“Why, here is General Grant,” Lincoln called out at a White House reception in March 1864.  “Well, this is a great pleasure, I assure you!”  As guests applauded, the president reached over and shook Grant’s hand.  The crowd, as eager for a look at the victorious general as they were to see the president, pressed in on the pair.

At last Grant climbed up on a couch to greet the crowd, who clamored to see him.  For an hour, he balanced there, exchanging greetings with his well-wishers.  “For once at least,” a guest recalled, “the President of the United States was not the chief figure in the picture.  The little, scared-looking man who stood on a crimson-covered sofa was the idol of the hour.”

In the spring of 1864, the most successful general of the Union army faced the most renowned Confederate commander.  Grant put his most trusted subordinate, William Sherman, in charge of Union operations in the west, then headed to Washington, D.C., to take command of the Union troops facing Lee.

From the Wilderness to Cold Harbor

“Whatever happens, there will be no turning back,” Grant promised Lincoln.  He was determined to march southward, attacking Lee’s forces relentlessly, until the South surrendered.

The first battle of Grant’s campaign erupted in the Wilderness, a densely forested area near Fredericksburg, Virginia.  The battle lasted two days, continuing even after the woods caught fire, blinding and choking the combatants.  Despite suffering heavy casualties, Grant did not pause.  He headed southeast toward Spotsylvania Courthouse.  First in terrible heat and then in pouring rain, the two armies battled near Spotsylvania for 11 days, often in bloody hand-to-hand combat that left many traumatized.

Unlike past campaigns in which several weeks of reinforcing and resupplying followed battles, warfare now continued without pause.  Savage combat, advances and retreats, and the digging of defensive trenches filled most days and nights.  One Union officer noted that the men “had grown thin and haggard.  The experience ... seemed to have added twenty years to their age.”

Unable to break Lee’s lines at Spotsylvania, Grant headed toward Cold Harbor, a strategic crossroads northeast of Richmond.  Convinced that his relentless attacks had weakened and demoralized Lee’s troops, Grant decided to launch an all-out assault on Lee’s forces at Cold Harbor.  The attack cost his army 7,000 casualties, compared to 1,500 for the South.  Grant conceded, “I regret this assault more than any one I have ever ordered.”

The Siege of Petersburg

Stopped by Lee at Cold Harbor, Grant tried another plan similar to the one he had used near Vicksburg.  He ordered General Philip Sheridan to stage a cavalry raid north and west of Richmond.  While Sheridan’s troops distracted Lee, Grant headed southeast, crossed the James River, and then turned west toward Petersburg.  Capturing Petersburg would cut the only rail line into Richmond.

When the first Union troops reached the outskirts of Petersburg, they paused.  The city was defended by miles of barricades 20 feet (7 m) thick.  In front of the Confederate trenches were ditches up to 15 feet (4.6 m) deep to slow down attackers.  Carefully positioned cannons supported the Confederate lines.

The strength of the defenses the Confederates had erected at Petersburg intimidated the Union troops, who were already exhausted.  Realizing a full-scale frontal assault would be suicidal, Grant ordered his troops to put the city under siege.

Summarizing
Why did General Grant decide to capture Petersburg?
 

Union Victories in the South

While Grant battled Lee in Virginia, General Sherman marched his army from Chattanooga toward Atlanta.  Meanwhile, the Union navy launched an operation to close the port of Mobile, Alabama, the last major Confederate port on the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi.

Farragut Attacks Mobile

On August 5, 1864, David Farragut took 18 ships past the three Confederate forts defending Mobile Bay.  As the fleet headed into the bay, a mine—which in the 1860s was called a torpedo—blew up a Union ship.  The xplosion brought the fleet to a halt, right in front of a fort’s guns.  “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” cried Farragut, whose ship led the way through the minefield.

After getting past the Confederate forts, Farragut’s ships destroyed a Confederate fleet defending Mobile Bay.  Although Farragut did not capture Mobile, he did seal off the bay.  Blockade runners moving goods in and out of the Deep South east of the Mississippi could no longer use any port on the Gulf of Mexico.

The Fall of Atlanta While Farragut had been preparing for his attack on Mobile Bay, Sherman’s army pushed toward Atlanta.  In late August 1864, Sherman sent his troops south around Atlanta to cut the roads and railways leading into the city.  His troops destroyed the rail lines by heating the rails and twisting them into snarls of steel nicknamed “Sherman neckties.”

To avoid being trapped in the city, Confederate General John B.  Hood evacuated Atlanta on September 1.

Sherman’s March to the Sea

After occupying Atlanta, Sherman proposed to march across Georgia.  “I could cut a swath to the sea,” he explained, “and divide the Confederacy in two.” The march would be “a demonstration to the world...  that we have a power that Davis cannot resist.  I can make the march, and make Georgia howl!”

Sherman ordered all civilians to leave Atlanta.  He explained to the city’s mayor that he was “not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people.” To end the war, he believed, he had no choice but to “make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” Sherman then ordered his troops to destroy everything in the city of military value, including railroads, warehouses, mills, factories, and machine shops.  Sherman’s troops set fires to destroy these structures, but the fires quickly spread, burning down more than one-third of the city.

On November 15, 1864, Sherman began his March to the Sea.  His troops cut a path of destruction through Georgia that was in places 60 miles (97 km) wide.  They ransacked houses, burned crops, and killed cattle.  By December 21, 1864, they had reached the coast and seized the city of Savannah.

After reaching the sea, Sherman turned north and headed into South Carolina—the state that many people believed had started the Civil War.  “The whole army,” Sherman wrote, “is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina.” As one of Sherman’s soldiers declared about South Carolina, “Here is where treason began and ... here is where it shall end.”

The troops burned and pillaged, or looted, nearly everything in front of them.  At least 12 towns were set on fire, including Columbia, the state capital.  The march demoralized Southerners.  As one South Carolinian wrote, “All is gloom, despondency and inactivity.  Our army is demoralized and the people panic stricken ...  to fight longer seems madness.”

Examining
Why did General Sherman march his army through Georgia?
 

The South Surrenders

When Sherman and Grant began their campaigns in the spring of 1864, Lincoln knew that his own reelection depended on their success.  By summer, sensing the public’s anger over the costly war, Lincoln confided to an army officer, “I am going to be beaten.” He did not know that the war was rapidly approaching its conclusion.  Only a few months later, the Confederacy was on the verge of collapse.

The Election of 1864

To oppose Lincoln in the 1864 election, the Democrats nominated General George McClellan, whose popularity had remained high despite his dismissal earlier in the war.  Playing to the country’s growing war weariness, McClellan promised to stop the hostilities and open negotiations with the South to restore the Union peaceably.

The capture of Atlanta came just in time to revitalize Northern support for the war and for Lincoln himself.  The president won reelection with 55 percent of the popular vote.

Lincoln interpreted his reelection as a mandate, or clear sign from the voters, to end slavery permanently by amending the Constitution.  To get the amendment through Congress, Republicans appealed to Democrats who were against slavery to help them.  On January 31, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, banning slavery in the United States, narrowly passed the House of Representatives and was sent to the states for ratification.

Surrender

Meanwhile, in the trenches near Petersburg, Lee knew that time was running out.  On April 1, 1865, Union troops led by Phil Sheridan cut the last rail line into Petersburg at the Battle of Five Forks.  The following night, Lee’s troops withdrew from their positions near the city and raced west.

Lee’s desperate attempt to escape Grant’s forces failed when Sheridan’s cavalry got ahead of Lee’s troops and blocked the road at Appomattox Courthouse.

When his troops failed to break through, Lee sadly observed, “There is nothing left for me to do but go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.” With his ragged and battered troops surrounded and outnumbered, Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865.

Grant’s generous terms of surrender guaranteed that the United States would not prosecute Confederate soldiers for treason.  When Grant agreed to let Confederates take their horses home “to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter,” Lee thanked him, adding that the kindness would “do much toward conciliating our people.” As Lee left, he shook hands with Ely Parker, a Senecan who served as Grant’s secretary.  “I am glad to see a real American here,” Lee told the Native American.  Parker replied, “We are all Americans.”

Lincoln’s Assassination

With the war over, Lincoln described his plan to restore the Southern states to the Union, and in the speech he mentioned including African Americans in Southern state governments.

One listener, the actor John Wilkes Booth, sneered to a friend, “That is the last speech he will ever make.”

The president’s advisers repeatedly warned him not to appear unescorted in public.  Nevertheless, Lincoln went to Ford’s Theater with his wife on the evening of April 14, 1865, to see a play.  During the third act, Booth slipped quietly behind him and shot the president in the back of the head.

Lincoln’s death shocked the nation.  Once viewed as a rustic, unsophisticated man not suited for the presidency, Lincoln had become the Union’s greatest champion.  The usually stern General Grant wept openly as Lincoln’s body lay in state at the White House.  Tens of thousands of men, women, and children lined railroad tracks across the nation as Lincoln’s body was transported back to Springfield, Illinois.

Aftermath of the Civil War

The North’s victory in the Civil War strengthened the power of the federal government over the states.  It also transformed American society by finally ending the enslavement of millions of African Americans.  At the same time, it left the South socially and economically devastated.

Following the war, many questions remained unresolved.  No one yet knew how to bring the Southern states back into the Union, nor what the status of African Americans would be in Southern society.  Americans from the North and the South tried to answer these questions in the years following the Civil War—an era known as Reconstruction.

Explaining
Why did President Lincoln doubt he could win the 1864 election?