Chapter 17 The Civil War (1861-1865)

Lesson 5 The War’s Final Stages

Total War Strikes the South

• General William Sherman destroyed Atlanta
• The deliberate strategy to bring the horrors of war to the Southern people is called total war
• Including terror, starvation, violence, and homelessness

Union Strategy

• The Union forces surrounded the South
• Cut off imports and exports
• The Union controlled the Mississippi River
• Western Confederate states cut off

Grant

• Ulysses S. Grant was an average student
• Failure as a farmer and businessman
• But was an amazing soldier
• Victories at Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga
• Lincoln put Grant in charge of all Union armies

Grant in Charge

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• 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 series of three battles at Richmond
• Grant was determined to march southward until they surrendered

The Wilderness Campaign

• Near Richmond is an area of dense forests called the Wilderness
• 6 bloodiest weeks of the war begun
• Grant and Lee struggled through trees
• Both sides had many casualties
• Brushfires went through the forest burning alive 200 wounded men

The Wilderness Campaign Continued

• Grant then moved to Richmond
• A Union general observed men “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
• 50,000 deaths in 30 days

The Petersburg Siege

• A vital Confederate railroad center
• If Grant could take Petersburg, Richmond would be cut off
• 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 resistance
• 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 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 interpreted his reelection as a clear sign from the voters to end slavery permanently by amending the Constitution
• On January 31, 1865, Congress passed the 13^th 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

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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”

Wilmer McLean

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 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

Essential Question

What events led to the end of the war?

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- Wilderness campaign

- Blockade of Mobile Bay

- Sherman’s March to the Sea

- Total War

- Fall of Richmond

Chapter 17 Lesson 5 Quiz

The systematic destruction of an entire land—not just an army—is called

1. slash-and-burn.
2. terminal war.
3. holocaust.
4. total war.

A nine-month siege resulted from Ulysses S. Grant's assault on the railroad center of

1. Petersburg.
2. Richmond.
3. Vicksburg.
4. Shiloh.

What helped Lincoln win the 1864 election?

1. Lee's surrender
2. winning at Gettysburg
3. William T. Sherman's capture of Atlanta
4. promotion of Grant

Sherman's march to Savannah was called

1. cold war.
2. undeclared war.
3. total war.
4. malicious war.

General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in a small Virginia village called

1. Richmond.
2. Appomattox Court House.
3. Vicksburg.
4. Gettysburg.