Episode number 2 of Series “The Civil War”.
1,000,000 men are massing along a 1,600 km. front. Washington is a madhouse with hordes of opportunists jostling for advantage. General George McClellan slowly leads his huge Army of the Potomac up the Virginia Peninsula towards the Confederate capital of Richmond, but when he encounters only a tiny Confederate force he doesn’t fight, he halts and digs in. To the west, however, Ulysses S. Grant meets the South’s Albert S. Johnston in a battle called Shiloh. For two days 100,000 men slam viciously into each other. At the end the Union holds the field and 23,000 soldiers have fallen, the first of many huge losses on the battlefield.