The American Civil War

Documentary, History, War

David McCullough (Pres/Narr)
Ken Burns (Director)
Betsy Apple
Hoyt Axton
Ed Bearss	Himself
Harriet Beecher Stowe	Herself
Philip Bosco	Horace Greeley
Colleen Dewhurst	Dorothea Dix
Dorothy Dix	Herself
Frederick Douglass	Himself
Ralph Waldo Emerson	Himself
Barbara J. Fields	Herself
Laurence Fishburne
Horton Foote	Jefferson Davis
Shelby Foote	Himself
Morgan Freeman	Frederick Douglass, John Boston, etc
Julie Harris	Mary Chesnut
Julia Ward Howe	Herself
Jeremy Irons	Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clérel de Tocqueville
Derek Jacobi
Garrison Keillor	Walt Whitman
Joe Mattys	Additional Voices

Director	Ken Burns
Producer	Ken Burns; Ric Burns
Writer	Ken Burns; Ric Burns

The most successful public-television miniseries in American history, the 11-hour American Civil War defined what has since become known as the "Ken Burns approach"--voice-over narrators reading letters and documents dramatically and stating the writer's name at their conclusion, fresh live footage of places juxtaposed with still images (photographs, paintings, maps, prints), anecdotal interviews, and romantic musical scores taken from the era he depicts.

The American Civil War uses all of these devices to evoke atmosphere and resurrect an event that many knew only from stale history books. While Burns is a historian, a researcher, and a documentarian, he's above all a gifted storyteller, and it's his narrative powers that give this chronicle its beauty, overwhelming emotion, and devastating horror. Using the words of old letters, eloquently read by a variety of celebrities, the stories of historians like Shelby Foote and rare, stained photos, Burns allows us not only to learn and understand history, but also to feel and experience it. --Dave McCoy