so war begins in april of 1861 at fort sumpter. >> we see in the next image the bombardment of fort sumpter. so chisy and dbeauregard saw action at -- >> let me talk about fort sumpter for one second. so this furious bombing didn't take any lines inside the fort, but there was no way that they were going to recover or stay aloft, so chism demands the surrender of the fort after this day and a half long siege, and anderson accepts the terms. chism later writes in his recollections and those are in the historical society, too, that he thought that anderson should be court-martialed for surrendering without a fight. kind of a bullying recollection of this. i'm sorry to interrupt, but he did go on, of course. >> they supposedly led a successful calvary charge and first major engagement of the war. the confederates won, but there is a myth about this win. what is that? >> well, there are several. first of all, the union shouldn't have lost. they outnumbered the rebels, all of washington society turned out to watch this event with picnic baskets packed with lunch. but in the afternoon, the federa

. >> back to, was he wrong about anderson in fort sumpter, was there any hope of the union army relieving him if he held out? >> that's a really good question. so anderson was told by the lincoln administration that his fort would not be reinforced, it would be resupplied. he was running out of ammunition. he had no way to defend himself for much longer and the supply ships were turned back by the shellings, so he didn't get mortar. there's a great story about anderson, you know, he was allowed to leave. there were casualties because an area of the fort blew up during the flag lowering ceremony, so not during the shelling. he took the flag with him. he went on a boat, and went all the way back to new york. center of the universe even then, and he admitted that when he was on the ship to new york, he did not know whether he was going to be given a court martial or a parade. well, guess what, he was given a parade. his flag was draped over the equestrian statue of george washington that sits in union square park and 100,000 people came out. and then a few days later when the 7th regiment, n

and the 1st shot of course had been fired by the confederates at fort sumpter so that they were at the dresser in what people thought would be a short war and turned into the bloodiest in a very prolonged conflict. and very different from what we face today. and when lincoln. lifted. his corpus he did so under legal strictures when the congress was in recess and couldn't uphold it and he waited until they came back and then they approved it and so on there and what you were dealing with was in fact an insurrection and what was the insurrection against it was against democracy against accepting democracy and gans the very heart and constitution of united states of america and the question is. whether trump will engage in that sort of activity a kind of counter revolution against constitutional democracy as we go forward. part of that pathway will be his relationship with the media which. to be kind i would say is a bit stressed and i think i'd love to hear about lincoln's relationship with the media well lincoln had. deep and close relations with the media of his time and even before li

so, when the war started, when fort sumpter fell, the federal authorities wanted to secure the virginia side of the river opposite washington, d.c. and that meant alexandria to start. and he was a frequent guest of the white house. and playing with the lincoln boys on the roof of the white house, he noticed a huge confederate flag flying in alexandria. he could see it with a telescope. by the way, i've seen the remains of this flag. it was big. so, he decided to march across the bridge to the other side of the potomac as the union forces captured alexandria. he went to this hotel, marched up the stairs to the roof. he tore the flag down. he put it over his soldiers and descended the staircase. as he got midway, the proprietor of this hotel, who was named thomas -- his name was james jackson. he was a relative of the man who would soon become stonewall jackson a couple of months later at bull run. and jackson shot ellsworth dead and ellsworth's men shot jackson's men dead. so, there were two martyr. lincoln was devastated. he gave ellsworth a funeral on the east room of the white house.

i was just watching the history channel and somebody fired a cannonball into fort sumpter they're now on doing subliminal so tell me about your babies man you got 2 young girls tell me about your wife marie she guys have really i let me show trudeau in yeah we have a reality show on on usa network ms and mrs new episodes are coming in the fall it's basically about my entire family which is myself my wife marie's who is a former or still a w e superstar and as well as she's a former. women's champion and then we have 2 daughters a 2 year old and a 10 month old and he think that household is a no no we have more we have 2 dogs you 2 cats we have 2 moms in the house yes i have my mother and my mother in law living with us right now as we speak it is absolutely pandemonium all the time in this household. it's like the waltons meets noah's ark you got a paring of everything rather if the rains come you can float away and have your entire life in the household so yeah there i would i want to ask you missed seeing as you start i guess you gravitated towards the real world you must i went to

fort sumpter. grant joins the volunteer infantry in illinois. you write that a changeover comes grant. what was that change? >> when the civil war broke out, there was a shortage of officers. about a third of the army officers were from the south. most of them defected to the confederacy. there was a need for trained people. grant add all of that lure from west point stored in his mind. he had fought in the mexican war before the civil war. and so his efficiency and his military knowledge immediately come to the fore. and grant's rise gives new meaning to the term mediocre. four months after it, he's a brigadier general, 12 months later he's a major general. and by the end of the civil war, there are man who had been working as a clerk in his father's leather goods store in illinois back in 1860, that man was general and chief in the army with 1 million soldiers under his command, the largest military establishment in the country up until that time. >> he has some early victories that catches the eye of lincoln, is that right? >> absolutely. ver

the south goes back to exactly what it was before fort sumpter, before there was any conflict at all. that's a tough position. you have 4 million people who had been freed at this point. what do you do with them? there were people that realized that called for something but he said no. the constitution does not allow what you're trying -- what you're attempting to do. anything -- he was very much, he said, a proponent of the constitution. he saw himself as the guardin of t the constitution, but he had a cafeteria style approach to the constitution. things that he liked were constitutional. things that he didn't like were unconstitutional. the constitution clearly says that congress has the right to set rules for the governance and anything having to do with the district of columbia. when congress gives black people the right to vote, he vetoes it and says it's unconstitutional. that is in the constitution. this is not some kind of interpretation of it. so you get a sense of what constitutionalism means to him, if i like it, it's constitutional. if i don't, it's not. so he thought that

i was just watching the history channel and somebody fired a cannonball into fort sumpter there now and do an subliminal so tell me about your babies man you got 2 young girls tell me about your wife marie she guys have a really i let me show to. yeah we have a reality show on on usa network news and misses new episodes are coming in the fall it's basically about my entire family which is myself my wife marie sue is a former or still a w e superstar and as well as she's a former. women's champion and then we have 2 daughters a 2 year old and a 10 month old and he think that household is a no no we have more we have 2 dogs you 2 cats we have 2 moms in the house yes i have my mother and my mother in law living with us right now as we speak it is absolutely pandemonium all the time in this household. it's like the waltons meets noah's ark you've got a paring of everything rather if the rains come you can float away and have your entire life in the household so yeah there i would i want to ask you missed seeing as you start i guess you gravitated towards the real world you must a went to it