[00:16.68]On the twelfth of April,
[00:19.58]Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor
[00:23.91]thus beginning the bloodiest conflict in American History --
[00:28.31]620,000 casulties -- more than all other American wars combined 62
[00:35.80]The Civil War remains this nation's single most defining experience
[00:40.52]ultimately giving new meaning to the word "Freedom"
[00:44.58]Walt Whitman, a young newspaperman
[00:47.84]destined to become America's greatest poet wrote:
[00:51.46]"Future years will never know the seething hell “
[00:53.78]and the black infernal background of this war --
[00:57.70]and it is best they should not--
[01:00.16]the real war will never get in the books."