THE CIVIL WAR, 1864–1865 |
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rom Bull Run to Chattanooga, the Union armies had fought their battles without benefit of either a grand strategy or a supreme field commander. Even after the great victories of 1863, the situation in 1864 reflected this lack of unity of command. During the final year of the war the people of the North grew restless; and as the election of 1864 approached, many of them advocated a policy of making peace with the Confederacy. President Abraham Lincoln never wavered. Committed to the policy of destroying the armed power of the Confederacy, he sought a general who could pull together all the threads of an emerging strategy and then concentrate the Union armies and their supporting naval power against the secessionists. After Vicksburg in July 1863, Lincoln leaned more and more toward Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant as the man whose strategic thinking and resolution could lead the Union armies to final victory. Acting largely as his own General in Chief, although Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck had been given that title after George B. McClellan’s removal in early 1862, Mr. Lincoln had watched the Confederates fight from one victory to another inside their cockpit of northern Virginia. In the Western Theater, Union armies, often operating independently of one another, had scored great victories at key terrain points. But their hold on the communications base at Nashville was always in jeopardy as long as the elusive armies of the Confederacy could escape to fight another day at another key point. The twin, uncoordinated victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, 900 miles apart, only pointed out the North’s need for an overall strategic plan and a general who could carry it out. |
armies. After this great step, he proposed to isolate the area west of the line Chattanooga-Atlanta-Montgomery-Mobile. Within this region, Grant urged a "massive rear attack" that would take Union armies in the Gulf Department under Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks and Grant’s Army of the Tennessee to Mobile and up the Alabama River to Montgomery.
The U.S. Navy would play a major role in this attack. Simultaneously,
Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was to advance overland through Chattanooga to Atlanta. All military resources within this isolated
area would be destroyed. Lincoln vetoed Grant’s plan in part by deferring the Mobile-Montgomery phase. The President favored a demonstration by Banks up the Red River to Shreveport to show the American flag to the French occupying Mexico. Napoleon III had sent French soldiers to that country to install Maximillian, archduke of Austria, as emperor, taking advantage of the U.S. preoccupation with the Civil War. This was a clear violation of the Monroe Doctrine, but Lincoln could do little more than protest and demonstrate at the time. Banks’ Department of the Gulf was left out of the consolidation of the other western commands under Grant in October 1863. Grant’s plan was further stymied after the Union defeat at Chickamauga and the subsequent need to break the siege at Chattanooga. After his own victory at Chattanooga in November, however, Grant wasted few hours in writing the President what he thought the next strategic moves should be. As a possible winter attack, Grant revived the touchy Mobile campaign while the Chattanooga victors were gathering strength for a spring offensive to Atlanta. Grant reasoned that Lee would vacate Virginia and shift strength toward Atlanta. For the Mobile-Montgomery plan, Grant asked for Banks’ resources in the Gulf Department. Lincoln again balked because the Texas seacoast would be abandoned. Grant’s rebuttal explained that Napoleon III would really be impressed with a large Army-Navy operation against Mobile Bay. The Red River campaign, Grant believed, would not provide as dramatic a demonstration. The President told Grant again that he had to heed the demands of Union diplomacy, but at the same time he encouraged Grant to enlarge his strategic proposals to include estimates for a grand Federal offensive for the coming spring of 1864. Grant’s plan of January 1864 projected a four-pronged continental attack. In concert, the four armies were to move on Atlanta, on Mobile (after Banks took Shreveport), on General Robert E. Lee’s communications by a campaign across the middle of North Carolina on the axis New Bern–Neuse River–Goldsboro–Raleigh–Greensboro, and on Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the hope of defeating it in an open battle. Lincoln opposed the North Carolina phase, fearing that Grant’s diversion of 60,000 effective bayonets from formations covering Washington was too dangerous. Lincoln knew that Lee’s eyes were always fixed on the vast amount of supplies in the depots around the Washington area. Though Lincoln scuttled some of Grant’s professional schemes, he never lost his esteem for Grant’s enthusiasm and intelligence. In February 1864 Congress revived Winfield Scott’s old rank of lieutenant general; and Grant was promoted on March 9, making him senior to all Union officers. Lincoln relieved Halleck as General in Chief and ordered Grant to Washington to assume Halleck’s post; Halleck remained |
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as Lincoln’s military adviser and Chief of Staff, but his position was decidedly inferior to Grant’s. During March the President, the new General in Chief, and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton ironed out command arrangements that had plagued every President since the War of 1812. Lincoln and Stanton relinquished powerful command, staff, and communications tools to Grant. Stanton, greatly impressed with Grant’s public acclaim, cautioned his General Staff Bureau chiefs to heed Grant’s needs and timetables. General in Chief Grant reported directly to the President and the Secretary of War, keeping them informed about the broad aspects of his strategic plans and telling them in advance of his armies’ needs. However, Grant removed himself from the politics of Washington and established his headquarters in northern Virginia with the Army of the Potomac. Though he planned to go quickly to trouble spots, Grant elected to accompany the Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. George G. Meade to assess Lee’s moves and their effects on the other columns of the Union Army. By rail or steamboat, Grant was never far from Lincoln, and in turn the President visited Grant frequently. To tie his far-flung commands together, Grant employed a vast telegraph system. In a continental theater of war larger than Napoleon’s at its zenith, Grant’s job, administratively, eventually embraced four military divisions, totaling seventeen subcommands wherein 500,000 combat soldiers would be employed. At Washington, Halleck operated a war room for Grant. Halleck eased his heavy administrative burden of studying the several Army commanders’ detailed field directives by preparing brief digests, thus saving the General in Chief many hours of reading detailed reports. Halleck also kept Grant informed about supply levels at base depots and advance dumps in Nashville, St. Louis, City Point, Washington, Philadelphia, Louisville, and New York City. Under Stanton, Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, the most informed logistician and supply manager of his day, dispatched men and munitions to Grant’s subcommands according to a strategic timetable. As the spring offensive progressed, Stanton, Halleck, and Meigs gave Grant a rear-area team that grasped the delicate balance between theater objectives and the logistical support required to achieve them. Grant spent the month of April on the Rapidan front developing his final strategic plan for ending the war. In essence, he recapped all his views on the advantages to be gained from his victories in the Western Theater. He added some thoughts about moving several Federal armies, aided by naval power when necessary, toward a common center in a vast, concentrated effort. He planned to stop the Confederates from using their interior lines. He intended to maneuver Lee away from the Rapidan Wilderness and defeat the Army of Northern Virginia in open terrain by a decisive battle. Another Union force collected from the Atlantic seaport towns of the Deep South was to cut the James–Appomattox River line to sever Lee’s rail and road links with the other parts of the Confederacy. Simultaneously, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s group of armies would execute a wide wheeling movement through the South to complete the envelopment of the whole country east of the Mississippi. Banks was still scheduled to make the attack through Mobile. Sherman’s and Banks’ assaults were meant to fix the rebels on the periphery while |
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SHERMAN "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it," wrote William T. Sherman (1820−1891) to the mayor of |
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Grant struck at the center, or, as Lincoln described the plan, "Those not skinning can hold a leg." |
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tered the dry-as-dust details of the logistical system and used common sense in deciding when to use the horse-drawn wagon, the railroad, or the steamboat in his strategic moves. Above all, Grant understood and applied the principle of modern war that the destruction of the enemy’s economic resources—his ability to sustain his forces—is as necessary as the annihilation of his armies. On the morning of May 4, 1864, Meade and Sherman moved out to execute Grant’s grand strategy. The combat strength of the Army of the Potomac, slimmed down from seven unwieldy corps, consisted of three infantry corps of 25,000 rifles each and a cavalry corps. Commanding the 12,000-man cavalry corps was Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, an energetic leader whom Grant brought east on Halleck’s recommendation. Meade had dispersed his cavalry, using troopers as messengers, pickets, and train guards; but young Sheridan, after considerable argument, eventually succeeded in concentrating all of his sabers as a separate combat arm. Grant reorganized Burnside’s IX Corps of 20,000 infantrymen, held it as a strategic reserve for a time, and then assigned the IX Corps to Meade’s army. Lee’s army, now 70,000 strong, was also organized into a cavalry and three infantry corps. |
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Lee, . . . his fighting blood aroused to a white heat, moved forward personally and looked as if he wanted to lead an assault in person. |
Grant and Lee were at the height of their careers, and this was their first contest of wills. Having the initiative, Grant crossed the Rapidan and decided to go by Lee’s right, rather than his left. (Map 32) First, Grant wanted to rid himself of his reliance on the insecure Alexandria and Orange Railroads for supplies. Second, he wanted to end the Army of the Potomac’s dependence on a train of 4,000 wagons (the Army’s mobility was hobbled by having to care for 60,000 animals). Finally, Grant wanted to use the advantages of Virginia’s tidewater rivers and base his depots on the Chesapeake Bay. He was willing to accept the risk inherent in moving obliquely across Lee’s front in northern Virginia. He also hoped to find a weakness to his front that would allow him to slip around Lee’s flank and get between him and Richmond. With little room for maneuver, Grant was forced to advance through the Wilderness, where Hooker had come to grief the year before. As the army column halted near Chancellorsville to allow the wagon trains to pass the Rapidan, on May 5 Lee struck at Meade’s right flank. Grant and Meade swung their corps into line and hit back. The fighting in the Battle of the Wilderness, consisting of assault, defense, and counterattack, was close and desperate in tangled woods and thickets. Artillery could not be brought to bear. The dry woods caught fire, and some of the wounded died miserably in the flame and smoke. On May 6 Lee attacked again. Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s I Corps, arriving late in battle but as always in perfect march order, drove the Federals back. Longstreet himself received a severe neck wound, inflicted in error by his own men, which took him out of action until October 1864. Lee, at a decisive moment in the battle, his fighting blood aroused to a white heat, moved forward personally and looked as if he wanted to lead an assault in person; but men of the Texas brigade with whom Lee was riding persuaded the Southern leader to go to the rear and direct the battle as their army commander. On May 7 neither side renewed the fight. The indecisive battle cost the Union nearly 17,000 casualties and the South some 10,000. Now came the critical test of Grant’s execution of strategy. He had been worsted, though not really beaten, by Lee, a greater antagonist than General Braxton Bragg, General Albert S. Johnston, or Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton. After an encounter with Lee, each of the former Army of the Potomac commanders, McClellan, Burnside, and Hooker, had retired north of the Rappahannock River and postponed any further clashes with that great tactician. But Grant was of a different breed. He calmly ordered his lead corps to move south toward Spotsylvania as rapidly as possible to get around Lee’s flank and interpose the Army of the Potomac between Lee and Richmond, hoping to achieve by mobility what he had not been able to do with battle. Lee detected Grant’s march and, using roads generally parallel to Grant’s, also raced toward the key road junction at Spotsylvania. Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry harassed and slowed Grant; Lee arrived first and quickly built strong earth-and-log trenches over commanding ground that covered the roads leading to Richmond. In this crossroads race, Sheridan’s cavalry would have been useful; but Meade had dissipated the cavalry corps’ strength by deploying two divisions of horse to guard his already well-protected trains. Sheridan and Meade argued once again over the use of cavalry, and the General in Chief backed |
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Map 32 |
COLD HARBOR After several days of inconclusive sparring at North Anna, General Grant maneuvered his men south- |
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Sheridan, allowing him to concentrate his cavalry arm. Grant gave Sheridan
a free hand to stop Stuart’s raids. Leading his corps south on May 9 in a long ride toward Richmond, its objective a decisive charge against Stuart, Sheridan did the job. He fought a running series of engagements that culminated in a victory at Yellow Tavern, just six miles north of Richmond, on May 11; the gallant Stuart was mortally wounded. The South was already short of horses and mules, and Sheridan’s raid ended forever the offensive power of Lee’s mounted arm. Lee, in addition, had lost another irreplaceable commander. |
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G. T. Beauregard outmaneuvered him in May and bottled up Butler’s men at Bermuda Hundred between the James and Appomattox Rivers. Eventually Butler and Banks, who did not take Mobile, were removed from command for their failure to carry out their assignments in the grand strategy.
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THE CRATER To breach the Confederate trenches at Petersburg, Union troops tunneled forward and placed a mine |
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Map 33 |
On July 20, while Sherman was executing a wide turning movement
around the northeast side of Atlanta, Hood left his fortifications and attacked at Peach Tree Creek. When Sherman beat him off, Hood pulled back into the city. While Sherman made ready to invest, Hood attacked again and failed again. Sherman then tried cavalry raids to cut the railroads, just as Johnston had during the advance from Chattanooga,
but Sherman’s raids had as little success as Johnston’s. Sherman
then began extending fortifications on August 31. Hood, who had dissipated his striking power in his assaults, gave up and retired to northwest Alabama. Sherman marched into Atlanta on the first two days of September, depriving the South of one of its key cities and railroad
junctions. Sherman hoped that if Mobile could be taken, a shorter line for his supplies by way of Montgomery, Alabama, or still better by the lower Chattahoochee to Columbus, Georgia, would open. Tightening
the noose still further, Admiral Farragut had entered Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, with four Monitors and fourteen other ships but had no troops to take Mobile itself. Nevertheless, the capture of the harbor left the South with only one major port: Wilmington, North Carolina. The fall of Atlanta gave President Lincoln’s campaign for reelection in 1864 a tremendous boost. In addition, the psychological lift given the Union by Admiral Farragut’s personal heroism in the battle of Mobile Bay greatly added to Lincoln’s prestige. Atlanta was only a halfway point in Sherman’s vast wheel from the Western Theater toward the rear of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Abandoning the idea of catching up with Hood, Sherman by telegraph outlined his next strategic move to Lincoln and Grant in early September 1864. Sherman’s two proposals proved him an able strategist as well as a consummately bold and aggressive commander. To defend Nashville, he suggested that he send two corps, 30,000 men, back to Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. That commander would raise and train more men and be in position to hold Tennessee if Hood came north. To carry the offensive against the economic heart of the Confederacy, Sherman recommended that he himself take four corps (62,000 men), cut his own communications, live off the country, and march to the seacoast through Georgia, devastating and laying waste all farms, railways, and storehouses in his path. Whether he arrived at Pensacola, Charleston, or Savannah, Sherman reasoned he could hold a port, make contact with
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ATLANTA TO THE SEA AND INTO THE CAROLINAS General Sherman led an army of 62,000 men on a massive raid through Georgia and South Carolina |
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army; and, even worse, his men had lost confidence in their commander.
The Federals in Nashville were securely emplaced in a fortified city that they had been occupying for three years. Hood could do little more than encamp on high ground a few miles south of Nashville and wait. He could not storm the city; his force was too small to lay siege; to sidestep
and go north was an open invitation to Thomas to attack his flank and rear; and to retreat meant disintegration of his army. He could only watch Thomas’ moves. |
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envelopment of the enemy left. Hood, on the other hand, was overextended;
and his thin line was concave to the enemy, denying him the advantage of interior lines. Hood’s reserve was inadequate, and his cavalry was absent on a minor mission. President Lincoln was delighted with Savannah as a Christmas present: In his congratulatory letter to Sherman and Grant, the Commander in Chief said that he would leave the final phases of the war to his two leading professional soldiers. Accordingly, from City Point, on December 27, 1864, Grant directed Sherman to march overland toward Richmond. At 3:00 P.M. on December 31, Sherman agreed to execute this last phase of Grant’s continental sweep. In the final 100 days of the war, the two generals would clearly demonstrate the art of making the principles of warfare come alive and would prove that each principle was something more than a platitude. The commanders had a common objective: Grant and Meade would continue to hammer Lee. Sherman was to execute a devastating invasion northward through the Carolinas toward a juncture with Meade’s Army of the Potomac, then on the line |
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of the James River. Their strategy was simple. It called for the massing of strength and exemplified an economy of force. It would place Lee in an untenable position, cutting him off from all other Confederate commanders and trapping him between two Union armies. Surprise would be achieved by reuniting all of Sherman’s original corps when Schofield, moving from central Tennessee by rail, river, and ocean transport, arrived at the Carolina capes. Solidly based on a centralized logistical system with protected Atlantic supply ships at their side, Grant and Sherman were ready to end Lee’s stay in Richmond. Robert E. Lee, the master tactician, divining his end, wrote to Davis that the Confederates would have to concentrate their forces for a last-ditch stand. In February 1865 the Confederate Congress conferred supreme command of all Confederate armies on Lee, an empty honor. Lee could no longer control events. Sherman moved through Columbia, South Carolina, in a destructive campaign much harsher than that visited on Georgia. Even the Union troops felt that South Carolina had started the war and should be punished for it. In February, Sherman took Wilmington, North Carolina, the Confederacy’s last available port, and then pushed on. Johnston, newly reappointed to a command, had the mission of stopping Sherman’s forces but could not. He interposed his small army of about 21,000 effectives in the path of two of Sherman’s corps at Bentonville, North Carolina, on March 19. His initial attack gained some ground, but by the next day more of Sherman’s forces were on the scene and Johnston had to continue his retreat. There would be no further major attempts to stop Sherman. At Richmond and Petersburg toward the end of March, Grant renewed his efforts along a 38-mile front to get at Lee’s right (west) flank. By now Sheridan’s cavalry and the VI Corps had returned from the Shenandoah Valley, and the total force immediately under Grant numbered 101,000 infantry, 14,700 cavalry, and 9,000 artillery. Lee had 46,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry, and 5,000 artillery. On March 29 Grant began his move to the left. Sheridan and the cavalry pushed out ahead by way of Dinwiddie Court House in order to strike at Burke’s Station, the intersection of the Southside and Danville Railroads, while Grant’s main body moved to envelop Lee’s right. But Lee, alerted to the threat, moved west. Lt. Gen. Ambrose P. Hill, who never stood on the defense if there was a chance to attack, took his corps out of its trenches and assaulted the Union left in the swampy forests around White Oak Road. He pushed Maj. Gen. Gouveneur K. Warren’s V Corps back at first, but Warren counterattacked and by March 31 had driven Hill back to his trenches. On that day Sheridan advanced toward Five Forks, a road junction southwest of Petersburg, and there encountered a strong Confederate force—cavalry plus two infantry divisions under Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett—which Lee had dispatched to forestall Sheridan. Pickett attacked and drove Sheridan back to Dinwiddie Court House, but there Sheridan dug in and halted him. Pickett then entrenched at Five Forks instead of pulling back to make contact with Hill, whose failure to destroy Warren had left a gap between him and Pickett, with Warren’s corps in between. Sheridan, still formally the commander of the Army of the Shenandoah, had authority from Grant to take control of any nearby infantry corps of the Army of the Potomac. He wanted Warren to fall upon Pickett’s exposed |
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rear and destroy him, but Warren moved too slowly and Pickett consolidated
his position. On April 1 Sheridan attacked again but failed to destroy Pickett because Warren had moved his corps too slowly and put most of it in the wrong place. Late in the afternoon, however, the Union attack struck Pickett’s position in full force on both flanks. His position outflanked, Pickett ordered a retreat, but not quickly enough to avoid losing almost half his force of 10,000 as prisoners. |
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Confederates to keep their horses and mules, furnished rations to the Army of Northern Virginia, and forbade the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac to cheer or fire salutes to celebrate the victory over their old antagonists. Johnston surrendered to Sherman on April 26. The last major trans-Mississippi force gave up the struggle on May 26, and the grim fighting was over. Viewing the war in its broadest context, a historian could fairly conclude that a determined general of the North had bested a legendary
general of the South, probably the most brilliant tactician on either side, because the Union could bring to bear a decisive superiority in economic resources and manpower. Lee’s mastery of the art of warfare staved off defeat for four long years, but the outcome was never really in doubt. Grant and Lincoln held too many high cards; and during the last year of the war, the relations between the Union’s Commander in Chief and his General in Chief set an unexcelled example of civil-
military coordination. This coordination was essential to prosecuting a multitheater war characterized by the slow, yet steady expansion of the area brought back under Federal control over the course of four years of struggle. (See Map 34.) |
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ANDERSONVILLE AND ELMIRA PRISON CAMPS Andersonville Prison in southern Georgia and Elmira Prison in south-central New York State became |
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badges that heightened unit identification, esprit de corps, and pride in organization. The year 1863 saw the first award of the highest U.S. decoration, the Medal of Honor. Congress had authorized it on July 12, 1862, and in 1863 Secretary Stanton gave the first medals to Pvt. Jacob Parrott and five other soldiers. They had demonstrated extraordinary valor in a daring raid behind the Confederate lines near Chattanooga. The Medal of Honor remains the highest honor the United States can bestow on any individual in the armed services. |
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made able-bodied males between twenty and forty-five years of age liable
1. By 1864, what strategic options remained for the Confederacy? |
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R R Castel, Albert. Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864. Other Readings Beringer, Richard E., et al. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens: |
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Last updated 10 July 2006
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