|
|
 The
episode begins with the presidential election of 1864
that sets Abraham
Lincoln against his old commanding general, George
McClellan. The stakes are nothing less than the survival
of the Union itself: with Grant and Sherman stalled at
Petersburg and Atlanta, opinion in the North has turned
strongly against the war. But 11th-hour victories at Mobile
Bay, Atlanta, and the Shenandoah Valley tilt the election
to Lincoln and the Confederacy’s last hope for independence
dies. In an ironic twist, poignantly typical of the Civil
War, Lee’s Arlington mansion is turned into a Union
military hospital and the estate becomes Arlington National
Cemetery, the Union’s most hallowed ground.
Click here for a detailed description of
this episode.
|
|
