This account of the last days of the Civil War focuses on the capture and imprisonment of President Jefferson Davis.

"James Bulloch, a sea captain turned Confederate agent, arrived in Liverpool at a crucial moment during the U.S. Civil War: a Union blockade was preventing Southern cotton exports from reaching Britain, threatening to destroy what was left of the Confederate economy-unless Bulloch could secretly arrange for the construction of a fleet of warships to break the northern grip on the South. Shortly thereafter, Union operative Thomas Dudley, a pious Quaker...

When The Civil War, originally premiered in September 1990, the response was phenomenal and the series became a national viewing event. The film interweaves thousands of photographs and paintings with the words of those who lived through the war that shattered a union and shaped a nation: politicians, generals, common soldiers, slaves and free slaves, the famous and the forgotten, male and female.