The Civil War (miniseries)

• 1. Genesis And Production

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  Mathew Brady's photographs inspired Ken Burns to create a nine-episode documentary spanning more than ten hours. The production team gathered some 16,000 contemporary photographs and paintings for the project. Five years of development preceded the first broadcast on PBS from September 23 to 27, 1990. Funding came from General Motors, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation also provided financial support. Ric Burns co-produced the series while Geoffrey C. Ward wrote the script alongside him. Paul Barnes edited the footage with cinematography handled by Buddy Squires. A large cast of actors voiced correspondence and memoirs throughout the run. Daisy Turner appeared as a 104-year-old daughter of an ex-slave whose poetry features prominently in the final cut. She died in February 1988 before the series aired.

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• 2. Narrative Structure And Voices

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  Actors read letters from Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Walt Whitman, Stonewall Jackson, and Frederick Douglass. Mary Boykin Chesnut, Samuel R. Watkins, Elisha Hunt Rhodes, and George Templeton Strong contributed diary entries. Military historian Ed Bearss and Columbia University professor Barbara J. Fields offered expert commentary. Shelby Foote, Stephen Oates, William Safire, James W. Symington, and poet Robert Penn Warren appeared on screen. Shelby Foote received more screen time than any other commentator despite being a journalist rather than a trained historian. The series followed a fairly consistent chronological order of history across its episodes. Each episode contained numerous chapters or vignettes with specific battles or topics as primary themes. Burns combined these images with modern cinematography to create a unique visual style later termed the Ken Burns effect. The slow zooming and panning across still images became a signature technique for future documentaries.

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• 3. Musical Identity And Soundtrack

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  Jay Ungar composed Ashokan Farewell in 1982 after annual Ashokan Music & Dance Camps ended. He described it as coming out of a sense of loss and longing. The instrumental piece appears twenty-five times during the film yet is the only modern music heard throughout. It became the first ever single release for the Elektra Nonesuch label which released the series soundtrack album. People frequently and erroneously believe it was a Civil War song due to its association with the documentary. Ungar performed this song along with his band Fiddle Fever and pianist Jacqueline Schwab. Schwab's piano arrangements changed the mood of century-old marching tunes into heart-warming lyrical melodies. A version of the old spiritual We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder appeared a cappella by Bernice Johnson Reagon and several other female voices. The song appears on Reagon's album River of Life. Critics praised her exceptional arranging skills that transformed rousing songs like Bonnie Blue Flag or Battle Cry of Freedom into lamentations contemporary audiences could identify with.

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• 4. Broadcast Impact And Viewership

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  More than 39 million viewers tuned in to at least one episode of the miniseries. Viewership averaged more than 14 million viewers each evening making it the most watched program ever to air on PBS. The series sparked a major renewal of interest in the Civil War after it had receded since its 1960s centennial. Before the series, public historical consciousness about the conflict had faded significantly. Following the broadcast there was a sharp upturn in popular books and other works about the Civil War. It served as the main source of knowledge about the war for many Americans. Ward published a companion book titled The Civil War: An Illustrated History shortly after the series aired. The film was rebroadcast in June 1994 as a lead-up to Burns's next series Baseball. This initial run established the documentary as a cultural phenomenon beyond typical educational programming.

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• 5. Awards And Critical Acclaim

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  The series received more than forty major film and television awards including two Emmy Awards and two Grammy Awards. Honors included the Producer of Year Award from the Producers Guild of America and the People's Choice Award. Critics awarded it the Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, D.W. Griffith Award, and the US$50,000 Lincoln Prize among dozens of others. Robert Brent Toplin wrote Ken Burns's The Civil War: Historians Respond in 1996 which included essays from critical academic historians. These essays argued that topics of interest were not covered in enough detail by the production team. Responses came from Ken Burns and others involved in the series' production regarding these criticisms. The widespread acclaim demonstrated how skillfully the series depicted and retold Civil War events. Drawing huge numbers of viewers into a new awareness of historical importance marked its reception. The sheer volume of awards reflected both artistic achievement and public engagement with the subject matter.

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• 6. Historiographical Controversies

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  Some critics believe the series provides a weak or faulty explanation of the causes of the war. Academic historians concur that the war was fought to preserve slavery yet Burns presented Shelby Foote's framing as a failure to compromise. The fact that Burns himself was not a historian nor were most of his production team led to accusations of insufficient historical overview. That most of them were also white men has been fingered for a lack of coverage of women, blacks, or Reconstruction. The series has been criticized for propagating the Lost Cause of the Confederacy ideology. Because the documentary is so influential some critics fear it has perpetuated this discredited view. Critics felt the focus on battles came at the detriment of other areas like the subsequent racially contentious Reconstruction era. The exclusion of Reconstruction events remains a significant point of contention among scholars today.

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• 7. Digital Restoration And Legacy

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  The entire series was digitally remastered for re-release on the 17th of September 2002 in VHS and DVD by PBS Home Video and Warner Home Video. A Spirit DataCine transferred and remastered the film into improved fullscreen standard-definition digital video. Paul Barnes commented that they eliminated dust and dirt embedded into 16mm film when printed during original production. Technology to color correct print and transfer a film to video had vastly improved especially in digital computer technology. For the 150th anniversary of the end of the war and the 25th anniversary of the series PBS remastered the series in high definition. This work involved creating a new 4K ultra-high-definition digital master from the film's original camera negatives. It aired on PBS from September 7 to 11, 2015 with Blu-ray and DVD editions released on the 13th of October 2015. The George Eastman House preserved the original 16mm negatives where this restoration took place.

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