“Valley of the Shadow of Death — 1864” and “Most Hallowed Ground — 1864,” episodes six and seven of Ken Burns’s THE CIVIL WAR.

“Valley of the Shadow of Death — 1864”--Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee are pitted against each other in an extraordinary series of battles from the wilderness to Petersburg in Virginia. With Grant and Lee finally deadlocked at Petersburg, we move to the ghastly hospitals in both the North and South, and follow Sherman’s Atlanta campaign through the mountains of northern Georgia. As the horrendous casualty lists increases, Abraham Lincoln’s chance for re-election begins to dim and with them, the possibility of Union victory. Episode six of nine.

“Most Hallowed Ground — 1864”--The presidential campaign of 1864 sets Abraham Lincoln against his old commanding general, George McClellan. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of the Union itself. Opinion in the North has turned strongly against Lincoln and the war, but 11th-hour Union victories at Mobile Bay, Atlanta and the Shenandoah Valley tilt the election to Lincoln, and the Confederacy’s last hope for independence dies. In an ironic twist, Robert E. Lee’s Arlington mansion is turned into a Union military hospital and the estate becomes Arlington National Cemetery — the Union’s most hallowed ground. Episode seven of nine.