The Civil War - Miniseries

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 death in battle and the grief of families at home.

9 Episodes

The Cause: 1861

Season 1 - Episode 1

Beginning with a searing indictment of slavery, this first episode dramatically evokes the causes of the war, from the Cotton Kingdom of the...

A Very Bloody Affair: 1862

Season 1 - Episode 2

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. Epis...

Forever Free: 1862

Season 1 - Episode 3

This episode charts the dramatic events that led to Lincoln's decision to set the slaves free. Convinced by July 1862 that emancipation was ...

Simply Murder: 1863

Season 1 - Episode 4

The nightmarish Union disaster at Fredericksburg comes to two climaxes that spring: at Chancellorsville in May, where Lee wins his most bril...

The Universe of Battle: 1863

Season 1 - Episode 5

This episode opens with a dramatic account of the turning point of war: the Battle of Gettysburg, the greatest ever fought in the Western He...

Valley of the Shadow of Death: 1864

Season 1 - Episode 6

Episode six begins with a biographical comparison of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee and then chronicles the extraordinary series of batt...

Most Hallowed Ground: 1864

Season 1 - Episode 7

The episode begins with the presidential election of 1864 that sets Abraham Lincoln against his old commanding general, George McClellan. Th...

War is All Hell: 1865

Season 1 - Episode 8

The episode begins with William Tecumseh Sherman's brilliant march to the sea, which brings the war to the heart of Georgia and the Carolina...

The Better Angels of Our Nature: 1865

Season 1 - Episode 9

This extraordinary final episode of The Civil War begins in the bittersweet aftermath of Lee's surrender and then goes on to narrate the hor...