The War in Between

The War in Between In 1990, Congress set up a commission to study every major fight of the Civil War — three hundred eighty-four fields in all — and rank each one by how much it actually weighed on the war. Class A. Class B. You already know most of those: Gettysburg, Antietam, Vicksburg. The War in Between stays entirely in Class C: real fights, real ground, almost none of it known outside the county it happened in. A Union general who broke his own standing orders and missed an entire brigade hiding in the trees three days before Bull Run. A sitting governor who personally commanded troops in a battle — the only time in American history that's happened. A herd of wild horses, mistaken in the dark for enemy cavalry, on a beach in Florida. Episodes run in strict order, one year at a time, coast to coast — Virginia one week, Missouri or Kansas the next — because the war didn't happen in one place at a time, and neither does this show. If you already know the big campaigns, this is the thread that ties them together: the days you skipped on your way to the days everyone else knows by heart. Every episode ends the same way. Know this ground.