1 00:00:03,460 --> 00:00:08,560 History is often presented as a set of facts and dates, 2 00:00:08,560 --> 00:00:11,040 of victories and defeats, 3 00:00:11,040 --> 00:00:13,840 of monarchs and presidents, 4 00:00:13,840 --> 00:00:16,920 all consigned to an unchanging past. 5 00:00:16,920 --> 00:00:20,240 Good morning. Morning to you as well, Lucy. 6 00:00:20,240 --> 00:00:22,560 But it's not like that at all. 7 00:00:22,560 --> 00:00:27,080 History is the knitting together of rival interpretations, 8 00:00:27,080 --> 00:00:30,280 deliberate manipulations of the truth, 9 00:00:30,280 --> 00:00:32,040 and, sometimes... 10 00:00:32,040 --> 00:00:33,880 ..alternative facts. 11 00:00:33,880 --> 00:00:36,800 In this series, I'll be lifting the lid 12 00:00:36,800 --> 00:00:40,320 on three of American history's greatest national stories. 13 00:00:43,280 --> 00:00:46,480 The revolutionary War Of Independence. 14 00:00:49,120 --> 00:00:52,480 Is the story of the Founding Fathers built on fibs? 15 00:00:55,840 --> 00:00:59,520 United States supremacy in the Cold War - 16 00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:01,520 American dream... 17 00:01:01,520 --> 00:01:04,040 ..or nuclear nightmare? 18 00:01:04,040 --> 00:01:05,960 EXPLOSION 19 00:01:05,960 --> 00:01:10,520 And in this programme, the American Civil War. 20 00:01:12,160 --> 00:01:15,800 It's gone down in history as a battle to liberate the slaves 21 00:01:15,800 --> 00:01:19,040 in the South and to reunite the nation. 22 00:01:20,520 --> 00:01:22,720 But is that really true? 23 00:01:23,800 --> 00:01:28,840 We like to think of Lincoln as someone who starts the war 24 00:01:29,080 --> 00:01:33,600 to free African-Americans and the reality is quite different. 25 00:01:34,680 --> 00:01:39,560 The story of this bloody conflict has been told and retold, 26 00:01:39,560 --> 00:01:42,800 shaping the culture and politics of the nation 27 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:45,520 with epic tales like Gone With The Wind. 28 00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:47,360 Ashley! 29 00:01:47,360 --> 00:01:50,240 I'm getting Scarlet O'Hara's waist as we speak. 30 00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:54,080 And it's still going on. 31 00:01:54,080 --> 00:01:56,800 Conflicting accounts of the Civil War 32 00:01:56,800 --> 00:02:00,000 continue to divide the nation to this day. 33 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:02,480 CHANT: You will not replace us! 34 00:02:02,480 --> 00:02:05,000 You will not replace us! 35 00:02:06,040 --> 00:02:09,080 But history is a murky business 36 00:02:09,080 --> 00:02:12,280 and the story of the Civil War is stuffed full 37 00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:15,000 of some of American history's biggest fibs. 38 00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:32,000 The American Civil War broke out in April 1861. 39 00:02:33,080 --> 00:02:36,040 By the time it ended four years later, 40 00:02:36,040 --> 00:02:39,280 over 600,000 Americans had been killed. 41 00:02:39,280 --> 00:02:42,960 That's more than in World War I and World War II combined. 42 00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:50,240 The northern Union forces had defeated southern Confederates. 43 00:02:51,360 --> 00:02:54,760 President Abraham Lincoln was the heroic victor... 44 00:02:56,040 --> 00:02:58,760 ..and this is his memorial. 45 00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:04,560 I'd say that there's something extra monumental about this monument. 46 00:03:04,560 --> 00:03:07,800 It's got utter self-confidence, hasn't it? 47 00:03:07,800 --> 00:03:11,040 And every stone within it tells a story. 48 00:03:11,040 --> 00:03:14,440 There are 36 of those columns, 49 00:03:14,440 --> 00:03:17,080 which represent the 36 states 50 00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:19,800 that ended up being in the union after the war. 51 00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:23,240 And you can read all their names, too, round the top. 52 00:03:23,240 --> 00:03:26,320 "Arkansas, Michigan, Florida..." - they're all there. 53 00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:29,240 It's a real symbol of togetherness. 54 00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:31,560 Lincoln has saved the union 55 00:03:31,560 --> 00:03:34,920 and ended the divisions of the Civil War. 56 00:03:40,080 --> 00:03:45,080 The great unifier himself is made of 175 tonnes of southern marble 57 00:03:46,080 --> 00:03:48,080 from the state of Georgia. 58 00:03:48,080 --> 00:03:52,720 Stone from the North and the South is combined throughout this temple. 59 00:03:53,800 --> 00:03:56,640 It's an image of the union in masonry. 60 00:03:57,720 --> 00:04:01,440 And presidents ever since have celebrated Lincoln's achievement. 61 00:04:02,520 --> 00:04:05,240 That's what Abraham Lincoln understood. 62 00:04:05,240 --> 00:04:07,720 He had his sceptics, he had his setbacks, 63 00:04:07,720 --> 00:04:10,080 but through his will and his words, 64 00:04:10,080 --> 00:04:12,520 he moved a nation and helped free a people. 65 00:04:13,560 --> 00:04:18,560 With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, 66 00:04:18,560 --> 00:04:22,320 I can be more presidential than any president 67 00:04:22,320 --> 00:04:25,320 that's ever held this office, that I can tell you. 68 00:04:27,400 --> 00:04:32,040 The memorial is telling a powerful version of the story. 69 00:04:32,040 --> 00:04:34,240 The official version, if you like. 70 00:04:34,240 --> 00:04:36,480 But history is made up of facts 71 00:04:36,480 --> 00:04:39,280 and interpretations and distortions 72 00:04:39,280 --> 00:04:42,080 and, sometimes, downright lies. 73 00:04:42,080 --> 00:04:44,440 And the story of the American Civil War 74 00:04:44,440 --> 00:04:47,080 is one of the most contested stories of all, 75 00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:50,760 so I'm left wondering, could the Lincoln Memorial itself 76 00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:54,520 be telling one of American history's biggest fibs? 77 00:05:00,560 --> 00:05:03,320 To find out how the history of the Civil War 78 00:05:03,320 --> 00:05:08,080 has been shaped and manipulated, I'm heading south to Georgia, 79 00:05:08,080 --> 00:05:11,000 and I'll be asking if Abraham Lincoln 80 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:13,640 really was a saintly emancipator 81 00:05:13,640 --> 00:05:16,560 dedicated to ending slavery, 82 00:05:16,560 --> 00:05:19,280 and whether his victory in the Civil War 83 00:05:19,280 --> 00:05:21,760 really did reunite the nation. 84 00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:28,040 It all started in the mansions of wealthy slave owners, 85 00:05:28,040 --> 00:05:30,480 whose way of life was under threat. 86 00:05:35,080 --> 00:05:37,800 Slavery is the thing that the entire American economy 87 00:05:37,800 --> 00:05:39,640 at this point really rests. 88 00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:42,360 The number of slaves in the South would grow 89 00:05:42,360 --> 00:05:45,320 from approximately about 800,000 in 1790 90 00:05:45,320 --> 00:05:48,040 up to four million by the time of the Civil War. 91 00:05:48,040 --> 00:05:51,640 Slaves themselves were worth more than they had ever been. 92 00:05:51,640 --> 00:05:56,080 A prime field hand male was worth somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500, 93 00:05:56,080 --> 00:05:59,560 so, if you do the math, by today's numbers, 94 00:05:59,560 --> 00:06:03,000 it's anywhere between $2 trillion and $9 trillion. 95 00:06:03,000 --> 00:06:08,080 Slaves and slavery was worth more than all of the factories, 96 00:06:08,520 --> 00:06:11,320 all of the warehouses, all of the railroads, 97 00:06:11,320 --> 00:06:14,400 all of everything else in the economy in America. 98 00:06:14,400 --> 00:06:17,040 Slaves dwarfed that. 99 00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:21,480 Today, the USA has 50 states, 100 00:06:21,480 --> 00:06:25,560 but in 1861, there were only 34. 101 00:06:25,560 --> 00:06:30,040 The Civil War began as a clash between the 19 northern states 102 00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:32,480 which had abolished slavery 103 00:06:32,480 --> 00:06:34,840 and 11 southern states 104 00:06:34,840 --> 00:06:38,240 whose economy was built on slave labour. 105 00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:44,040 At the same time, huge areas of the American West 106 00:06:44,040 --> 00:06:47,040 were just beginning to emerge as new states. 107 00:06:50,080 --> 00:06:53,000 Would they adopt the economic model of the North 108 00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:55,000 or the South? 109 00:06:56,640 --> 00:06:59,840 Well, the issue in the western territories 110 00:06:59,840 --> 00:07:04,120 is whether or not slavery is going to be allowed to exist in the West. 111 00:07:04,120 --> 00:07:06,600 And the question then for the United States is, 112 00:07:06,600 --> 00:07:10,920 as this territory, which is unorganised now, becomes states, 113 00:07:10,920 --> 00:07:13,280 will we allow those states to be free 114 00:07:13,280 --> 00:07:15,320 or will we allow them to be slave? 115 00:07:15,320 --> 00:07:18,560 The issue is not so much about slavery where it exists 116 00:07:18,560 --> 00:07:22,040 but slavery where people want it to exist or not to exist, 117 00:07:22,040 --> 00:07:24,080 depending on their perspective, 118 00:07:24,080 --> 00:07:26,800 and there are people who can see that this is going to be 119 00:07:26,800 --> 00:07:30,280 the powder keg that's going to set this whole sectional conflict off. 120 00:07:31,320 --> 00:07:35,200 So, the war didn't start out as Abraham Lincoln's crusade 121 00:07:35,200 --> 00:07:38,240 to liberate enslaved people at all. 122 00:07:38,240 --> 00:07:40,560 It was all about money. 123 00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:43,320 Northerners feared they would be unable to compete 124 00:07:43,320 --> 00:07:47,080 if slavery was allowed to take root in the new western states. 125 00:07:47,080 --> 00:07:49,720 And southerners worried that slave Labour, 126 00:07:49,720 --> 00:07:51,760 the bedrock of their economy, 127 00:07:51,760 --> 00:07:55,000 might be abolished altogether if it was outlawed in the West. 128 00:07:57,160 --> 00:08:00,560 Abraham Lincoln was a Kentucky-born Southerner, 129 00:08:00,560 --> 00:08:05,080 but in 1860 he managed to win the presidential election 130 00:08:05,080 --> 00:08:08,080 without taking a single state in the south. 131 00:08:09,120 --> 00:08:10,840 Within two months, 132 00:08:10,840 --> 00:08:14,040 11 southern states broke away from the United States 133 00:08:14,040 --> 00:08:17,280 and set out to create the Confederacy. 134 00:08:18,320 --> 00:08:22,080 As tensions rose, they installed their own president, 135 00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:25,000 Jefferson Davis, in their own White House 136 00:08:25,000 --> 00:08:27,240 in Montgomery, Alabama. 137 00:08:27,240 --> 00:08:29,560 And at 4:30am 138 00:08:29,560 --> 00:08:31,800 on the 12th of April, 1861, 139 00:08:31,800 --> 00:08:35,280 the first shots were fired by Confederate troops 140 00:08:35,280 --> 00:08:36,800 at Fort Sumter. 141 00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:41,640 The war escalated into a brutal conflict. 142 00:08:42,680 --> 00:08:45,120 At the battle of Gettysburg alone, 143 00:08:45,120 --> 00:08:49,520 51,000 men lost their lives in just three days. 144 00:08:50,800 --> 00:08:55,720 The Confederate forces were fighting for a new American nation. 145 00:08:55,720 --> 00:08:58,320 So, this flag is what is called 146 00:08:58,320 --> 00:09:01,080 the first national flag of the Confederacy. 147 00:09:01,080 --> 00:09:05,080 You have the original 11 stars of the Confederacy 148 00:09:05,080 --> 00:09:08,520 and you have these red and white stripes or bars on it. 149 00:09:08,520 --> 00:09:12,080 It looks really quite like the Stars and Stripes. Is that deliberate? 150 00:09:12,080 --> 00:09:16,080 That's part of the problem. When you're on the battlefield, it's very hard to tell 151 00:09:16,080 --> 00:09:19,000 the difference between it and an United States flag - 152 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:20,560 an American flag. 153 00:09:20,560 --> 00:09:23,320 So you can't tell who's who? You can't tell who's who. 154 00:09:23,320 --> 00:09:26,760 That prompted the Confederate government to create another flag, 155 00:09:26,760 --> 00:09:29,080 a flag that would be used in battles, 156 00:09:29,080 --> 00:09:32,280 and we just happen to have an example of that here as well. 157 00:09:32,280 --> 00:09:37,080 So I can see that I've been thinking of the Confederate flag wrongly. 158 00:09:37,080 --> 00:09:40,360 What I'm actually thinking of is the Confederate battle flag. 159 00:09:40,360 --> 00:09:42,520 That's correct. It is the battle flag. 160 00:09:42,520 --> 00:09:44,480 This is a purely military flag 161 00:09:44,480 --> 00:09:47,080 designed to be used by troops in the field. 162 00:09:47,080 --> 00:09:49,800 This particular flag was in the battle of Gettysburg. 163 00:09:49,800 --> 00:09:52,560 You will notice a lot of the battle damage on it. 164 00:09:52,560 --> 00:09:56,240 One of the other things that you might notice is the number of stars. 165 00:09:56,240 --> 00:09:58,800 So, that's one, two, three... 166 00:09:58,800 --> 00:10:02,520 four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12... 167 00:10:02,520 --> 00:10:05,560 And one's gone missing at the end, there, but that's 13. 168 00:10:05,560 --> 00:10:07,960 There's 13 stars. That's wrong, isn't it? 169 00:10:07,960 --> 00:10:11,320 By the time this flag was created in the fall of 1861, 170 00:10:11,320 --> 00:10:15,080 the Confederate government had admitted two other 171 00:10:15,080 --> 00:10:20,000 slaveholding states that never formally seceded from the union. 172 00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:22,040 Kentucky and Missouri. 173 00:10:22,040 --> 00:10:25,560 Isn't that clever, then? They were trying to snap up any state 174 00:10:25,560 --> 00:10:29,320 that showed a flicker of interest in the cause of the Confederacy. 175 00:10:29,320 --> 00:10:32,560 This is a real case of smoke and mirrors, isn't it? 176 00:10:32,560 --> 00:10:36,080 Even the flag itself, there's more to it than you think. 177 00:10:36,080 --> 00:10:39,000 It's not quite telling the straightforward truth. 178 00:10:39,000 --> 00:10:42,320 It feeds into, sort of, this myth and how we understand 179 00:10:42,320 --> 00:10:45,240 the Confederacy and the Civil War to this day. 180 00:10:47,840 --> 00:10:50,240 The bloody conflict dragged on, 181 00:10:50,240 --> 00:10:52,080 year after year. 182 00:10:52,080 --> 00:10:56,080 Many in the North began to question whether it was all worth it. 183 00:10:56,080 --> 00:11:00,720 Then, after three years of fighting, Lincoln made a clever tactical move. 184 00:11:00,720 --> 00:11:04,000 He turned the war into a crusade 185 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:06,520 to abolish slavery. 186 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:10,760 In January 1863, Lincoln drafted a statement - 187 00:11:10,760 --> 00:11:14,040 the Proclamation of Emancipation. 188 00:11:14,040 --> 00:11:18,080 It used the promise of liberation for the enslaved people of the South 189 00:11:18,080 --> 00:11:21,720 to strike a decisive blow against the Confederacy. 190 00:11:22,800 --> 00:11:26,880 This is a copy of the actual Proclamation of Emancipation. 191 00:11:26,880 --> 00:11:30,920 It says that on the first day of January 1863, 192 00:11:30,920 --> 00:11:35,960 "All persons held as slaves shall be then, thenceforth 193 00:11:38,560 --> 00:11:41,560 When it was read aloud in Washington DC, 194 00:11:41,560 --> 00:11:44,520 one witness reported that men squealed, 195 00:11:44,520 --> 00:11:47,560 women fainted and dogs barked. 196 00:11:47,560 --> 00:11:50,120 Thousands of copies of it were printed. 197 00:11:50,120 --> 00:11:54,080 This one has rather beautiful illustrations that tell the story. 198 00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:59,080 Here's an angel releasing a poor little boy from his chains. 199 00:11:59,160 --> 00:12:02,800 Here are the bad old days - an overseer beating a slave. 200 00:12:02,800 --> 00:12:06,000 And then here are "the freed", and they are saying, 201 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:10,080 "Give thanks all ye people, give thanks to the Lord." 202 00:12:10,080 --> 00:12:14,120 It rather looks in this image like Lincoln himself is the Lord. 203 00:12:14,120 --> 00:12:18,360 The message is clear - to all the enslaved people here in Georgia 204 00:12:18,360 --> 00:12:22,240 and across the South, you are now free. 205 00:12:23,400 --> 00:12:26,520 But Lincoln was only promising the abolition of slavery 206 00:12:26,520 --> 00:12:28,560 in rebel states. 207 00:12:28,560 --> 00:12:31,720 Several slave-owning states on the border of the Confederacy 208 00:12:31,720 --> 00:12:34,080 had remained loyal to the union. 209 00:12:34,080 --> 00:12:36,560 They were allowed to keep their slaves. 210 00:12:36,560 --> 00:12:41,040 So was Lincoln himself a real supporter of emancipation? 211 00:12:41,040 --> 00:12:43,560 There's a damning piece of evidence 212 00:12:43,560 --> 00:12:47,040 that suggests that Lincoln's attitude toward slavery 213 00:12:47,040 --> 00:12:50,560 was much more morally ambivalent than you might assume. 214 00:12:50,560 --> 00:12:54,080 He actually wrote to a newspaper in 1862, 215 00:12:54,080 --> 00:12:58,080 saying that his paramount objective was to save the union. 216 00:12:58,080 --> 00:13:02,080 It wasn't either to save or destroy slavery. 217 00:13:02,080 --> 00:13:05,520 He said that, "If I could save the union without freeing 218 00:13:05,520 --> 00:13:08,320 "one single slave, then I would." 219 00:13:08,320 --> 00:13:11,080 Lincoln was the ultimate pragmatist. 220 00:13:11,080 --> 00:13:16,080 He saw emancipation as just a tactic towards achieving his bigger goal. 221 00:13:16,080 --> 00:13:20,560 And he also saw another practical benefit of ending slavery. 222 00:13:20,560 --> 00:13:25,160 He could see that it would destroy the economy of the South. 223 00:13:26,160 --> 00:13:27,800 And it worked. 224 00:13:27,800 --> 00:13:31,040 Enslaved African Americans left the plantations 225 00:13:31,040 --> 00:13:32,880 and fled to the North. 226 00:13:33,960 --> 00:13:38,960 180,000 black soldiers came to serve in the Union Army. 227 00:13:39,400 --> 00:13:42,080 And in November 1864, 228 00:13:42,080 --> 00:13:44,760 the Northern General, William Sherman, 229 00:13:44,760 --> 00:13:48,040 set out to break the spirit of the South. 230 00:13:48,040 --> 00:13:50,320 With 60,000 union troops, 231 00:13:50,320 --> 00:13:55,000 he made an audacious attack behind Confederate lines. 232 00:13:56,040 --> 00:13:58,440 Flying the flag of emancipation, 233 00:13:58,440 --> 00:14:02,200 he marched 300 miles from Atlanta to Savannah, 234 00:14:02,200 --> 00:14:05,040 raiding farms, stealing livestock 235 00:14:05,040 --> 00:14:07,840 and destroying everything in his path. 236 00:14:07,840 --> 00:14:12,240 In some places, the trail of devastation was 60 miles wide. 237 00:14:13,240 --> 00:14:15,600 Sherman made it very clear 238 00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:20,080 that he was waging psychological warfare on the people of Atlanta. 239 00:14:20,080 --> 00:14:22,840 He wrote them an open letter that says, 240 00:14:22,840 --> 00:14:27,800 "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. 241 00:14:27,800 --> 00:14:30,040 "War is cruelty. 242 00:14:30,040 --> 00:14:33,560 "They who brought war into our country deserve all the curses 243 00:14:33,560 --> 00:14:36,960 "and maledictions that people can pour on them." 244 00:14:36,960 --> 00:14:41,800 Sherman said to another general, "I will make Georgia howl." 245 00:14:43,520 --> 00:14:47,440 Sherman's March is the stuff of legend. 246 00:14:47,440 --> 00:14:50,560 The South remembers it as a brutal war crime. 247 00:14:50,560 --> 00:14:53,080 To the North, it was a military triumph, 248 00:14:53,080 --> 00:14:56,240 celebrated in art and music. 249 00:14:56,240 --> 00:14:59,680 Good morning. Good morning to you as well, Lucy. 250 00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:05,560 Now you are a musician. 251 00:15:05,560 --> 00:15:09,280 What was the role of music in the Civil War armies? 252 00:15:09,280 --> 00:15:12,320 One of the chief reasons of musicians is to inspire 253 00:15:12,320 --> 00:15:15,520 the soldiers. So, if you had a patriotic song 254 00:15:15,520 --> 00:15:18,320 or even if you had a song that is well known at home 255 00:15:18,320 --> 00:15:21,800 that can put a spring in your step if you're marching, say 20 miles, 256 00:15:21,800 --> 00:15:25,040 in the swamps and marshes of Georgia, that's mighty important. 257 00:15:25,040 --> 00:15:26,680 Right, let's sing a marching song. 258 00:15:26,680 --> 00:15:28,600 This song I actually know. 259 00:15:28,600 --> 00:15:30,360 We used to sing this at the girl guides. 260 00:15:30,360 --> 00:15:31,560 Or a variation of it. 261 00:15:31,560 --> 00:15:33,640 We didn't have quite these words. 262 00:15:33,640 --> 00:15:37,040 But this is a civil war version, isn't it? 263 00:15:37,040 --> 00:15:39,680 Yes, indeed. John Brown. Let's give it a go. 264 00:15:39,680 --> 00:15:43,960 # John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see 265 00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:47,160 # Christ who of the bondmen shall the Liberator be 266 00:15:47,160 --> 00:15:51,480 # And soon throughout the Sunny South the slaves shall all be free 267 00:15:51,480 --> 00:15:53,720 # For his soul is marching on 268 00:15:53,720 --> 00:15:55,160 # Da-da-da-da-da 269 00:15:55,160 --> 00:16:02,880 # Glory, glory, hallelujah! 270 00:16:02,880 --> 00:16:07,920 # Glory, glory, hallelujah! and his soul is marching on! # 271 00:16:11,880 --> 00:16:14,040 This song makes it sound really simple. 272 00:16:14,040 --> 00:16:16,520 The slaves shall all be freed, that is what the troops 273 00:16:16,520 --> 00:16:18,320 from the North are here to do, right? 274 00:16:18,320 --> 00:16:22,160 Well, according to some union soldiers that is what they're here 275 00:16:22,160 --> 00:16:24,320 to do, and perhaps that's even why many of them joined 276 00:16:24,320 --> 00:16:25,720 in the first place. 277 00:16:34,720 --> 00:16:38,360 As the war intensified, the union tried to justify 278 00:16:38,360 --> 00:16:42,400 the bloodshed and destruction, with the twin goals of abolishing 279 00:16:42,400 --> 00:16:45,800 slavery and restoring national unity. 280 00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:57,440 But as Sherman's March across the South continued, 281 00:16:57,440 --> 00:17:01,120 the union songs of liberation took on a very hollow ring. 282 00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:07,920 This is Ebenezer Creek, the waters are silent, 283 00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:12,120 but they're very deep and murky and there are alligators hiding 284 00:17:12,120 --> 00:17:13,520 amongst these trees. 285 00:17:18,400 --> 00:17:23,400 On December the 8th, 1864, 14,000 union soldiers, 286 00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:27,440 under Brigadier General Davis arrived at the creek, 287 00:17:27,440 --> 00:17:31,640 accompanied by thousands of former slaves who were seeking protection 288 00:17:31,640 --> 00:17:35,680 from Lincoln's Army. Confederate troops weren't far behind them. 289 00:17:37,200 --> 00:17:42,240 As night fell, pontoon bridges were constructed across the water, 290 00:17:42,760 --> 00:17:46,240 but Davis saw the new arrivals as a hindrance. 291 00:17:46,240 --> 00:17:50,240 He called them, "useless Negroes", trying to protect them, 292 00:17:50,240 --> 00:17:53,360 he said, would be suicide. 293 00:17:53,360 --> 00:17:58,080 He ordered that the African American men, women and children be prevented 294 00:17:58,080 --> 00:18:01,480 from crossing until the threat of more Confederate troops ahead 295 00:18:01,480 --> 00:18:02,920 had been dealt with. 296 00:18:03,920 --> 00:18:08,120 Another commander, James Connolly, heard what Davis was up to, 297 00:18:08,120 --> 00:18:10,400 and he thought that it was wrong. 298 00:18:10,400 --> 00:18:14,680 He wrote this, "I knew this must result in all these Negroes 299 00:18:14,680 --> 00:18:18,040 "being recaptured or perhaps brutally shot. 300 00:18:18,040 --> 00:18:20,960 "And I told his staff officers what I thought of such 301 00:18:20,960 --> 00:18:24,680 "an inhuman, barbarous proceeding." 302 00:18:24,680 --> 00:18:26,360 But Davis didn't listen. 303 00:18:28,680 --> 00:18:31,800 Davis' story turned out to be a lie. 304 00:18:31,800 --> 00:18:35,480 There was no Confederate force in front. 305 00:18:35,480 --> 00:18:37,960 And once his soldiers were across the creek, 306 00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:41,600 he ordered the bridges to be pulled up behind them. 307 00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:47,960 600 men, women and children were all trapped on that side. 308 00:18:47,960 --> 00:18:50,560 The Confederate troops were closing in on them. 309 00:18:50,560 --> 00:18:51,800 They panicked. 310 00:18:51,800 --> 00:18:55,320 In the early hours of the morning, they tried to cross 311 00:18:55,320 --> 00:18:59,440 these swampy waters. Some of them put together rafts. 312 00:18:59,440 --> 00:19:03,800 Others used the trunks of trees. Many of them drowned. 313 00:19:04,800 --> 00:19:08,320 And those that didn't were either shot by the Confederates, 314 00:19:08,320 --> 00:19:10,320 or sent back into slavery. 315 00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:28,640 But Lincoln the liberator had another surprise in store. 316 00:19:28,640 --> 00:19:31,920 On April the 11, 1865, one of the windows of 317 00:19:31,920 --> 00:19:33,880 the White House was opened. 318 00:19:35,320 --> 00:19:37,960 President Abraham Lincoln, the hero of the hour, 319 00:19:37,960 --> 00:19:42,480 leaned out of the window and he made an impromptu speech to the crowds 320 00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:43,840 gathered on the lawn. 321 00:19:43,840 --> 00:19:45,880 He was on the verge of victory. 322 00:19:45,880 --> 00:19:49,200 He was looking ahead to the future, and he said that the country 323 00:19:49,200 --> 00:19:53,360 really ought to think about giving all these newly freed 324 00:19:53,360 --> 00:19:55,600 African Americans the vote. 325 00:19:55,600 --> 00:19:58,680 Of course, this was completely against the values and attitudes 326 00:19:58,680 --> 00:20:01,720 that the south had been built upon. 327 00:20:01,720 --> 00:20:05,160 In the crowd that day was a man with a deep commitment 328 00:20:05,160 --> 00:20:06,880 to the Confederacy. 329 00:20:06,880 --> 00:20:09,400 His name was John Wilkes Booth. 330 00:20:11,760 --> 00:20:14,840 He was enraged by the President's speech. 331 00:20:14,840 --> 00:20:18,160 He said, and his words carry a health warning, 332 00:20:18,160 --> 00:20:21,840 "That means nigger citizenship. 333 00:20:21,840 --> 00:20:25,320 "By God, that's the last speech he will ever make." 334 00:20:30,560 --> 00:20:34,120 Three days later, Lincoln came here to Ford's Theatre 335 00:20:34,120 --> 00:20:38,200 to see a show, and Booth made good on his promise. 336 00:20:38,200 --> 00:20:42,360 He got into the theatre and he shot the President at close range, 337 00:20:42,360 --> 00:20:46,520 in the head, shouting, "Thus to all tyrants!" 338 00:20:46,520 --> 00:20:49,880 Lincoln's bleeding body was carried out of the theatre, 339 00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:53,320 and across the road and to that house over there. 340 00:20:53,320 --> 00:20:57,040 He lingered on for 24 hours and then he died, 341 00:20:57,040 --> 00:21:01,080 instantly becoming a martyr to the cause of emancipation 342 00:21:01,080 --> 00:21:02,080 and the Union. 343 00:21:03,920 --> 00:21:07,400 Unionists descended into mourning. 344 00:21:07,400 --> 00:21:12,200 Millions lined the streets as his funeral train travelled 1,700 miles 345 00:21:12,200 --> 00:21:16,080 across the country, finally reaching his burial place, 346 00:21:16,080 --> 00:21:18,520 in Springfield, Illinois. 347 00:21:18,520 --> 00:21:23,160 Almost as soon as he was dead, images like this one began to appear 348 00:21:23,160 --> 00:21:28,040 in the press. "In memory of Abraham Lincoln, the reward of the just." 349 00:21:29,080 --> 00:21:32,720 And he has been carried off to Heaven by an angel. 350 00:21:32,720 --> 00:21:36,120 It is almost as if he has become a religious figure, 351 00:21:36,120 --> 00:21:39,800 and, like Christ himself, he died at Easter. 352 00:21:39,800 --> 00:21:42,960 The fatal shot was fired on Good Friday. 353 00:21:45,360 --> 00:21:50,200 Soon after Lincoln's death, Charlotte Scott, a former slave 354 00:21:50,200 --> 00:21:54,640 from Virginia, gave $5 from her pay packet to begin fundraising 355 00:21:54,640 --> 00:21:57,120 for a statue of Lincoln. 356 00:21:57,120 --> 00:22:02,120 In April, 1876, this photograph of Charlotte was sold to visitors 357 00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:07,400 at the grand unveiling of the emancipation memorial in Washington. 358 00:22:07,600 --> 00:22:11,320 The main speaker at the ceremony was another former slave, 359 00:22:11,320 --> 00:22:15,120 now a politician and reformer, Frederick Douglass. 360 00:22:15,120 --> 00:22:18,640 And he began a reassessment of Lincoln's memory. 361 00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:24,920 Frederick Douglass was, at the time, arguably the most important 362 00:22:25,120 --> 00:22:28,640 black man in the country and he didn't disappoint. 363 00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:32,440 He very quickly launches into, almost a tirade 364 00:22:32,440 --> 00:22:34,880 about Lincoln's shortcomings. 365 00:22:34,880 --> 00:22:39,360 He talks about the fact that Lincoln was pre-eminently 366 00:22:39,360 --> 00:22:44,440 the white man's President, that even though he had helped to free 367 00:22:44,840 --> 00:22:49,720 enslaved people, Lincoln always did what was in the best interests 368 00:22:49,720 --> 00:22:50,920 of his race. 369 00:22:50,920 --> 00:22:55,960 But, this man was President when we got our freedom 370 00:22:55,960 --> 00:22:59,120 and this is what he did to help us get our freedom, 371 00:22:59,120 --> 00:23:00,600 so he's balancing it. 372 00:23:00,600 --> 00:23:03,760 Do you think people were surprised at the time, 373 00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:06,960 to hear words of criticism being spoken at all? 374 00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:11,560 Lincoln was an anti-slavery man, but he was no abolitionist 375 00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:13,480 before the Civil War. 376 00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:18,200 He's someone who believed that slavery was a legitimate 377 00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:23,040 institution, a constitutionally protected institution, 378 00:23:23,040 --> 00:23:27,680 and because of that, the federal government could not touch that 379 00:23:27,680 --> 00:23:30,480 institution where it already existed. 380 00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:33,840 He believed, that if you contain it, it would die a natural death. 381 00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:38,640 It might take 200 years, mind you, but it would eventually die out. 382 00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:41,360 Did Lincoln believe in racial equality? 383 00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:47,400 It depends upon what time in his life we're talking about. 384 00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:52,360 In 1858, he was engaged in a series of debates and Lincoln 385 00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:56,920 was in an environment where he had to show the local people 386 00:23:56,920 --> 00:24:00,560 that he was just as anti-black as they were. To get the votes? 387 00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:05,320 To get their votes. Absolutely. And so this is what he says to them. 388 00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:09,840 "I will say then that I am not, nor never have been, in favour 389 00:24:09,840 --> 00:24:13,800 "of bringing about in any way the social and political equality 390 00:24:13,800 --> 00:24:16,160 "of the white and black races. 391 00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:21,160 "And I, as much as any other man, is in favour of having the superior 392 00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:24,840 "position assigned to the white race." Whoa. 393 00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:29,880 And so in 1858, Lincoln is decidedly not for racial equality. 394 00:24:31,160 --> 00:24:35,960 Not in this statement, but not in reality, either. 395 00:24:46,120 --> 00:24:49,960 On the 9th of April, 1865, the Confederate general 396 00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:52,720 Robert E Lee surrendered. 397 00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:54,280 The war was over. 398 00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:58,040 But the shaping of its place in history was just getting started. 399 00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:06,680 Lincoln's moral and political shortcomings were largely forgotten. 400 00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:11,000 The north celebrated the prospect of unity restored. 401 00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:13,960 Rebels and traitors had been crushed, 402 00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:18,640 and slavery would now be abolished in every state of the union. 403 00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:27,000 Whatever the truth really was, the legend of Lincoln 404 00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:30,400 the great emancipator who had consigned slavery 405 00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,120 to the history books was very powerful. 406 00:25:33,120 --> 00:25:38,040 Surely, this promise of freedom to the enslaved would now be delivered? 407 00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:39,960 Wouldn't it? 408 00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:43,760 It was a very limited kind of freedom. 409 00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:47,920 Many states quickly instituted racial segregation laws. 410 00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:51,800 Mixed marriages were illegal in most southern states. 411 00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:55,080 Black people were banned from sharing the same schools, 412 00:25:55,080 --> 00:25:57,920 restaurants and transport as whites. 413 00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:01,200 "Separate, but equal," was the phrase used to justify 414 00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:05,440 all these racist laws, which were introduced by a growing number 415 00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:07,680 of states after the Civil War. 416 00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:10,760 It was completely within their rights to do this. 417 00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:14,760 The laws were just rubber-stamped by the US Supreme Court. 418 00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:18,560 So, millions of African Americans may have been freed from slavery, 419 00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:21,800 but they were still denied basic civil rights. 420 00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:25,920 And it was when they were at work that this fib of freedom 421 00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:28,160 was most cruelly exposed. 422 00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:36,920 Sharecropping was one example. 423 00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:40,280 Former slaves had no money to buy land or tools, 424 00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:43,720 so they often had to borrow from former slave owners, 425 00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:47,680 to supply these essentials and basic housing. 426 00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:50,440 They were charged punitive interest on the loans 427 00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:53,760 and forced to give up a large share of the crop. 428 00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,800 This is an account of an anonymous victim of the system 429 00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:01,800 which was published in 1904. 430 00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:04,840 He signed a contract with a landlord. 431 00:27:04,840 --> 00:27:08,080 He got a cabin, like this, and in return he was supposed 432 00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:10,640 to work to pay back this debt. 433 00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,560 After ten years, though, the debt had mysteriously got 434 00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:15,400 bigger, not smaller. 435 00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,640 He really wanted to leave and the landowner said, 436 00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:19,920 well, you can, as long as you sign this paper saying 437 00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:23,720 that you acknowledge that you are still in debt to me. 438 00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:25,360 This is what he says, 439 00:27:25,360 --> 00:27:28,600 "We would have signed anything, just to get away. 440 00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:32,000 "We stepped up, we did, and made our marks. 441 00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:36,120 "That same night, we were rounded up by a constable and ten or 12 442 00:27:36,120 --> 00:27:39,120 "white men who aided him and we were locked up. 443 00:27:39,120 --> 00:27:40,600 "Everyone of us." 444 00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:46,080 The next morning, they were told the papers they'd signed 445 00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:50,800 had bound them to hard labour until all the debts were paid. 446 00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:56,320 He describes the next three years as hell on earth. 447 00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,640 The workers were kept in pens, rather like animal pens. 448 00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:02,800 In the daytime, they had to go out to work to pay their debts 449 00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:04,520 and at night, they were locked up. 450 00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:06,800 The conditions were appalling. 451 00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:11,440 He describes the pens as, "the filthiest places in the world. 452 00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:13,960 "They were cesspools of nastiness." 453 00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:26,480 And there was another betrayal to come. 454 00:28:28,120 --> 00:28:30,760 The Emancipation proclamation became law, 455 00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:32,080 as the 13th Amendment. 456 00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:37,080 But it confirmed that the end of slavery was a lie. 457 00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:54,960 Slavery had been abolished, it said, except as a punishment for crime. 458 00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:58,600 Which meant that anyone who had been convicted of wrongdoing 459 00:28:58,600 --> 00:29:01,720 could be held in captivity and made to work. 460 00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:08,320 After the devastation of the war, the South was rebuilding its cities 461 00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:13,320 and its economy. This is the site of the Chattahoochee Brick company 462 00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:18,600 in Atlanta. In its heyday, it turned out 30 million bricks a year. 463 00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:22,560 After companies like this one had spotted this loophole 464 00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:27,240 in the 13th Amendment, they exploited it ruthlessly. 465 00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:30,080 They went to the local prisons and hired convicts 466 00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:33,480 and then worked them, and worked them to the bone. 467 00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,680 Lincoln's emancipation had been transformed 468 00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,000 into slavery of a new kind. 469 00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:48,560 They called it convict leasing. 470 00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:53,160 And between 1870 and 1920, 90% of the prisoners 471 00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:56,160 sold into labour were African Americans. 472 00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:01,080 If you were found guilty of vagrancy, fare avoidance, 473 00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:05,600 even talking to white women, you could end up as a slave again. 474 00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:10,840 The city of Atlanta was rebuilt with the bricks prisoners made here. 475 00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:16,400 Conditions were so bad that hundreds, 476 00:30:16,400 --> 00:30:18,560 maybe thousands of them, died. 477 00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:22,240 Their bodies still buried beneath the ruins. 478 00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:30,600 In 1935, a book called Black Reconstruction in America 479 00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:34,880 was published by the historian WEB Du Bois. 480 00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:38,800 After the Civil War, he said, the slave went free, 481 00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:43,800 stood for a brief moment in the sun, and then moved back towards slavery. 482 00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:54,200 In December, 1934, convict leasing was rebranded 483 00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:58,040 as Federal Prisons Industries Incorporated. 484 00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:01,680 The 13th Amendment is still in force to this day. 485 00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:06,720 Starbucks, Microsoft and IBM have all made use of prison labourers. 486 00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:19,240 In 1867, a Virginia journalist, Edward A Pollard created 487 00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:23,640 the powerful Southern alternative to the northern version of history. 488 00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:25,800 He called it The Lost Cause. 489 00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:31,920 The title of the book inspired a revival of Southern resistance 490 00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,000 against the North. 491 00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:38,360 Believers in the lost cause portrayed the old South 492 00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:41,600 as a vanished civilisation where plantation owners 493 00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:45,160 and happy slaves lived in harmony. 494 00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:50,240 Rebels and traitors were rebranded as heroes or freedom fighters 495 00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:55,120 and Southern mothers, wives and daughters seized the opportunity 496 00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:59,200 to find pride in the defeat of the fallen soldiers. 497 00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:04,200 Women really become the face of the lost cause in the late 19th 498 00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:07,920 and early 20th century. Southern women formed this organisation 499 00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:10,600 called the United Daughters of the Confederacy. 500 00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:14,200 They grew from 30 women at the original meeting 501 00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:18,560 of the United Daughters to 30,000 women in ten years, 502 00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:21,440 to 100,000 women by World War I. 503 00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:23,000 They were everywhere. 504 00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:27,480 The United Daughters put up hundreds of memorials 505 00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:29,880 to fallen Confederate heroes. 506 00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:33,280 They also set out to ensure that the next generation would learn 507 00:32:33,280 --> 00:32:36,160 the Southern version of history. 508 00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:39,240 They even appointed their own historian general, 509 00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:41,040 Mildred Lewis Rutherford. 510 00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:44,720 This is how she dressed when she would give 511 00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:47,320 her presentations, her addresses. 512 00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:49,960 We are in the early 20th century here, aren't we? Correct. 513 00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:52,360 She is forever locked in 1860. 514 00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:58,080 She was sort of a one-woman propaganda machine. 515 00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:02,800 She made it her mission to ensure that young children 516 00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:06,800 were going to learn the true history of the South, 517 00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:09,600 which is always a pro-Southern, pro-Confederate history 518 00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:12,640 of the South. What tools did she develop to do that, then? 519 00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:16,760 She created something called a measuring rod for textbooks. 520 00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:19,400 You know, you used a sort of a litmus test to say, 521 00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:21,160 does this book have these things in it? 522 00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:25,160 If it does, you need to reject it, you need to deface it, 523 00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:27,320 if it's in your school library. 524 00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:30,080 So, how did she determine if the book was right or not? 525 00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:33,520 There's so many reasons to get rid of a book, 526 00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:36,240 it is hard to imagine there are any books left. 527 00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:39,760 For example, "Reject a book that calls the Confederate soldier 528 00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:42,800 "a traitor or rebel, and the war a rebellion. 529 00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:45,720 "Reject a book that speaks of the slave holder 530 00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:50,440 "of the South as cruel and unjust to his slaves." 531 00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:54,960 "And reject a textbook that glorifies Abraham Lincoln 532 00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:57,320 "and vilifies Jefferson Davis." 533 00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:00,240 It is so unsubtle. 534 00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:04,520 It is very unsubtle and she's not a subtle woman at all. 535 00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:07,200 This is fairly clever historical propaganda machine they have got 536 00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:09,240 working here then, isn't it? Yes. 537 00:34:09,240 --> 00:34:11,960 They don't miss a beat. They cover all the bases. 538 00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:17,520 Mildred Rutherford also taught a version of history that said 539 00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:21,320 that the Confederacy's noble cause was to stand up 540 00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:24,040 for individual states' rights. 541 00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:26,800 Against the tyrannical and interfering big government 542 00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:28,680 from the north. 543 00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:30,840 Southerners considered themselves the inheritors 544 00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:32,680 of the revolutionary generation. 545 00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:36,040 That they were being patriotic because they were abiding 546 00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:38,840 by the tenth Amendment to the constitution, 547 00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:40,880 which defended States' rights. 548 00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,440 That they needed to be able to make their own decisions 549 00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:45,280 about their State. 550 00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:47,480 The thing that is always left out of that, 551 00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:52,360 even to this day, while the South fought the war for States' rights, 552 00:34:52,360 --> 00:34:55,680 they never say the States' rights to maintain slavery. 553 00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:57,480 That's what they mean though, isn't it? 554 00:34:57,480 --> 00:35:01,160 They wouldn't say so, but that's exactly what it boils down to. 555 00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:08,880 The Lost Cause buried this inconvenient truth, 556 00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:11,880 but in the 1860s, they were a bit more honest about it. 557 00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:17,480 Motivation of a secessionist is pretty simple. 558 00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:20,640 All we need to do is look at their words and what they said. 559 00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:24,320 They all, to a State, said this is about defending 560 00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:28,800 the institution of slavery. Mississippi said it right up front. 561 00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:31,400 Mississippi's Ordinance of Secession, the very first 562 00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:35,440 sentence, "They said our cause is inextricably linked 563 00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:37,120 "to the institution of slavery, 564 00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:39,720 "the greatest material interest in the world." 565 00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:08,800 a new movie was about to reawaken the lingering prejudice and hatred 566 00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:10,200 of the Civil War. 567 00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:14,480 The title of the film made it sound like a rousing, 568 00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:18,440 patriotic story. It was called The Birth Of A Nation. 569 00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:24,760 It's director, DW Griffith, was the son of a Confederate veteran 570 00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:29,640 and he was determined to make the first great Civil War movie. 571 00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:33,160 But the film's name masked the nasty source material 572 00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:38,160 that it was based upon, which was a novel called The Clansman, 573 00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:41,640 a historical romance of the Ku Klux Klan. 574 00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:48,640 The Ku Klux Klan was a white supremacist movement 575 00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:50,680 that emerged in the 19th century. 576 00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:54,720 Set during the Civil War and its aftermath, 577 00:36:54,720 --> 00:36:57,720 The Birth Of A Nation portrays the Klan 578 00:36:57,720 --> 00:37:00,480 as the White Knights of the South. 579 00:37:02,240 --> 00:37:05,800 It showed African Americans, often played by white actors 580 00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:10,760 in blackface, as violent criminals, eager to molest white women. 581 00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:21,360 In this scene, the Klan takes its revenge. 582 00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:29,920 The Birth Of A Nation smashed all box office records, 583 00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:33,200 taking today's equivalent of nearly $2 billion. 584 00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:39,840 A week before the premiere in Atlanta a former preacher, 585 00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:44,840 William Simmons, got together 15 of his friends at a local landmark, 586 00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:47,040 Stone Mountain. 587 00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:51,160 They climbed to the summit, lashed together two planks of wood, 588 00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:55,760 and set them alight, for the whole of Georgia to see. 589 00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:58,840 Simmons was relaunching the Ku Klux Klan. 590 00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:04,800 This was a very interesting use of history. 591 00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:07,200 The Klan had existed in the 19th century, 592 00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:10,400 it was a thing, but it had sort of fizzled out. 593 00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:14,920 When Simmons revived it, he was reopening a chapter of history 594 00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,600 that had been consigned to the past. 595 00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:23,080 The film and the novel would help Simmons bring the Klan back to life. 596 00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:28,360 On the night of the premiere, Simmons and the other Klansmen 597 00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:33,200 decided to hold a recruitment drive, so they came in procession 598 00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:34,800 along this street. 599 00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:38,120 It's Peachtree Street, it's the main street of Atlanta. 600 00:38:38,120 --> 00:38:42,320 They were riding horses, and they were firing rifles into the air, 601 00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,920 to salute the new film. And all over the country, he had organised 602 00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:49,360 for other Klansmen to dress up in their Klan robes and hoods, 603 00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:53,080 and to parade outside cinemas. 604 00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:57,560 And in a local newspaper, Simmons placed a recruitment advert. 605 00:38:57,560 --> 00:38:59,240 He'd drawn it himself. 606 00:38:59,240 --> 00:39:02,560 It was printed alongside adverts for the film. 607 00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:08,200 Within ten years, it has been estimated that 4 million people 608 00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:09,520 had joined the Klan. 609 00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:14,080 But the revival was based on fibs. 610 00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:18,360 The historic Klan never burned crosses, that idea was invented 611 00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:23,240 by the novel, and the original Klan costumes weren't all white. 612 00:39:23,240 --> 00:39:26,240 The ones we know today were created for the film, 613 00:39:26,240 --> 00:39:27,840 as the director put it, 614 00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:32,360 "Solely from the viewpoint of theatrical effectiveness." 615 00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:37,000 Between them, they were reinventing the terrifying iconography 616 00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:38,480 of the Ku Klux Klan. 617 00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:41,680 They were playing with history to suit their purposes, 618 00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:44,200 by making the Klan sound old, 619 00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:47,840 they also made it sound somehow authentic. 620 00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:51,280 They were trying to give it a veneer of respectability, 621 00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:54,000 to cover up their murderous intentions. 622 00:39:57,040 --> 00:40:02,000 The revival of the Klan unleashed a new reign of terror. 623 00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:06,320 The trademark hoods and crosses would now accompany lynchings 624 00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:07,520 across America. 625 00:40:10,720 --> 00:40:15,320 Thousands of black Americans were kidnapped, tortured and murdered. 626 00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:35,560 Nearly 25 years after The Birth Of A Nation, 627 00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:40,000 the American Civil War went to the movies again in 1939. 628 00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:45,400 Based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell, 629 00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:50,400 Gone With The Wind would put the unity back into the United States. 630 00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:54,240 It's one of the most successful films ever made. 631 00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:58,160 The film had everything a girl could want - 632 00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:01,800 elegant Southern Belles, ravishing landscapes, 633 00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:06,600 a swooping score, and devastating Southern gentlemen. 634 00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:12,240 The film opens on the eve of the Civil War. 635 00:41:12,240 --> 00:41:16,120 It tells the story of Scarlett O'Hara, the wealthy daughter 636 00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:19,200 of a cotton plantation owner in Georgia. 637 00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:23,440 And it follows her struggle to survive the devastation of war. 638 00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:27,520 It's an epic romance with sumptuous costumes. 639 00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:28,760 Ashley! 640 00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:33,800 We will now put on your hoop skirt. Oh, yeah. 641 00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:38,880 Let's get it over your head. Fantastic. And work my way in. 642 00:41:41,720 --> 00:41:44,800 Bit of a Barbie theme going on here. 643 00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:47,640 Am I going to fit in? Yes, you will. 644 00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:51,240 If not, we'll just have to suck your corset in some more. 645 00:41:51,240 --> 00:41:53,800 I'm getting Scarlett O'Hara's waist as we speak. 646 00:41:56,160 --> 00:41:59,200 Just so you know, getting out of it is a lot easier 647 00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:03,640 than getting into it. And for the final touch... 648 00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:05,760 You will look like a princess. 649 00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:07,840 There you go. 650 00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:11,640 You are darling, darlin'! 651 00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:16,280 Scarlett is the flawed but irresistible mistress 652 00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:20,800 of an estate called Tara and this house is said to have inspired it. 653 00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:25,840 Today it's a museum, celebrating the spirit of Gone With The Wind. 654 00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:28,880 Can you tell me, what is your relationship with 655 00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:30,120 Gone With The Wind? 656 00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:32,400 Well, it just happens to be my most favourite movie 657 00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:33,760 in the whole wide world. 658 00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:36,320 Your most favourite movie in the whole wide world! 659 00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:39,720 And that I have watched it probably 30 or 40 times. 660 00:42:39,720 --> 00:42:44,520 I enjoy the clothing from the movie, I enjoy the time period, 661 00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:49,560 I enjoy the romance of that period, and the genteelness of that period. 662 00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:54,640 By the 1930s, when Gone With The Wind is a huge sensation, 663 00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:57,680 it is a massive commercial success, there must have been people 664 00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:00,760 in the North who were as much in love with that as people 665 00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:05,840 from the south. Is that right? Absolutely. America went crazy. 666 00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:10,680 The whole of America went crazy over Gone With The Wind. 667 00:43:10,680 --> 00:43:15,600 The film transcended the divisions of the Civil War, 668 00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:18,280 and spoke to a generation who had gone without 669 00:43:18,280 --> 00:43:20,240 during the great depression. 670 00:43:20,240 --> 00:43:24,840 As God is my witness, as God as my witness, 671 00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:27,040 they're not going to lick me. 672 00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:29,680 I'm going to live through this and when it is all over, 673 00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:31,280 I'll never be hungry again. 674 00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:35,840 But to achieve that process of healing and reconciliation 675 00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:39,240 between North and South, the old fibs and distortions 676 00:43:39,240 --> 00:43:41,440 were dusted down once again. 677 00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:45,880 Gone With The Wind was an elegant airbrushing of history. 678 00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:48,000 Let go of my horse! 679 00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:52,200 Hollywood also suppressed some of the sinister politics 680 00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:54,960 of Margaret Mitchell's novel. 681 00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:59,120 After Scarlett O'Hara is attacked, the men plan to go off that night 682 00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:01,280 to seek revenge. 683 00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:02,720 Thank you. Scarlett. 684 00:44:02,720 --> 00:44:05,160 Change your dress and go over to Miss Melly's for the evening. 685 00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:07,320 I've got to go to a political meeting. 686 00:44:07,320 --> 00:44:09,000 A political meeting? 687 00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:12,720 But in the novel, that political meeting is revealed to be 688 00:44:12,720 --> 00:44:14,040 at the Ku Klux Klan. 689 00:44:16,080 --> 00:44:20,880 Both book and film peddled one enduring and dangerous 690 00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:23,560 lost cause misrepresentation - 691 00:44:23,560 --> 00:44:28,040 that the slaves in the old South were cheerful, contented 692 00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:30,560 and faithful to their owners. 693 00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:34,280 Mammy is a kind-hearted, matriarchal figure, 694 00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:36,480 just like one of the family. 695 00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:38,760 Ms Scarlet! Where are you going without your shawl, 696 00:44:38,760 --> 00:44:40,520 and the night air fixing to set in? 697 00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:42,920 And how come you didn't ask them gentleman to stay... 698 00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:46,200 But the fact remains that Mammy was enslaved. 699 00:44:47,720 --> 00:44:52,720 There's no escaping it, Gone With The Wind is a romanticised version 700 00:44:53,480 --> 00:44:56,000 of a dark period of history. 701 00:44:56,000 --> 00:45:00,560 I'm always one for dressing up, but when you bear that in mind, 702 00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:03,640 I don't feel entirely comfortable dressed like this. 703 00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:11,280 The film may have tried to prettify the past, 704 00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:13,200 but with the character of Mammy, 705 00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:17,760 there was no escaping the barefaced racism of the present. 706 00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:20,320 The role was played by Hattie McDaniel. 707 00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:24,000 She was herself the daughter of enslaved African Americans 708 00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:26,960 and she was recognised for the part with an Oscar. 709 00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:29,400 The first black actor to get one. 710 00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,840 But, when it came to the film's fancy premiere, just down the road 711 00:45:32,840 --> 00:45:35,560 in Atlanta, there were segregation laws in place 712 00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:39,160 that prevented black and white people from sitting down together. 713 00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:42,040 So Hattie wasn't invited. 714 00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:45,760 The producers thought about it, decided it would be awkward, 715 00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:47,720 and asked her to stay away. 716 00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:57,400 A children's choir, dressed as plantation workers, 717 00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:00,200 had been booked to perform that evening. 718 00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:04,840 And one of the choir boys was a ten-year-old 719 00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:06,800 called Martin Luther King. 720 00:46:19,720 --> 00:46:22,920 24 years later, a growing Civil Rights movement 721 00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:25,600 was campaigning for change. 722 00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:29,760 In 1963, a massive march on Washington was planned. 723 00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:36,960 By this time, the choir boy had grown up. 724 00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:40,080 He was now a Baptist minister and activist, 725 00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:44,640 and the march was going to be addressed by Dr Martin Luther King. 726 00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:49,480 Right here, black voices were creating a new version of history. 727 00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:59,600 # We shall not 728 00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:01,880 # We shall not we shall not be moved. # 729 00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:06,920 August 28, 1963, 100 years after Lincoln's Emancipation proclamation, 730 00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:12,640 more than 200,000 people gathered at the Lincoln memorial 731 00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:15,480 to challenge the legacy of the Civil War. 732 00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:21,400 The nation was celebrating 100 years since the Emancipation proclamation 733 00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,640 and civil rights organisations knew this was a time to think 734 00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:27,960 about how far we haven't come as a nation. 735 00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:32,960 There's something really powerful about a mass of people facing 736 00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:36,960 Abraham Lincoln, who is considered one of the greatest presidents 737 00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:39,600 outside of the founding era, 738 00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:44,280 to challenge the idea of inequality among the citizenry and what does 739 00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:48,040 it mean to have masses of people looking at this symbol, 740 00:47:48,040 --> 00:47:52,400 and asking for the nation to finally deliver on its promises? 741 00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:56,680 The phrase that people remember from this speech is, 742 00:47:56,680 --> 00:47:58,880 "I have a dream," but there's another phrase 743 00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:01,360 that particularly interests you, isn't there? 744 00:48:01,360 --> 00:48:04,280 Yes, it is the idea of the promissory note. 745 00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:07,200 When King opens his speech, he talks about the fact 746 00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:10,720 that African Americans have essentially been written 747 00:48:10,720 --> 00:48:14,520 a bad cheque, and that the cheque was first written by Lincoln 748 00:48:14,520 --> 00:48:16,960 and his promises of emancipation, 749 00:48:16,960 --> 00:48:21,320 and the country was unable to fulfil the promise of that note. 750 00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:24,680 King is really making critical the point of the march, 751 00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:27,800 that it's not just about the declaration of freedom, 752 00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:31,520 but that there are economic responsibilities, economic goals 753 00:48:31,520 --> 00:48:34,400 that the march also was advocating for. 754 00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:37,600 Jobs, better schools, the right to vote, 755 00:48:37,600 --> 00:48:41,600 King is really showing us his most revolutionary 756 00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:45,600 and his most expansive vision of what Civil Rights actually meant. 757 00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:54,880 The story had been that Lincoln had healed the wounds of the battle 758 00:48:54,880 --> 00:48:58,280 between the North and the south, but King was saying, 759 00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:01,840 no, there's more to the story than that, what's not being healed 760 00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:04,720 are the wounds left by slavery. 761 00:49:04,720 --> 00:49:08,080 He was using history, he was using all of this to put 762 00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:10,280 Civil Rights onto the agenda. 763 00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:18,280 I think this march will go down as one of the greatest, 764 00:49:18,440 --> 00:49:23,440 if not the greatest, demonstrations for freedom and human dignity 765 00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:26,320 ever held in the United States. 766 00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:29,400 It was powerful. 767 00:49:29,400 --> 00:49:34,440 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended racial discrimination at work 768 00:49:35,160 --> 00:49:38,520 and prohibited segregation in public spaces. 769 00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:42,640 The divisive legacy of slavery and the Civil War was finally 770 00:49:42,640 --> 00:49:45,560 beginning to be confronted. 771 00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:49,960 Another of the resonant phrases from King's epic speech was, 772 00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:54,320 "Let freedom ring from the stone mountain of Georgia." 773 00:49:54,320 --> 00:49:58,040 By that he was trying to bury the memory of the Klan, 774 00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:03,040 but, in fact, the echoes of the Lost Cause would continue to resonate 775 00:50:03,080 --> 00:50:04,680 throughout the country. 776 00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:10,080 In 1972, a huge Civil War memorial was completed 777 00:50:10,080 --> 00:50:14,040 on the side of stone mountain. 778 00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:16,840 Three Confederate leaders were carved into the rock, 779 00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:21,360 Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson. 780 00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:26,440 As recently as August, 2017, a member of the Ku Klux Klan 781 00:50:27,240 --> 00:50:32,240 sought permission to burn another cross at Stone mountain. 782 00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:34,680 The application was turned down. 783 00:50:49,720 --> 00:50:53,880 150 years after the end of the Civil War there are hundreds 784 00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:57,320 of Confederate memorials across the South. 785 00:50:57,320 --> 00:50:59,760 One of them is the centrepiece of a little park 786 00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:02,480 in Charlottesville, Virginia. 787 00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:07,440 But some don't want to celebrate what this statue stands for. 788 00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:12,480 Mario, what is the story of your relationship to this park? 789 00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:16,080 This is the park where my wife and I got married, 790 00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:18,520 roughly eight years ago. 791 00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:22,440 And what did your father say to you at the wedding? 792 00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:27,440 My dad, he told the photographer he did not want that statue 793 00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:31,680 in our wedding pictures. 794 00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:34,440 Can you remember what he said about the statue? 795 00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:39,400 You know, it represented the oppression of the African-American 796 00:51:39,720 --> 00:51:44,640 people by individuals like Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson, etc. 797 00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:48,960 And your father, he is from Georgia, is he? Yes, ma'am. 798 00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:54,000 And so that statue to him, it had real horrible meaning. It does. 799 00:51:54,600 --> 00:51:56,000 It does. 800 00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:59,080 I'm sorry that the American Civil War turned up to your wedding. 801 00:51:59,080 --> 00:52:01,240 Yeah. Unreal. 802 00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:09,800 Under mounting pressure, in February, 2017, 803 00:52:09,800 --> 00:52:12,760 the City Council of Charlottesville voted to change the name 804 00:52:12,760 --> 00:52:14,080 of Lee Park. 805 00:52:15,640 --> 00:52:19,400 Then they said they wanted to remove Lee's statue. 806 00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:21,200 Many were against this. 807 00:52:24,600 --> 00:52:28,360 Jock, what's the case for keeping the statue of General Lee, 808 00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:29,920 just as it is? 809 00:52:29,920 --> 00:52:33,800 Well, it is a magnificent piece of art, it represents our culture 810 00:52:33,800 --> 00:52:36,640 and our history and it is a good talking point for talking 811 00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:39,000 about all the things that happened during the Civil War, 812 00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:40,960 and after the Civil War. 813 00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:45,640 If you can imagine the park without it, what's left to talk about? 814 00:52:45,640 --> 00:52:47,800 One of the complaints about the statue is that it 815 00:52:47,800 --> 00:52:50,520 celebrates just one side, and the other side needs 816 00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:52,840 to get its own chance to speak. 817 00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:55,880 I would agree completely with putting more signs around it, 818 00:52:55,880 --> 00:52:59,280 or using other educational materials to tell both sides of the story. 819 00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:01,680 The problem is that those who want to remove the monument 820 00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:03,800 don't want to tell both sides of the story. 821 00:53:03,800 --> 00:53:06,080 They want to, as they put it, change the narrative, 822 00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:08,120 so it is just one side of the story. 823 00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:11,440 They have a view of the matter that the Confederates and Lee 824 00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:14,800 were just evil people, and we shouldn't have any statues of them. 825 00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:17,200 I am afraid I disagree with that. 826 00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:22,400 There is a kind of modern-day Civil War stand-off. 827 00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:26,840 The name that was chosen for the park was Emancipation Park. 828 00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:31,880 But standing right in the middle of it was the statue of General Lee. 829 00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:34,320 It was like he was still in the heat of battle. 830 00:53:34,320 --> 00:53:37,600 This is a really strange moment when two different versions 831 00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:39,320 of history were colliding. 832 00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:42,480 There is the unionist story, Emancipation Park, 833 00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:46,000 and the Confederate story, General Lee. 834 00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:48,000 And then things turned ugly. 835 00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:56,840 On the 11th of August, 2017, an organisation 836 00:53:56,840 --> 00:54:01,560 called Unite The Right gathered in Charlottesville for a rally. 837 00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:05,400 Hundreds of white supremacists marched to protest 838 00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:10,400 against the removal of General Lee's statue in Emancipation Park. 839 00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:14,200 On the other side, Civil Rights protesters mobilised. 840 00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:20,640 You will not replace us! 841 00:54:23,080 --> 00:54:26,320 There were Confederate flags everywhere and people were shouting, 842 00:54:26,320 --> 00:54:30,480 "Blood and soil" and, "You will not replace us!" 843 00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:36,880 The past was at the heart of this very 21st-century conflict. 844 00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:41,160 The organiser of the Unite The Right rally said that they were doing 845 00:54:41,160 --> 00:54:43,840 it to stand up for our history. 846 00:54:43,840 --> 00:54:48,560 You will not replace us! 847 00:54:48,560 --> 00:54:52,240 But the history the statue represented has hidden layers. 848 00:54:52,240 --> 00:54:55,560 Well, the statue is very interesting, in that 849 00:54:55,560 --> 00:55:00,520 though Lee was a Confederate general who lived in the 19th century, 850 00:55:00,640 --> 00:55:05,680 it wasn't commissioned until 1917 and actually erected in 1924. 851 00:55:05,800 --> 00:55:10,240 And it was erected during a time of heightened racial violence 852 00:55:10,240 --> 00:55:13,280 against African Americans, particularly the lynchings. 853 00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:16,120 And it is part of that moment in history as well as the Civil War. 854 00:55:16,120 --> 00:55:20,320 Yes, it is. And, make no mistake, that these monuments, 855 00:55:20,320 --> 00:55:23,960 these figures were meant to, in some way, both directly 856 00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:26,240 and indirectly, instil fear. 857 00:55:33,320 --> 00:55:36,520 The confrontation continued into the 12th of August. 858 00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:45,640 Just like the Blind Boys of Alabama, look at them. 859 00:55:45,640 --> 00:55:49,800 That day, one of the supporters of Unite The Right drove his car 860 00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:52,560 into a crowd of counter protesters. 861 00:55:52,560 --> 00:55:57,080 33 people were injured, and a Civil Rights activist, 862 00:55:57,080 --> 00:55:59,160 Heather Heyer, was killed. 863 00:56:06,280 --> 00:56:10,720 SHOUTING INCOMPREHENSIBLY 864 00:56:17,080 --> 00:56:21,760 Not too far from where we are, perhaps a 30 second walk, 865 00:56:21,760 --> 00:56:25,680 the violent clashes claimed the life of one of the counter protesters, 866 00:56:25,680 --> 00:56:30,640 Heather Heyer, and it's still shakes the city of Charlottesville, 867 00:56:30,720 --> 00:56:33,680 the University of Virginia community, to its core. 868 00:56:33,680 --> 00:56:36,800 It seems to me that the woman who was killed, Heather Heyer, 869 00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:40,320 the counter protester, in a way she was a victim 870 00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:45,320 of the Civil War. Is that fair? I think so. And perhaps a victim 871 00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:49,160 of a new Civil War, one that is re-emerging, 872 00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:53,680 and one that did not really conclude in the middle of the 19th century. 873 00:56:53,680 --> 00:56:57,200 We are still, in many ways, fighting similar battles 874 00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:02,120 about what it means to be American, about what it means to be white, 875 00:57:02,120 --> 00:57:05,960 or perhaps black Americans, and what it means to have 876 00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:09,200 this shared history, in a really complex way. 877 00:57:12,080 --> 00:57:16,280 In the 1850s, it was North versus South. 878 00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:18,720 Black America didn't have a voice. 879 00:57:18,720 --> 00:57:23,760 Now it does, and the new fault lines are just as dangerous and violent. 880 00:57:24,320 --> 00:57:26,120 History is never fixed, 881 00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:29,560 it's a cultural and political battle ground. 882 00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:35,120 And national mythologies are usually a combination of conflicting 883 00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:40,120 versions, full of distortions, legends, myths and lies. 884 00:57:44,040 --> 00:57:48,240 Abraham Lincoln set up a story about the Civil War that promised 885 00:57:48,240 --> 00:57:53,080 a happy ending of unity, freedom and equality. 886 00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:56,520 That's the message of the Lincoln memorial. 887 00:57:56,520 --> 00:57:59,640 It's set in stone. 888 00:57:59,640 --> 00:58:01,920 But, perhaps, that message of permanence 889 00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:03,840 is the biggest fib of all. 890 00:58:11,520 --> 00:58:13,400 Next time... 891 00:58:13,400 --> 00:58:14,840 Post-war supremacy. 892 00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:16,240 We have liftoff. 893 00:58:16,240 --> 00:58:17,840 Liftoff has happened, it has gone. 894 00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:21,600 And the fibs lurking beneath the surface of the American dream. 895 00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:23,040 Witch-hunts. 896 00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:26,000 Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? 897 00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:27,600 What's that? What's that? 898 00:58:27,600 --> 00:58:29,360 UFOs. 899 00:58:29,360 --> 00:58:30,800 And atomic tourism.