civil war - the ken burns treatment

I just wrapped up the comprehensive and remarkably riveting Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War. Burns makes use of 16,000 archival photographs often set to a sad but sweet melody called "Ashokan Farewell" by Jay Ungar. There are wonderful insights from the writer Shelby Foote, historian Barbara J. Fields, and the narrators are divine casting from Morgan Freeman to Arthur Miller.

 First, some favorite quotes:

The last words of Stonewall Jackson: "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." He also said that he'd always hoped to die on a Sunday.

A soldier regarding his uniform: "I got the best suit of clothes i've ever had in my life."

"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." — Robert E. Lee, at Fredericksburg.


And then there are the facts: Following the Civil War, albumen glass negatives (photograph negatives) were reused as greenhouse windows. So, if you were in a greenhouse that used these negatives as panes you would see a history of the war and it's people through the sunlight. There's also a metaphor in that, over time, these panes will eventually find their subjects erased from the exposure to sunlight.

At the Battle of Shiloh, Nathanial Bedford Lee escaped the last shots by grabbing a soldier and holding him up behind him to take the bullets.

Stonewall Jackson rode with an arm raised to keep balance.

Abraham Lincoln's wife Mary never recovered from the assassination of her husband. She was committed by her sons to an asylum and passed away there.

The Siege of Vicksburg (Mississippi) ended with surrender on July 4. The city would not celebrate July 4 for eighty years in memory of the siege and their surrender. And this siege has more to it. They ran out of food and resorted to domestic meat and shoe leather. The news was printed on the back of salvaged wallpaper. Over 500 caves were dug into the yellow clay hills as hide out residences. Slaves operated them and there were attempts to make them more comfortable with rugs, pictures, and furniture. The Union soldiers called the town "Prairie Dog Village" after seeing the caves.


The documentary probes questions about our wars since and left me personally grateful for basic facts such as personally never having to run for my life. I was disappointed by the fleeting coverage of Sherman's March which remains the story I heard most as a southerner. Essentially, Sherman made it his goal to burn through Georgia and South Carolina. He took homes over as his temporary residence, collected family valuables for his own use, and set fire to many of the homes after his stay. It was a deeply personal attack on the southern people which is still relayed today in oral storytelling for its haunting nature. Still, there were so many revelations in the viewing of this documentary. It was impossible to not find myself repeatedly moved by the photographs, the stories, and, most of all, by the letters home.