Together with the Renaissance Center, NPT joins nation in commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War; First Documentary airs January 3
From the NPT Pressroom:
“Shall it be peace, or sword?” When Abraham Lincoln pondered how to conclude his first inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1861, it was these words he considered. He was struggling with how to make the nation whole again – seven states had already seceded from the union. While Lincoln ultimately chose less inflammatory language, the nation chose sword. Secession tore the country apart, and with it, states, communities and families. Nowhere was the debate more heated than in Tennessee, where some were willing to lay down their lives for what they saw as a threat to their way of life, while others were willing to die to preserve the Union they loved. The Civil War is figuratively referred to as a conflict of brother against brother. In Tennessee, it was a cold, hard fact.
In 2011, the nation marks the 150th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War. To commemorate the historic event, Nashville Public Television (NPT) and the Renaissance Center present Tennessee Civil War 150, a new series of documentaries delving into life in Tennessee during the war. The first episode, “Secession,” premiering on Monday, January 3, 2011 at 8:00 p.m. and airing numerous times through the month of January, explores why many Tennesseans chose to join the Confederate States of America and fight a new war for their independence.
“NPT joins many organizations in Tennessee commemorating the sesquicentennial of the war,” says Beth Curley, president and CEO of NPT. “Throughout the state, and especially here in Middle Tennessee, there are markers and reminders of the horror and heroism of those dark days in our nation’s history. As an educational resource, we feel that it’s our mission to preserve that history, and provide context for viewers, now and for generations to come.”
“Secession,” produced by NPT’s Ed Jones (Beautiful Tennessee: Parks & Preservation) and narrated by former NBC and MNBC news anchor John Seigenthaler, Jr., covers Tennessee’s internal struggle, including how the geographic and cultural divisions throughout the state determined loyalty to the Union or the Confederacy.
Read the Complete Press Release on the NPT Pressroom.
9 Comments
Is there any way to watch this online? Or buy a copy? I don’t have cable.
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for checking in. Right now, we’re still working out the details on how we might make this available outside the broadcast. But I’m curious about your not having cable. You don’t need cable to see it. It’s available for free over-the-air. Be sure to check our schedule online (http://www.wnpt.org/schedule/new/) for the all the rebroadcasts, including this Thursday, 1/6 at 9:30 p.m. and Monday 1/10 at 9:30.
There are also some bonus clips at http://www.wnpt.org/productions/civilwar/secession/watch.html.
Thanks!
I was moving and didn’t have cable at the time. I live in Chattanooga, and I was thinking that we get NPT from time to time but not sure. If I can pick it up on cable, then maybe I can catch the Monday rebroadcast. If not, maybe it will pop up online or something. Thanks for the information!
I live in W TN and can not view NPT. Will the Civil War in TN series be available for purchase on DVD?
Hi Mike,
There are no immediate plans, but we’ll definitely be making it available in the near future. Thanks for asking!
I was disappointed not to see any mention of the music in the closing credits. How can I find out who played the haunting trumpet piece at the begining and the violin piece at the end? I hope they were local musicians? Thanks.
Hi Katherine. Thanks for watching. Glad you enjoyed the music. While we always prefer to use local musicians to score our docs, as we’ve done with our Next Door Neighbors and Children’s Health Crisis series, budgetary constraints often call for the use of royalty-free library music, which we used in this doc. But … stay tuned in the future for our Music of the Civil War episode, when we plan to use local musicians to perform songs from the period. Thanks again!
I am an East Tennessean living in Florida and would love to see this series. So, I too would like to register my support for providing access via the internet.
I am very interested in this series as I have been teaching American Heritage to groups of Boy Scouts for several years now and Just purchased the Shiloh Reenactment DVD and would love to follow it up with several other documentary of the same era with in Tennessee as the troops that I Work with are from west Tennessee and are interested in the civil war in relation to Tennessee and Mississippi. When will this be available as the last correspondence is close to a year and a half ago.