4

BETWEEN THE STATES

1861–1865

Five days before Christmas in 1860, South Carolina, in a convention convened to consider the question of secession, chose to leave the American federal union. It did so because Abraham Lincoln had just been elected president of the United States.

Lincoln was an Illinois politician, a Republican, who had been elected with but 40 percent of the popular vote and had carried not a single state in the South. His views and those of his party were anathema to most Southerners, particularly in regard to slavery, the key issue of the day. Personally, Lincoln was opposed to the South’s “peculiar institution,” although, like many in the North, he would not seek its abolition in those states where it already existed. But in the new lands to the west, where additional states soon would be established, Lincoln and his colleagues were dead set against its extension. States of the American South whose economy and social system depended on slavery understood that their way of life and influence within the national union were threatened should the Western states be declared slave-free. With Lincoln in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress, they feared for the future. So they decided to withdraw from the Union.

Mississippi soon followed South Carolina’s example. Then, in turn, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas seceded. Early in February, delegates from these states met in Montgomery, Alabama. Drafting a constitution, they created a new political entity, the Confederate States of America, and selected its first (and only) president, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. In addition, they declared their intent to exercise control of federal military assets within the South, including forts along the coast.

Lincoln had no intention of allowing the seven states to secede, nor of transferring military resources to those he considered in rebellion. Cleverly, he maneuvered the South into firing the first shot, which it did on April 12, 1861. That morning Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Thirty-four hours later the fort surrendered. Though no one had been killed, the bloodiest war in America’s history had begun.

Two days later Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand men to join the army. Then, on April 19, he proclaimed a naval blockade of the Confederate coast. The blockade would prove effective, though the president would need, and obtain, a far greater number of soldiers.

Meanwhile, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee signed on with the Confederacy. That brought the number of states in rebellion to eleven, all committed to slavery. Four slave-holding states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—remained in the Union.

When Virginia seceded, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond, one hundred miles south of Washington, D.C. Defending the Southern city was an army that both in its day and in history became legendary, the Army of Northern Virginia. Aiming to seize Richmond was the North’s premier fighting force: the Army of the Potomac (Union armies tended to be named after the river in the area where they first assembled). These two armies, each with its eyes on Richmond, would battle each other throughout the conflict, fighting seven of the war’s longest battles.

The first one took place on July 21, 1861, at Manassas Junction. This was in northern Virginia, not far from Washington. To reach the enemy, Lincoln’s troops had to cross a small stream called Bull Run. In command of the Union force, some thirty thousand men, was General Irwin McDowell, whose army was, up to then, the largest military force ever to be seen in America. But they were an untrained lot lacking in discipline and experience. McDowell pointed this out to Lincoln, who responded that the same was true of the rebels. The Union commander wanted more time to prepare his troops for their first battle, but the political pressure to march “on to Richmond” was such that Lincoln ordered him to engage the enemy, which he did. McDowell’s plan was to hold the Confederates’ center while moving around to his right, attacking the rebels’ left flank. The plan was solid and it almost worked. But Confederate reinforcements arrived at a critical time, and McDowell’s army was sent scurrying back to Washington.

The Union defeat at Bull Run (the North tended to name battles by the nearby body of water, while the South called them by the town near where the battle occurred) was followed three weeks later by another defeat, this time in the West. There, in Missouri, a small Union army led by Nathaniel Lyon attacked a larger Confederate force. This proved unwise, as Lyon lost his life and the federals lost the battle. These early setbacks destroyed the hopes of many in the North who, anticipating early success on the battlefield, had expected a quick return to the political fold on the part of the South.

Two additional events associated with the Southern victory at Bull Run are worth mentioning. The first took place during the battle. The second occurred afterward. The first event explains one of the most famous nicknames in all of American history. During the early hours of the fight, when Northern troops appeared to have their Southern counterparts on the run, a senior Confederate commander, Thomas Jackson, effectively rallied his troops. Another Southern general pointed this out to his own wavering men, exclaiming, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall.” Henceforth, General Jackson had a moniker that would stay with him forever.

The second event associated with the July 1861 engagement at Bull Run was the appointment of a new commander of the Army of the Potomac. President Lincoln relieved McDowell, who fades from our story. His successor was a West Point graduate by the name of George B. McClellan.

An extremely capable military executive, McClellan retooled the Army of the Potomac. Under his leadership, the army, dispirited by its performance at Bull Run, became a first-rate fighting force. No longer a collection of amateurs, the Army of the Potomac was transformed into a body of men willing and able to fight. Having selected many of its top officers and attending to the needs of ordinary soldiers, McClellan was revered by the 120,000 he would lead into battle. The Army of the Potomac was his army.

Much was expected of this force and of its commander. Northern newspapers heaped praise on McClellan, who came to see himself, as did others, as the savior of the American republic. Lincoln was more perceptive, but he hoped the young general—McClellan was only thirty-four—would swiftly move his army south and take Richmond.

The general, however, procrastinated. In a pattern that would repeat itself, he delayed his departure, asking for more troops and more equipment, justifying his action by exaggerating the size of the opposing army. Abraham Lincoln said McClellan had “the slows.” Frustrated, the president pushed hard to get the general to move, which he finally did, in March 1862.

Instead of taking his army overland to Richmond, McClellan moved south via the navy, landing his troops on the peninsula bounded by the York and James Rivers. Richmond lay not far to the west. He thus kept his supply lanes free from attack and avoided battle while in transit. Methodically and slowly, as was his style, McClellan advanced, eventually coming within five miles of the Confederate capital.

Known to historians as the Peninsula Campaign, McClellan’s efforts in late spring and early summer of 1862 did not succeed. A number of battles took place, not all of which the Union army lost. Yet the net result was failure, for Richmond remained under Southern control. Disheartened, the Army of the Potomac withdrew from the peninsula in August.

In one of the early battles on the Peninsula, the general commanding Confederate forces was wounded and had to be replaced. His successor was Robert E. Lee, who, with ninety thousand men, the largest number of soldiers ever to comprise the Army of Northern Virginia, proceeded to outmaneuver the Union forces. However, the cost to the South was high. During the campaign, Lee suffered more than twenty thousand casualties. McClellan, who blamed his defeat on everyone but himself, paid in blood as well: the Union army had more than fifteen thousand killed or wounded.

These losses, as well as subsequent ones, upset McClellan on a personal level. He felt the pain of his men and worked hard to secure medical treatment for them. Given his reaction to the dead and wounded, it’s not clear that George B. McClellan had the stomach to do what generals must.

As the Army of the Potomac began its campaign on the peninsula, a clash of a different sort took place at Hampton Roads, a body of water at the confluence of the James and Elizabeth Rivers in southeastern Virginia, immediately north of Norfolk. It was on these waters, on March 9, 1862, that two ships, one belonging to Abraham Lincoln’s navy, the other to its Confederate counterpart, fought a battle that forever changed naval warfare.

Upon seizing the Norfolk navy yard in April 1861, Southern engineers rebuilt the partially destroyed Union steam frigate the Merrimac. But what they created was an entirely new form of warship. Discarding masts and sails, they constructed an armored warship with sloping sides (the armor and angled structure would cause enemy shells to ricochet off rather than penetrate the vessel) powered by the Merrimac’s repaired engine. They armed the ship with ten guns and, in a throwback to Roman times, attached a fifteen-hundred-pound iron ram to the bow. Christened the Virginia, this strange-looking vessel first went to sea on Saturday, March 8, 1862. Her commander was Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan, an experienced sailor who had been the first superintendent of the United States Naval Academy.

Buchanan took the Virginia into Hampton Roads intent on striking at Union warships that formed part of the blockade Lincoln had ordered the previous year. Buchanan’s first sortie was a success. Employing both guns and the ram, his ship sunk the USS Cumberland, a twenty-four-gun wooden sloop, and then so damaged the fifty-gun frigate Congress that the Union vessel later exploded and was destroyed.

In but an afternoon the Virginia apparently had altered the naval equation of the War Between the States. She had demonstrated that the Confederate navy could challenge the much larger Union fleet and, thereby, break the blockade. If the United States Navy’s blockade could be rendered ineffective, the chances were good that the South might win its battle for separation from the Northern American states.

However, that same Saturday, about an hour after the Virginia had dropped anchor, having returned safely to port, an equally strange vessel, this one belonging to the North, tied up alongside a Union warship in Hampton Roads. Her name was the USS Monitor.

She had been built in Brooklyn when Union naval leaders had learned the rebels were constructing an ironclad in Norfolk. Designed for calm, coastal waters, her freeboard (that portion of the side of the hull above the water) was but eighteen inches. She carried neither masts nor sails and had a crew of only 49 (the Virginia’s crew numbered 360). Amidships was an armored, rotating turret containing two cannons. No one had ever seen a ship like her.

The Monitor’s captain was Lieutenant John Worden. He weighed anchor at 8:10 in the morning and steamed out into Hampton Roads. His goal was to protect a Union ship that had run aground the day before. This was the USS Minnesota, a vessel the Virginia was determined to sink. Thus began the famous “duel of the ironclads.” The fight lasted four hours as the two ships turned and fired, then fired and turned. Neither the Monitor nor the Virginia was sunk, nor was either seriously damaged. Late that afternoon, they returned to their respective ports. Southerners claimed a victory although the blockade remained in force. Northerners, disputing the claim, simply went to work and built more ships like the Monitor.

They also built a large number of shallow-draft, armored steamboats for use on America’s rivers. These would play a key role in the war, ferrying troops and supplies and bombarding Confederate fortifications.

Union shipyards were central to the success of Abraham Lincoln’s cause. During the war years they built 200 warships. They also helped convert 418 merchant ships into military vessels. At the beginning of the conflict the U. S. Navy had only 90 ships. By 1865, the number was 671.

This huge armada enforced the blockade, no mean task as the Southern coastline extended some thirty-five hundred miles from Virginia to Texas. Confederate blockade runners occasionally slipped through, but the overall effort was to stifle the South’s lucrative trade in cotton and to reduce significantly the importation of British firearms. In addition to blockade runners, which used Bermuda, Nassau, and Havana as ports of origin, the South had a small number of oceangoing warships, built mostly in England. They were deployed to intercept Northern vessels far out at sea, much as the tiny U.S. Navy had done in the War of 1812. Perhaps the most famous of the Confederate warships was the CSS Alabama. Commanded by Raphael Semmes, she sunk sixty-five ships during her two-year cruise. However, on June 19, 1864, the federal navy caught up with her off Cherbourg in the form of the USS Kearsarge, which took but ninety minutes to end her career as a maritime raider.

Whether on the high seas or on fast-flowing rivers, the Union navy had much to do with the defeat of the South, a role that seems overlooked as Americans today recall their Civil War. Yet throughout the conflict sailors and marines were in action. Early in the war, for example, the United States Navy conducted a successful amphibious operation capturing the forts that defended Hatteras Inlet in North Carolina. Two months later, a fleet of seventy-seven vessels, under the command of Samuel F. Dupont, took control of the Confederate forts off Port Royal Sound along the coast of South Carolina. Of greater importance to the Union cause was the seizure in April 1862 of New Orleans by ships directed by David G. Farragut who, three months later, was rewarded with the rank of rear admiral, the first such American to be so invested. Better known is Farragut’s later exploit off Alabama. In attacking the Confederate positions guarding Mobile, Farragut shouted, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” as his ships charged through a narrow channel. The “torpedoes” were, in fact, what today are called mines, a munition which, according to naval historian Jack Sweetman, the South showed great resourcefulness in using to eventually put forty Union warships out of action. Farragut’s fleet made it through the channel losing but one vessel, the monitor Tecumseh. Subsequently, his ships destroyed several Confederate warships and closed the port to Southern commerce, further tightening the naval screws that so weakened the Confederacy.

One last aspect of the conflict at sea is worth noting. Of the more than 170,000 men who served in the Union navy during the War Between the States, 18,000 were black Americans. Ten times as many served in the Union armies, but, unlike those soldiers, these black sailors were assigned to units in which white Americans served. Thus the Union navy, to a degree, was an integrated force. Congress recognized that black citizens represented a valuable pool of manpower. So in 1862 it authorized military service for African-Americans by passing the Second Confiscation Act in July. This act and other steps led to a large number of blacks donning the blue uniform of the Union army. By war’s end there were 166 black regiments in the army’s Order of Battle. More than a few were given secondary or menial tasks, yet when called upon to fight they performed well.

When General McClellan withdrew from the Peninsula, contingents of the Army of the Potomac were detached for service with a newly established Union army. Its commander was Major General John Pope, an officer who had had success in the West. He would not have much in Virginia. Abrasive and conceited, he was an unpopular choice. But Lincoln wanted a general who was eager to do battle, and Pope, for all his faults, was that.

Late in August Pope’s army met that of Lee. The result was a victory for the South. The battle again took place at Bull Run in Virginia. Union casualties were high: some thirteen thousand soldiers were killed or wounded.

Several of Lincoln’s advisors urged him to sack both Pope and McClellan, as neither general had distinguished himself. The president agreed that this was so, but dismissed only Pope. The general’s army became part of the Army of the Potomac. Thus this latter army was now a substantial military force. It required a commander who could restore its pride and prepare it for battle. Lincoln knew, better than anyone else, that McClellan would do both.

Meanwhile, in Richmond, Jefferson Davis devised a strategy he believed might win the war. A West Point graduate, the Confederate president planned an invasion of the North, In fact, he set in motion two such endeavors. One in the West would strike into Kentucky. The other would take Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland. Kentucky and Maryland were border states with residents sympathetic to the Southern cause. Success likely would bring them into the Confederacy.

Robert E. Lee was fully supportive of this plan. He wanted to relieve his beloved Virginia of the hardship of war. He wanted Northerners to experience firsthand the destruction that accompanies military conflict. He wanted to engage the Army of the Potomac in a decisive battle, one he believed he would win. And, along with Jefferson Davis, Lee wanted a victory up north that might persuade Abraham Lincoln to sue for peace. Moreover, both Lee and Davis were convinced that such a victory would cause Great Britain to recognize the Confederate States of America. Such recognition would enhance the chances of gaining Southern independence, much as victory at Saratoga in 1777, by bringing about recognition from France, had aided the American rebels.

The advance into Kentucky began late in August 1862. Commanded by Braxton Bragg, thirty thousand Confederate soldiers moved from Mississippi to Tennessee, then into Kentucky, a state Lincoln believed had to remain in Union hands. Defending Kentucky was Major General Don Carlos Buell, whose Army of the Ohio outnumbered that of Bragg. Buell was a military professional who rarely moved with speed and lacked an aggressive approach to war, much like McClellan. The two armies clashed at Perryville on October 8. Neither appeared to win, but with Confederate setbacks at Iuka and Corinth, Bragg wisely decided to return home. Buell did not pursue him and was relieved of command. But, as he no doubt said to himself more than once, he had kept Kentucky in the Union.

The advance into Maryland began in September 1862, when lead elements of the Army of Northern Virginia began crossing the Potomac River. Numbering approximately forty-five thousand, the army was structured as two corps. One was commanded by Jackson, the other by James Longstreet, both extremely capable senior officers. Lee sent Jackson and his men to capture the federal garrison at Harpers Ferry. Longstreet was to continue north. Once reunited, the army either would head into Pennsylvania or turn and fight the Union army that Lee expected would be in pursuit. Thus Robert E. Lee had split his army in two, a tactic military experts say is often unwise.

If McClellan and the Army of the Potomac could fall on each of the Confederate corps separately, they could destroy the South’s principal military force. Such an outcome became a realistic possibility when Union soldiers found a copy of Lee’s orders describing his plan. To succeed, McClellan had to move quickly. He did, but not quickly enough.

Troops belonging to Longstreet delayed the Army of the Potomac in battles at South Mountain in which each side suffered more than twenty-two hundred casualties. Soon thereafter, Stonewall Jackson took control of Harpers Ferry, taking twelve thousand prisoners along with much needed supplies. Learning that McClellan was aware of his intentions, Lee ordered Jackson to promptly link up with Longstreet, which he did. Lee then placed his entire army just outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, and prepared to fight. Close by flowed Antietam Creek.

When McClellan arrived at Sharpsburg, his army was a powerful force, comprising some eighty thousand soldiers. His plan of attack was to have three assaults in sequence, on the Confederate left, center, and right. This would prevent Lee from moving troops from one spot to reinforce another. The plan was sound, but it required clear communication, constant pressure on the enemy, and precise timing. These three goals the Union army and its commander could not deliver. What the soldiers in blue could deliver was raw courage and murderous firepower, and on that day, September 17, 1862, the Army of the Potomac brought with it plenty of both.

The Union attack began shortly after sunrise. The Union I Corps, commanded by Major General Joseph Hooker, struck hard upon the Confederate left. Across a cornfield they marched, suffering heavily, as did their Southern cousins. A second federal corps entered the fray and it too paid a heavy price. Then to the south, in the middle of the Confederate line, other Union soldiers advanced against the rebels, who were entrenched along a sunken road. There the fighting was furious and long, lasting beyond three hours. The soldiers in blue prevailed, though the cost—on both sides—was high. Further south, on Lee’s right flank, a small narrow stone bridge crossed Antietam Creek. McClellan’s IX Corps, commanded by Major General Ambrose Burnside, was to cross the creek, push the Confederates back, and envelop Lee’s forces to the north. However, Burnside launched his attack late and, instead of fording Antietam Creek in several places, concentrated his men at the bridge. The result was heavy casualties and time lost in crossing the creek. Eventually, his men pushed the defenders back and were able to move north. But not very far north, for his soldiers were exhausted and unable to breach A. P. Hill’s division, fresh troops that had arrived from Harpers Ferry truly in the nick of time.

So the Battle of Antietam came to a close. It had been a day unlike any other in American history. From McClellan’s army the number of dead totaled 2,108. For Lee, 2,700. Soldiers listed as wounded or missing numbered 10,302 for the North and 11,024 for the South. Thus the butcher’s bill at Antietam added up to 26,134. September 17, 1862 was—and still is—the bloodiest day in American history.

Several of McClellan’s corps commanders urged him to continue the fight. They pointed out that Lee’s army had been hit hard and that their army had fresh troops available to strike again. But McClellan said no. He was satisfied with the results of September 17 and wanted the Army of the Potomac to regroup. Thus the Union army rested as Robert E. Lee took his men back to Virginia.

McClellan claimed a victory. He had confronted the best the South had to offer and had done well, forcing the Army of Northern Virginia to give up its invasion of the North.

Lincoln too saw Antietam as a victory. He had been waiting for such an outcome in order to issue a document of considerable importance. This was the Emancipation Proclamation. One page in length and dated September 22, 1862, it freed the slaves in those states that were in rebellion. Many Republicans wanted a stronger statement. Many Democrats spoke out in opposition. They did not see emancipation as a legitimate goal of the war and they believed that the proclamation would stiffen Southern resistance.

Along with other steps taken by Congress and the president, the Emancipation Proclamation changed the character of the war. No longer just an effort to preserve the federal union, Lincoln’s proclamation transformed the American civil war. It was now a crusade. The objective was to rid the United States of an evil that, since 1777, had made a mockery of Jefferson’s words that all men are created equal.

If Abraham Lincoln the politician was satisfied with the steps taken to free the slaves, Abraham Lincoln the American commander in chief was not satisfied with the progress of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln wanted McClellan to pursue Lee aggressively. But that was not the general’s modus operandi. Before campaigning again, he wanted more troops and more time. Finally, at the president’s direct urging, he marched his army south in search of Lee and the Southern army. But, as usual, he did so at a deliberate pace. Speed was not an attribute of McClellan’s leadership.

By late June, Lincoln had had enough. He wanted a commander eager for combat, willing to fight. McClellan, he concluded, was not that man. So he sacked George B. McClellan. In his place, the president appointed Ambrose E. Burnside, one of the Army of the Potomac’s senior commanders.

Burnside had several strengths, but high command was not one of them. He himself thought he was unequal to the task, a view shared by many in the army. Their judgment was vindicated when Burnside bungled the battle with Lee’s army at Fredericksburg. In that debacle, for that’s what it was, the Army of the Potomac suffered approximately twelve thousand killed or wounded and gained no advantage either tactical or strategic. Confederate casualties on December 13, 1862, were slightly more than fifty-two hundred.

Nothing Burnside did after the battle restored Lincoln’s confidence. So, to the surprise of no one, Ambrose Burnside was dismissed. The Union army’s new commander was Major General Joseph Hooker. Like Burnside, he had been one of the army’s corps commanders, though, unlike Burnside, he had done well at Antietam. Ambitious and aggressive, Joe Hooker intended to give his Confederate counterpart a solid thrashing. But Lee on a bad day was a better general than Hooker on a good day, a point proven at the Battle of Chancellorsville. There, not far from Fredericksburg, Robert E. Lee outmaneuvered a Union army twice the size of his own. For the South, it was a dramatic victory, though costly, for among the dead was Stonewall Jackson, brought down by friendly fire. For the North, it was a humiliating defeat. Once again, the mighty Army of the Potomac had failed, or at least its commander had.

Heartened by his victories, Lee once again turned north. Battle-tested and accustomed to winning, the Army of Northern Virginia swept through Maryland into Pennsylvania. Lee was confident of victory, perhaps too much so.

Once the Army of the Potomac learned of Lee’s movements, it followed in pursuit. However, Joe Hooker no longer was its commander. Lincoln had replaced him with George Meade. Major General Meade was a respected officer, a career military man who understood the art of war.

Standard practice with both the Union and the Confederates on the march was to send cavalry forward with an assignment of determining the whereabouts of the enemy. Meade had done so, and, on June 30, 1863, two brigades of federal cavalry led by Brigadier General John Buford rode into a small Pennsylvania town. Buford soon spotted a large formation of Confederate infantry advancing from the west.

The town was called Gettysburg.

Buford realized that he had bumped into the lead elements of the entire Army of Northern Virginia. Calling for reinforcements, he understood the imperative of preventing the rebels from securing the high ground south of the town. Additional Union troops soon arrived. The next day, the battle began in earnest as Lee’s men attacked. In furious fighting, the Confederates pushed the Union back through the town. But, in a strategic blunder, they failed to take control of the heights.

By the second day, July 2, Meade and most of his army had arrived on the scene. They were deployed along the ridges and small hills outside of Gettysburg. Their position resembled that of a fishhook, with hills at each end. In between lay a ridge, Cemetery Ridge, south of which a peach orchard and wheat field spread out on relatively flat land. The overall shape of the Union army was that of a shallow convex line. This enabled Meade to move reinforcements back and forth as required. It was a very strong defensive position.

Lee’s army was spread out. It also was smaller, comprising approximately 75,000 men against Meade’s 112,000. Moreover, Gettysburg was not where Lee had planned to fight. Yet the town was where the two armies had crossed paths. Lee felt he had to attack and so, on three successive days, he did.

On July 2, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Southern commander launched a full-scale assault on both ends of the fishhook, starting first with the southern tip. Across the peach orchard and wheat field the men in gray advanced. The fighting was fierce. Union soldiers held fast, then gave ground, then held again. At the southernmost point in the Union line, there was a small, tree-lined, stony hill named Little Round Top. If the Confederates could take it, they would be able to swing around and hit Meade’s men from the rear. For the Army of the Potomac, holding Little Round Top was vital. The task of doing so was assigned to a brigade of 1,336 men commanded by Colonel Strong Vincent. He ordered one of his regiments, the 20th Maine, to defend that part of the hill that represented the absolute end of the Union line. With fewer than five hundred soldiers, the regiment held fast, rebuffing repeated attacks by men from Alabama and Texas. When the regiment ran low on ammunition, its commander, Joshua Chamberlain—who, three years earlier, had been a professor at Bowdoin College—issued a command of “fix bayonets.” He then led his men down the hill into the attacking Confederates and stopped them once and for all. It was a defining moment in the battle, one of the great actions in American military history, and yet, for all the courage it entailed, it was but one event in a day when courage was common and gunfire left oceans of blood on the ground. Two-thirds of the casualties at Gettysburg occurred on July 2.

On the next day, Lee ordered an attack on the Union center. It was to be a massive assault. More than 150 Confederate cannons would bombard the Union line. Then, General George Pickett’s division plus men from A. P. Hill’s corps, some twelve thousand men in total, would hit the enemy where Lee believed Meade’s forces were weakest. General Longstreet thought the attack unlikely to succeed. He preferred an assault on the Union flanks. But Robert E. Lee insisted that the attack on the center be carried out as planned.

At one o’clock in the afternoon the rebel artillery opened fire. The bombardment lasted for two hours. When it ceased, the Confederate infantry moved forward. For sixteen minutes they marched across an open field, twelve thousand men with guns at the ready. An impressive sight, it marked the high tide of the Confederacy as the men in gray advanced into both battle and legend. But the soldiers in blue were ready. The rebel bombardment had failed to dislodge them, and they and their artillery poured such fire into the Southerners as to shred their ranks. Meade’s men held their ground. In less than an hour the Confederate assault disintegrated and with it the Confederate hope of victory. Some six thousand Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured. What became known as Pickett’s Charge was more than a failure, it was a disaster, for the Army of Northern Virginia as well as for the Southern cause, a disaster for which Robert E. Lee alone was responsible.

The failure of the July 3 attack meant Lee had lost the Battle of Gettysburg. The outcome gave hope to the North and to the Army of the Potomac, which now realized that in future engagements it could more than match its vaunted opponent. For Lee, Gettysburg meant a severe and undeniable defeat.

At Gettysburg, the Confederate army suffered 22,874 casualties, of whom 4,637 were killed. The Army of the Potomac listed its dead at 3,149, with 19,664 men wounded or missing. For those three days in July 1863, 45,687 men were either put in the hospital or never left Gettysburg alive. The number bears repeating: 45,687. Never has the United States of America witnessed such bloodshed.

On July 4, Lee began his retreat, marching south, back into Virginia. He moved as quickly as he could, though speed was difficult, as the army’s wagon train of wounded soldiers extended seventeen miles. Meade took up the pursuit and battled with the Confederate rear guard, taking some fifteen hundred prisoners. But the bulk of Lee’s force escaped. The result was that the war would continue.

Lincoln was displeased that Meade had allowed Lee to get away. The president wanted the Army of Northern Virginia to be destroyed, not just defeated. He realized that once Lee’s army ceased to exist, the Confederate cause would collapse, much as the American fight for independence would have fallen apart had the British been able to destroy Washington’s Continental army. Nevertheless, Lincoln retained Meade as the commander of the Army of the Potomac.

Because of Gettysburg, George Meade’s place in American history is secure. Yet in his day, he did not gain the fame his success in that battle warranted. One reason was Lincoln’s dissatisfaction. Another was that he soon became overshadowed by another general. But the principal reason was newspaper reporters. According to historian Brian Holden Reid, General Meade, in 1864, had humiliated a reporter who had written an insulting article about him. The press retaliated by no longer mentioning Meade when writing about the war. As a result he all but disappeared from public view. Perhaps Meade did not care. He had accomplished something significant: he had beaten Robert E. Lee in battle, winning a victory of immense importance. And he had done so while in command of the Army of the Potomac for but three days, having relieved Hooker on June 28,1863. His was an outstanding performance.

By the time of the great battle, the need for more men to serve in the Union army was clear. The thousands who had volunteered at the outbreak of hostilities were an insufficient number. As a result, Congress had enacted a law drafting men into the army. As it was possible to avoid military service by paying a fee of $300, the law fell heavily on the urban poor, whose support of the war was often tenuous. Why? Because they saw freed slaves as cheap labor that would come north and take their jobs. Moreover, racism was not limited to the South. Not everyone north of the Mason-Dixon Line was an abolitionist. The result in New York City was an outbreak of violence. For five days mobs rampaged through the streets. Buildings were set on fire and people killed. Eighteen African-Americans were hanged. Order was restored only with the arrival of federal troops, some of which came from Gettysburg.

Though Lincoln did not fire Meade as he had McClellan and the others, the president was looking for a general who understood the necessity of ruthlessly destroying the enemy’s war machine. He wanted an aggressive general. He wanted a man who would seek out and crush the Confederate armies wherever they were.

Out west there was such a general. Lincoln brought him to Washington and placed him in charge of the entire Union army. The general’s name was Ulysses S. Grant.

To reinforce Grant’s authority, President Lincoln, with the approval of Congress, conferred on him the rank of lieutenant general. Up to then only two men in the United States had held this three-star rank. One was George Washington. The other was Winfield Scott, the hero of the war with Mexico, although his was of an honorary nature. During the American Civil War generals in command of an army or of its principal subdivision, a corps, were major generals, a two-star rank. As a lieutenant general, Grant outranked them all.

In addition to three stars, Lincoln enhanced Grant’s authority by appointing him general in command. At the war’s beginning the most senior position in the Union army had been held by Winfield Scott. By 1860 Scott was past his prime, though he did propose to Lincoln the sensible strategy of strangling the South by a naval blockade in the East and by taking control of the Mississippi River in the West. For a short period of time George B. McClellan was general in chief, having replaced the ailing Scott in October 1861. This didn’t work out, so the president appointed Major General Henry Halleck to the position. Halleck was Scott’s choice for the job, which entailed providing Lincoln with military advice. Halleck, one of the few intellectuals in the army, was considered by many to be an ideal choice. Yet “Old Brains,” as he was called, failed miserably in the job. His critics, and they came to be many, considered him a highly paid clerk. When Grant took over, things would be different.

Ulysses Simpson Grant was thirty-nine years of age when he rejoined the army in June 1861. A graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Mexican War, he’d left the service in 1854 to pursue several business ventures. These did not turn out well; nor did the New York investment banking company he established after he left the White House. Historians, of course, judge his two terms as president (1869–1877) a failure. Clearly, Grant was a man neither of business nor of politics. But he was a man of war. In all of American history, no general stands taller.

Grant’s first action against Confederate troops, at Belmont in eastern Missouri, was less than fully successful. He and his troops did better early in 1862 when, with the assistance of navy gunboats, he took control of two key Confederate forts in Tennessee. The second, Fort Donelson, was the more important. In seizing it he captured a strategic position. He also took possession of fifteen thousand Confederate prisoners and a huge supply of enemy stores. Given that Union victories early in the war were infrequent, the capture of Fort Donelson pleased Lincoln greatly. For his efforts Grant was promoted to major general.

With the fall of Fort Donelson, the senior Confederate general in the area, Albert Sidney Johnston, retired south to the town of Corinth in Mississippi, just below the state’s boundary with Tennessee. He had forty-five thousand men. They were well equipped and ready to fight. Grant, with slightly fewer troops, had pursued him, moving down the Tennessee River to Pittsburgh Landing, just north of the boundary, where he and his men disembarked. Between the two armies lay relatively flat land and a church called Shiloh.

Grant was waiting for additional troops belonging to Don Carlos Buell, who were coming down from Nashville. Upon their arrival, he planned to attack.

No fool, Albert Sidney Johnston struck first. On April 6, 1862, he hit Grant’s forces hard and caused them to fall back. While many Union soldiers fought well, a large number simply ran away. As night fell, it seemed that come morning Johnston’s men would push Grant and his troops into the river. However, Grant remained calm. He redeployed his men and said he would counterattack the next day and win the battle, which is what he did, albeit with help from Buell, whose soldiers had just arrived.

Shiloh, occurring before Antietam and Gettysburg, was the first true bloodbath of the Civil War. Confederate casualties numbered 10,699, among them Albert Sidney Johnston, who was killed. Grant’s army suffered 13,047 killed or wounded. These numbers shocked people in both the North and South. They began to realize that, in human life, the war was to be extremely costly.

Toward the end of 1862 the North had three field armies confronting the Confederacy. To be sure, there were other troops either in training or guarding lines of supply. And elsewhere there were smaller units on the offensive. But the principal threat to Jefferson Davis and friends came from three Union armies. One was the Army of the Potomac then commanded by Burnside. Another was Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. The third was the Army of the Cumberland. Its commander was William S. Rosecrans.

Rosecrans was a cautious yet capable general, popular with his men. He had fought Confederate forces at Iuka and Corinth and done well, though Grant thought he ought to have done better. For his efforts, however, Rosecrans received a vote of thanks from Congress and a promotion.

He was then ordered to take the Army of the Cumberland southeast for another crack at Bragg. The purpose was to keep Bragg’s army away from Grant in Mississippi. Rosecrans accomplished this, but on September, 19, 1863, his army was defeated at Chickamauga. Only calm steadying of troops by Major General George H. Thomas prevented a Union rout. No small affair, total casualties at Chickamauga numbered thirty thousand. Afterward, the Army of the Cumberland retreated into Chattanooga.

Rosecrans was soon relieved. He was at odds with Lincoln’s secretary of war, and by now Grant thought little of him. Command of the Army of the Cumberland went to Thomas. Grant himself became in charge of all Union forces in the West. His army, the Army of the Tennessee, was now led by William Tecumseh Sherman.

While Rosecrans was in Tennessee focusing on Bragg, Grant had been in Mississippi attempting to capture Vicksburg. In July 1863, he finally did so, but it was not an easy campaign.

Vicksburg controlled the central portion of the Mississippi River. Capturing it would cut the Confederacy in half, depriving the Southern states to the east of the food produced in Louisiana and Texas. The river was, as historian Robin H. Neillands has noted, a great commercial highway. Both sides wanted, indeed needed, to control it. By seizing New Orleans, the North had made a strong start. The task for Grant was to finish the job.

He initiated his campaign in November 1862. Trekking through difficult terrain, progress was slow. Then twice disaster struck. In a bold move the Confederates destroyed Grant’s supply base at Holly Springs. And General Sherman was defeated in a battle at Chickasaw Bluffs. The result was a withdrawal by Grant to figure out a different approach. Several were devised and attempted. One was to dig a canal in order to divert the river. Another was to send gunboats east of Vicksburg via streams and bayous. Both failed.

Finally, he decided to march the Army of the Tennessee, some forty thousand men, down the western side of the Mississippi River past Vicksburg. The terrain was most difficult, but with great perseverance they arrived at New Carthage, approximately thirty-five miles south of the city. There, they awaited the navy. On the night of April 16, 1863, in a daring midnight sortie, acting rear admiral David Dixon Porter ran his gunboats and transports past the Confederate guns of Vicksburg. He met up with Grant and conveyed the Union army across the river into Mississippi. Grant’s plan was bold, some would say foolhardy, because he had no lines of supply to the North. The river current was too strong for Porter’s flotilla to sail back. U. S. Grant and the Army of the Tennessee were on their own.

Instead of heading north to Vicksburg, Grant moved east and, after several battles, took control of the city of Jackson, Mississippi’s capital. He then marched on Vicksburg, attacking the city twice before putting in place on May 19 a siege the city and its garrison of thirty thousand had little hope of lifting. On July 4, the Southerners surrendered. The day before Meade had defeated Lee in Pennsylvania.

However, all was not rosy for the North. Its Army of the Cumberland was besieged in Chattanooga. Low on supplies, surrounded by Braxton Bragg’s army, the Union army in Tennessee was in dire straits. Having become overall commander in the west, Grant had the responsibility of rescuing it.

Grant acted forcefully. He opened a supply line into Chattanooga and then laid out a plan of attack. Sherman and the Army of the Tennessee would attack Bragg’s right flank. Joe Hooker, leading two corps on loan from the Army of the Potomac, would hit the left at Lookout Mountain, while General George Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland were to move toward the middle, in front of Missionary Ridge. The two flank attacks were to converge and envelop Bragg’s center. As often happens, events in battle deviated from the plan. Sherman’s men ran into difficulties, although Hooker’s corps succeeded in taking Lookout Mountain. And the Army of the Cumberland, wishing to avenge its defeat at Chickamauga and show its mettle to the other Union units, did more than Grant had anticipated. On their own, without orders, they stormed Missionary Ridge and won the day. Having lost the battle—many in the South believed it to be a catastrophe—Bragg retreated into Georgia. Soon thereafter, he offered his resignation, which Jefferson Davis accepted.

Grant had done well at Chattanooga. Moreover, he had gained a victory at Shiloh and his campaign to capture Vicksburg had been highly successful. Ulysses S. Grant was therefore a soldier accustomed to winning. He was a general who planned well, fought hard, stayed calm, persevered, and, most importantly, won. So hopes were high when Lincoln called him east.

Grant arrived in Washington early in March 1864, checking himself into the Willard Hotel. He did not stay long.

Until Grant, standard practice for the Union army’s general in chief was to remain in Washington rather than operate in the field. Scott, McClellan, and Halleck all had done so. Being in Washington facilitated communications with the president and the secretary of war, and made easier the command of the various army staff organizations. But it also imposed heavy social and political obligations, obligations Grant wished to avoid.

So he did something radical. He left Washington and established his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac. George Meade was retained as the army’s commander, though it was Grant who gave it direction. He also kept Henry Halleck busy, making him the senior army staff officer in Washington, a position in which Old Brains did some good.

As to fighting, Grant wasted little time in bringing the Confederates to battle. He understood his job was to destroy the two remaining Southern armies, each of which comprised about sixty thousand men. He thus ordered General Sherman to move against Joe Johnston’s Army of Tennessee and General Meade to strike at Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. As part of this effort Grant directed General Benjamin Butler to march his Army of the James, some thirty thousand Union soldiers, to attack Richmond from the south. He also directed another general, Nathaniel P. Banks, to campaign along the Red River in Texas, hoping that a victory there, in addition to weakening the Confederates, would send a message to Mexico that mischief on its part would not go unanswered.

Both Butler and Banks were among the many nonprofessional generals Lincoln had commissioned in order to secure the political support he considered vital to the prosecution of the war. No president—then or now—can wage war without the support of Congress and the American people. Lincoln was no exception. As a moderate Republican he had to keep the radicals in the party happy, while at the same time holding on to those Northern Democrats willing to continue the war. One way Lincoln did this was to offer military commissions to politicians, most of whom wanted to serve in the army as a means to secure political advantage once the war was over. Banks had been governor of Massachusetts. Butler, like Banks, was a prominent New England Democrat. Neither man, however, was a particularly good general. Banks made a mess of the expedition in Texas. Butler botched his campaign against Richmond.

In 1864 there was to be a presidential election, and without military successes, Lincoln was likely to lose. Many in the North were weary of the war. It had gone on for four years, casualties were extremely high, and despite Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the South appeared far from defeated. Democrats in particular were losing their zeal for the war. In fact, many of them favored a negotiated settlement with Jefferson Davis’s government. This might not abolish slavery, but it would put a stop to the killing. To carry their flag on the political battlefield, the Democrats nominated none other than George B. McClellan. Many people, Democrats and Republicans alike, expected him to win.

However, Union soldiers and sailors provided Lincoln successes in battle that gave the president a second term in office. In August, Admiral Farragut damned the torpedoes and captured the coastal port of Mobile. In September, two battles on land resulted in victories for the North. General Philip Sheridan defeated Confederate cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley, an area where the South had enjoyed much success. Perhaps most important of all was William Tecumseh Sherman’s capture of Atlanta.

Grant had put Sherman in charge of three Union armies, totaling approximately a hundred thousand men. George Thomas, the “Rock of Chickamauga,” commanded the Army of the Cumberland. Major General John Schofield led the Army of the Ohio. James McPherson, considered a rising star in the Union army, was in charge of the Army of the Tennessee. Their task was to destroy Joseph Johnston’s Confederate army. The way to do this was to move against Georgia’s capital, thus forcing Johnston to fight.

Early in May, Sherman marched his troops southeast from Chattanooga into Georgia. Atlanta was about a hundred miles away. Johnston fought a cautious, defensive battle that kept his army intact. Sherman moved aggressively, attempting to outflank his opponent. There were several battles along the way, not all of which Sherman won. But the Union advance was inexorable. By early July, Sherman was at the outskirts of the city.

On July 17, Jefferson Davis, frustrated that Sherman had not been stopped, replaced Johnston. The new Confederate commander was John Bell Hood, a veteran of Chickamauga and Gettysburg. Hood’s approach to battle was not terribly subtle: he would attack and then attack again, which is what he did. At Peachtree Creek, Decatur, and Ezra Church, he flung his men at those of Sherman. The battles were hard fought, and on both sides casualties were high (among the dead was General McPherson). Yet each time Sherman prevailed. On September 4, 1864, his troops entered Atlanta, the news of which brought despair throughout the South.

Battered, Hood took his much depleted army north into Tennessee. Sherman detached the Army of the Cumberland to deal with it. George Thomas did just that, defeating Hood twice.

Once in Atlanta, Sherman decided to march to the sea, a distance of 285 miles. His objective was to inflict such damage along the way that Southerners, in uniform and not, would realize the futility of continuing the fight.

The march began on November 16. Averaging about fifteen miles a day, Sherman’s men reached the coast early in December. The results were as planned, although there was more destruction than death. After accepting the surrender of Savannah, Sherman took his force, then numbering some sixty thousand soldiers, north into South Carolina. The state was considered by many of his men to warrant special treatment, for it had been South Carolina that had started the conflict. So they wreaked havoc, burning everything in sight. Yet in March, when they moved through North Carolina, they were far less destructive. It was in North Carolina, in Bentonville, where they fought their last battle. A small Confederate force attacked but were driven back. Soon thereafter some of Sherman’s soldiers linked up with troops belonging to Meade and Grant.

Sherman’s campaign had been a huge success. He had taken Atlanta, destroyed the Confederate Army of Tennessee, marched through Georgia, ransacked South Carolina, and taken control of North Carolina. A large Union force had cut a wide path through the South, destroying whatever stood in its way. Sherman had been its commander and he had performed extremely well. A hero in the North, his name in the South, then and at the present day, brings forth resentment. Yet among military historians William Tecumseh Sherman ranks high.

When in May 1864 Sherman took his troops into Georgia, the Army of the Potomac too was on the march. Generals Grant and Meade broke camp early in the same month and moved south, crossing the Rapidan River on May 4. Their objective was to engage Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and destroy it.

Grant envisioned multiple assaults on the Confederates. In coordination with Meade’s advance, Grant ordered Butler to attack from the south and General Franz Sigel to take control of the Shenandoah Valley. In concert with Sherman’s invasion of Georgia, the Union forces would be attacking on several fronts simultaneously, offering the rebels no respite. In effect, Grant had crafted a strategy that he hoped would lead to overall victory. It would, but not quickly, and not without great loss of life.

Lee still had some sixty-four thousand soldiers and, most certainly, no intention of giving up. His goal was to keep Grant at bay, hold on to Richmond, and hope Northerners, tired of the war, would agree to let the states in rebellion depart the union. Lee’s army was battle-tested. It had bested the Army of the Potomac before and was confident it would do so again.

With approximately 115,000 men Grant first clashed with Lee at a place in Virginia called the Wilderness. This was an inhospitable tract of land, not far from Chancellorsville, some ten miles wide and full of tangled trees and bushes. It was a terrible place to fight a battle, and the ensuing two-day fight was terrible indeed. Many of the wounded, unable to move, died from brush fires started by the gunfire. Their screams were a chorus to the carnage. The Union army suffered sixteen thousand casualties. No one in blue believed they had won.

After the battle most Union soldiers expected the Army of the Potomac to withdraw, in order to rest and rebuild. That is what the army had done in the past. Grant had a different approach. He ordered Meade south to again engage the enemy. The grinding down of Robert E. Lee and his army had begun.

Grant wanted the Union army to occupy Spotsylvania Court House, some eleven miles south of the Wilderness. This was a crossroads, possession of which might cut Lee off from Richmond. But the Army of Northern Virginia got there first. The resulting battle took place on May 12, and once again, American blood flowed freely. According to Robin H. Neillands, “men fought hand to hand with musket and bayonet, sword and pistol.” On both sides casualties were high. When it was over, Grant again moved south. He was taking the initiative away from Robert E. Lee.

They next met at Cold Harbor, near the Chickahominy River. There, in several days of fighting, the Union troops attacked their Southern counterparts. In one such assault, on June 3, Grant hurled his men against well-entrenched Confederates, losing seven thousand men—killed or wounded—in a single day. Later in his memoirs he would write that this attack was a mistake.

So far Grant’s campaign had been costly. The Army of the Potomac was averaging some two thousand casualties per day. In total, more than fifty-four thousand Union soldiers had been killed, wounded, or gone missing. Critics in Washington, and there were many, were calling Grant a butcher, a perception that has lasted until the present time. In fact, throughout the war Lee’s casualty rates were higher than those of Grant. Historian James M. McPherson notes that among seventeen Civil War commanders, both North and South, Lee had the highest percentage of casualties. But the reputation of Grant as a not so subtle killer of men remains. Yet he was doing what he had to do to win. Grant was using the material superiority of the North to hammer the Confederacy’s best army. Slowly but surely, he was destroying the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant knew it and so did Lee.

The Union commander was relentless. After Cold Harbor he again ordered Meade to move south, this time to Petersburg. This was a small town directly south of Richmond. It embraced a railroad line on which supplies were transported to both the Southern capital and Lee’s army. Take the town and the Army of Northern Virginia would have to move out into the open and fight. Grant wanted such a battle, for he was sure he could win it.

A battle did occur at Petersburg, but not of the type Grant had envisioned. Instead of a few days of assault and counterattack, as had taken place at Cold Harbor and Spotsylvania Court House, the Union army laid siege to Petersburg. For nine months Meade’s men kept Lee’s penned up. Toward the end of the siege, Union trenches extended some fifty miles. It was warfare that foreshadowed the type of fighting that would later characterize the First World War.

While Grant and the Army of the Potomac were at Petersburg, Sherman was marching through Georgia. And Franz Sigel was attempting to take control of the Shenandoah Valley. Unfortunately for the North, Sigel failed to do so. As did his replacement, General Daniel Hunter. Grant then sent Philip Sheridan to deal with the Confederates. A favorite of Grant, Sheridan was an officer who knew how to fight. He vanquished the rebels, whose commander, General Jubal A. Early, previously had moved troops across the Potomac and threatened Washington. So Grant had dispatched troops from the Army of the Potomac to the Northern capital, and Early wisely withdrew. Washington was safe, and thanks to Sheridan, the Shenandoah Valley was at last no longer in Southern hands.

During the siege of Petersburg an episode occurred worthy of mention. Union soldiers from Pennsylvania, men who had been miners before the war, proposed that a tunnel be dug under the Confederate positions, filled with explosives, and then ignited. The result would be a huge gap in the enemy’s defensive structure through which Union troops would pour. The proposal was accepted and the digging began. In overall charge of the project was one of Meade’s corps commanders, none other than Ambrose Burnside.

On July 30, 1864, eight tons of explosives were detonated, surprising the Confederates and creating a gigantic crater. But the advance of the Union soldiers was slow. The Confederates recovered, and, worst of all, Burnside’s men were unable to move out of the crater once they had entered it. The soldiers in gray poured fire downward and slaughtered the Union troops. The attack failed, with considerable loss of life. General Burnside was relieved of command and the siege continued.

By early 1865 the Confederacy was crumbling. Southern armies in Tennessee and Georgia had been defeated. The Carolinas essentially were out of the war, courtesy of Sherman as well as of General Alfred Terry and Admiral Porter. Early in January, these latter two gentlemen had led a combined army-navy task force that seized Fort Fisher outside of Wilmington. Mobile and New Orleans were under Northern control. The economy of the South was in ruins. The Union navy owned the waters offshore and on the rivers. Confederate forces—particularly the army facing Grant and Meade—were short of manpower and short of supplies. Many of Lee’s men lacked shoes. Many more had little to eat.

So the Army of Northern Virginia did what it was good at. It attacked, striking a Union position around Petersburg called Fort Stedman. The assault took place on March 25 and, as in the past, was conducted with skill and courage. But the Union troops, by now a match with their Southern counterparts, recovered and beat back the attack. Grant responded in kind. He sent Sheridan and twelve thousand men to the southeast, where, on April 1, they met up with a force commanded by George Pickett of Gettysburg fame. Sheridan’s men demolished their opponents, in the process taking five thousand prisoners. Lee’s army was disintegrating. The next day, Grant ordered a full-scale assault along the entire line of siege. Union artillery blasted away and Union infantry swarmed across the Confederate positions. It was an unstoppable tidal wave of military might, and when it was over, Robert E. Lee and his army were in full retreat.

Union forces occupied Petersburg, and on April 3, 1865, the Army of the Potomac marched into Richmond. Lee hoped to reach North Carolina, there to link up with Joseph Johnston’s remaining troops. Grant prevented this. He ordered Meade’s men to pursue the Southerners. On April 6, Sheridan caught up with the Army of Northern Virginia at Sayler’s Creek and inflicted further damage on the Confederate’s already depleted force. Lee and his army continued to flee. Three days later Union cavalry overtook them at Appomattox Court House and the Confederate general called it quits.

Grant’s terms were generous. He permitted Lee and his men, once they pledged not to take up arms against the United States, to retain their horses and go home, which is what they did. Once soldiers of the South, they were once again simply Americans. With their departure, for all practical purposes, the War Between the States was over.

Could the South have won?

Perhaps, but a Confederate victory was unlikely. The North simply had too great a material advantage. The South was largely an agrarian society, while the North, though full of farms, was replete with companies small and large that could manufacture what a nation at war required. Resources, natural and man-made, favored the North. For example, of the thirty-one thousand miles of railroad track in the United States twenty-two thousand were in the North. Of the firearms produced in the United States only 3 percent were made in the South. The North also possessed the majority of shipyards. Most telling of all were the population figures: there were twenty-two million people in the North, whereas in the South the population was but nine million, of whom four million were slaves.

Hence those states that formed the Confederacy were outmatched. The American War Between the States was far from an equal contest.

How then might the South have won?

The South might have gained independence from the federal union by doing better than it did on the battlefield. Military victory could have led to successful secession. Had Vicksburg not fallen, had Lee routed McClellan at Antietam or beaten Meade at Gettysburg, the North may well have sued for peace. If Sherman and Sheridan had failed in 1864, Lincoln in all likelihood would not have been reelected and the American union of states would probably have split in two. What if sometime in 1863 or 1864 Robert E. Lee had crushed the Army of the Potomac, had beaten it so badly that it simply disintegrated? Were that to have happened, surely the outcome of the war would have been different. But it didn’t happen. The great victory parade was held not in Richmond but in Washington.

Might Great Britain have altered the course of the war?

Official recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain might well have produced a different outcome. In addition to legitimacy and prestige, recognition would have brought much needed supplies to the South. Even without official support, Britain at times aided the Southern cause, in one instance permitting Confederate agents to obtain eight hundred thousand British rifles. At first, before Lincoln’s determination to hold the Union together became apparent, Britain’s political elites thought the North could never take control of the 750,000 square miles the rebel states comprised. Plus, they had no love for the United States, a country many of them viewed as uncultured and a commercial threat. But they also had no desire to go to war with the United States. The British wanted the South first to win independence on its own, and then they would bestow recognition and its benefits. The South was hoping that the Union naval blockade, in preventing Southern cotton from reaching English mills, would so damage the British economy as to force the government in London to side directly and substantially with the Confederates. The blockade did hurt England’s industrial midlands but not to the degree the South had hoped. What decided the matter was the Emancipation Proclamation. Once it became evident that the North was fighting to free the slaves, while the South was rebelling in order to preserve slavery, Britain simply could not side with the Confederacy.

What happened at Gettysburg?

What happened, in essence, is that the Army of the Potomac, under the command of Major General George Meade, decisively defeated the Army of Northern Virginia. In July 1863 Meade stopped Lee’s second invasion of the North and, in so doing, inflicted heavy losses on the Confederate army. Responsibility for the defeat rests squarely on Robert E. Lee. In American history Lee is a revered figure. He was a gifted leader and a skilled commander. That he was fighting to uphold the institution of slavery seems not to have lessened the respect in which he was, and is, held. Yet his management of the Battle of Gettysburg requires a reassessment of his talents. Lee failed miserably at Gettysburg. His insistence on directly attacking the Union center on day three was crucially wrong. Pickett’s Charge was suicidal, the results catastrophic. A Union general who did what he had done would have been sacked. But Lee was not. He continued on, beloved by his men and respected—then and now—throughout the entire country.

Of course, another view of the Battle of Gettysburg shifts responsibility from Lee to others. Instead of blaming the Confederate leader, credit is given to Meade and the troops he commanded. This view is wonderfully expressed, according to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, by Pickett himself, who, when asked after the war what had led to the Confederate defeat, is said to have replied, “I always thought the Union army had something to do with it.”

How best to think about Ulysses S. Grant?

In comparison to that of Lee, Grant’s reputation suffers. Much of that stems from his less than successful years as president. Some originates with the widely held view that his approach to battle was excessively costly in blood. And his lack of success in business simply adds to his tarnished reputation.

He deserves better. True, his years in the White House were undistinguished and his talents for business were limited. But as a military commander in the War Between the States, Ulysses S. Grant had no peer. He understood the North’s need for a comprehensive strategy. And, unlike his predecessors as general in chief, he was able to implement one. His reputation as a butcher of men is unfair. As noted above, Lee had a higher rate of casualties, and as the Vicksburg campaign revealed, Grant could maneuver an army in the field as well as anyone. What his actions in the East against Lee showed was his determination to do what had to be done to wear down and eventually destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. In thinking about Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, it’s well to remember who won.

The plain fact of the matter is that Grant was the best of the American civil war generals. That’s because he knew how to fight and, more important, how to win. He may not have looked the part—in appearance he was nondescript and in dress ordinary (he usually wore a private plain blue shirt with the stars of his rank sewn on)—but as a military commander he was superb. The American army has had no better general.

What did Philip Kearny, John Reynolds, and John Sedgwick have in common?

They were all major generals in the Union army and they were all killed in battle. During the American War Between the States high rank was no guarantee of safety. Often generals led from the front and often they were killed or wounded. Thousands more of lesser rank lost their lives. Indeed, the years 1861–1865 in the United States saw killing become a common occurrence. The battles between North and South resulted in the death of approximately 618,000 men. Then—and now—that is an enormous number. In 1865 it represented 2 percent of the U.S. population. There was hardly a town in America that did not have someone killed. The war was many things—a sectional conflict, a crusade against slavery, an effort to keep the Union together, a spur of economic growth in the North, and in the South a misguided attempt to preserve the status quo—but, above all, it was a bloodbath. Young men, boys really, marched into battle. Wearing blue or gray, they shouldered arms and advanced in the face of enemy fire. Courage was their companion, as was the angel of death. Again, 618,000 men were killed. The price of union was high, very high.