Prologue
On the twelfth of April, 1861
Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor
Thus beginning the bloodiest conflict in American History
620,000 dead, more than all other American wars combined
The Civil War remains this nation's single most defining experience
Ultimately giving new meaning to the word freedom
Walt Whitman, a young newspaperman
Destined to become America's greatest poet wrote
"Future years will never know the seething hell
And the black infernal background of this war
And it is best they should not
The real war will never get in the books"