Secession would not only tear our nation apart, but also its states, communities, even families. Nowhere was the debate more heated than Tennessee. Some were willing to lay down their lives for what they saw as a threat to their way of life, while others were equally willing to die to preserve the Union they loved. The Civil War is figuratively referred to as a conflict of brother against brother. In Tennessee, it was a cold, hard fact.

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From pride and patriotism to death and defeat, Civil War Songs and Stories describes how music was as much a part of Army life as a musket. The narrative explains how both sides were accompanied by professional regimental brass bands mustered to preserve morale. The music inspired soldiers and consoled them. It brought memories from home and gave hope to what would soon seem to be hopeless circumstances.

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The Civil War turned the home front into the frontline for many women in the Confederacy. As husbands departed, wives and daughters had to shoulder the full burden of daily life. Hardship and hunger forced changes in long held cultural and societal beliefs, breaking boundaries confining most women, while breaking chains for others.

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It took a two day battle with a casualty list of over 23,000 to give America a reality check on the shocking cost of its Civil War. This bloody clash near the small Shiloh church altered the war… and lives. Ann Wallace traveled hundreds of miles for a reunion with her soldier husband – only to end up sitting at his deathbed. The promising career of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was cut short by a supposedly ‘minor’ wound. Union Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman narrowly turned defeat into a victory that set them on their pathway as military legends. Such stories told in this documentary are just a few of the thousands that were a part of a brutal battle for prized Confederate railroad crossings in nearby Corinth, Mississippi.

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The vast majority of Americans in the first half of the 19th Century were highly religious and overwhelmingly Christian. They believed America was destined for greatness in part because of our belief in God. We were a favored people. This conviction was particularly strong in the heavily protestant South. The belief among Southerners that they were ordained for greatness by God was put to the ultimate test by the war. In a nation full of professing religious believers, could faith stand the test of this war? The Civil War was not only a crisis of country and conscience, but also a crisis of faith.

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The Civil War began as a means of preserving the Union. But to nearly four million African Americans, it held a much more personal promise. As Northern armies swept south, self-emancipated slaves sought refuge behind Union lines. Determined to claim basic human rights, former slaves turned soldiers helped defeat their oppressors. But the road to freedom would be a rocky one. Despite continued oppression and violence, African Americans worked tirelessly to rebuild families torn apart by slavery, to educate themselves, and to claim their rightful place as American Citizens. Through in-depth interviews with Civil War scholars, historical reenactments, and moving songs of faith and hope that made life bearable, Looking Over Jordan: African Americans and the War highlights the African American experience in Tennessee during and after the war.

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Explore how transportation by water and steel brought great prosperity to the state just before the Civil War, only to give the invading Union Army a highway directly into the Deep South, eventually helping force the Confederacy to its knees.

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In 1796, Joseph Washington, a distant relative of our first president, purchased sixty acres in Middle Tennessee for tobacco farming. Eventually covering 13,000 acres, Wessyngton Plantation would thrive off the blood, sweat and tears of hundreds of African Americans. Unlike other plantations only two slaves were ever sold from Wessyngton, resulting in several generations of enslaved family members living and laboring together.

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After three years of war, with depleting manpower and resources, and a series of stinging defeats, the fate of the Confederacy seemed certain. The South had to gamble, and take costly risks... and Tennessee would take center stage in that effort. Desperate Days: Last Hope of the Confederacy tells this remarkable story through the words and experiences of men, women, and children who shaped the events of the Civil War in Tennessee, or more often just tried to survive.

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The end of the Civil War was not the end of hostilities between North and South. Years of fighting over how to reunite the divided country and what role millions of newly freed African Americans would play still lay ahead. Reconstruction: A Moment In The Sun depicts Tennessee's tumultuous Reconstruction era and its riveting tale of revenge, domestic terror, and broken promises.

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