• Grant promises Lincoln he will relentlessly attack Lee’s
forces until he surrenders
• May 1864 the first battle erupts in the “Wilderness”, a
densely forested area near Fredericksburg
• Battle lasted two days even as the woods around the
troops burned
• The series of battles became known as the Wilderness
Campaign
Grant versus Lee
• Much of the fighting had become hand-to-hand with little
reinforcement or resupply
• June 1864, Grant follows Lee to Cold Harbor, a strategic
crossroads NE of Richmond, VA
• Convinced Lee’s troops are fatigued, Grant launches an
all-out assault
• Union pay’s heavily for Grant’s miscalculation as they
have 7K casualties compared to 1,500 for the
Confederacy
Cold Harbor
• August 1864, David Farragut takes 18 ships to attack
Mobile
• Farragut moved his fleet past Confederate forts and
destroyed the Confederate fleet defending Mobile Bay
• Farragut failed to capture Mobile, but sealed off the bay
• Blockade runners could no longer use any port in the
Gulf of Mexico
Farragut Attacks Mobile
• Grant had made William Tecumseh Sherman his commander in
the west
• Sherman instructs his troops to cut the railways leading into the
city and occupies Atlanta on Sept. 1, 1864
• Sherman orders civilians to leave and has his troops destroy
everything of military value
• Approximately a third of Atlanta is burned
Fall of Atlanta
• On November 15, 1864, Sherman begins his “March to
the Sea” from Atlanta to Savannah
• Sherman’s path of destruction was 60 miles wide in some
places
• Troops ransacked homes, burned crops and killed
livestock
• Sherman presented President Lincoln the city of
Savannah as his Christmas present
Sherman’s March to the
Sea
1) The destruction of railroads and resources was
devastating to the Confederate war effort
2) The march crippled Southern morale
3) The march helped Lincoln win re-election in the North
Effects of the March to the
Sea
• Lincoln is opposed in the election of 1864 by General George
B. McClellan, a Democrat
• McClellan promised to stop the fighting and open negotiations
with the South
• Sherman’s march and the capture of Atlanta gave Lincoln the
support he needed to win
• Lincoln interpreted his reelection as a mandate to end slavery
• On Jan. 31, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, banning slavery in the U.S., passed the House of
Representatives and was sent to the states for ratification
• Union troops cut off the road at Appomattox Courthouse,
VA. and surrounded Lee’s forces
• Lee surrenders to Grant on April 9, 1865
• Fives day’s later on April 14, 1865, while viewing a play
at Ford’s Theater, Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes
Booth
Southern Surrender and
Assassination
• Creation of a single, unified country (Nationalism)
• End of slavery
• Increased power of the central government-killed the
issue of states rights
• US now an Industrial nation
• Western lands increasingly open to settlement
• South was economically and physically devastated, w/ the
plantation system crippled...thus Reconstruction
(rebuilding the south) - but a deep hatred of the North
remained...
Effects of the Civil War