Burns’ Civil War

While the Civil War has always featured prominently in American history, and is therefore prescient in the minds of Americans, Ken Burns’ documentary about the Civil War undoubtedly created a resurgence of interest in the Civil War upon its first airing in September of 1990.

The interest in Burns’ The Civil War was keen; 40 million people tuned in to watch a documentary that, at eleven hours in length, certainly asked a lot of dedication from its viewers. The Civil War remains today one of the most-watched miniseries of all time, and the most-watched program ever aired on PBS.

But viewers, however, had only a sliver of the dedication that documentarian/historian Ken Burns brought to the project. The nine episodes that make up The Civil War used over 16,000 images, including photographs, paintings, and other media, from the Civil War era. A huge cast of actors, writers, and other public figures that included Sam Waterson, Studs Terkel, James Earl Jones, Kurt Vonnegut, Jeremy Irons and Jason Robards were employed to give voice to the “characters” portrayed in the documentary – those whose names would forever be associated with the Civil War, including Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and many others.

What would inspire a documentary film maker to undertake such a huge, almost overwhelming task as making a movie that encompasses the entire Civil War? On the PBS website, Burns attempts to explain, saying that he was inspired in part by reading Michael Shaara’s seminal Civil War book The Killer Angels. The process was, Burns notes, “‘emotional archaeology,’” trying to unearth the very heart of the American experience; listening to the ghosts and echoes of an almost inexpressibly wise past.”

It was also a grueling, time-consuming process to bring The Civil War to the screen. Burns wryly notes that making the film took longer than the actual war itself, and involved visiting more than 80 museums and libraries to gather the information and images that would be used to construct the film. In doing so, Burns created a film that relied as heavily on the recollections and photographs of heretofore “unknown” soldiers, soldiers who unlike Lee, Grant, Stonewall Jackson or William Tecumseh Sherman, had mostly been forgotten by time, their stories unheard. Burns’ allowed these men – and women – who served as valiantly, although anonymously, to have a voice in history.

The Civil War became a cultural phenomenon. The sepia-toned people and events of over a hundred years ago were a hot property. The film was discussed in schools, at the water cooler, in the home the way soap operas and ballgames usually were. In it’s wake came a flurry of television, film, and print media about the Civil War.

Burns reminded America that, in his own words, “the Civil War was the greatest event in American history – where paradoxically, in order to become one, we had to tear ourselves in two,” while creating a monumental piece of cinema and history that will continue to be watched and discussed for years to come.