Experience the Civil War in twenty 4-8 minute segments featuring never before seen photographs, artifacts and hundreds of rare paintings and engravings. Learn about the lives of the soldiers through their handwritten letters home and find out what life was like from the perspective of the average foot soldier.

When The Civil War, originally premiered in September 1990, the response was phenomenal and the series became a national viewing event. The film interweaves thousands of photographs and paintings with the words of those who lived through the war that shattered a union and shaped a nation: politicians, generals, common soldiers, slaves and free slaves, the famous and the forgotten, male and female.

Recounts how the struggle between North and South, long defined by battles like Gettysburg, Antietam, and Bull Run, was actually dependent on events in the West. Although often overlooked, the western theatre saw some of the conflict's bloodiest encounters, such as Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chickamauga, and featured iconic leaders.

Nearly a century and a half after his death, Robert E. Lee, the leading Confederate general of the American Civil War, remains a source of fascination and, for some, veneration. This film examines the life and reputation of the general, whose military successes made him the scourge of the Union and the hero of the Confederacy, and who was elevated to almost god-like status by his admirers after his death.

It was one of the great turning points in American history: a clash of ideologies from the political arena and on the battlefield, where over half a million lives were lost. The war between the Union and the Confederacy saw the country divided along geographical, racial and industrial lines, and few were spared the decision of where to pledge their loyalty. Communities were torn apart, families broken and cities destroyed. Now, travel back and experience...

The episode begins with William Tecumseh Sherman’s brilliant march to the sea, which brings the war to the heart of Georgia and the Carolinas and spells the end of the Confederacy. In March, following Lincoln’s second inauguration, first Petersburg and then Richmond finally fall to Grant’s army. Lee’s tattered Army of Northern Virginia flees westward towards a tiny crossroads town called Appomattox Court House. There the dramatic and deeply...

In this true story about an epic friendship, U.S. Marshal Ward Hill Lamon foils repeated assassination attempts while serving as President Abraham Lincoln's bodyguard.

1862 saw the birth of modern warfare and the transformation of Lincoln’s war to preserve the Union into a war to emancipate the slaves. Episode Two begins with the political infighting that threatened to swamp Lincoln’s administration and then follows Union General George McClellan’s ill-fated campaign on the Virginia Peninsula, where his huge army meets a smaller but infinitely more resourceful Confederate force. During this episode we witness...

Episode six begins with a biographical comparison of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee and then chronicles the extraordinary series of battles that pitted the two generals against each other from the wilderness to Petersburg in Virginia. In 30 days, the two armies lose more men than both sides have lost in three years of war. With Grant and Lee finally deadlocked at Petersburg, we visit the ghastly hospitals north and south and follow General Sherman’s...