This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we return to our American stories.

Up next, a story about a consequential year and a consequential man. Here's the late historian

Charles Brasselin Flood to tell the story of 1864 and Abraham Lincoln. On that New Year's Day of

1864, the Civil War had been going on for 33 months on its way to being what is the bloodiest war in American history to date.

In November of 1864 there would be a presidential election that was going to be a referendum on the war.

In hindsight, it's easy to say that, of course, Lincoln was re-elected and the North won the war,

but there were an endless number of times during 1864 when it did not look that way.

Please remember that military success or failure was inextricably linked with what would be Lincoln's political success or failure.

Four days before the Baltimore Political Convention in early June that nominated Lincoln to run for a second term,

Ulysses S. Grant presided over a military disaster. His forces had been taking terrible casualties

as they moved south against Robert Lee through the battles of the wilderness and Spotsylvania.

Now he started one of the largest attacks of the war at a place in Virginia

called Cold Harbor. Grant had 108,000 men and threw them straight at Lee, whose 59,000

men were well entrenched. In the first hour, and some say even within the first 20 minutes,

7,000 of Grant's men were killed or wounded, with the Union attack repulsed and nothing gained.

But the bad news went on for many more weeks.

At one point, Grant had lost more than 40,000 men in 30 days,

and that figure grew to having lost 60,000 men in 45 days.

60,000 men dead and wounded to advance 60 miles. Also, during that time, Jubal

Early once again erupted from the Shenandoah Valley. He led a massive raid that brought a force

of 12,000 men right to the edge of Washington's fortifications, five miles from the White House.

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