Despite coming at a time before mankind had learned to resolve disputes without bloodshed, the outcome of the civil war, nevertheless, brought about an end to slavery and oppression (VOY: "The Q and the Grey"), though at a cost as it was described as "the four bloodiest years" of United States history.[1] (TOS: "The Savage Curtain")
GeneralUlysses S. Grant served as the commanding officer of the Union Armies during the Civil War, a position granted to him by President Abraham Lincoln, concurrently serving as the commander in chief, but who was assassinated shortly before the conclusion of the war. While generally described as a gentle man, Lincoln gave orders that sent "a hundred thousand men to their death at the hands of their brothers".[2] (TOS: "The Savage Curtain")
US President and Commander-in-Chief Abraham Lincoln
Confederate generals Lee(l) and Jackson
Union infantry attacking.
A Union Army encampment.
The Battles of Hampton Roads on the left, and Fort Hindman on the right.
During the war, the Union Army utilized observation balloons that were tethered at around six hundred feet high. (TOS: "The Savage Curtain")
The war also introduced technological innovations in the field of naval warfare, as both sides experimented with the novel ironclad warships, which resulted for the Confederacy in the CSS Virginia and for the Union side in, among others, the USS Monitor,[5] these two actually pitted against each other during the Battle of Hampton Roads. (TOS: "The Cage") Other Union ironclads were employed during the Battle of Fort Hindman. (TOS-R: "The Cage")
A century later, in 2254, the library computer of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, then commanded by CaptainChristopher Pike, was accessed by the Talosians when the ship was sent to Talos IV in response to a distress call. Unable to stop them from doing so, imagery the Talosians accessed included that from the Civil War, featuring, among others[6], President Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Battle of Fort Hindman. (TOS-R: "The Cage")
Two years later, Captain Kirk was more intimately reacquainted with the historical subject matter when the Excalbians confronted him with a facsimile recreation of his personal hero, Abraham Lincoln. Even though he knew this version of Lincoln not to be the actual one, he did receive him aboard Enterprise with full presidential honors, and it was during the subsequent discussions on, and with the recreation that the subject of the Civil War came up repeatedly. (TOS: "The Savage Curtain")
Thaddeus Riker (r) with his savior Quinn on the left
in 2373, Q chose to use the American Civil War as an illusionary metaphor for their own Q Civil War, so that Captain Janeway could comprehend the conflict that raged within the Continuum at the time. (VOY: "The Q and the Grey") The Q Civil War incidentally, was sparked by one of its members, Quinn, who had committed suicide the year previously to prove a philosophical point. In one of his life's many exploits, Quinn had participated in the actual American Civil War as an Union officer, in the process saving Thaddeus Riker's life by carrying the wounded officer from the battlefield during the Battle of Pine Mountain – and thus ensuring William Riker's existence and that of his son, named after Thaddeus. (VOY: "Death Wish")
↑While no total war casualty figures were ever mentioned in Star Trek, Lincoln's "bloodiest years" line in "The Savage Curtain" was by no means an exaggeration; the most commonly quoted fatalities figure in historical texts had until recently traditionally been an approximately 620,000 total (out of a then total population of a little under 31.5 million, excluding the Native-Americans living in the "wild", according to the 1860 census), which is increasingly believed to be on the conservative side by modern scholars as of late, since civilian (estimated at 50.000 free civilians and 80.000 slaves) and Native-American war fatalities in particular – almost exclusively concerning those suffered in the former Confederacy and the Far West respectively – have never been properly documented by either side, or even been accounted for in one way or another in the traditional estimate. This is on top of the fact that Confederate armed forces records are incomplete, most conspicuously those of the numerous local armed militias and irregular forces, much of which destroyed at war's end – or not having been documented at all, which became more of an issue in the latter half of the war due to the increasing chaos within the Confederacy. As a result, some modern studies have revised the total Civil War fatality rate upward from anywhere between 620.000 to as high as one million, with a newly derived 820-850.000 average war death toll gaining more and more academic acceptance. Still, even the traditional conservative figure on its own had until the 21st century already accounted for over half of all the war fatalities the Unites States had incurred by then in all its armed conflicts as a nation.
↑The "hundred thousand men" line refer to the casualties incurred by the Union Army during Grant's bloody drawn-out 1864-1865 campaign waged in Virginia against the Confederate Army of General Robert E. Lee, which however eventually led up to the conclusion of the war. Nonetheless, that one campaign alone accounted for nearly a third of all war fatalities incurred by the Union Army. Historians have estimated the Confederate losses during that campaign at two-thirds of that of the Union's, likewise accounting for a full third of all their war fatalities when adhering to the traditional total death toll number in both cases. Aside from the featured line, the episode had originally also a scene included delving much deeper in Lincoln's regrets and doubts he had while serving as Commander-in-Chief during the war, and in which the facsimile Lincoln stated, in the process also mentioning the Union General George B. McClellan, who was generally considered a failure by historians, "Either way, I'm too ordinary James. I'm surprised you've always thought so highly of me. The errors, the unforgivable errors I made. McClellan at first appeared to me a veritable Napoleon; Grant seemed a whiskey-befuddled barbarian...There were so many things I could have done to end the war earlier...to save so many lives, so much suffering..." The scene however, was cut from the episode as eventually aired. [1](X)
The actual historic photograph of Donner and Stegman
Both the backstory and photograph of Thaddius Riker were "borrowed" from the real life Union soldier who "portrayed" the character in the Star Trek episode, Lewis R. Stegman. Stegman, like Riker, commanded the 102nd New York Regiment that fought in the Atlanta Campaign under Sherman in 1864. The featured photograph also featured Riker's "savior" Quinn, whose performer's face was superimposed on that of the actual Union officer pictured in the image, Lieutenant Donner from Ohio.
↑In "Family", Wesley Crusher views a holographic recording that his deceased father made for him when he was a ten-week old infant. In a filmed, but unaired line from the script, Jack R. Crusher recounts with pride to Wesley that one of their ancestors fought and died at Bull Run on the side of the Confederate States, and which historically could have been either the First or the Second Battle of Bull Run, both Confederate victories and in the former Confederacy itself usually referred to as the "Battle(s) of Manassas". Included on the 2013 TNG Season 4 Blu-ray release, the line was featured in the deleted scene of the episode
↑An oral reference to the Monitor was also present in the above-mentioned "The Savage Curtain" deleted scene when Lincoln stressed the innovative nature of the vessel, "We thought our Monitor the most formidable vessel imaginable. An iron ship that floated on water! You can imagine my amazement at an iron ship that floats on air..." [2](X) Both historic vessels had Starfleet vessels named after them, the 23rd century USS Merrimac and 24th century USS Merrimac (Virginia's original name) and USS Monitor. (Star Trek Encyclopedia, 4th ed., vol. 2, p. 37)
↑For the remastered version of the episode, project supervisor Mike Okuda decided to entirely replace the original imagery sequence with a new one, mostly motivated by the wish to reflect developments after 1964, the year the pilot episode was produced. This also affected the historical imagery, and where the Civil War was concerned, it resulted in the portrait of Lee and Jackson now being left out, the original crude drawing of Lincoln being replaced by a bonafide photograph with two Lincoln related pictures added – including that of the reading of the Emancipation Declaration – , and the picture of the Battle of Hampton Roads being replaced by that of the Battle of Fort Hindman. [3] Memory Alpha considers both the original and the retconned versions as valid reference sources, hence the "among others" statement.
↑While the Civil War imagery seen in the resetting timestream and the Guardian of Forever were obviously taken from as of yet unidentified Hollywood productions, they were in their respective episodes meant as actual scenery as they took place at that moment in time, as indeed was the other historical imagery seen in both.
↑Though the battle itself was never actually mentioned, when Janeway speaks of "the fields at Gettysburg" in "Memorial", this is clearly intended as a reference to the engagement that took place there in July 1863.
