A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Unit 2: Westward Expansion and Civil WarPart 20: The Civil War (IV)

THE CHATTANOOGA CAMPAIGN

• In November 1863, after the Union forces in Tennessee retreated to Chattanooga, Ulysses S. Grant led his men from Vicksburg to Chattanooga to provide reinforcements.

• Grant worked with Major General William T. Sherman to break the Union forces in half.

• Grant’s strategy was to allow Sherman’s detachment to launch a surprise attack against the Confederate forces while they were in battle against another Union detachment.

THE RISE OF ULYSSES S. GRANT

• Grant’s strategy was successful and proved to be a major victory for Lincoln as he prepared to run for re-election.

• In early 1864, however, rumors abounded that the Republican Party planned to nominate Grant rather than Lincoln as its candidate for the Presidency.

• After Grant publicly rejected any notion of running for the Presidency, Lincoln promoted him from his command of the Western theatre to place him in charge of all Union forces.

THE UNION’S FINAL STRATEGIC MOVES

• When Grant took control of all Union forces, he gave Sherman his old position and placed him in charge of all Western forces.

• At Chattanooga, Grant again split his forces in half, but this time on a nationwide scale.

• Sherman and his men would head south into Georgia, to capture the city of Atlanta.

• Grant and his men would head north through the Shenandoah Valley into northern Virginia, then south towards Richmond.

GRANT vs. LEE

• As he waged his Overland Campaign in May and June 1864, Grant repeatedly battled the forces of Robert E. Lee.

• His greatest loss came at the Battle of Cold Harbor, when 59,000 Confederate forces defeated 108,000 Union forces.

• Rather than capturing Richmond, however, Grant sent a large detachment of men to the nearby city of Petersburg. He placed Petersburg under siege to use it as a base for a later invasion of Richmond.

McCLELLAN’S NOMINATION

• In a move calculated to intimidate the Republican Party in a Presidential election year, the Democrats nominated George B. McClellan as their candidate for the Presidency.

• A high-profile military figure breaking ranks with Lincoln was bad for the President without any end to the war in sight.

• McClellan ran on a platform criticizing Lincoln’s conduct of the war. His nomination gave the pro-slavery party a shot at recapturing the White House.

SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA

• After Sherman and his men captured Atlanta in July 1864, they embarked on a sweep through the South and a march towards the seaside city of Savannah, Georgia.

• Their intention upon reaching Savannah was to march north towards Richmond, to provide Grant with reinforcements.

• They destroyed everything in their path, burning entire towns and huge swathes of land and ripping up the railroads.

SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA

• Sherman had left a similar trail of destruction on his march from Vicksburg to the town of Meridian, Mississippi.

• His intention was to completely decimate the South, to adversely affect the lives of ordinary people so badly that they would cease to support the Confederate Government.

• He allowed African American soldiers to serve in battle.

• He captured Savannah four days before Christmas 1864.

THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT

• After Lincoln was re-elected in November 1864, the chances of a Union victory rose.

• Because the Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure, however, there was still no guarantee that slavery would remain abolished in the United States whenever the war came to an end.

• Lincoln feared that if he defeated the Confederacy and the seceded states returned to the Union, they would simply reintroduce slavery.

THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT

• To avoid this scenario, Lincoln had to ensure that slavery was abolished nationwide before the war ended and the seceded states returned to the Union.

• In January 1865, he secured the passage of a proposed thirteenth amendment to the Constitution in the House of Representatives.

• The amendment read: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

THE HAMPTON ROADS CONFERENCE

• In February 1865, Abraham Lincoln and his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, met with three representatives of the Confederate States at Hampton, Virginia.

• They discussed possible terms of surrender as well as the possibility of compromising on the continuation of slavery in the United States.

• The representatives of the Confederate States returned to Richmond without having secured a deal for peace.

LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

• On March 4, 1865, Lincoln delivered the address at his second inauguration.

• He clearly blamed the South for the Civil War: “[F]our years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. ... Both parties [involved in conflict] deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.”

LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

• At the same time, however, Lincoln looked ahead to the impending end of the war.

• “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

THE FALL OF RICHMOND

• Ulysses S. Grant used hundreds of miles of trenches to place Petersburg under siege for nine months from mid-1864.

• In March 1865, two weeks before Lincoln’s inauguration ceremony, Petersburg fell to the Union and with it the supply lines to Richmond were broken.

• Robert E. Lee retreated from both cities and fled towards the town of Appomattox.

• On April 4, Lincoln paid a visit to Richmond, dramatizing the Union conquest of the Confederacy.

THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR

• On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, officially ending the Civil War.

• On April 15, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a stage actor and Confederate sympathizer.

• That same day, Lincoln’s Vice President, Andrew Johnson, took the oath of office to become the next President.

THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR

• On April 26, after two weeks as a fugitive, John Wilkes Booth was tracked down and shot dead by a Union soldier.

• On May 10, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, was arrested by Union cavalrymen. He was imprisoned for two years, during which time he defended the actions of the Confederate States and characterized their dream of independence and sovereignty as the South’s ‘Lost Cause.’

THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

On December 6, 1865, after its passage through the House of Representatives and the Senate and its ratification by the states, the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was officially adopted and slavery was forever abolished.

A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Unit 2: Westward Expansion and Civil WarPart 20: The Civil War (IV)