Ken Burns' The Civil War: Paul Roebling, Sullivan Ballou, and Unsung Perfection

Sullivan Ballou and Paul Roebling

Edited 9/27/2023: I removed a stupid joke that originally ended this piece. Over the years, I've grown more comfortable with sincerity, and I no longer feel that undercutting this post with irony is necessary.

Ken Burns' documentary miniseries The Civil War came out in 1990 and almost never seems to get discussed as a work of art. It seems more like a classroom staple, a filmed textbook with scholarly analysis, primary sources, and a mostly objective recounting of events as they happened. But when you revisit The Civil War outside of the classroom, its artistic achievements stand out in ways a bored 8th grader would miss. The restraint it shows throughout its nine episodes makes the moments of true artistry sing even louder.

And the absolute pinnacle of The Civil War's brilliance as a piece of art comes early, right at the end of episode one, with a segment titled "Honorable Manhood." This is Paul Roebling's stunning reading of Sullivan Ballou's letter to his wife, Sarah, which he wrote shortly before his death at the First Battle of Bull Run.

Give it a watch. It stands on its own without the rest of the series.

Like much of The Civil War, Ballou's beautiful letter to his wife does not pretend that the problem of America has an easy answer. The letter is full of inner conflict; Ballou holds a deep belief in the righteousness of the Union's cause, yet he cannot help but feel guilt and sadness at leaving his home, where he felt true happiness. Underscoring the pain in Ballou's words is Ashokan Farewell, a song about "loss and longing." Rather than an image of Ballou, Burns shows us a series of pictures of soldiers with their wives, who -- given the body count of the Civil War -- were very likely to become widows like Sarah.

One of the reasons this letter has achieved such a degree of fame is that it comes from such an unknown soldier. Sullivan Ballou's death came early in the Civil War. The First Battle of Bull Run was the first battle to lead to mass casualties, and it was one of the earliest signs that the Confederacy was prepared to fight a long, violent war. Going into the battle, the Northern public expected an easy victory that would end this ridiculous secessionist charade. After the battle, the Northern public dreaded a Confederate attack on Washington, DC. (Take a look at this newspaper report on the battle and look at how the report changes from "the rout of the rebels is complete" to "the corps de armee is to be instantly reorganized and increased.")

It's clear, however, from his letter that Ballou did not share the optimism of his fellow northerners. There's a resignation in his words, bordering on fatalism. He knew that his chances of dying in battle were high. Maybe it's because he was a senior officer, and his role was to lead his men on horseback. Maybe it was just a premonition. Either way, Ballou's words evoke the looming dread that must have hung over America in the days leading up to that first battle. Ballou was not just an anonymous soldier, however. He was the speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, a successful lawyer and politician who rose from humble beginnings as an orphan at a boarding school. He campaigned passionately for Abraham Lincoln. He was the judge advocate for the Rhode Island militia. He was only 33 when he died at Bull Run, and it seems that his political future was a promising one up until his untimely death. So, Ballou never achieved a political or military legacy, despite his success, but his name lives on because of this one letter that captures the place where ideals and personal life diverge, where a greater good is only achieved through suffering and sacrifice.

I'm amazed at the legacy of this letter because it almost certainly wasn't meant to be a legacy. It was a deeply personal, heartfelt outpouring of love, regret, and devotion. And yet, Sullivan Ballou, a politician and lawyer, is best remembered as one of America's great poets.

So that brings us to Paul Roebling, because the parallels here are impossible to ignore.

Much of the power of "Honorable Manhood" comes from Ballou's lyrical prose, but it's Paul Roebling's recitation of the piece that elevates this sequence from beautiful to transcendent. Roebling brings a gravity to Ballou's voice, truly communicating the sense of foreboding that must have hung over the soldier's tent. While Ballou's words express a stalwart dedication to the Union, Roebling's uneasy delivery tells a story of a man who, despite his passion, could not help but wonder if he was ready to give up his own life. There's regret in Roebling's tone, but also a wistful hope in the divine; real grief, but also true love. Roebling's performance is so controlled that in the rare instances where he wavers, the interruption communicates a thousand things that are left unsaid in the letter itself.

There's a moment towards the end of "Honorable Manhood" where Roebling's strong, trained voice cracks, just a little, and it gets me. If I haven't already started to cry by that point, that vocal crack breaks me and the tears start flowing. His voice has a slight shake in it for the rest of the monologue; it sounds as though he, the actor, is trying to keep it together just as Ballou was likely trying to keep it together.

I've been curious about the voice behind "Honorable Manhood" for a while now, and finally looking into Roebling's history only deepens the impact of his performance for me.

Looking at Roebling's credits, he seems to hold a similar historical pedigree to Sullivan Ballou; he was reasonably successful in his own time, but he didn't exactly have the kind of career that would be written in the annals of time. His film credits include a small role in a lesser known Sidney Lumet film, a supporting role in an obscure melodrama, and a government goon in this trashy Roy Scheider helicopter movie. The rest of his IMDB credits are made up of TV roles. None of this is to say that Roebling was unsuccessful; far from it. He was certainly a working actor. But it's hard to say that his legacy is as vaunted as that of some of the other vocal performers on The Civil War: Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Irons, Morgan Freeman, and others. Much like Ballou, his place in history is smaller than his significant talents suggested it could have been.

It's in his theater credits that his legacy starts to come into focus. He had quite a number of Broadway credits to his name, including a leading role in the first Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Any More. That alone is a testament to Roebling's talent. He won an Obie award for his role in a play about F. Scott Fitzgerald calledThis Side of Paradise. This was in 1962, the same year that James Earl Jones, Samuel Beckett, and Rosemary Harris took home Obies.

But the legacy of a Broadway actor tends to be more fleeting than that of a film actor, especially in the case of Broadway actors who perform in dramas rather than musicals. There are no vinyls out there immortalizing Roebling's vaunted performances. There is no filmed production of "This Side of Paradise" on Disney+. Great Broadway actors are ephemeral; they perfect their crafts in front of an audience limited to those who have the time, the means, and the motivation to go to New York and buy tickets to a show that doesn't even have singing in it. Within a hundred years, every single person who saw that performance will be dead.

I have a lot of questions about the recording session in which Paul Roebling recited the letter. Did Roebling know that this would eventually be the role for which he was best remembered? Was Ken Burns there, or was it just an engineer and Roebling? Did everyone else there know how heart-stopping this segment would be? What made Burns choose Roebling for the reading of such a famous letter when a stable of bigger names were at his disposal? Regardless of the answer, there is no question that Roebling came to the session and made his reading professional, deep, and personal. There's no question that this reading affected Roebling. You can hear it in his voice, no matter how much he powers through his emotions. It's not surprising when you learn what was going on in Roebling's life at the time.

Roebling's wife, Olga Bellin, had died from cancer only a few years earlier.

Like Roebling, Bellin was a reasonably successful working actor who never quite achieved stardom. Her sole film credit is also Roebling's sole producing credit, Tomorrow. Also like Roebling, her Broadway credentials are remarkable. Most notably, she originated the role of Margaret More opposite Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons. A few years before her death, Roebling directed her in the role of Zelda Fitzgerald. (Roebling, it should be noted, had a long history with Fitzgerald. His stage debut at 12 years old was in Fitzgerald's The Vegetable.)

Bellin died young. She was only fifty-four when she passed away from cancer. As with Roebling, it seems as though the performances that brought her success will disappear with the last audience member who got to see it happen live. When Roebling went to record the Ballou letter for The Civil War, it seems likely that mortality was on his mind. It's not difficult to imagine him reading this letter and putting himself in the shoes of Ballou, clinging to hopes of immortality and an afterlife, looking back on a marriage that undoubtedly had its highs, its lows, and its moments in between.

There's no pageantry in Roebling's performance. He is not trying to impress anyone. He reads the words honestly and with truth in his voice. He has nothing to act with but his voice, and yet every little inflection is magical. He disappears into the role. You forget that you're hearing an actor, and you believe that the ghost of Sullivan Ballou has come back to read you his final words. Whether he knew it or not, Roebling was also nearing the end of his life. It was only four years after the airing of The Civil War that Roebling passed away while on a trip to a Navajo reservation. He was 60 years old, not young, but not old either. The Orlando Sentinel reported that his death was a suicide, but the LA Times only reported his death as "under investigation." As Ballou left three sons behind, Roebling was survived by his son.

With the full context of these two men's lives, Ballou's and Roebling's, "Honorable Manhood" feels like a miracle. Separated by over a century, two men plagued by grief, both with the ends of their lives in sight, still somehow collaborated to create a 3-minute piece of art so beautiful that it can still break hearts over thirty years later. What could have been a simple, academic recitation of an artifact of the 19th century became -- through heartfelt writing, acting, and editing -- an unforgettable piece of media that evokes pain, hope, and love in equal measure. It's the kind of miracle that only happens when artists, without vanity, put their hearts into something they feel deeply.