I had intended for this to be a blog reviewing great books. I think it’s a bit ironic then, that my first post here is on a movie. But it is on a movie so epic, on a war and of times so thought-provoking, that I think it’s fitting for this to be the first of Root’s Reviews. Ken Burns may be the greatest documentarian ever, and his nine episode saga on the Civil War is probably his greatest work (I hear Baseball is excellent, as well). Ken Burns’ 10 plus hour film, Civil War http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/, is such a well done documentary, that I’m sure it is just as enthralling to watch today as it was over twenty years ago when the documentary first aired. When it did air on PBS over five consecutive nights back in 1990, it was watched by some forty million viewers, making it the most-watched program to ever air on PBS. 
Ironically, I think the thing that makes the nine-volume movie such a rich experience, is that for a motion picture, it doesn’t have much in the way of motion. Most of the visual content in the episodes are views of still photographs, of which over a million were taken during the Great War (Most were lost or destroyed soon after; In the immediate postbellum years, no one wanted to see them). More than 16,000 archived photographs, maps, and paintings were drawn on by Burns for his film. They all give the documentary a vintage, contemporaneous feel, as if the documentary was being filmed in the 1860s. The best part of the whole film, for me, was the interviews with historians, like Shelby Foote. The interviews with Mr. Foote were such a treat to watch. He told dozens of stories and anecdotes of soldiers and generals that were absolutely wonderful, and told in his thick, southern drawl. I’ve never read one of his books, but I have no doubt now that he knew more about the Civil War than any man living or dead.
The general history of the Civil War is well known to most Americans: the South seceded to protect states rights and to preserve the institution of slavery (cynics might say that the former is just an excuse for the later), Abraham Lincoln was president and ordered the northern army to bring the rebel Confederate states back into the union by force. The war was won for the union, the slaves were freed, and Lincoln was assassinated. One might expect this to be the place where I’d say something like, “but there is a much more nuanced and complex story behind the war.” But the amazing thing about the Civil War, is that it really was a remarkably simple affair. One of my favorite accounts in the movie (told by Mr. Foote) was of a Confederate solider caught by union troops somewhere in Virgina. He was poor and clearly didn’t own slaves. The union troops asked him, “Why are you fighting us anyway?” And he replied, “Because you are down here.” A rather satisfactory answer, no?
The challenge for telling the story of the Civil War well, was in telling the tales of the individuals who lived through it. What Burns does is to introduce the viewers to lowly infantry soldiers, slaves, former-slaves-turned-soldiers, great generals from the north and south, abolitionists like Frederick Douglas, southern aristocrats, politicians like the Confederacy’s president Jefferson Davis, and of course the nearly irreproachable President Lincoln - all in their own words. Throughout the nine episodes, great narrators, like David McCullough, Kurt Vonnegut and Morgan Friedman read letters, diaries, and contemporaneous news reports written by those that lived through the Great Civil War. One union private, Washington Robling, seemed to be in every major battle of the Civil War and lived to write about them all! Southern women like Mary Chestnut, living in southern cities under siege, kept great records of daily life of civilians during the war. What I loved about Burns’ opus was that you really get a sense of what life was like for all the parties involved: poor, rich, north, south, presidents, soldiers, slaves. The narration paints a vivid picture of the times, even the monotonous days of the most common souls involved. Consider this diary entry by Robert B. Ellie, a sailor on one of the Union’s iron-clad ships during the Civil War: “The day has been so excessively hot that I am almost melted. The thermometer in the ward room stands at ninety degrees. While on deck the weather is very pleasant, a fair breeze blowing from the east. Everything is dirty. Everything smells bad. Everybody is demoralized. How are you Iron-clad? A man who would stay on an Iron Clad from choice is a candidate for the insane asylum, and any man who would stay by compulsion is an object of pity. Fresh leaks are breaking out every day...”
And the depictions of the battles were enthralling, despite no special effects or big-budget reenactments. With a simple map and read and blue boxes symbolizing the armies, the narrators, aided by the written records of those who were there, were able to give a rich description of the often pitched battles moment-by-moment. The battles were so bloody and so hard fought. They are incredible, inspiring, tragic, and awful all at the same moment. The description of the battle at Gettysburg was almost as moving as was the beautiful account of Lincoln’s famous address given there a year later. Great and horrible battles like Antietam, Cedar Creek, Bull Run, and of course, Gettysburg were discussed in very rich detail for a movie. And finally there was the telling of the scene at Appomattox Courthouse, the farm house of Wilbert McKlain, whose farm had been used as General Beauregard's headquarters at the first great battle of the civil war, and then was the scene of Lee’s famous surrender to U.S. Grant. One could say the war almost began and ended at this quaint farmhouse.
The Confederacy was doomed from the start. They were to be over-whelmed by the superior numbers, finances, and industry of the North. But until the Battle of Gettysburg, it seemed as if the Confederacy could in fact win. Whether winning or losing, the soldiers of the Confederate and Union armies, often brothers of soldiers from the opposing armies, had more in common than they had in contravention. During the siege of Atlanta, a southern bugle boy would play his trumpet every evening, so beautifully, that soldiers from the north and south would stop to listen, then resume their fighting each morning. Sherman’s infamous march in 1864 and 1865 from Atlanta to Savannah (his “march to the sea”) was much discussed in the eighth film. It is an event that still invokes ire in parts of the South. Sherman burned Atlanta on his way out. After conquering Savannah he turned his army north and marched into South Carolina - the place where the rebellion began - and destroyed everything in sight. The photographs shown in the movie of these siege fallen places were just incredible. Just incredible.
Saying that the reasons for the war itself were relatively simple, is not to say that the personalities involved were not complex. No person of notoriety in the war was more so than Robert E. Lee. Offered command of the union army by Lincoln at the beginning of the war, Lee declined and instead fought for the Confederacy, not because he supported slavery - which he did not - but because he saw his first duty as being to Virginia. In fact, towards the end of the war, Lee requested that the Confederate Congress arm slaves to fight for the Confederacy, in return for their freedom after the war.
What to say about Abraham Lincoln? So much has been written, so many hundreds (thousands?) of books have been written about him that anything I could say here is “beyond our power to add or detract.” The movie did not focus on Lincoln so much, but at the center of the war and the divided nation was Lincoln. However, there was a dramatic, and depressing account of his assassination and of Mary Lincoln’s depression. Truly the man for the times, and I’m left believing, Lincoln was the greatest president our nation has known.In the end, Burns' film took longer to make than it did to begin and conclude the war. And in the end, the Civil War unified the nation; with violence for sure, but it resolved those issues left to be decided by the founders when they crafted the Constitution. It also turned the notion of a United States from a vague concept into a reality. More than a million men who had never been very far from home before, finally saw the broad country as they trudged across it. The costs to unify the nation were great. In a nation of little more than 30 million people at the time, well over 600,000 Americans were dead (including civilians that died of starvation and disease, maybe the number is closer to one million). In the south, ¼ of the white males were dead. The price was so high, but after the cacophony of canon fire had died down, a much more durable nation was formed. Slavery was abolished, yet racially motivated immoral actions persisted. It was not the final test of the American experiment, but it was the end of a test to see if a “union so conceived could long endure.” It was, perhaps, the founding of a more perfect union.
