["POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE"]
It's one of the most fascinating and tragic periods
in American history.
The Civil War pitted the North against the South
from 1861 to 1865.
The war between the states left an indelible mark
on the minds, bodies, and spirits of all those
who nursed and sang, marched, fought, and died.
The struggle that sometimes saw family member take up arms
against family member had its roots in a bitter dispute
over states' rights and a southern suspicion
of centralized government, northern fears
of a slave power conspiracy, and the fight
for the abolition of slavery.
But in the end, the Brothers War grew
into a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America,
and ultimately, what many historians call
the most defining and shaping event in American history.
Fire!
This, the largest war fought on North American soil,
changed life forever in the United States.
More than 3 million Americans of all races went off to battle,
and more than 600,000 died for their cause.
Although more than a century has passed
since the guns fell silent, the Civil War
is still a vibrant part of our cultural landscape.
Dozens of new books are published each year
about the conflict.
While for many Americans, a firsthand experience
of the Civil War is only a few generations removed.
Countless grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins,
sons, and sweethearts marched off to war, never to return.
Visitors to battlefields are often drawn by family lore,
like these visitors to Shiloh, whose forebearer
fought on the very ground they are now walking on.
Yeah, and when you see and you read the histories,
and you go back and you read the muster records,
and it shows like he was wounded in the left kneecap here.
Everywhere it says Fifth Tennessee,
our grandfather probably walked in those faces.
Somewhere close.
It does.
It makes you think.
He survived it.
Survived it all the way through, after being wounded three times.
I mean, it's just amazing.
For those whose ancestors fought,
or the millions of American families
who are intrigued by the subject,
the battlefields, museums, reenactments, and documentaries
allow them to revisit the war.
Places like Gettysburg, Manassas, and Antietam
are crowded with visitors, whose numbers
rival the size of the armies who fought on the hallowed ground.
But along the waters of what was once the war's Western Theater,
opportunities exist for experiencing the Civil War
in a most unusual fashion.
In the 1860s, paddle wheel steamboats
carried the supplies of war up and down the rivers,
rivers which also served as avenues of invasion.
Today, the steamboat still plies the mighty rivers,
making port at many of the cities and sites of the Civil War.
Passengers are transported in glorious Victorian style
at a leisurely pace to the very sites
of some of the most dramatic events of the Civil War.
Shiloh National Military Park on the Tennessee River.
It was here in 1862 that General Ulysses S. Grant prevailed
in a bloody two-day battle that was one of the early turning
points of the war.
Visitors wander the historic battlefield
at Vicksburg, Mississippi, the so-called Gibraltar
of the Confederacy.
Captured by Union forces on July 4, 1863,
after a 48-day siege, Grant's Vicksburg campaign
is, to this day, considered to be
a landmark of American military genius and ingenuity.
And just south of Vicksburg lies historic Natchez,
a colorful river town spared by Grant's Union troops.
Here, more than 200 antebellum homes
grace the broad avenues of this distinct and well-preserved
southern city.
Natchez, where many delta planters
built elaborate residences, boasts
one of the highest concentrations
of pre-Civil War homes in the South.
We were very fortunate during the Civil War.
They weren't burned.
We were not a strategic place.
They used many of the homes for hospitals.
But they allowed the people to stay in the homes.
Historical and architectural treasures
survive the conflict intact and give modern visitors
a sense of the wealth of the early planters.
Many of the plantation aristocracy
sent their architects to Europe to acquire the best
materials that money could buy.
Today, Natchez also offers fertile fields
for antiquers, tours, and annual pilgrimages
helped to preserve the opulent and historic tradition.
All along the way, steamboat passengers
get a sense of the importance that the Mississippi, Tennessee,
Ohio, and Cumberland Rivers played
in the outcome of the Civil War.
But they also get a chance to view that history
at a gentler pace, one well known
by the river captains who pilot the mighty steamboats.
Long before there was expressways,
there was this river expressway that God gave us.
There's always a part of history anywhere up
and down the Mississippi River.
Civil War historian and author Richard McMurray
often serves as a guest lecturer on board.
He says the importance of the river pathways
during the Civil War is often overshadowed.
Most people who look at the Civil War
tend to look at the war that was fought in Virginia,
because that's the most famous part of the war.
Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, Ulysses S. Grant,
who actually spent most of the war out here.
Philip Sheridan, who was out here for most of the war.
Great battles like Antietam, Gettysburg, the two capitals,
and Richmond and Washington, 100 miles apart.
And they associate the war with that area.
But if you step back and look at the big picture,
the war that took place in Virginia did not change a thing.
It was one battle after another that led nowhere to a stalemate.
And it was out here on these rivers
that the North won and the South lost the war.
And that happened because the federal government had
a navy that permitted it to control these rivers
and just split the Confederacy apart on the Mississippi
in 1863.
McMurray says it was these battles along the South's
Western frontier, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Fort Donaldson,
that started the real downfall of the Confederacy.
In fact, it was the command of these rivers,
the cradle of the nation, which was
a decisive element in the ultimate victory of the North.
There was a historian named John Fisk, who
was very prominent about 1900, and who
wrote in one of his books, The Mississippi
Valley in the Civil War, that if you
look at what happened in Virginia,
you get a totally misleading picture of the Civil War.
Because in Virginia, the Confederacy
appeared to be winning or at least holding its own.
And then suddenly it collapsed.
Why did it collapse?
It collapsed because the whole Western part of the Confederacy
was just cut out from under the Confederate government.
And it was cut out because the North gained control
of these rivers and was then able to march through Georgia
and just slice away portion after portion
after portion of the Confederacy.
The real decisive part of the American Civil War
was not at Gettysburg, it was not at Antietam,
it was not at the wilderness or Spotsylvania.
It was out here on these rivers in 1862 and 1863
and then in Georgia in 1864.
A different perspective on a war,
which the media of the time and many subsequent historians
have often neglected.
The focus in the day was on Virginia.
In the 1860s, the press centers of Washington, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston
were all more accessible to the Eastern Front.
For the steamboat passengers, traveling the Civil War River
Trail is an eye-opening experience.
Here on these waterways, travelers
deepen their knowledge of the conflict,
while at the same time, they enjoy the comfort, ease,
and leisurely pace of a river vacation.
We take people into the heartland of America.
We don't take them away from America,
as most cruising industry vessels do.
We take them into the heartland, into their homeland.
They have an inner urge to learn more about where they live,
their country, their forefathers,
finding out about their ancestors and the genealogy.
And people are proud of their beginnings.
It's nice to see where it all happened.
Plus, this is a beautiful country we live in.
We have everything in this country
that many will travel other places in the world to see.
Several times each year, the Delta Queen Steamboat Company,
based in New Orleans, offers seven-day Civil War voyages.
They begin at Memphis, Nashville, or Chattanooga,
and sail the Tennessee, Cumberland, Ohio,
and Mississippi rivers.
We'll embark at Chattanooga, Tennessee, a river city
and rail center with a unique Civil War history.
Just above the bend in the Tennessee River,
at the intersection of two vital railroad lines,
Chattanooga marked the gateway to the Eastern Confederacy
and a link to the essential war industries in Georgia.
During the war, the destruction of Chattanooga
was a key objective for the Union Army.
Here, in the fall of 1863, Union and Confederate forces
fought two major battles over a nine-week period.
The South won the first encounter,
the Battle of Chickamauga, but it
was one of the bloodiest engagements of the war,
with more than 34,000 casualties.
Ironically, the Native American name
Chickamauga means River of Death.
The Battle of Chickamauga was characterized
by brutal hand-to-hand combat and a long, drawn-out, ragged
retreat by Union soldiers.
By modern standards, the 30% casualty rate in Civil War
battles is mind-boggling.
A 10% casualty rate today is considered a bloodbath.
Many soldiers who survived battle
died of disease, such as typhoid, typhus, malaria,
pneumonia, or smallpox.
It's been said that the American Civil War occurred
during the medical Middle Ages.
It was not uncommon for amputations
to take place without painkiller or chloroform.
Penicillin did not yet exist.
Germs and blood poisoning were still unknowns.
Two months after Chickamauga, Union forces
struck back, winning control of Chattanooga
and opening the Deep South to invasion.
The Battle of Chattanooga was savage,
and the artillery so powerful, soldiers on both sides
were said to have stopped mid-combat
to pick raw cotton to stuff in their ears.
Each army lost more than a third of its men.
The Chickamauga and Chattanooga Military Park
honors soldiers from both north and south.
Now we move on, away from Chattanooga.
A steam whistle sounds.
The sun slips below the horizon.
A giant red paddle wheel begins to turn,
and the huge vessel, towering seven decks above the water,
moves away from the landing and out onto the river.
Music serenades the voyage.
The Calliope accompanies the paddle wheel.
Named after Calliope, the beautiful-voiced muse
of epic Greek poetry, the instrument
pays homage to the inspiring music of the Civil War
and other patriotic American standards.
Some tunes were patriotic, others poignant,
most quite familiar.
From the Calliope comes the familiar sounds of Dixie,
followed by the Stars and Stripes Forever,
and then the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
And so, as the notes drift off into the sunset,
the mood is set for the voyage ahead.
We're on board the Mississippi Queen,
one of the newest of three paddle wheelers
making overnight trips to the Civil War sites.
The first steam-powered vessel appeared on the Mississippi
in 1811.
By the mid-19th century, the Rivers of America
teamed with thousands of paddle wheelers.
They took the raw materials to market,
brought finished goods to consumers,
and carried thousands of immigrants
to the lands of the Western frontier.
It was a quick way of transportation,
an easy way of transportation.
When you consider that at one time where there weren't
any roads, many supplies coming in by steamboat
to get to another town that was only 14 miles away
would have to go by ox cart, 14 miles, it might take two weeks.
It takes two hours by steamboat.
So we think of it a slow way today.
It was a very fast mode of transportation.
It was an era known as the Golden Age of Steamboating.
And the Mississippi Queen, along with her sister ships,
Delta Queen and American Queen, gives modern travelers
a taste of the Victorian elegance of those days.
Passengers refer to these ships as floating mansions.
If you look at the pictures, it duplicates,
which had, in a way, the old pocket boats that were so fancy,
they spent no expenses back in those days
to make it ornate and fancy.
And that's the way people traveled then, you know.
Captain Lawrence Keaton has been working these rivers
for well over 60 years.
From the furniture and decor to the music and food,
the riverboat overflows with century-old grandeur
and hospitality.
The staterooms reflect the era of the 1860s,
the sumptuous public spaces with quality touches
that duplicate the magnificent Antebellum River Mansions.
Chandeliers, ornate lamps, 19th century aviaries,
lavish dining rooms all help the passengers
relive those days so long ago.
The boat has all the up-to-date amenities,
such as large staterooms, exercise rooms,
and swimming pools.
In the dining rooms, the food captures the unforgettable
flavors of the South, Cajun and Creole specialties
like gumbo, jambalaya, catfish, hush puppies,
and crab meat Louisiana.
Once you have feasted on Southern fare,
you can feed your curiosity about Victorian engineering,
a tour of the engine room, to see what
powers the huge paddle wheeler.
Many of America's colorful figures
of speech were inspired by the paddle wheel steamboats that
dominated the nation's rivers.
One common expression we still use today
was drawn from a frequent engine room practice.
Steam-powered paddles often have to be relieved when
the steam boilers get too high.
Relieving the boiler pressure was called letting off steam,
and it came to describe the human emotion
of getting rid of tension.
You will see some similar examples
of steamboats in the future.
You will see some solid machinery
and a simple old oil can that keeps it all working smoothly.
No computers or fancy gadgets here,
just a few pressure gauges.
And these modern steamboats are hardworking gems
of a bygone era.
They are uniquely well designed for river work.
Steamboats are low maintenance and easy to repair.
They are boats that are perfect for the mighty and often
unpredictable Mississippi River.
They are the engineer for the Delta Queen Company.
Steam is clean and steam is quiet.
In a diesel engine-powered boat,
in an engine room with comparable power to this,
you wouldn't be able to talk to me now.
It would be so noisy.
At night, entertainment on the steamboats
includes music and dancing from the big band era.
Dixieland jazz is also popular and somehow more enjoyable
than a riverboat.
Showboat melodramas and even some Civil War songs
in the evening.
By day, entertainment is low key.
There are classes in embroidery,
a famed pastime of 19th century women of leisure.
During the war, women were shielded from the horrors
of war for the most part.
Many, however, worked as nurses.
Southerners of stature often criticized the occupation
of caring for the ruffians as un-ladylike.
They said,
Some northern women were known to have taken a more active role
in the war, disguising themselves as men
and becoming soldiers.
Just some of the interesting details that you will learn
from the guest lecturers on board.
The rest of your day is spent relaxing, sunning and swimming.
Passengers, while away the hours, sipping mint juleps,
flying kites off the fantail or watching the scenery slide by.
We will be traveling 1,041 miles in seven days.
And that's a combination of the Tennessee River,
the Ohio River and about 55 miles on the Cumberland River.
So you'll get to do three rivers on this particular cruise.
Although steeped in history and nostalgia for the Civil War
and the steamboat era, the journey offers so much more.
The riverboat cruises past 19th century river towns
and 20th century levees alongside dense stands of oaks and elms.
The boat maneuvers through the very same bends
which once saw the smoke and heard the clatter of Union
and Confederate gunboats.
The river view offers a special vantage point,
a relaxing way for the passengers to relish the natural splendor
and historical importance of the area.
Cruising is usually days of sea with nothing to see.
Going ashore is fun but this you get a changing scenery every hour
just as you move.
Although bathed in southern atmosphere,
the Civil War river trips seek to bring both sides of the war to life.
It brings it alive and I think it brings both viewpoints
because if you live in the south as a child you get one viewpoint
and in the north you get another
and I think this gives us both viewpoints
so that you feel each had their own ideas and each thought they were right.
In fact, before the first Battle of Manassas or Bowl Run in 1861,
war was viewed as a chance for a young man to put on a fancy new uniform
and march to the sounds of bands and enjoy the admiring glances of ladies,
a sort of glorified camping trip.
They knew nothing of the brutality that was to come.
The soldiers were young and naive.
They were complex but yet very simple people
because they don't believe very strongly in something they backed it up by action.
And according to Keith Snyder, a Civil War battlefield ranger,
This war changed warfare.
Preceding the Civil War it was nice pretty armies meeting on an open field
on a sunny day like today.
The Civil War would change that into civilians becoming involved,
civilian property and it made it the first modern war.
It was a singing war.
Sentimental and inspirational songs were popular with both sides.
Shout, shout the battle cry of freedom
Our Dixie forever she's never at a loss
Down with the eagle and up with the cross
We'll rally round the bonnie flag
We'll rally once again
And shout, shout the battle cry of freedom
The stirring lyrics tell a first-hand story about the morale of the troops
and the development of the war.
The songs tell the human side of war.
Civil War music is a form of oral tradition
that offers insight into the lives of the soldiers and those left at home.
The soldiers were not only serenaded by bands,
many wrote and sang of their feelings and experiences.
General Robert E. Lee once said after listening to a band concert,
I don't believe we can have an army without music.
Away from Mississippi's Bay with my old hat there for a sail
I crossed the Carna Cottenville to the Rose of Alabama
Old Brown Rosie, Rose of Alabama
The sweet tobacco cozy is the Rose of Alabama
Another special feature of the steamboat experience is the music of Bobby Horton,
who plays authentic Civil War tunes.
Old Brown Rosie, Rose of Alabama
The sweet tobacco cozy is the Rose of Alabama
My job is to just present the music which gets right down to the individual common soldier.
And that's where it comes to life.
They were real people.
To me, that's the joy of this cruise and what Mississippi Queen is offering is
you're allowed to do that.
You're not only to understand the big picture of the rivers,
what they played in the war and how important they really were,
but you're also getting to walk the fields where individuals fought the battle.
And hopefully I can enhance the individual picture of the common soldier.
There were more than 900 songs written about the Confederacy
and more than 3,000 Union ballads.
The early war tunes were upbeat, patriotic and optimistic.
Secession is our watchword, our right we will demand
To defend our homes and firesides we pledge our hearts in hand
Jeb Davis is our president with Stevens by his side
Frank Beauregard, our general, will join us for the ride
Awake for the wagon, the dissolution wagon
The South is our wagon and we'll all take the ride
As the war progresses, the songs get darker and more foreboding
because the casualties are going up.
And all this is reflected in tunes, it really, really is.
They wrote songs about leaving home, hundreds of songs about leaving home.
You were going to the wars, willy boy, willy boy
You were going to the wars far away
To protect our rights and laws, willy boy, willy boy
And our banner in the sun's golden ray
Love ballads about the life and the loved ones left behind
Dearest love do you remember
When we last did meet
How you told me that you loved me
Kneeling at my feet
Oh, how proudly you stood before me
In your suit of gray
When you bowed to me and contrary
Ever to be true
And even musical expressions of military trials and tribulations
Come, all you valiant soldiers, a story I will tell
About the bloody battle that was fought on Shiloh Hill
It was an awful struggle and will cause your blood to chill
It was a famous battle that was fought on Shiloh Hill
Music even affected wartime behavior.
There was a sentimental song called Somebody's Darling,
a song which spoke of the tragedy of war.
When soldiers came upon a corpse, it quickly became ritual
to jerk a thumb at the dead body and say, that's somebody's darling.
It's very moving. It's very moving.
And you realize you get beyond the way history is taught,
like I say, with names, numbers, dates, places, you get to the people.
Music
After a few days aboard the riverboat,
we stop at Shiloh National Military Park in Shiloh, Tennessee.
All ashore for visitors, all ashore.
While disembarking, one can only imagine the sight of Union soldiers
running from the deadly Battle of Shiloh.
Some were said to have been so desperate to escape
that they didn't stop running until they reached the river.
Some tried in vain to swim to safety on the far shore.
Tennessee was second only to Virginia in the number of battles
fought within its borders.
You will visit the battlefield where the Army of Ulysses S. Grant
was nearly destroyed in 1862 during a surprise morning attack
by Confederate General Sidney Johnston.
Union soldiers were polishing muskets and shining their shoes,
completely unprepared for the battle that was to come.
Confederate troops were said to have been so hungry
that during their rampage of the Union camp,
many Southern soldiers scavenged the remains of their enemy's breakfast.
Shiloh Park historian Stacey Allen says the battle was significant
for many reasons, not the least of which was its sheer enormity.
One hundred thousand troops faced each other,
and in just two days of combat,
more than 23,000 were either dead, wounded, or missing.
Shiloh is named after a holy place in the Bible
where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.
Some historians believe Shiloh is derived from the Hebrew word
shalom, meaning peace.
If that is so, it is ironic considering what took place here.
In referring to the battle,
Northerners called the Confederate soldiers maddened demons,
and the survivors remembered it as the hornet's nest.
In just two days, which eclipsed all American wars prior to that date
and the number of casualties involved.
Grant's army did survive, and Allen says many historians believe
the South's failure to annihilate his army
was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.
The issues of Shiloh were the possession of the Mississippi Valley
and the defeat of major armies.
In this instance, the Confederates had to defeat a major feller army,
almost virtually annihilated,
to keep the Federals from possessing the Mississippi River Valley.
They were unable to do that.
The Federals ultimately, within a year, would possess the Mississippi River.
The Confederacy was cut in two.
Not maybe wounded mortally, but crippled,
heavily crippled in being able to progress and win victories
and win some sort of conclusion that would have been positive for their cause.
More than 350,000 visitors come here each year to the 4,000-acre battlefield.
Allen says the park gives those visitors a chance to experience the past.
The sense they get, I believe, is being able to step onto a piece of land
that is very unchanged from the time when history transpired here in 1862.
The field is extremely well-preserved.
That is a testimony to all those who have gone before
and worked here and tried to make the field easy to understand.
And I think it's being able to step back,
look at the field as the soldiers who fought here must have seen it,
and feel that relevancy with them.
You may see white-tailed deer or even bluebirds
that have made their nests in some of the cannons.
There is a quiet and a peace here now,
nothing like the constant thunderous noise of cannons and muskets
which caused permanent hearing loss in so many Civil War veterans.
Today, a regenerated Tennessee wilderness marks the place
where so many gave their lives for their cause.
Later in the day, back on board the Mississippi Queen,
passengers get a chance to experience a little Civil War firepower on their own.
A musket-firing demonstration is held next to the ship's swimming pool,
and passengers can see for themselves just how difficult it was
to pack these old muskets with gunpowder and coax them into firing.
And as this young historian will attest, the period weapons are loud.
From man-made thunder to nature's noise.
Elsewhere, riverlorian Karen Tuts Maloy is answering questions from passengers
and giving them insight into the wildlife, the water, and the history that surrounds them.
That very shallow area there provides excellent habitat for the different wildlife,
not only the waterfowl and the birds, but also the river otters,
a lot of river otters along the Tennessee River.
Music
Seeing the very waters that were so important to the drama of the Civil War
helps bring the period to life.
The trip offers plenty of time to study and experience the history,
which allows a deeper understanding of the events and the people that shaped the era.
For example, it was here, on the Ohio River, that many slaves crossed over to freedom.
The river served as a natural boundary between north and south.
Freedom was just across the river for slaves, only a river separated Kentucky from Ohio,
a slave-holding state from a free state.
The population of the north at the time of the war was 22 million.
The Confederacy, a predominantly agrarian society built on plantation life,
had nine million people, of which four million were slaves.
In the early part of the war, slaves who had escaped bondage
were considered fugitives by the Confederacy and contraband by the Unionists.
It's still possible to glimpse a window into the world of slavery,
the Underground Railroad, and the African Americans' role in the Civil War.
The Burkle Estate in Memphis, Tennessee, for example, was built in 1849 by a German immigrant.
A visit to the reputed slave haven brings to life the struggles of the Underground Railroad
and the crucial role the rivers played.
These are the sacrifices that our ancestors made for us,
and those that endured slavery, some of them couldn't endure it, and they said, I run away.
And this is what this house was for.
It was a way station on the Underground Railroad.
A white man who lived in Memphis used his house to help slaves to run away
by hiding them in his cellar so that they could go on from this house
just over to the Mississippi River, which is only about three blocks from here.
And once they got to the Mississippi River, they would be stowed away on boats
and taken up north on the Mississippi River to Cairo, Illinois.
Once they reached Cairo, that's where the Ohio River comes in,
and they could cross over the Ohio River and they're into the Free States.
In 1862, the U.S. Congress authorized the enlistment of persons of African descent into military service.
It was the recruitment of slaves to the military cause
that quickened the demise of slavery in the southern slave states.
The former slaves were not citizens, could not vote or hold office,
but they were a force to be reckoned with.
Military engagement provided the necessary entree into the political system
that ultimately secured emancipation and the abolition of slavery.
Back on the boat, as the day winds down to sunset, New Orleans-style jazz,
music born out of the African-American experience, drifts out of the Mississippi Queens Lounge.
As the ship steams up the Tennessee toward the Cumberland River,
it passes through one of 12 locks that help make these waters navigable.
People on nearby docks wave to the passengers.
The next historic stop is Fort Donaldson Military Park in Dover, Tennessee.
It was the scene of the first major Union victory in the Civil War,
the capture of Fort Donaldson in 1862.
The battle was also the first real test of the ironclad gunboats by Union forces.
Although the gunboat was not very effective, Union troops led by Ulysses S. Grant
were successful in capturing the fort and thousands of Confederate soldiers.
Park Ranger Jim Job says,
Until this time, General Grant is a relatively unknown, obscure general over in the West
with a poor reputation in military circles.
But all of a sudden, he had captured an entire army,
and he had demanded an unconditional surrender,
which played very well in the press with his initials of U.S. Grant.
He became unconditional surrender Grant.
And so Grant got another star on his shoulder.
He went to a two-star general as a result, and Lincoln began to watch this man who would fight.
Grant, who was a brilliant and creative general, won great respect for his adaptability.
But he made mistakes that cost many lives. Job contends,
Had Grant lost this battle, he would have been replaced and he would have never heard of him again.
He would not have gotten the chance to become commander of all the Union armies
or later president of the United States.
Visitors to Fort Donaldson can explore the fort and the museum.
Dover Hotel, also known as Surrender House,
is where Confederates surrendered to General Grant,
and where he earned his nickname U.S. Grant, Unconditional Surrender Grant.
The very table where the Confederate defeat was conceded still remains.
It was a defeat that Job says carried major strategic significance.
These large rivers, like this is the Cumberland River, like the Tennessee River,
Mississippi River, railroad lines, these all provided easy invasion routes
and supply lines for Union armies.
It's important, from a southern point of view, if you want to keep the Union army out
to control these avenues of invasion, and that's what was important about this place.
Of course, it's also important from a northern perspective to have those avenues.
So if the Union army wants to invade, hold the country together,
to force the south back into the country, they're going to have to bring armies into southern territories.
To bring large armies into southern territories, you need invasion routes and supply lines.
And at this battle, Grant had 27,000 men.
Later in the war, he's got 75,000 men to feed, clothe, house, horses.
So you've got to have mass transportation to bring all those things in,
and that's why rivers, railroad lines, any type of mass transportation was very important.
Music
These river trips offer a unique perspective on war and the important role that the rivers played.
Each of these journeys is a relaxing, information-packed experience for anyone,
perfect for those with an interest in this period of American history.
A journey back to a place Mark Twain called,
The Great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi,
rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun.
He added, four years at West Point and plenty of books and schooling
will learn a man a great deal, I reckon, but it won't learn him a river.
Along these rivers, history comes alive and into focus.
The captain of the Mississippi Queen, Buddy Muirhead, sums it up best.
It's like going back in time when you get out here.
You're away from a lot of modern things and you're back in history
and you learn a lot of things about your country, about your heritage and past,
and that just adds to the mystique, the whole thing.
When you come in here, we carry you to the heartland of America,
as Betty Blake put it many years ago.
We show you our nation.
We show you the cradle of our nation, in essence, over in here.
You go into these small towns and the people welcome you with just open arms.
They love the boats. They love to see the passengers.
And our passengers pick this up.
And I've had a lot of them tell me, I've seen the world,
but I haven't seen my own country and said,
now that I'm seeing this, I really feel a part of it and it's exciting to me.
Music
The divorce between North and South was not to be.
Instead, a new era was forged.
The results of the Civil War are far-reaching.
The most important results were the abolition of slavery
and the preservation of the Union.
Nine million slaves had their first taste of freedom.
Music
With four long years of conflict at an end, the nation would rebuild.
The fields of medicine, warfare, science and industry
all benefited from the great human expense.
A nation was built as a result of the Civil War.
We are not the old Union, which we were before.
We are quite a different land, and the war solved some key issues
about where power was going to be in the country,
who was going to retain power, what were the rights of individuals,
and what was the right of government to control society.
The bloodshed served as a catalyst for a new economic and political order.
The war ended the horrors of slavery
and caused the downfall of Southern plantation aristocracy.
Big business, big industry and big government were born.
As Abraham Lincoln said, the Civil War forged a new nation, a new beginning.
Music