*The 3rd and 4th of July, 1863, can be seen as the turning point of the war.  The slaughter of Pickett’s Charge would preclude any further major offensive moves on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the fall of Vicksburg gave the Union control of the Mississippi, split the Confederacy in half, and, combined with the continuing blockade of the South by the US Navy, left only one item left for the completion of the Anaconda Plan.

*Grant had been the commander of the western US Army, the Army of the Tennessee, and was victorious in almost every major battle, although often at such a high cost in his own men’s lives that it horrified observers.  Lincoln, however, appreciated results, whatever the cost, and in 1864 promoted Grant to overall command of the US Army.  Grant went east, and left William Tecumseh Sherman in command of the Army of the Tennessee.

*By this point, the United States Army has many black units, who will fight well in the South, as they believe deeply in their cause.  About 10% of the Union Army over the course of the War will be composed of black men.  The Confederate Army will also include black men, although not nearly as many—towards the end of the War, the South will even offer freedom to any slave who will join the army, but by then it will be too late to win the war.

*Although Meade remained in command of the Army of the Potomac, Grant would stay with him and direct him in the way he should go.  In 1864, Grant moved into Virginia and began to attack Lee.  Grant’s army would remain larger than Lee’s, but Lee’s men were mostly veterans, and Grant’s mostly new recruits.  Grant also was not a brilliant commander in the field; he killed thousands in frontal assaults, but he did so in part because he knew he could afford it—the North had far more men to spare than did the South.

*Grant and Lee faced off in what is called the Battle of the Wilderness, in Virginia not far from Chancellorsville.  This is actually a series of battles and skirmishes.  The fighting was so intense that the discharge from some of the guns set the woods on fire, and some men were burnt to death.  Grant took terrible casualties, but refused to retreat.  Rather, he re-oriented himself and attacked again.

*Grant attacked Lee at Spotsylvania and at Cold Harbor, a battle famous for fighting so intense that 7,000 men died in less than an hour.  More would have been killed as Grant ordered further attacks, but his officers refused to obey his orders, knowing them to be futile.

*Although Lee technically won almost all the battles on early 1864, Grant’s constant pressure and overwhelming numbers forced him back to the railroad hub of Petersburg, just south of Richmond.  There he and his men would dig trenches and hold out for almost a year of siege, and hope that Lincoln would lose the next election.

*Lincoln was opposed by George McClellan, who was running on a peace ticket.  Many Northerners felt that the war was not worth fighting at this point, and wanted to end it.  Grant’s deadly battles in Virginia made the war even more unpopular, as hundreds and thousands of Union men died each week.  Lincoln, wanting to build unity, chose as a running mate not his last Vice-President, Hannibal Hamlin, but the most prominent Unionist Southern Democrat, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee.  Many of Lincoln’s cabinet advised him not to hold the election, but to cancel it due to the emergency of war, but, despite his violation of civil liberties earlier, Lincoln refused to even consider cancelling or postponing the election.

*In the west, the Confederacy had a number of commanders.  Braxton Bragg had taken over after Albert Sidney Johnston’s death.  He was a poor commander and an unpopular leader, but he was a friend of Jefferson Davis.  He was finally replaced by Joseph Johnston, who was a better leader, especially on the defensive, but who inherited an army that was too demoralised to fight properly.

*Sherman decided to try a bold move:  he would leave behind his base of operations in Tennessee and move through Georgia, living off the countryside.  Johnston defended against him, but Davis wanted him to attack, and replaced him with John Bell Hood, who had lost the use of one arm at Gettysburg and had lost an entire leg at Chickamauga.  Hood, well dosed with laudanum, attacked Sherman, and then invaded Tennessee, where his army was crushed.

*Without opposition, Sherman marched to Atlanta, and burnt it, pillaging the countryside along the way.  His goal was to terrorise the South and make its people suffer so much that the Confederacy would have to end the war.

*At about the same time, his men discovered escaped prisoners from Andersonville, where almost 50,000 Union prisoners of war were being held in terrible conditions and many were starving to death.

*Sherman’s capture of Atlanta would happen on 2 September, 1864, and news of it, along with a furlough for as many soldiers as could be spared, helped Lincoln win the election of 1864 in a landslide.

*From Atlanta, Sherman marched to Savannah, Georgia, which he took on 21 December, 1864 and gave to Lincoln as a Christmas present.  In 1865, he and his Army of the Tennessee marched through South Carolina, burning much of the state along the way.  From there, Sherman would move into North Carolina, where he would face the re-instated Joseph Johnston.

*After a nine and a half-month siege, Lee finally left Petersburg in April, 1865, and after a few small skirmishes, surrendered to Grant on 9 April, 1865 at a small village called Appomattox Courthouse, in the home a Wilmer McLean, who had once owned a home at Manassas, which he had allowed Beauregard to use as his headquarters in 1861.

*Johnston would surrender to Sherman on 29 April, and the war would essentially be over, although some fighting would continue into May, and the last Confederate unit, CSS Shenandoah, would surrender on 6 November, 1865, after sailing all the way around the world and ending up in Liverpool.

*Johnston’s surrender, however, was only a bright spot in the gloom of a nation in mourning.  On 14 April, 1865, Lincoln and his wife were at Ford’s Theatre watching a play called ‘My American Cousin.’  There, a Southerner and an actor from a famous acting family, John Wilkes Booth, crept into his private box, shot Lincoln in the head, and leapt onto the stage crying ‘Sic semper tyrannus, before fleeing.  He was eventually surrounded and killed by the Union Army, but Lincoln was already dead from his wound.  Andrew Johnson became the 17th president of the United States.

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