America The Story of Us
Episode 5: Civil War
Soldiers in the Second Battle of Bull Run
The Civil War rages. The terrible new technology of the minie ball is devastating Union and Confederate forces alike. It is 20th century technology meeting 18th century tactics and the result is a death toll never before seen on American soil. Still, strict discipline and an unshakeable belief in their cause have welded Robert E. Lee's Confederate army into a formidable force. And Lee is the ultimate military commander. His victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run leads him to within 20 miles of Washington, D.C. and it looks as if the Union might lose. But President Abraham Lincoln is fighting a very different kind of war than Lee is--one of technological innovation and military centralization. Lincoln uses the rail network, the telegram, supply lines and even advances in battlefield medicine and the media to mobilize men and machines as never before to fight the world's first technological war. As the battle reaches its bloody climax at Atlanta, the industrial capacity of the North is harnessed as Lincoln declares "total war." After General William Sherman's March to the Sea, the South is definitively crushed, and the industrial might that allows the Union to prevail leaves America poised to explode into the 20th century as a global superpower.
Related Topics
- Rifle
- Samuel Colt
- Interchangeable Parts
- Minié Ball
- American Civil War
- Civil War Technology
- Battle of Antietam
- Battle of Shiloh
- Clara Barton
- Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
- Battle of Chancellorsville
- Battle of Gettysburg
- Vicksburg Campaign
- Mathew Brady
- Battles of Cold Harbor
- Ether and Chloroform
- Samuel Morse and the Telegraph
- The Emancipation Proclamation
- New York Draft Riots
- The Irish Brigade
- Atlanta Campaign
- William T. Sherman
- Sherman's March
- Trench Warfare
- Arlington National Cemetery
- Gatling Gun
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