Miniseries
(1990)
Overview
Photographs, period paintings, lithographs and headlines of the Civil War are combined with moving newsreel footage of Civil War veterans, interviews with distinguished historians and first-person accounts in this award-winning documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns. The miniseries vividly embraces the entire sweep of the war: the complex causes and lasting effects of America's greatest and most moving calamity, the battles and the homefronts, the generals and the private soldiers, the anguish of d…
Cast
as Narrator
as Abraham Lincoln
as Mary Chestnut
as Ulysses S. Grant
as Frederick Douglass
as Joshua Chamberlain
as Walt Whitman
as Robert E. Lee
as William Tecumseh Sherman
as Elisha Hunt Rhodes
as Samuel R. Watkins
as Jefferson Davis
as George Templeton Strong
as Horace Greeley
as George B. McClellan
as Stonewall Jackson / Various
as Benjamin Butler / Various
as Various
as Various
as Various
as Various
as Various
as Various
as Various
as Various
as Various
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as Various
Episodes
The Cause: 1861 7.5
September 23, 1990
Beginning with a searing indictment of slavery, this first episode dramatically evokes the causes of the war, from the …
A Very Bloody Affair: 1862 7.2
September 24, 1990
1862 saw the birth of modern warfare and the transformation of Lincoln's war to preserve the Union into a war to emanci…
Forever Free: 1862 7.5
September 24, 1990
This episode charts the dramatic events that led to Lincoln's decision to set the slaves free. Convinced by July 1862 t…
Simply Murder: 1863 7.6
September 25, 1990
The nightmarish Union disaster at Fredericksburg comes to two climaxes that spring: at Chancellorsville in May, where L…
The Universe of Battle: 1863 7.6
September 25, 1990
This episode opens with a dramatic account of the turning point of war: the Battle of Gettysburg, the greatest ever fou…
Valley of the Shadow of Death: 1864 7.6
September 26, 1990
Episode six begins with a biographical comparison of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee and then chronicles the extraor…
Most Hallowed Ground: 1864 7.6
September 26, 1990
The episode begins with the presidential election of 1864 that sets Abraham Lincoln against his old commanding general,…
War is All Hell: 1865 8.2
September 27, 1990
The episode begins with William Tecumseh Sherman's brilliant march to the sea, which brings the war to the heart of Geo…
The Better Angels of Our Nature: 1865 7.8
September 27, 1990
This extraordinary final episode of The Civil War begins in the bittersweet aftermath of Lee's surrender and then goes …