Victory
NOVEMBER 1864
Lincoln is reelected, ensuring that there will be no peace negotiations. Sherman’s army begins its “march to the sea.”
JUNE 1864
Confederate and Union forces entrench outside Petersburg, the important rail center and gateway to Richmond.
APRIL 1-2, 1865
A Union breakthrough cuts Petersburg’s railroad to Richmond. The Confederate government flees the capital.
APRIL 3-8, 1865
Lee’s army heads west, harried by Union cavalry. President Lincoln visits a smoldering Richmond.
APRIL 9, 1865
Lee surrenders at
Appomattox, the de facto end of the war. Just five days later Lincoln is assassinated.
JUNE 2, 1865
Gen. Kirby Smith surrenders his rebel forces, ending formal Confederate resistance.
MAY 1865
Gen. Richard Taylor surrenders the remaining Confederate troops east of the Mississippi.
APRIL 18, 1865
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrenders his 90,000 strong army to Sherman in
North Carolina.
THE CRATER
On July 30, 1864, almost 4,000 Union troops were killed after rushing headlong into a crater they’d blown behind Confederate lines. Grant would call it “the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war.”
SUPPLY SHORTAGES
The Confederate Navy fought hard but failed to break the Union blockade. Instead, daredevil blockade runners, often fast steamships, brought essential war supplies from Europe.
Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor— until they came to their final redoubt, Petersburg. Here, at the gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond, they dug in and waited. Grant’s men built, quite literally, a new city—City Point—expanding the existing town where the James and Appomattox Rivers met. From there, through vast networks of wharves, newly laid railroads, and a giant bakery, they could reinforce and resupply their besieging armies at will.
For months, from June 1864 to March 1865, the armies remained in essentially the same positions. Protected by the thin but heavily entrenched line at Petersburg, the Confederate government in Richmond persisted. And although their influence ran barely beyond the city limits, Confederate leaders still hoped, somehow, to turn the tide of war. Their hopes became increasingly unrealistic after September 1864, when the great railroad hub of Atlanta, Georgia, fell to the forces of Gen. William T. Sherman. From there Sherman began his destructive march to the sea—to Savannah, and then, turning north, through the swollen rivers
and seas of mud that made a wet South Carolina winter. Although there were still many parts of the Confederacy that had not yet seen a Union soldier, one by one the sources of Southerners’ capacity to keep fighting were being knocked away. One of the most significant was the fall of Wilmington, North Carolina, to a naval assault in January 1865. This deprived the Confederacy of its last significant port and the vital weapons and ammunition brought in by blockade-running ships. If ever the writing was on the wall, surely it was then.
But by this stage, no one took anything for granted. Lee had eluded many vain, inept, and unlucky Union commanders before. Just maybe he could do it again. Perhaps, Lee’s army could sneak away from the trenches of Petersburg. It could then join up with the only other sizable Confederate force, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army which was being pushed into the North Carolina mountains by Sherman. Maybe then this combined Confederate force could
BRIDGEMAN/INDEX
GRANT DID NOT COMPLETELYencircle Petersburg, and Lee could
still communicate with Richmond. Elaborate lines of trenches, tunnels, lookout posts—even newly invented barbed wire—were constructed by both sides. Such field fortifications, uncommon ear- lier in the war, were a response to Grant’s strategy of continuous pressure and not retreating back into camp between engagements.
THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG
PRINT COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES
The fight for the trenches outside Petersburg was intense, and in many ways foreshadowed the bloody battles of the First World War. Here a regiment of Union infantry storms and captures part of the Confederate line.
defeat Sherman, then march back to Virginia and deal with Grant. The Northern will to win would be broken at last, and the South would be free. It was sheer fantasy, but so long as Lee’s army remained in the field, people who needed to could believe in it. After all, if Lee’s army could prevent Grant from taking Richmond for months, despite being massively outnumbered and outgunned, anything might be possible.
But when the end came, it came quickly. In just nine days, Lee’s army tried to flee, but in- stead it found itself trapped by overwhelming numbers. Surrounded on all sides, desperately hungry, depleted, and demoralized, they were comprehensively and suddenly defeated.
Over the winter, desertion and disease had steadily drained the last strength from Lee’s army. By March 1865 he had a long defensive line and barely a thou- sand men per mile to hold it. The on- ly question was whether Lee’s men could escape to fight another day, before they were finally over- whelmed. On March 25 Lee or-
dered a surprise attack on the Union-held Fort Stedman, east of Petersburg, in the hope that he would draw Union forces east, giving the rest of the Confederate Army half a chance to escape to the west. Union forces rolled back the Confed- erate assault with ease. On March 31 there were fleeting, faint echoes of past Confederate suc- cess, as the first waves of Union attackers were
given hard fights. But on April 1, at the battle of Five Forks, Grant made the vital breakthrough, tak- ing control of the railroad that connected Petersburg to Richmond. Despite disarray among the attackers, the Confederate lines were
finally broken.