Ken Burns's epic documentary brings to life America's most destructive -- and defining -- conflict.

THE CIVIL WAR, the award-winning film produced and directed by Ken Burns, will be rebroadcast over five consecutive nights in September 2015. The broadcast, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of the series’ initial broadcast in September 1990, will present for the first time a newly restored high-definition version. This is also the first time the film will be seen with the same fidelity and framing as the negative that Burns and his co-cinematographers Allen Moore and Buddy Squires shot more than 25 years ago.

The fourth program look at the years 1846 to 1865. The two wars America fought in this period could not have been more different. The Mexican American War of 1846 was a brief, almost light-hearted campaign that ended quickly and brought vast new territory to the nation. Fifteen years later, the ultimate pain of war fell directly upon the country for the first time. These were the darkest years, militarily, for the Republic, a time when Americans turned new, more lethal, weapons on each other in the Civil War.