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The July 30, 1864, mine explosion, as seen from the Federal lines. Newspaper correspondent Alfred A. Waud made this sketch.
Other related actions took place in Virginia. On May 11, Gen. Philip Sheridan’s cavalry clashed with “Jeb” Stuart’s horsemen a few miles north of Richmond at Yellow Tavern. Sheridan’s men were driven back. Yet this battle cost the Confederacy the colorful Stuart, mortally wounded while leading his troops.
On May 15 the Confederates scored another victory in the Shenandoah Valley. Gen. Franz Siegel and 8,000 Federal horsemen advanced up the Valley as far as New Market. There they encountered a hastily assembled Confederate force less than half the size of Siegel’s division. The highlight of the battle was the successful charge of 225 youthful cadets from the Virginia Military Institute. Siegel’s force suffered an embarrassing defeat and fled down the Valley.
Both Lee and Grant recognized the importance of control of the Valley. Yet neither could afford to dislodge his army from Petersburg. Grant therefore organized a separate force under Gen. David Hunter with orders to move into the Valley and “to eat up Virginia clear and clean as far as [you] can go, so that crows flying over it for the balance of this season will have to carry their provender with them.”
To oppose Hunter, Lee rushed westward a small Confederate army under Gen. Jubal Early. Hunter burned and looted his way as far as Lynchburg before Early sent them scurrying over the mountains. Early then decided to make an invasion of his own. Sweeping down the Valley, he crossed the Potomac and moved to the outskirts of Washington. Yet “Jubal’s Raid” (July 4-20) failed when Early decided not to attack the Northern capital.
Grant resolved that no such threat to Washington would again occur. He dispatched a large Federal army under Sheridan into the Valley. Early, woefully outnumbered, nevertheless put up stiff resistance. Only after victories at Winchester (September 19), Fisher’s Hill (September 22), and Cedar Creek (October 19) could Sheridan declare the Valley once and for all cleared of Confederate forces.
In Georgia at this time, Sherman was also meeting with success. Federal victories at Ezra Church (July 28) and Jonesboro (August 31-September 1) compelled Hood to evacuate Atlanta. Sherman occupied the city on September 2. The fall of Atlanta was a valuable assist to Lincoln in his reelection to the presidency that autumn.
The railroad yards and ruins of Atlanta, photographed shortly after the fall of the city.
Sherman felt strongly that the war had to be carried to the Southern people themselves before the Confederacy would collapse. He therefore laid plans to slash through the very heart of the South. The campaign that followed is known as the “March to the Sea.”
Sherman first sent part of his army under Gen. Thomas back to Tennessee to watch Hood, whose Confederates had moved northward in an effort to force Sherman from Georgia. With Thomas blocking Hood, Sherman on November 16 left Atlanta in flames and started toward the Georgia coast with 68,000 veteran fighters. Sherman met little opposition during his advance, and on December 22 he telegraphed Lincoln: “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”
Kentucky-born John B. Hood first gained fame as commander of a Texas infantry brigade. He was an excellent division or corps commander, but unsuited for the leadership of an army.
Meanwhile, Hood’s strategy in Tennessee backfired tragically. At Franklin, Tenn., on November 30, Hood hurled his army against a part of Thomas’s force under Gen. John M. Schofield. Hood’s assaults cost 6,000 Confederates, including 5 generals and 53 regimental colonels. Two weeks later, Thomas’s troops all but destroyed Hood’s army when the Confederates made repeated assaults at Nashville.
Sherman’s strategy had cut the Confederacy in two. Although Grant was then no closer to Richmond than McClellan had been two years earlier, all that remained of the Confederacy were Virginia, the Carolinas, and isolated areas of the Trans-Mississippi.
Fort Darling, a Confederate defense overlooking the James River at Drewry’s Bluff. In the left foreground can be seen one of the bombproof shelters used by defenders.
1865After a month’s rest at Savannah, Sherman on February 1 started northward to strike through the Carolinas and join Grant in Virginia for the final blow against Lee. Sherman’s major opposition was the remnant of the Army of Tennessee, which had been placed again under the command of Gen. Joseph Johnston.
Johnston could offer but feeble resistance to Sherman. Federal troops occupied Charleston and were in Columbia when the latter was gutted by fire. On March 10 Sherman’s forces seized Fayetteville in central North Carolina, brushed back part of Johnston’s army six days later at Averysboro, and successfully withstood a Confederate attack at Bentonville (March 19-21).
Meanwhile, Grant had been mustering his forces for a grand drive against Lee’s weak defenses. Throughout the long siege of Petersburg Grant had slowly extended his lines farther to the south and west. Lee had no choice but to stretch his own meager defenses accordingly. Soon the Southern defenses were dangerously overextended.
This was the situation which Grant had sought. On April 1 he attacked Lee at Five Forks, sixteen miles southwest of Petersburg. The Confederate line bent and then broke. That night the Army of Northern Virginia abandoned the Richmond-Petersburg trenches and slowly moved westward in retreat. At the same time President Davis transferred the Confederate capital to Danville near the North Carolina border, Lee’s major hope was to rendezvous at Danville with Johnston’s army, then falling back in the face of Sherman’s advance. Together, Lee speculated, he and Johnston might be able to defeat first Sherman and then Grant.
This April, 1865, photograph shows the gutted business district of Richmond. The prominent building in the center was the Confederate capitol.
The dream quickly faded. As Lee’s army plodded westward, Grant’s divisions snipped at its heels at Amelia Court House (April 4-5), Sailor’s Creek (April 6), High Bridge (April 7), and Farmville (April 7). On April 8, near Appomattox Court House, Lee found the way blocked by massed infantry and cavalry under Sheridan. The Confederates were surrounded. On Palm Sunday, April 9, Lee surrendered to Grant. Three days later, 28,000 Confederates in the Army of Northern Virginia stacked their muskets before silent lines of Federal soldiers.
Lee’s surrender left Johnston with no place to go. On April 26, near Durham, N. C., the Army of Tennessee laid down its arms before Sherman’s forces. With the surrender of isolated forces in the Trans-Mississippi West on May 4, 11, and 26, the most costly war in American history came to an end.
The imposing farmhouse of Wilmer McLean was the site of Lee’s surrender to Grant.
In contrast, Johnston surrendered to Sherman in the small frame cottage of James Bennett.
THE CIVIL WAR
1861-1865
Compiled and drawn by Caroline Gray Holcomb SEPT. 1963
High-resolution Map
SUGGESTED READINGS Angle, Paul M., and Miers, E. S., eds., Tragic Years, 1860-1865 (2 vols., 1960) Barrett, John G., Sherman’s March through the Carolinas (1956) Boatner, Mark M., III, The Civil War Dictionary (1959) Catton, Bruce, The Centennial History of the Civil War (2 vols., 1962-63) ____, Glory Road (1952) ____, Mr. Lincoln’s Army (1951) ____, A Stillness At Appomattox (1953) ____, This Hallowed Ground (1956) Commager, Henry S., ed., The Blue and the Gray (2 vols., 1950) Coulter, E. Merton, The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 (1950) Donald, David, et al., eds., Divided We Fought (1952) ____, ed., Why The North Won The Civil War (1960) Dowdey, Clifford, The Land They Fought For (1955) Eaton, Clement, A History of the Southern Confederacy (1954) Eisenschiml, Otto, and Newman, R. G., eds., The American Iliad (1947) Foote, Shelby, The Civil War (2 vols., 1958-63) Freeman, Douglas S., Lee’s Lieutenants (3 vols., 1942-44) Harwell, Richard, ed., The Confederate Reader (1957) ____, ed., The Union Reader (1958) Henry, Robert S., The Story of the Confederacy (1931, 1936) Horn, Stanley F., The Army of Tennessee (1941, 1953) Jones, Archer, Confederate Strategy from Shiloh to Vicksburg (1961) Ketchum, Richard M., ed., The American Heritage Picture Book of the Civil War (1960) Miller, Francis T., ed., The Photographic History of the Civil War (10 vols., 1911, 1957) Monaghan, Jay, The Civil War on the Western Border, 1864-1865 (1955) Nevins, Allan, The War For The Union (2 vols., 1959-60) Randall, James G., and Donald, David, The Civil War and Reconstruction (1961) Williams, Kenneth P., Lincoln Finds a General (5 vols., 1949-59)(Students should also consult bibliographies in the above works for additional readings.)
Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery is one of the larger depositories for Confederate dead. This 1865 photograph shows the wooden slabs then used for headstones.
IV. LOSSESMore Americans died in the Civil War than in all of America’s other wars combined. From the French and Indian wars of the 1750’s through the hostilities in Korea in the 1950’s (with the exception of the Civil War), 606,000 American soldiers died in the line of duty. In the Civil War alone, over 618,000 men perished in four years of fighting.
The North lost 360,022 soldiers. Of that number, 67,058 were killed in action, while 43,012 later died of battle wounds. A total of 275,175 Federals received wounds while fighting.
Accurate records do not exist for the Confederate side. The total number of Southern soldiers killed was approximately 258,000. About 94,000 were killed or fatally wounded in battle. No figures exist for the number of Confederates who were wounded in action.
Lord Alfred Tennyson’s famous poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” tells of the assault of a British cavalry unit in the Crimean War. In its charge the Light Brigade sustained 37% losses. Yet at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, the 1st Minnesota Infantry lost 82% of its strength in that day’s fighting. At Antietam the 1st Texas suffered 82% casualties in a few hours of combat. The 27th Tennessee had 54% losses at Shiloh; six months later, the same regiment lost 53% of its remaining strength at the battle of Perryville. In all during the Civil War, no less than 63 Federal and 52 Confederate regiments lost over 50% of their strength in a single engagement.
After a battle it was not always possible to bury the dead. Here bleached bones mark the spots where soldiers died in the fighting at Gaines’s Mill.
Other statistics of the Civil War give an equally horrible picture. Over 400,000 soldiers died of sickness and disease. For every man killed in battle, two men died behind the lines from such maladies as smallpox, measles, pneumonia, and intestinal disorders. It is a sad fact that almost as many Federal soldiers (57,265) died of dysentery and diarrhea as were killed outright on the battlefield (67,058). Since conditions in Confederate armies were worse, the number of Southern deaths from sickness was probably higher.
Field hospitals, such as this one established near Mechanicsville in June, 1862, could usually be found near the battlefield. The man in the center foreground is a doctor examining the leg wound of a soldier.
SUGGESTED READINGS Adams, George W., Doctors in Blue (1952) Cunningham, H. H., Doctors in Gray (1958) Fox, William F., Regimental Losses in the American Civil War (1898) Livermore, Thomas L., Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861-1865 (1900, 1956) Phisterer, Frederick, Statistical Record of the Armies of the United States (1883) V. NAVIESNaval affairs were among the most critical problems facing each side in 1861. The Federal
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