of the bloody Battle of Antietam, He sits down in private to write, grappling with deep thoughts about the mystery of divine will. They are thoughts he never intends anyone to read. The will of God prevails. In great contests, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong.

God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war, it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party. And yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to affect his purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true, that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, he could have either saved or destroyed the union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun, he could give the final victory to either side any day.

Yet the contest proceeds. This is a man searching for meaning in the midst of chaos. He's a father mourning his son, and a president questioning destiny. Nearly a year and a half after Lincoln scratched those words into his private journal, the contest is still undecided. It could still go either way. And it is about to erupt in the largest battle of this excruciating war.

This is the American Story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 17, new birth of freedom. Gettysburg, Lincoln, and the end of the Civil War. Robert E. Lee. He was the kind of officer that made other soldiers straighten their spines just by walking into the room. West Point graduate in 1829, second in his class,

decorated hero of the Mexican War and by 1861, a colonel in the U.S. Army. He had a reputation for flawless engineering, iron discipline. and quiet grace. Lee wasn't flashy. He didn't crave glory. Men who served under him described him as courteous and humble,

almost fatherly. Yet when the moment came, he could be ruthlessly decisive on the battlefield. Now, Lee loved the union. He had sworn to defend it, but when Virginia seceded in April 1861, something deeper pulled him.

His home, his family, his entire world was there in the South. He and his wife inherited Arlington House from her parents in 1857, along with the plantations 196 slaves. The property was just a few miles from the White House. President Lincoln offered Lee command of the entire Union Army, but Lee turned it down. In letters written from Arlington House, he explained his torment. With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen,

I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the army and save in defense of my native state with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed. I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword. When Virginia seceded from the Union in May 1861, The Lee's left Arlington House, never to return.

The U.S. Army then took control of their estate, and first they built forts on it. The rising toll of U.S. troops killed in action prompted the army to turn the property into a military burial ground. Today, Robert E. Lee's house is known as Arlington National Cemetery. By May 1863, Lee had just pulled off one of the most audacious victories of the war at Chances. His Army of Northern Virginia was riding high, but Virginia's farms were picked clean and the men were ragged. So Lee made a fateful call. We have to invade the North again. The plan was classically another bold, offensive gamble.

He would take the war to Pennsylvania's untouched fields for food and supplies. Draw the Union Army out of Virginia, threaten Washington, D.C. or Harrisburg, and just maybe, share the Union Army. maybe shattern the northern morale so badly that Lincoln would have to pursue peace. Lee believed that one more decisive blow on northern soil would actually end it all. Lee's army crossed the Potomac, late June. July 1st, Major General Henry Heth's division, marched into a sleepy crossroads town called Gettysburg in south-central Pennsylvania. Heth sent men ahead to search for supplies, especially shoes because so many of the men were just marching barefoot or in rags. When they got there, they were expecting nothing more than a quiet foraging run.

Instead, they ran straight into Union Cavalry under Brigadier General John Buford, who had deliberately dismounted his troops on the ridges west of town to buy time for the Army of the Potomac. The first shots cracked across the fields of Gettysburg almost by surprise. What started as a skirmish erupted into a raging battle. More Confederate in Union divisions poured in all day. By late afternoon, the Confederates drove the Blue Coast through the streets of Gettysburg in chaotic house-to-house fighting. But the Union troops clawed their way on to the vital high ground.

Cemetery Hill, Culp's Hill. and the long ridge beyond. Lee arrived on the field and saw the opportunity he was seeking for a decisive blow. The accidental collision quickly escalated into the biggest battle of the entire war. Day two of Gettysburg, July 2nd, Lee ordered James Longstreet's First Corps to smash the Union's left flank.

The fighting around the Peach Orchard and Devil's Den was savage. But the hinge of the entire line was a rocky, wooded knob called Little Roundtop. The very end of the line on the Union's left was defended by the 20th main volunteer infantry, commanded by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. He was a college professor of rhetoric in modern languages who had taken leave from his job to fight. Tall, bookish, with a methodical mind and a preacher's voice, Chamberlain was the last man anyone expected to become a battlefield legend.

He was ordered, hold your position at all costs. Chamberlain's 358 men faced continuous waves of Confederate troops trying to roll up the Union flank. For hours they poured fire down the slope until their ammunition ran almost dry. When Chamberlain saw Confederate regiments swinging around even further to his left, He knew one more push would break his exhausted unit. So he did something insane. He yelled, fixed bayonets! And the command rippled down the line.

With a wild yell, the 20th Main charged downhill in a sweeping move straight into the enemy's face. The shock of the bold bayonet assault. Men running, screaming, steel, flashing, froze the Confederate momentum. Little Roundtop held, and so did the Union line. Chamberlain's desperate gamble saved the Army's flank. By nightfall and the second night, both armies were hemorrhaging.

Lee, convinced the Union Center had been weakened, decided the moment had come for the killing stroke. He would hit Cemetery Ridge head on across nearly a mile of open ground. General Longstreet, his most trusted lieutenant, argued against it with every ounce. of his stubbornness. Longstreet had seen the Union guns and the stone walls. He knew what masked artillery and rifles could do to men in the open, he told Lee. General, I have been a soldier all my life. It is my opinion that no 15,000 men ever arrayed for battle can take

that position. He pleaded for a flanking maneuver instead, but Lee would not be moved, insisting The enemy is there, and I am going to attack him there. Longstreet obeyed his general, but his heart wasn't in it. July 3rd, the final day of battle. After a two-hour artillery duel that shook the earth, Major General George Pickett's 13,000 men stepped out of the trees and began that long, terrible march. three quarters of a mile across open field.

It became known as Pickett's Charge. The Union guns opened up, firing canister shot that tore the Confederate Division all apart. Canister was what it sounds like a tin can packed with lead or iron balls and sawdust and then fired out of a cannon at relatively close range under 400 yards. It was like a giant shotgun.

When the enemy was even closer, artillery men would load two or three canister rounds into the same cannon and fire them all at once. Canister shot likely killed more soldiers in the Civil War than all other types of artillery rounds combined. Pickett's men, they dropped by the hundreds. Still, 200 of them managed to reach the short stone wall in front of the Union position, where the two sides clashed in a nightmarish hand-to-hand wall. Pickett's charge was over less than an hour. Over 5,500 of Pickett's men, more than half his force, killed, wounded, or captured.

As the survivors staggered back, General Lee told Pickett to reorganize his division in a defensive position, to which Pickett replied, General Lee, I have no division. Lee rode out among the remaining Confederate soldiers, taking all the blame himself. This has all been my fault. Pickett's charge marked the end of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Late the next day, July 4th, the Confederate Army began its long retreat, south, and heavy rain. With a combined total of over 165,000 troops engaged, with 23,000 union casualties versus 28,000 for the South, Gettysburg was the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere. hemisphere. Lees Gamble failed. He lost over a third of his army just at Gettysburg. He offered his resignation to Jefferson Davis, but Davis refused it, and the war would grind on. But Gettysburg turned the tide in the Union's favor. It was actually the beginning of the end with the Confederacy. Just two days after the guns fell silent at Gettysburg,

President Lincoln and his 10-year-old son, Tad, went to visit Major General General Sikles. On the second day at Gettysburg, a cannonball shattered Sickle's leg, and it had to be amputated. Colonel James Rusling, one of Sickle's staff officers, was there, and as the men talked, Lincoln, obviously burdened by the war, opened up about the darkest hours. Rustling later wrote that Lincoln told them, In the pinch of the campaign up there, when everybody seemed panic-stricken, and nobody could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of our affairs.

I went into my room one day and locked the door and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told him that this was his war, and our cause his cause, but that we couldn't stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellor'sville. And I then and there made a solemn vow to Almighty God that if he would stand by our boys at Gettysburg,

I would stand by him, and he did, and I will. And after that, I don't know how it was, and I can't explain it, but soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that things would go all right at Gettysburg. My team and I dove headfirst into researching Free Spoke. It is an incredibly important tool, and I am so excited for what it is, but what it's about to be as well. well. Most platforms hand you a version of a story and expect you to take their word for it. But

Free Spoke pulls reporting from different perspectives, whether they agree or disagree, and cites where the information is all coming from. They've got a great new feature like podcast moments. Instead of listening to an entire podcast, find the thing you're looking for, and it'll take you straight to the answer. The timeline lets you see how a story has developed, but only after it's gathered reporting from multiple perspectives. Their privacy policy is simple. They're not building a business by tracking you or storing or selling your data. That's why subscriptions cost a few dollars every month. Download it for free at get freespoke.com slash Beck. Use the promo code Beck. Check out 20% off FreeSpoke Premium, which adds a full tracker blocking through the app. Unlimited

access to every free spoke feature. You'll know you've getting the right information and not being manipulated by tech. Freespoke.com promo code Beck. Hey, if you're enjoying this and you want to keep going, you don't have to wait a week for the next episode. Torch Insiders already have access to all 20 episodes of the American story right now, ad free. Just go to glenbeck.com slash torch or torch250.com and unlock the full experience today. There was nothing inevitable about Ulysses S. Grant. There was no shining pedigree or polished reputation, no aura of greatness, at least not at first glance.

He was short, rumbled, cigar usually hanging out of his mouth. He was the kind of man you'd pass on the street without a second glance. Born in 1822 in Ohio, he graduated from West Point in the middle of his class. He had fought bravely in the Mexican-American War, but afterward, his life kind of unraveled. He resigned his commission in 1854 amid rumors of heavy drinking, and then he essentially vanished into obscurity. He had failed at farming, failed at business. At one point, he was reduced to selling firewood on a street corner in St. Louis, Missouri. By 1860, he was clerking in his dad's leather store in Illinois,

staring down middle age with nothing to show for it. But when the Civil War erupted in 1861, Grant didn't hesitate. He returned to the Army because he desperately needed it. The war gave him something he hadn't had in years. Purpose. The man that re-entered military service was quiet and unassuming. He wasn't one for big speeches. He was fiercely loyal to his troops.

He was a strategist who saw the whole board when others were fixated on one little square. He hated waste, he despised pomp, and he showed almost an eerie calm under fire. Officers who served under him said he treated the enemy like fellow humans once the shooting stopped. He wasn't flashy, but he was effective and relentless. Once he made a decision, he moved and didn't stop. It didn't take long for that quality to make him stand out, and that's how he earned his nickname. In 1862, Fort Donaldson in Tennessee, after being defeated by Grant's forces, Confederate General Simon Buckner, tried to negotiate terms of surrender, but Grant famously sent this written reply.

No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. And just like that, U.S. Grant became unconditional surrender grant in the press. By the way, that S in his name actually doesn't stand for anything. It was the result of a clerical error when he applied to West Point, with the S, perhaps a reference to his mother's maiden name of Simpson, but his real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. But once he was in the Army Records as Ulysses S. Grant, he eventually just gave up trying to correct it.

By 1863, the Union military had its eye on a vital town on the Mississippi River called Vicksburg. perched high on the bluffs overlooking a hairpin turn in the river, Vicksburg was a nightmare fortress. Artillery batteries lined the heights, trenches, snaked across ridges, earthen forts packed with artillery, with the whole place earning the nickname the Gerbralter of the Confederacy. But if the Union could conquer Vicksburg, it could control the Mississippi. It would split the Confederacy in two. Lincoln understood this strategic importance, telling his inner circle. Vicksburg is the key. This war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.

An earlier union attempt to take Vicksburg had failed, but Grant tried several alternative approaches to the town. But the surrounding landscape was choked with swamps and tangled terrain that stalled his force in mud and disease. Finally, Grant tried something different. and daring. He moved further south, cutting himself off from his own supply lines. He crossed the Mississippi River below Vicksburg, slipping past the Confederate defenses at night. Then he drove inland and he drove fast. His first major target, Jackson, the Mississippi State Capitol. It was the

railroad hub, the lifeline between Vicksburg and the rest of the Confederacy. Grant struck hard. On May 14th, Union forces captured Jackson and destroyed the railroad tracks. Vicksburg was now alone. Grant moved his 50,000 troops and surrounded Vicksburg, trapping 31,000 Confederate troops inside the town. Grant tried to storm the city's forts twice and failed with over 4,200 Union casualties. The dead bodies of the Union troops were piled at the foot of the bluffs, decomposing in the harsh May sun and the stench was so overpowering,

that Confederate General Pemberton sent a message asking Grant for a brief ceasefire to remove the dead. Determining the Confederate defenses were too strong for direct assaults, Grant began a 47-day siege of Vicksburg. Over those weeks, Union artillery reigned over 20,000 shells on the town. Residents dug caves into the hillsides, spending so much time in them and some were actually furnished with rugs and chairs. As the Union noose tightened, starvation gripped Fixberg. People were eating horses and mules.

And then they resorted to cats and dogs and even rats. Grant had sealed off every single escape route. Confederate resupply and reinforcements were impossible. And finally, by July 3rd, Confederate General Pemberton knew it was over. He tried to negotiate a surrender, but Grant again refused. The next day, Independence Day, Pemberton officially surrendered. Grant was convinced by his officers to parole the Confederate soldiers rather than take them all prisoner.

They were all allowed to go home on their word not to fight again. As Union troops filed into Vicksburg and interacted with the emaciated Confederate soldiers, Grant noted, I myself saw our men taking bread from their haversacks and giving it to the enemy they had so recently been engaged in starving out. Only later would Grant and his men find out that their capture of Vicksburg came on the same day as the Union victory at Gettysburg.

Jefferson Davis disparate. He considered the loss of Vicksburg worse than the Gettysburg defeat. He said, We are now in the darkest hour of our political existence. Meanwhile, in Washington, Navy Secretary, Gideon Wells, burst into the White House, clutching the telegram, and Lincoln, usually so measured, couldn't contain himself. He hugged Wells and said, I cannot, in words, tell you my joy over this result.

It is great, Mr. Wells. It is great. For the first time in the war, the tide seemed to be turning, and General Grant was a rising star in the effort. One northern journalist embedded with Grant's force during the Vicksburg campaign wrote, Nothing like this campaign has occurred during this war. It stamps General Grant as a man of uncommon military ability, proves him the foremost one in the West, if not in the nation. President Lincoln concurred, saying about Grant,

He isn't shrieking for reinforcements all the time. He takes what troops we can safely give him and does the best he can with what he is has got. Grant is my man, and I am his the rest of the war. Grant never gloated after his wins. After Vicksburg, he said, while a battle is raging, one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure. But after the battle, these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy. as a friend. Lincoln understood that compassion.

The twin hammer blows of Gettysburg and Vicksburg had him thinking beyond victory now towards a healed union. His first big chance to voice that vision came four months later on November 19, 1863 at the dedication of a new military cemetery at Gettysburg. The story you may have heard

that Lincoln dashed off the Gettysburg address in the back of an envelope during the train ride that it's wrong. He had already drafted much of the speech at the White House. He traveled to Gettysburg, and then that night by lamplight. He refined and finished it. The next day at the cemetery dedication, the featured speaker was Edward Everett.

He was a renowned orator, famous Harvard president, and former Secretary of State. He delivered his speech from memory. It took two hours. And then Lincoln stood. He spoke for two minutes, 271 words, the most famous speech in American history. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, they have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. And the world will little note nor long remember what we say here.

But it will never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we will take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

When he finished, nothing. The crowd sat still, almost confused. Was that it? And then slowly applause rolled across the field. For many of them, it would take time for the power of those words to sink in. But Edward Everett, he understood immediately. The next day he wrote to Lincoln. I should be glad if I could flutter myself

that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes. The war still had much too far to go, but Lincoln had planted the first fragile seeds of healing for the nation. Your summer travels deserve an upgrade with select Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac vehicles. connected by OnStar, you can stream, game, and more on the go.

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broken. That meant another brutal year of fighting had to follow. At the center of the storm in 1864 stood a calm, determined figure, Ulysses S. Grant. In March, President Lincoln promoted Grant to command the entire Union Army, and Grant believed in constant grinding pressure, and now, for the first time in the war, he turned that pressure directly onto the South's most formidable defender, Robert E. Lee. What followed was a viciously sequence of battles in northern Virginia. As Grant pushed forward, the union losses began to pile up again, but Grant kept pressing, refusing to let Lee breathe. It was relentless, exhausting pace for Grant's troops, one that led them into a nightmare at a small crossroads

called Cold Harbor. It was just nine miles northeast of Richmond. Grant believed one decisive battle could shatter Lee's army, open a direct path to Richmond, and end the Confederate for good. But the Union troops knew Lee's army was dug in around Cold Harbor. Artillery, deep trenches, lines reinforced with timber. Grant planned a frontal assault for early in the morning of June 3rd. His men, they knew what was coming. They pinned scraps of paper to the backs of their uniforms, the names, hometowns next of kin scribbled in pencils so their bodies could be identified. They all knew they weren't coming back. At 4.30 a.m., the order came.

Fifty thousand Union troops surged forward. They ran straight into a wall of fire. The Confederate gunfire was so thick that Union troops took cover on the ground behind the dead bodies of their fellow soldiers. In the first hour alone, Grant's men suffered over 7,000 casualties. Lee's army lost just 1,500. It was really more of a slaughter than a battle. Later, among the dead, a diary was found that belonged to a soldier from Massachusetts.

The pages were stained with blood. The final entry read simply, quote, June 3rd, 1864, Old Harbor, Virginia. I was killed. Grant sat in his tent that night, staring the Unable. ending casualty list. To an aide, he admitted, The hardest part of this general business is the responsibility for the loss of one's men.

I can see no other way out of it, however. We've got to keep at them. But it is hard, very hard to see all these brave fellows killed and wounded. It means aching hearts back home. Lincoln stood solidly behind Grant. But even he was distressed by the soaring death toll. During Grant's Virginia campaign, that May and June,

the Union had over 65,000 casualties. That's about what we lost in Vietnam. Discussing Grant, Mary Lincoln snapped. He is a butcher and is not fit to be at the head of an army. Grant heard the whispers. The newspapers branded him, Butcher Grant. To another aide, he confessed. They call me a butcher, but you know I sometimes could hardly bring myself to give an order of battle.

When I contemplated the death and misery that were sure to follow, I stood appalled. Cold Harbor haunted Grant the rest of his life. In his memoirs, he wrote, I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made. No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained. Just days after the Cold Harbor disaster, the Republican Convention in Baltimore renominated Lincoln for president. But a giant cloud of doubt hovered over the proceedings.

Worry grew about Lincoln's ability to win a second term. To try to broaden support, they chose a Southern Democrat who was pro-union, Andrew Johnson, as Lincoln's running mate. They were trying to send a signal that this war was about restoring the union, not just defeating the Union, south. Meanwhile, Grant shifted his focus to Petersburg, a vital railroad hub just 22 miles south of Richmond. If it fell, Richmond would suffocate. But Lee had turned Petersburg into a fortress. Grant tried lightning attacks. Four days, 12,000 more union men lost, and not a single breakthrough.

So Grant dug in for another long siege. During this grim state, mailmate, Lincoln came to visit Grant. While there, the president rode through the camp of black union troops. The men erupted, cheering, weeping, reaching out to touch his horse in his clothes, Lincoln had in hand tears in his eyes, saluted them back. He was deeply moved by these soldiers who were fighting for their own freedom. Yet even in combat, they were treated as subhuman by the Confederates. During one of the battles around Petersburg, wounded black troops in the field were bayoneted by Southern soldiers. In July, Grant gave Ambrose Burnside permission to attempt an unusual attack.

Among Birdside's men were miners from Pennsylvania, who dug a tunnel beneath the ground separating the Union and Confederate lines at Petersburg. Then they stuffed it with explosives. Burnside wanted to redeem himself for his failure at Fredericksburg earlier in the war. So, around 5 a.m. on July 30th, That blast blew a crater 30 feet and 170 feet long. Rifles, equipment, human limbs, rain down as over 300 Confederates were killed in an instant. The explosion ripped a giant path through the Petersburg defenses.

But the attack that followed under Burnside was completely mismanaged. Union troops poured through into the crater instead of going around it. They became trapped targets. What could have been a game-changing operation, instead turned into another 4,000 union casualty. Grant was dismayed beside himself. He accepted part of the blame. He had left the operation to subordinates,

who, as it turned out, were not up to the task. So the siege dragged on. But Lee knew, the longer the war took, the more it favored, the north. Unless some measure can be devised to replace our losses, the consequences may be disastrous. In the North, disillusionment was rampant. Democrats demanded peace. Republican newspaper editor Horace Greeley declared, Mr. Lincoln is already beaten. He cannot be elected.

The Republican National Committee met in New York and then sent an emissary to tell Lincoln that his re-election was hopeless and he had to start peace talks with the South, even if it meant letting slavery survive. But Lincoln refused. On August 31st, the Democrats nominated George B. McClellan for president. The very general Lincoln had fired two years earlier. Their platform called the war a total failure, demanded an immediate ceasefire, and a convention to negotiate peace with the South. Politically, it seemed like the war effort was unraveling, but outside of Virginia, the Union was slowly breaking apart the Confederate Army piece by piece. Grant had a like-minded partner in the West, William T. Sherman.

A man he trusted completely, just two days after McClellan's nomination, Sherman captured Atlanta. When Atlanta's mayor begged him not to force civilians out of the city, Sherman replied, War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against these terrible hardships of war. Sherman's victory flipped the perception in the north on its head.

Suddenly, the Republicans rallied behind Lincoln. McClellan frantically distanced himself from his own party's peace platform. And two months later, Lincoln won re-election. It was a landslide, 212 electoral votes, and 55% to the popular vote. Grant's grinding siege at Petersburg had done its quiet work, pinning Lee down so he couldn't rush to save it or strike elsewhere. The Confederacy grew desperate. Jefferson Davis even backed a plan to buy 40,000 slaves and armed them to fight for the South. Meanwhile, Sherman marched to the Atlantic Ocean, carving a path of destruction across Georgia. His

troops destroyed anything that could be used by the South in the war effort. In December, he captured Savannah and sent Lincoln this telegram. I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition. Also, about 25,000 bales of cotton. The end was finally in sight. Here's a question that I want you to ask yourself. If someone in your family got sick tomorrow or there was a medication shortage or a natural disaster and it kept you from getting a doctor for a few days, what do you actually have that you,

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Protect them with everything you got and start today with Jace. Use the promo code Beck at checkout for a discount on your order. promo code back at J-A-S-E.com. Jace.com. For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings, by David Barton and Tim Barton, available now at wallbuilders.com. Through the brutal long year of 1864, President Lincoln made something clear to his cabinet and to his allies in Congress.

Winning the Civil War was not enough. Ending slavery permanently had to be written into the U.S. Constitution itself. Lincoln was concerned that his emancipation proclamation might not survive any peace process. It already freed thousands of slaves, but only as a war measure, After the war, that could be reversed. So Lincoln pushed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The Senate passed it in April 1864 with a required two-thirds vote. But it failed in the House, where votes were almost entirely along party lines.

Republicans. For it, Democrats against. Yet Lincoln refused to let it die. His annual message to Congress that December, he urged the House to reconsider. then on January 6, 1865, Ohio Representative James Ashley stood and reintroduced it. Race was on. Lincoln needed a handful of Democrats to flip. Standing in the way was George Pendleton, the opposition leader. The same Democrat, who was George McClellan's vice presidential running mate,

just the previous November. Pendleton rallied Democrats against the amendment, warning of constitutional overreach and political chaos. Everybody knew the margin would be razor thin. Lincoln himself described the moment like this. We are like whalers who have been long on a chase. We have at last got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer,

or with one flop of his tail, he will send us all into eternity. On the morning of the vote, Congressman Ashley panicked. He rushed word to the White House about rumors that the Confederate peace commissioners were in Washington ready to negotiate an end of the war. If that were true, he feared, Democrats would argue that passing the amendment now would jeopardize peace. Ashley feared the votes would collapse. Lincoln responded, like the veteran lawyer, he was, carefully and deliberately writing.

So far as I know, there are no peace commissioners in the city or likely to be in it. It was technically true, but also not the whole truth. Lincoln knew commissioners had been sent, and they just hadn't arrived yet. Inside the House chamber, there was barely room to breathe. Every square inch was packed, lawmakers, spectators, Supreme Court justices, members of Lincoln's cabinet. Almost like a criminal trial, both sides delivered closing arguments before the representatives voted. Then, at last, Speaker Shoeuvre,

Schuller Colfax rose and delivered the verdict. On the passage of the joint resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States, the eyes have 119, the nose 56. The constitutional majority of two-thirds having voted in the affirmative, the joint resolution has passed. Lincoln's friend, journalist Noah Brooks, captured what happened next. For a moment there was a pause of utter silence, as if the voices of the dense mass of spectators were choked by strong

emotion. Then there was an explosion, a storm of cheers, the like of which probably no Congress of the United States ever heard before. Five Democrats had flipped. Without those five votes, the amendment would have failed. By the end of the year, the required three-quarters of state legislators had ratified it, finally riding slavery out of the Constitution forever. March 4, 1865. 50,000 people. gathered in the rain outside the Capitol building. Among them, something never before seen at an inauguration. Thousands of Black Americans, including Black Union troops. Inside, new Vice President Andrew Johnson took the oath of office and then delivered a rambling, slurred 20-minute speech. Earlier, he had had

a few glasses of whiskey to steady his nerves. It didn't help. But then, Lincoln stepped outside. He was on the East Portico, above him the newly completed Capitol Dome, and just before he spoke, something almost theatrical happened. Noah Brooks captured the scene. The sun, which had been obscured all day, burst forth in its unclouded meridian splendor and flooded the spectacle with glory and light. Lincoln spoke with the full weight of the war behind every word. Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue,

until all the wealth piled by the bondman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword. As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. It echoed something deeper,

something he had wrestled with privately after the death of his son Willie, and then he closed with some of the most famous and vital presidential words ever spoken. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right. Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan,

to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. Almost a month later, Union General Philip Sheridan's cavalry smashed into Confederate lines outside of Petersburg. The next morning, General Grant curled 14,000 men at dense fortification. The combined force finally overwhelmed Robert E. Lee. His only option was to run, try to buy more time. So he abandoned Petersburg with his troops. A messenger bursts into a Richmond church on Sunday morning. Jefferson Davis was sitting in the pews.

He stood and walked out mid-service. The Confederate Capitol then quickly and completely unraveled. There was panic in the streets. Confederate government officials fled. with documents and gold. Citizens set fire to storehouses so they wouldn't fall into Union's hand. When Lincoln received the news

that Richmond had fallen, he said, Thank God that I have lived to see this. It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years. And now the nightmare is gone. Two days later, Lincoln walked into Richmond, protected only by a handful of soldiers. He had to see this center of the rebellion

for himself. Almost immediately, he was surrounded by black residents, shouting praises to God for their deliverance. And several of them dropped to their knees before Lincoln, he said, don't kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.

I am but God's humble instrument. Lincoln was escorted to Jefferson Davis's house and office, he sat at his desk and quietly put a Confederate $5 bill in his pocket as a souvenir. He savored the moment. The long, bloody rebellion was effectively over. April 9, 1865, Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. It wasn't a building, it was the name of a small village. Grant had finally cornered Lee, who said, There is nothing left me to do but go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.

Grant met Lee in the parlor of the modest brick house, owned by Wilmer McLean. McLean had once lived near Bull Run Creek, but that home was wrecked in the war's opening battle. He had moved to the quiet Appomattox courthouse to escape the war, only to end up hosting its final act in his own front parlor. Lee arrived first, immaculate in his formal uniform. Grant was self-conscious about his own rumbled field clothes, muddy boots.

He tried small talk about their shared Mexican war days, but Lee cut him short. Grant took the hint and wrote out the terms of surrender. Confederate soldiers would hand over their rifles, be paroled, and go home. Those with horses or mules could keep them to farm. After Lee read the terms, Grant asked him if they were satisfactory. Lee answered, Yes, I am bound to be satisfied with anything you offer. It is more than I expected.

The papers were signed around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Grant later reflected. What General Lee's feelings were, I do not know. As he was a man of much dignity with an impassable face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result and was too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my observation, but my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed.

I felt like anything, rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause. Though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. Before they left the McLean House, Lee admitted something devastating. His army was starving.

They had scraped by on parched corn for days. Grant didn't hesitate asking how many men needed feeding Lee, answered, about 25,000. Union troops, who just a few days earlier were firing on the men in dingy gray uniforms, now handed them meals, ladled water into their tin cups, with malice toward none, the charity for all. That night, Washington, D.C. erupted in colorful music, it was super in celebration and yet lurking in the shadows was a final insult about to be added to so much injury. One more national heartbreak for a people who had already endured so much. Coming up on the American story, The Beginnings.

As Seward rolled desperately to the floor, Sergeant Robinson regained his senses, rushed back into the room and tackled Powell from behind. They grappled with Powell's stabbing Robinson repeatedly in the shoulder. Seward's daughter, Fanny screamed for help, waking her brother Gus, who was asleep in the other room. She ran to the bedroom window, flung it open, and screamed into the street. That's when David Harold mounted his own horse and fled, leaving Powell's horse behind. Now Gus rushed in.

With Sergeant Robinson, they wrestled Powell out of the bedroom and into the hallway, but Powell was tall and strongly built and managed to punt. his way out of the brawl. He finally thundered down the stairs, out the front door and into the night. David Harold was nowhere to be found. So Powell threw away his bloody knife, swung onto his horse,

and rode away in the darkness. Secretary Seward, he lay in a pool of his own blood, writhing in pain. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

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