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The tide turns against the Confederacy in the Summer of 1863
By the time the United States celebrated the Fourth of July in 1863, the Confederacy had suffered two stunning defeats on the battlefield in that fateful month. The Battle of Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg mark the turning point of the Civil War and serve as the focus for Episode 5 in the celebrated PBS documentary by Ken Burns. If you are familiar with Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Killer Angels" or the film "Gettysburg," then you will not be surprised that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is featured so prominently in this particular episode. Other notable sequences are devoted to the Negro troops who fought for the Union, contrasted with the race riots in the North following Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. By the end of this episode, November of that fateful year, the war has moved from Tennessee to Georgia and Lincoln is delivering his address at the dedication of the National Cemetary in Gettysburg. David McCullough's solid narration and Shelby Foote's unforgetable anecdotes continue to provide the defining voices of this documentary. The Civil War is brought alive through the use of hundreds of photographs and illustrations, textured sound effects, evocative music and the recognizable voices Jason Robards, Jr., Julie Harris and Sam Waterson. But the most memorable moments on this tape come from Daisy Turner, the 104-year-old daughter of a former slave reciting a poem about the death of a soldier. This is why I make a point of watching this documentary again each year.