American Civil War

A

Overview

The year 1864 began optimistically for the North, which expected Grant, its new general-in-chief, to bring victory. However, the bloody Overland Campaign in Virginia during May and June, which featured clashes at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, depressed Northern morale, as did the failure of General Sherman to capture Atlanta. A swift strike through the Shenandoah Valley brought a small Confederate army to the outskirts of Washington in early July, which further alarmed the North. By August, Northern morale had reached its lowest point of the war, and there were expectations that Lincoln would be defeated in his bid for reelection in November. As Grant and Lee settled into a siege along the Petersburg-Richmond lines, Union victories at Mobile Bay in late August, at Atlanta in early September, and in the Shenandoah Valley in September and October raised Northern morale and ensured Lincoln’s reelection. Lincoln’s political triumph in turn guaranteed that the North would continue to prosecute the war vigorously. The year ended with Union victories at Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee, in November and December, and Sherman’s destructive march across the interior of Georgia. Hopes for Confederate success had virtually ended, the Northern blockade was tightening, and civilian and military morale in the South sagged badly.

For 1864 Grant planned an aggressive campaign. In the spring, when the roads had dried, the Army of the Potomac, still under Meade’s direct command, moved against Lee in Virginia. Union General Benjamin F. Butler’s Army of the James would advance from Bermuda Hundred, Virginia, on the James River. Sherman, now in full command in the West, would take the offensive against Johnston’s army and Atlanta. For these moves the Union armies could muster 235,000 men. The Confederates had no more than 150,000 to oppose them.

B

The Wilderness

On May 4 the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River in Virginia and camped in the Wilderness, a region of tangled woods and underbrush south of the old battlefields of Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. The next day the federal troops engaged Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. A two-day battle followed. Maneuvering was next to impossible, and much of the time the men of the two armies could barely see one another. The losses, however, were heavy: about 18,000 on the Union side and about 11,000 for the Confederates.

C

Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor

When such losses had been inflicted on the Army of the Potomac in the past, its commanders had either halted or retreated. Now a new man was giving orders. Advance, Grant said, and strike Lee on his right flank. From May 8 to May 18, fighting swirled around the hamlet of Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia. The Union lost more than 17,000 men without decisive results. Grant again ordered an advance around Lee’s right flank. This time, Lee shifted his army to meet the Union drive head on. At Cold Harbor, Virginia, north of the Chickahominy River and within sight of Richmond, Grant called for a frontal advance. On June 3 the federal troops suffered 7000 casualties during one day of the Battle of Cold Harbor, as the Union troops struggled against the entrenched Confederates, who lost fewer than 1500. For the next ten days the two armies were inactive, camped within sight of each other.

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D

Petersburg

Grant then decided to cross the James River, circle around Lee’s army and the Confederate capital to Petersburg, and fall suddenly on Richmond from the south before Lee could come to its defense. The plan was skillfully put into operation and almost succeeded. Just in time, however, the Confederates became aware of Grant’s movements. Beauregard, with a numerically inferior force, managed to stop Grant’s advance at Petersburg. Heavy fighting took place from June 15 to June 18, when Lee arrived from Richmond with his main army. Unable to take Petersburg by direct assault, Grant prepared to starve the city into surrender. Before the siege ended almost a year later, the entire Confederacy was on the verge of collapse.

E

Sinking of the Alabama

Grant’s failure to take Richmond in a smashing attack spread gloom in the North. An important Union naval victory was won at the same time, but news of it was slow in coming.

The Confederate cruiser Alabama, since its commissioning in May 1862, had sunk or captured more than $6.5 million worth of Union merchant ships and cargoes. On June 11, 1864, the Alabama entered the harbor at Cherbourg, France, to land prisoners and be repaired. Three days later the USS Kearsarge, which had been tracking the raider, came into port to pick up the Alabama’s prisoners. Ordered to withdraw beyond the territorial limits, Captain John A. Winslow of the Kearsarge waited for his prey. Captain Raphael Semmes of the Alabama sent out word that as soon as he had taken on coal he would come out and fight. The duel began on the morning of June 19 and ended less than two hours later, when the Alabama, mortally wounded, slipped stern first into the sea. The Kearsarge had destroyed the Confederacy’s greatest single menace to Northern commerce.

The Florida, second among the great Confederate raiders, was captured in violation of international law in the harbor at Bahia (now Salvador), Brazil, in October 1864. The Shenandoah, which had been taking prize vessels, chiefly whalers, in the Pacific, did not learn that the war was over until August 2, 1865. It succeeded in making its way to Liverpool, England, in November 1865, and there its captain turned it over to the English authorities.

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