Total War and the End of the Confederacy

1864-1865

A. A

B. B

C. C

D. D

Rate your agreement with the following statement: When fighting a war, an army should destroy only military, not civilian, targets.

A. Strongly agree

B. Somewhat agree

C. Somewhat disagree

D. Strongly disagree A B C D

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What events led to the end of the war?

Total War Strikes the South• General William

Tecumseh Sherman destroyed Atlanta

• The city was burned and citizens were ordered to leave

• Sherman said: “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it”

• The deliberate strategy to bring the horrors of war to the Southern people is called total wartotal war

• Including terror, starvation, violence, and homelessness

Union Strategy• By 1864- The Union

forces surrounded the South

• Cut off imports and exports

• The Union controlled the Mississippi River

• Western Confederate states were cut off

• General Grant would draw up a bold plan of attack

Grant• Ulysses S. Grant was only

an average student• And a failure as a farmer

and businessman• But as a soldier was

brilliant• Victories at Shiloh,

Vicksburg, and Chattanooga

• March 1864- Lincoln put Grant in charge of all the Union armies

Grant in Charge• Grant had a plan to deliver

killing blows from all sides• Grant would attack

Richmond• At the same time, Sherman

would lead his attacks across the Deep South

• Grant’s 115,000 soldiers met Lee’s 64,000 soldiers in a seriesseries of 3 battles at Richmond

• Grant promised Lincoln, “Whatever happens, there will be no turning back”

• Grant was determined to march southward, attacking Lee’s forces

• Until they surrendered

The Wilderness Campaign• Between Washington

D.C. and Richmond is an area of dense forests called the Wilderness

• May 5, the 6 bloodiest weeks of the war begun

• Grant and Lee struggled through trees

• “It was a blind and bloody hunt to the death”

• Both sides had many casualties

• Brushfires went through the forest burning alive 200 wounded men

The Wilderness Campaign Continued• Grant then moved south

toward Richmond• The next battles were

fought at nearby Spotsylvania Courthouse and at Cold Harbor

• A Union general observed me “writing their names and home addresses on slips of paper and pinning them to the back of their coats”

• To help people identify their bodies

• Grant’s critics called him a “butcher” because of the huge loss of life among his troops

• 50,000 deaths in 30 days

The Petersburg Siege• A railroad center that was

vital to Confederate movement of troops and supplies

• If grant could take Petersburg, Richmond would be cut off from the rest of the Confederacy

• Trains brought food and reinforcements to the Union troops

• The Confederates could get neither

• For 9 months, the Confederates held out

• The Union won

Sherman in Georgia• Sherman reached

Atlanta and met the Confederates under John Hood

• Hood’s forced put up major resistanceresistance

• Finally, on Sept. 1, Hood abandoned the city

• The mood in the South was desperate

• “There is no hope, but we will try to have no fear”

Farragut at Mobile Bay• David FarragutDavid Farragut was the

highest-ranking officer in the Union

• Farragut joined the navy when he was 12 years old

• Now in 1864 , he was leading a fleet of 18 ships through a narrow channel into Mobile Bay in Alabama

• The Confederates had two forts on either side of the channel, and they mined the waters with torpedoes

• Guns fired from both sides, what should Farragut do?

• “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

• Farragut was suffering dizziness and had himself tied to the ship

• The invasion worked, the Union took the last Southern port east of the Mississippi

The Election of 1864• 1864- opposition to the

war grew in the North• Lincoln was in danger of

losing the election• After Atlanta fell and

Mobile Bay was blocked, Northerners felt they could win

• Lincoln won the election• Lincoln interpretedinterpreted his

reelection as a clear sign from the voters to end slavery permanently by amending the Constitution

• On January 31, 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, banning slavery in the US

Sherman’s March to the Sea• The Union wanted to

break the will of the South• Sherman and his men

became destroyers• They burned cities and

farmlands across Georgia to the Atlantic coast

• Known as Sherman’s March to the Sea

• Sherman continued his path of destruction through the Carolinas

• Took food, tore up railroad lines and fields, and killed livestock in an effort to destroy anything useful to the South

• 1000s of enslaved people were freed

Back to Grant• Grant continued the

siege of Petersburg• April 2, 1865,

Confederate lines broke and Lee withdrew

• As word got to Jefferson Davis, he and his cabinet gathered documents

• Also ordered bridges and weapons useful to the enemy be set on fire

• Then Davis and the cabinet fled the city

Richmond• The armory was set on

fire• Lincoln and his son Tad

toured burning Richmond and said:

• “Thank God I have lived to see this. It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid nightmare for four years, and now the nightmare is over”

• Joyful African Americans followed Lincoln everywhere, singing, laughing, and reaching out to touch him

• At the Confederate president’s house, Lincoln sat in a chair in Davis’s office and “looked far off with a dreamy expression”

Surrender at Appomattox• Grant wrote to Lee- “The

result of last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance”

• Lee believed he needed to fight on

• But then the Union captured a train carrying food to his troops and Lee was completely surrounded, he knew it was over

• In the little town of Appomattox Court HouseAppomattox Court House, Virginia, Grant met with Lee

• The troops kept their weapons, officers kept their horses, and no one would disturb the soldiers on their way home

• Grant also gave 25,000 rations to feed Lee’s troops

• The War was over

The Toll of War• Deadliest war in US

history• More than 600,000

soldiers died• Cost billions of

dollars• City and farmlands

were destroyed and would take years to rebuild

• The Union was saved• The federal

government was strengthened and now clearly more powerful than the states

The Toll of the War Continued• The war freed millions of

African Americans• The end of slavery did not

solve the problems that the newly freed African Americans were to face

• Many questions remained including- How to bring the Southern states back into the Union

• And- What the status of African Americans would be in Southern society

• Americans tried to answer these questions in the years following the Civil War- an era known as Reconstruction