Civil War: The Untold Story

In the wake of the Confederate victory at Bull Run, Northern hopes for a quick end to the war are dashed, and Union leaders realize that defeating the South will mean taking the fight beyond the Appalachians. In March 1862, Ulysses S. Grant disembarks an army at Pittsburg Landing in Confederate-held Tennessee. Near a Methodist meeting hall called Shiloh - a Hebrew word meaning place of peace - the first epic battle of the Civil War erupts.

Both sides realize a Confederate win at Shiloh would be a giant step towards Southern independence. After early Confederate successes in the battle, Grant rallies his stunned troops, who repulse waves of enemy attacks at a dense thicket dubbed the Hornet's Nest. On Shiloh's second day, Grant goes on the offensive, winning the first in a series of Union victories that sees thousands of slave families start to flee to Union lines.

On January 1 1863 Abraham Lincoln declares more than 3 million slaves in rebelling states lsquoforever freerdquo The Emancipation Proclamation changes the war from one of reunification to one of ending slavery giving African Americans freedom to fight

After Vicksburg, Union forces push on to Chattanooga, an important rail center and gateway to the Deep South. But casualties at the Battle of Chickamauga provoke antiwar riots in New York City and growing anger that so many Northern boys are dying to free African Americans. As Grant travels east to take on Lee, William Tecumseh Sherman assumes command in the West and begins his advance on Atlanta.

With Lincoln facing an election and his Democrat opponents promising a negotiated end to the war, Sherman determines to break the back of the Confederacy by taking the war not just to the troops defending Atlanta, but right to the doorsteps of the Southern people. In his march across Georgia and sweep through the Carolinas, Sherman brings the western war to the east, just ahead of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.