“War Is All Hell — 1865” and “The Better Angels of Our Nature — 1865,” the conclusion (episodes eight and nine) of Ken Burns’s THE CIVIL WAR.

“War Is All Hell — 1865”--William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea brings war to the heart of Georgia and the Carolinas and spells the end of the Confederacy. Following Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration, Petersburg and Richmond finally fall to Ulysses S. Grant’s army. Robert E. Lee’s tattered Army of Northern Virginia flees westward towards Appomattox, where the surrender of Lee to Grant takes place. Meanwhile, John Wilkes Booth begins to dream of vengeance for the South. 

“The Better Angels of Our Nature — 1865”--On April 14, five days after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Abraham Lincoln is assassinated. Lincoln is buried, John Wilkes Booth is captured and the war finally comes to a close. The series ends by considering the consequences and meaning of a war that transformed the country from a collection of states to the nation it is today.