how total war killed the confederacy 1864-1865
Post on 09-Aug-2015
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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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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
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