Grant was in his element. He had recovered the mobility that had been lacking in the campaign and had run a risk few would have dared. He had exposed the Army of the Potomac to piecemeal destruction while on the march and had arrived at his embarkation point safe and sound. “Our forces will commence crossing the James today,” he wired Halleck. “The enemy show no sign of having brought troops to the south side of Richmond. I will have Petersburg secured, if possible, before they get there in much force. Our movement from Cold Harbor to the James River has been made with great celerity and so far without loss or accident.”⁴

Halleck, who continued to worry that Grant was leaving Washington uncovered by moving south of the James, did not reply.⁵ But at 7 A.M. on June 15 President Lincoln responded:

I have just received your dispatch of 1 P.M. yesterday. —I begin to see it. You will succeed. — God bless you all.

A. LINCOLN⁶

Attempting to cross the broad expanse of the James below Richmond was an enormous gamble. The river was eighty feet deep, the current at midstream was fearsome, and there was a four-foot tidal surge to contend with. No one knew whether a slender pontoon bridge could withstand such conditions. No army had ever built a floating bridge longer than 1,000 feet, and scarcely ever in tidal waters. There was also the weather to worry about. A sudden storm blowing in from the Chesapeake could destroy the bridge in minutes. Another danger was the Confederate flotilla at Richmond, which included three ironclads mounted with heavy-caliber guns. If not intercepted, they could shell the crossing to pieces. Even fireboats floated downstream could wreck the structure. Worst of all, Lee might scent what was up, break through the thin covering force Grant deployed, wait until the Union army was partially across the river, and then fall on the Federals stranded on the north bank with victory assured. Such a win would redeem every Confederate failure, defeat whatever thrust Grant might make toward Richmond, and place Lincoln’s reelection in jeopardy. As Grant saw it, the chances of failure were high, but like Eisenhower on D-Day, he took the risk. “No man ought to win a victory,” he said years later, “who is not willing to run the risk of defeat.”⁷ Grant was betting that Lee would not stir from his entrenchments at Cold Harbor to pursue him, or that if he did he would move south to cover the approach to Richmond along the Chickahominy. The tides and the weather would be left to chance.

On Wednesday morning, June 15, Grant stood upon a bluff on the north bank of the James watching the spectacle spread out before him. The Army of the Potomac was crossing the river, flags unfurled to the wind, guns reflecting in the sunlight, an endless column of marching men, horsedrawn artillery, and resplendent wagon trains, white canvas tightly tacked against the breeze. Once before, on a hill near Chattanooga, when he watched the Army of the Cumberland stretch out across the plain toward Bragg’s lines on Missionary Ridge, he had witnessed the terrible beauty of the massed might of an army in motion. Now Grant was watching a larger army trying a greater thing. He stood alone, his hands clasped behind his back, his cigar thrown away, looking down at the sparkling river with its amazing bridge and the long blue lines going across.

The approaches to the river on both banks were covered with troops moving briskly to their new positions or waiting patiently to cross. Warships cruised upstream while a fleet of steamboats shuttled back and forth with scheduled precision, carrying men for whom the bridge had no room. On the north shore, regimental bands blared out stirring marches (although the men on the bridge were not allowed to keep in step), and here and there a plume of white steam punctuated the crossing when some vessel sounded its whistle. The bizarre mixed with the sublime as the army’s cattle herd of 3,500 animals waited its turn to cross. It was a matchless pageant, and the man who conceived it stood watching in profound silence. Grant was on his way to Petersburg, a city the Confederacy could not lose, and Lee had been left behind. Not one man, one animal, or one vehicle would be lost in the crossing.

At noon Grant boarded a steamer and headed upriver to City Point, a small boat landing on the south bank of the Appomattox at the point where that river flowed into the James. Grant established his headquarters there on a high bluff overlooking the water and issued a brace of orders to move the army forward. Never had the Army of the Potomac been in a better strategic position. Having crossed the James successfully it was squarely in the rear of Lee’s army, which remained dug in south of the Chickahominy, ready to defend Richmond from an attack that would not happen. Grant had outfoxed Lee and stood poised to take Petersburg, the lightly defended southern gateway to the Confederate capital.⁸ Time, however, was running out. Grant had to strike before Lee could recover. Baldy Smith’s 18th Corps, which arrived by ship the evening of June 14, was to lead the Union advance. The Confederate trench line at Petersburg was six miles away. Smith’s force numbered 18,000 men. Beauregard, who was in command of rebel units southside, had deployed most of his troops facing Butler at Bermuda Hundred and could muster only a mixed assortment of 2,500 irregulars, home guard, and convalescents to man the city’s battlements.

Grant instructed Smith to move forward under cover of darkness and storm the Confederate works at dawn.⁹ The general in chief had a high opinion of Smith, particularly after his performance at Chattanooga, and entrusted the crucial role in the offensive to him. In this instance, Grant’s confidence was misplaced. Smith dawdled the night away, moved forward aimlessly the next morning, and did not have his troops in place until noon. At that point he hesitated to attack.¹⁰ Still shaken by the carnage at Cold Harbor, Smith insisted on making a lengthy personal reconnaissance of rebel defenses before advancing. This consumed an additional four hours after which he readjusted his lines for another two, and it was not until just before sundown that the attack got underway. Union forces swept forward and easily overran the Confederate position, taking more than two miles of earthworks and fifteen pieces of artillery. Beauregard wrote later that “Petersburg was clearly at the mercy of the Federal commander, who had all but captured it.”¹¹ Smith, however, failed to exploit his advantage. Overcome once again by caution, and fearing that Confederate reinforcements were arriving by the trainload, he declined to push ahead during the evening hours and the 18th Corps settled down for the night. An observer on the spot noted that Smith’s failure to continue forward on June 15 was “the greatest mistake of the campaign.”¹² Grant said later, “I believed then, and still believe, that Petersburg could have been easily captured at that time.”¹³ If Smith had done so, it would have been almost impossible for Lee to make a stand in front of Richmond and the war might have ended eight months sooner.

Thursday, June 16, was another day of missed opportunity. Hancock’s corps had come up during the night bringing Union strength close to 35,000. Beauregard received an infusion of veterans from nearby units but still could not muster more than 7,000 when dawn broke. Inexplicably, Smith still did not attack, preferring to wait until yet more Union reinforcements arrived. Beauregard took full advantage of the delay. Recognizing that it was essential to hold Petersburg at all costs, the flamboyant Creole stripped his line corking Butler at Bermuda Hundred and rushed every available man to the city’s trenches. Grant, who was becoming increasingly impatient at the Union delay, instructed Burnside to bring his corps forward as quickly as possible and then ordered Meade to launch a full-scale attack on the Confederate position at 6 P.M. By then it was too late. Beauregard had deployed his troops with consummate skill and was ready and waiting when the attack came. Once again the Union assault was uneven and loosely coordinated. Hancock and Burnside went forward aggressively but Smith hung back, still obsessed with the failure at Cold Harbor. The 2nd Corps captured an additional stretch of Petersburg’s outer defenses, Burnside’s men took an important redan, but at no point was a breakthrough achieved.

That evening, to shorten his line, Beauregard pulled back to the outskirts of Petersburg itself. On the Union side, Warren came up to occupy a position on the Federal left, and Meade ordered another attack for dawn on June 17. It was the same old story of inadequate coordination and insufficient follow-through. Burnside moved forward on time, but Hancock was two hours late and Warren and Smith failed to move at all. Beauregard said if Warren had advanced from his position on the flank, “I would have been compelled to evacuate Petersburg without much resistance.”¹⁴

By June 18 the Union’s opportunity had slipped past. Meade ordered an attack all along the line at noon. Noon came, each corps commander waited for his neighbor to go first, no concerted attack was made, and by then Lee had caught up. Hard-marching veterans from the Army of Northern Virginia began to file into the trenches before Petersburg and the odds against Beauregard shrank to manageable proportions. Disjointed Union attacks continued through the afternoon, costly in Federal lives but completely ineffective, and by night it was all over. The rebel trenches were held in full strength and a successful frontal assault was out of the question. Meade called off the assault, and Grant concurred.¹⁵

In the four days since crossing the James, Union losses totaled 11,386 killed, wounded, and missing.¹⁶ Petersburg was invested on the east, but the city, with its vital rail lines, remained in rebel hands. The problem was not with Grant’s plan but with its faulty execution. As one historian has written, the Army of the Potomac remained a little out of control at Petersburg. “The reflexes of the corps commanders continued to be sluggish and there was always a gap between the will and the act. Orders were executed late, often half-heartedly, and now and then they were reinterpreted on the spot so that what was ordered was not done at all.”¹⁷ Also give credit to Beauregard, who may have had his finest hour. General J. F. C. Fuller, the British military analyst, wrote that the Confederate general “was worth 10,000 reinforcements,” and if it had not been for him Petersburg would have fallen.¹⁸

If Grant was disappointed he did not show it. This was not the first time he had anticipated a quick victory only to have his opponent rally and turn the tables. At Donelson he had watched confidently as Commodore Foote’s ironclads steamed up the Cumberland to lay waste the fort and saw them tumble back in defeat and disarray. At Pittsburg Landing he had eagerly laid plans to dig the rebels out of Corinth only to have Albert Sidney Johnston surprise him at Shiloh and come within an inch of victory. In both instances Grant simply picked up the pieces and continued forward. And so it would be at Petersburg. Unable to seize the city by surprise or to take it by storm, he settled into a siege. And like Lee, he realized it was merely a question of time—provided the Northern heartland remained behind the war and Mr. Lincoln was reelected.

Neither was assured. The high casualty rate of the Army of the Potomac threatened to erode public support for the war. Since crossing the Rapidan on May 4, Grant had lost close to 65,000 men and there seemed to be no letup in sight. Lee, whose army was half as large, had lost half as many (35,000). With an election pending, Lincoln could have turned on Grant and made him a scapegoat. Yet he declined to do so. He had found his general and would stick by him. Taking the long view, Lincoln recognized that Lee’s casualties had been proportional, and that the South would have far more difficulty finding replacements than the North. Bloody as it was, the war was moving along satisfactorily. Grant had driven the Army of Northern Virginia eighty miles south, partially interdicted Lee’s communication with the rest of the Confederacy, and pinned him down in defense of Petersburg and Richmond.¹⁹ Speaking to a large public meeting in Philadelphia on June 16 the president took a hard line. “We accepted this war for the worthy object of restoring the national authority over the whole national domain, and the war will end when that object is attained. Speaking of the present campaign, General Grant is reported to have said, ‘I am going through on this line if it takes all summer.’ I say we are going through on this line if it takes three years more.”²⁰

The partnership between Lincoln and Grant would prove to be the key to Union success. It provided the North with a common outlook on the conduct of the war and a unity of command the South could only envy. Three days after returning from Philadelphia, the president decided to pay a visit to City Point, consult with the general in chief, and take a firsthand look at the war on the James. Unheralded and accompanied only by his son, Tad, Lincoln arrived by steamer on the afternoon of June 20 looking, as one of Grant’s aides wrote, very much like a boss undertaker in his black suit and stovepipe hat. After shaking hands all around, the president told Grant, “I just thought I would jump aboard a boat and come down and see you. I don’t expect I can do any good, and in fact I may do harm but I’ll put myself under your orders and if you find me doing anything wrong just send me [off] right away.”²¹ Lincoln stayed at City Point for the next two days, visited the troops at the front, and spent much of the time riding Cincinnati, the general in chief’s massive charger, while Grant accompanied him on little Jeff Davis. The president regaled Grant and his staff with his endless fund of stories, and seemed more intent on measuring the atmosphere and the attitude at headquarters than in discussing future plans or military strategy. Grant nevertheless took the occasion to reassure Lincoln that the present course would ultimately lead to victory. “You will never hear of me farther from Richmond than right now. I am just as sure of going into Richmond as I am of any future event. It may take a long summer day, as they say in the rebel papers, but I will do it.”²²

The president beamed his approval. “I cannot pretend to advise,” he replied, “but I do sincerely hope that it all may be accomplished with as little bloodshed as possible.” That was as close as Lincoln came to expressing an attitude on the fighting, and Grant did not consider it a rebuke. The fact is, both men were revived by the president’s visit. Grant felt their acquaintanceship had ripened into a genuine friendship.²³ Lincoln, tanned and sunburned, returned to the White House on June 23, and, as one cabinet officer remarked, the trip had “done him good, physically, and strengthened him mentally.”²⁴

At Petersburg, Grant tightened his siege lines. It was reminiscent of Vicksburg, but on a larger scale.^I And Lee was a far more dangerous opponent than Pemberton. Twice during the latter days of June, Grant attempted to sever the rail lines running south and west from the city, and did manage to break them temporarily, but Lee eventually beat back the assaulting columns, inflicting heavy losses. July brought a flurry of excitement when Jubal Early, having routed Union forces in the Shenandoah, continued down the valley, crossed the Potomac, and descended on Washington. On July 9, with 15,000 seasoned troops, Early easily defeated a pieced-together Union force commanded by Major General Lew Wallace at the Monocacy River east of Frederick, Maryland. This was the last Federal force between Early and the nation’s capital. Grant responded by rushing the 6th Corps under Horatio Wright to Washington and redeploying the 19th Corps, which was arriving by boat from New Orleans.

It was another race against time. Early reached the Washington suburb of Rockville on July 10. At 2 P.M. Lincoln telegraphed Grant informing him that for all practical purposes the capital was undefended. The president thought Grant should shift onto the defensive at Petersburg and come to Washington immediately with whatever troops he could shake loose. “This is what I think . . . and is not an order.”²⁵ Grant, who was eager to see Early’s force destroyed, briefly considered returning but then decided Wright could handle the task alone. At 10:30 that evening he wired the president that he had dispatched “a whole Corps commanded by an excellent officer” who would be able to meet any threat Early might pose. “I think on reflection it would have a bad effect for me to leave here.” Grant said he had complete faith in Wright and that Early would be hard pressed to make good his retreat to the Shenandoah.

As Early approached, the panic in Washington intensified. Halleck telegraphed Grant the morning of July 11 that the enemy had reached Silver Spring, six miles from the White House, and that Wright had arrived but his troops were not yet up. “Militia ordered from New York delayed by the Governor for some reason not explained. Pennsylvania will do nothing to help us.”²⁶ Lincoln, less panicky, wired that Longstreet’s corps was rumored headed for Washington but he did not repeat his request that Grant return and take charge.²⁷ Meanwhile, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, who was acting on his own authority, moved out to the trenches around Washington at the head of 1,500 armed employees of the Quartermaster Department. If the capital was going to be attacked, Meigs was going to defend it. Later that day Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana informed Grant that “Washington and Baltimore are in a state of great excitement. Both cities are filled with country people fleeing from the enemy. The damage to private property done by the invaders is almost beyond calculation.” Help, he implied, was urgently needed.²⁸

Grant refused to be stampeded. The fortifications surrounding the capital were strong, and by the evening of the 11th Wright’s troops were marching into the works. Confederate skirmishers moved forward at dawn the next day, found the trenches manned by hard-fighting veterans of the 6th Corps, and pulled back without making a full-scale assault. Early decided his luck had run out and it was time to return to Virginia.²⁹ That evening the rebels recrossed the Potomac and headed for Leesburg. Whatever pursuit Wright was able to organize was too little and too late.

Early’s foray shook confidence on the Northern home front. Grant was at the gates of Richmond but the Confederates had been able to move on Washington more or less unmolested. Public perception that the Union was winning the war declined noticeably. “The Confederacy is more formidable than ever,” commented the London Times.³⁰ On foreign markets the U.S. dollar dropped to 37 cents, its lowest level of the war. “I see no bright spot anywhere,” wrote New York diarist George Templeton Strong. “The blood and treasure spent on this summer’s campaign have done little for the country.”³¹

Grant was on the spot, and like Lincoln, his steadfastness served the Union well. The public might wonder about the progress of the war but the general in chief had no doubt. He had Lee by the throat and Sherman was closing on Atlanta. Grant was not about to relax the pressure. But he agreed that something had to be done about Early’s corps in the valley. For three years Union forces in the Shenandoah had been humiliated. They had been beaten repeatedly, and beaten badly. First by Jackson, then Ewell, then Breckinridge, now Early. Grant believed it was a problem of command, and to put the right man in charge he met the president at Fortress Monroe the last day of July. Neither Grant nor Lincoln ever said much about their July 31 meeting, but the next day, with the president’s concurrence, Grant wired Halleck: “I want Sheridan put in command of all the troops in the field with instructions to put himself south of the enemy and follow him to the death.”³² Grant was reaching down the army seniority list to select one of the most junior major generals, assign to him the defense of Washington, and give him three infantry corps and two cavalry divisions, a total of 48,000 men, to do the job.

Back in Washington, Lincoln saw the order two days later, and though he had already approved Sheridan’s assignment, he was so taken with the ring of Grant’s message that he wired his congratulations—together with a warning. “This, I think, is exactly right as to how our forces should move, but please look over the dispatches you may have received from here, ever since you made that order, and discover if you can, whether there is any idea in the head of anyone here, of ‘putting our army South of the enemy’ or of ‘following him to the death’ in any direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done or attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.”³³

The partnership between Lincoln and Grant was never more apparent. The president was alerting Grant to the opposition in the War Department to Sheridan’s appointment as well as to the tactics the general in chief prescribed. Both Halleck and Stanton thought Sheridan (at thirty-three) too young for so important an assignment, and both trembled at the thought of leaving Washington uncovered to pursue Early.³⁴ Lincoln knew they would do their best to undercut Sheridan. If Grant wanted Little Phil to fight an aggressive war in the valley, he was going to have to ride shotgun for him.

Grant was grateful for the warning. As soon as he read the president’s message he ordered a dispatch boat to get up steam for a quick voyage up the bay. Grant had not believed it was necessary for him to leave Petersburg when Early was driving on Washington. But if his authority as general in chief was going to be questioned, it required an immediate response. He was on his way to the upper Potomac within the hour. In Washington the next morning Grant visited neither the White House nor the War Department, but went straight to the railway station and caught a train to Monocacy Junction, headquarters for Union forces from the Shenandoah.

Sheridan arrived the next day. Grant told him he wanted Early driven from the valley and the Shenandoah made so desolate that the enemy would have no desire to return. “Eat out Virginia clear and clean . . . so that crows flying over it . . . will have to carry their provender with them.”³⁵ To insure that his orders would not be countermanded, Grant told Sheridan that he was to report directly to him, not to Halleck or the War Department.³⁶ Grant said he had every confidence in Sheridan’s judgment, and would not embarrass him with detailed instructions.³⁷

The meeting was brief. Inside of two hours Little Phil was on his way to the front and Grant was heading back to City Point. On his return he stopped briefly in Washington and brought the War Department to heel. Meeting first with Halleck and then with Stanton, he snuffed out potential interference with his orders and reasserted his control of military affairs—which is exactly what Lincoln wanted him to do.³⁸ Grant’s aide Colonel Theodore S. Bowers, who accompanied the general in chief, wrote afterward that “Grant now runs the whole machine independently of the Washington directory. Halleck has no control over troops except as Grant delegates it. He can give no orders and exercise no discretion.”³⁹

Grant seemed satisfied. On August 7 he wrote Sherman that he had just come from the Monocacy “after having put all our forces in motion after the enemy and after having put Sheridan in command who I know will push the enemy to the very death.”⁴⁰ Back on the James, he wrote Julia in a similar vein, and appeared more concerned with having her come east with the children and finding a convenient place for them to live. Princeton, he thought, would be a nice place, and if they could not find a house there, then perhaps Philadelphia.⁴¹

Back at Petersburg another effort to break Lee’s lines ended in frustrating failure. This was the Crater fiasco. A section of Burnside’s front, not more than 150 yards from rebel entrenchments, was held by the 48th Regiment of Pennsylvania volunteers, many of whom were coal miners. The regiment was commanded by Colonel Henry Pleasants, a mining engineer before the war, and together they proposed tunneling under the Confederate works, stacking the colliery with explosives, and blowing the rebel line to Kingdom Come. Meade, an old army engineer, had no faith in the enterprise, but the Pennsylvanians succeeded in excavating a tunnel 511 feet long, with lateral galleries in which they stacked four tons of gunpowder. Once the explosives were detonated, Burnside’s corps was to charge through the opening, with the 18th Corps following behind. Burnside designated a fresh division to lead the assault, an all-black unit commanded by Brigadier General Edward Ferrero. Ferrero’s division had crossed the Rapidan with the 9th Corps on May 5 but had not seen combat, being deployed primarily to guard rear-area supply lines. At the time, white officers in the East doubted the fighting capacity of black troops, but Burnside was an exception. The African-American soldiers received special training for the task and were ready to go before dawn on July 30 when the mine was scheduled to explode. At the last minute Meade ordered Burnside to send a white division in first.^II Burnside, who was stunned, tried unsuccessfully to get Meade to reconsider, and then apparently lost interest in the project. The commander of the division designated to lead the assault (chosen by drawing straws) was a notorious alcoholic who was dead drunk when the explosion went off.

The blast blew a crater 170 feet long, sixty feet wide, and thirty feet deep, burying an entire rebel regiment in the debris, along with a four-gun battery of artillery. The Confederates were momentarily helpless, yet the opportunity was not exploited. With no preparation and little leadership the Union troops attacked in disordered fashion and were quickly repulsed. As one historian has written, the plan was flawless but the execution was wretched.⁴² Within the hour the breach in the rebel line had been mended, and by mid-morning the Confederates were counterattacking. Union casualties were heavy: some 4,000 against fewer than half as many for the enemy. Grant, sorely disappointed at another missed opportunity, told Halleck, “It was the saddest affair I have ever witnessed in this war. Such an opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen and do not expect again to have.”⁴³

The Crater fiasco set the tone for the summer of 1864. The Army of the Potomac was stalled in front of Petersburg, Sherman had failed to take Atlanta, and Sheridan was making little progress in the valley. Except for Lincoln and Grant, pessimism prevailed in Northern circles. In mid-August Halleck wrote to warn of possible draft riots in New York and Pennsylvania, as well as in Indiana and Kentucky. If that occurred, Old Brains thought it would be necessary to withdraw combat troops from Meade to put down the riots and maintain order. “Are not the appearances such that we ought to take in sail and prepare the ship for a storm?”⁴⁴

Grant thought not. His reply was uncompromising. Such police work should be left to the state governors and the various state militias. “If we are to draw troops from the field to keep the loyal states in the harness it will prove difficult to suppress the rebellion in the disloyal states.” Grant said if he took troops from Petersburg, Lee would be able to send soldiers to defend Atlanta, just as he had reinforced Bragg at Chickamauga the year before, and that “would insure the defeat of Sherman.” In short, Grant had no intention of relaxing his efforts on the James.⁴⁵

Lincoln read Grant’s reply on August 17 and immediately telegraphed his approval. “I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.”⁴⁶ Looking over the president’s message at his City Point headquarters, Grant laughed aloud—something he seldom did—and when staffers came over to see what amused him, he showed them the president’s telegram. “The president has more nerve than any of his advisers,” he chuckled.⁴⁷

Grant’s views at this time were expressed in a lengthy letter to Elihu Washburne. His concern was not with Lee but the Union home front. “The rebels are down to their last man,” he wrote. “A man lost by them cannot be replaced. They have robbed the cradle and the grave equally to get their present force. Besides what they lose in frequent skirmishes and battles they are now losing from desertions and other causes at least one regiment a day. With this drain upon them the end is visible if we will be true to ourselves.” Grant said the enemy wanted to hold out until after the presidential election. “They hope for a counter revolution. They hope for the election of the peace candidate. In fact, like McCawber, they hope for something to turn up.”^{48, III}

Writing to his boyhood chum from Georgetown, Ohio, Commodore Daniel Ammen, Grant restated his view that the end was in sight. After briefly describing events at Petersburg, he criticized those in the North who sought peace at any price. “It would be but the beginning of the war. The demands of the South would know no limits. They would demand indemnity for expenses incurred in carrying on the war. They would demand return of all their slaves . . . and they would keep on demanding until it would be better dead than submit longer.”⁴⁹ Grant thought the war must be carried through to complete victory; there could be no compromise peace, no matter how ardently people wanted one, because the Union and slavery could no longer coexist.

Grant had no party affiliation and had never been an anti-slavery man. His view of the war had evolved over time, and by the summer of 1864 he defined it in the same terms as Republicans like Lincoln. Indeed, there was a growing, almost symbiotic relationship between these two sons of the Ohio valley. Instinctively, Lincoln took his military cues from Grant, while Grant, for his part, adopted the same stance as the president in political matters. Neither Grant nor Lincoln worried any longer about the outcome of the war provided the Union held the course; both worried intently whether it would do that, and about the upcoming election.^IV

Anticipating victory in the fall, the Democratic convention met in Chicago on August 29 and on the first ballot acclaimed George McClellan as the party’s nominee. His running mate was Congressman George H. Pendleton of Ohio, long an advocate of a negotiated peace. The party platform demanded “immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.” Emancipation of Southern slaves went by the boards, and the Copperhead view of the war dominated the convention.⁵⁰

The Democrats adjourned on August 31 in a mood of campaign euphoria. Two days later the bubble burst. On September 2 Major General Henry Slocum, commanding the 20th Corps in the Army of the Tennessee, wired the War Department: “GENERAL SHERMAN HAS TAKEN ATLANTA.” The next day Sherman sent his own message: “So Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.”⁵¹ Church bells rang across the land as they had not rung since Grant took Vicksburg. Lincoln proclaimed a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and at Petersburg the general in chief ordered a hundred-gun salute fired from every battery that bore on the rebel works. As the rumble of Union artillery celebrated Atlanta’s fall, Grant poured out his heart to Sherman: “I feel you have accomplished the most gigantic undertaking given to any general in this war, and with a skill and ability that will be acknowledged in history as not surpassed, if not unequalled. It gives me as much pleasure to record this in your favor as it would in favor of any living man, myself included.”⁵²

Public opinion rallied to the president. The St. Paul Dispatch headlined the news:

VICTORY

Is the War a Failure?

Old Abe’s Reply to the Chicago Convention Consternation and Despair Among the Copperheads.⁵³

Grant’s relentless effort to turn the Confederate position at Petersburg was also having its effect. Already the rebel line was stretched to the breaking point. “Unless some measure can be devised to replace our losses, the consequences may be disastrous,” Lee warned Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon.⁵⁴ “Grant,” he said, “could move his troops to the left or the right without our knowledge until he has reached the point at which he aims, and we are then compelled to hurry our men to meet him, incurring the risk of being too late to check his progress.”⁵⁵ Lee told Seddon that without more troops “I cannot see how we are to escape the natural military consequences of the enemy’s numerical superiority.”⁵⁶

The Union regained momentum. Flush with Sherman’s success, Lincoln and Grant began to apply pressure on Sheridan in the Shenandoah. In late August Grant had informed Little Phil of Lee’s losses at Petersburg—which he estimated at 10,000 killed and wounded in the past two weeks—and instructed him to push Early “with all vigor. Give the enemy no rest. Do all the damage to railroads and crops you can. Carry off stock of all descriptions and negroes so as to prevent further planting. If the War is to last another year we want the Shenandoah valley to remain a barren waste.”⁵⁷ Sheridan, with his first independent command, seemed unsure how to proceed, and on September 12 Lincoln suggested that Grant urge his protégé forward. “Sheridan and Early are facing each other at a deadlock,” wrote the president. “Could we not pick up a regiment here and there, to the number of say ten thousand, and quietly but suddenly concentrate them at Sheridan’s camp and enable him to make a quick strike? This is but a suggestion.”⁵⁸

For Grant, a suggestion was enough. He replied the next day that he had been planning to visit Sheridan for some time and “arrange what was necessary to enable him to start Early out of the Valley.”⁵⁹ Grant set out the following day, his second trip up the Potomac in six weeks, and reached Charles Town, West Virginia, on Friday September 16, where Sheridan joined him.^V

“That’s Grant,” a sergeant in Wright’s 6th Corps told a comrade, pointing him out. “I hate to see that old cuss around. When that old cuss is around there’s sure to be a big fight on hand.”⁶⁰

The meeting was brief. Grant had taken with him a plan to drive Early away from Winchester. Sheridan had his own plan, not merely to drive Early from Winchester, but to annihilate him. Grant heard Little Phil out, and found him to be “so clear and so positive in his views, and so confident of success,” that he accepted Sheridan’s proposal and kept his own plan in his pocket. “Can you be ready to move by Tuesday?” asked Grant. Sheridan said he would be off before daylight on Monday. “That’s fine,” said Grant. “Go in.”⁶¹

Sheridan was as good as his word. He hit Early on Opequon Creek at dawn on Monday, September 19, and after an all-day battle sent him whirling back through Winchester with heavy losses. Grant ordered another hundred-gun salute at Petersburg, recommended Sheridan for promotion to brigadier general in the regular army (which was promptly conferred), and instructed him to follow up the victory as quickly as possible. “Make all you can of it,” said Grant.⁶² This time Sheridan needed no prompting. On September 22 he fell upon Early at Fisher’s Hill, two miles south of Strasburg, and routed him, sending what was left of the Confederate 2nd Corps stumbling up the valley toward Harrisonburg and Staunton. “May your good work continue,” Grant telegraphed. “Your great victory wipes out much of the stain upon our arms by previous disasters in [the valley].”⁶³

Eight weeks earlier, Confederate troops had been knocking at the door to the nation’s capital. Now they were a hundred miles south of the Potomac and unlikely to return, given Sheridan’s two smashing victories. Grant briefly considered having Sheridan march on Richmond from the Shenandoah, but gave up the idea when Little Phil demurred because of lack of transportation. “I think the best policy will be to let the burning of the crops in the Valley be the end of this campaign,” he told Grant.⁶⁴ Union horsemen swept down the valley like a plague of locusts. On October 6 Sheridan reported that his troops had “destroyed over 2000 barns filled with wheat, hay and farming implements; over 70 mills filled with flour and wheat. . . . Tomorrow I will continue the destruction down to Fisher’s Hill. When this is completed the Valley, from Winchester up to Staunton, 92 miles, will have but little in it for man or beast.”⁶⁵

One last battle remained in the Shenandoah. As Sheridan withdrew down the valley, Lee decided to exploit whatever opportunity that provided for a counterattack. Early was reinforced, and at dawn on the morning of October 19 he struck the unsuspecting Union army in bivouac on Cedar Creek, fifteen miles south of Winchester. Outnumbered three to two, Old Jube had the advantage of surprise and by ten o’clock he had smashed the Federal left and appeared on the verge of a major victory. Sheridan, who had gone to Washington to confer with Halleck, was in Winchester when the attack began and hurried to the scene, spurring his powerful Mississippi Morgan, Rienzi, in the breakneck ride immortalized by Thomas B. Read as “Sheridan’s Ride”:

Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!

Hurrah for the horse and man!

And when their statues are placed on high,

Under the dome of the Union sky,

Be it said in letters both bold and bright:

“Here is the steed that saved the day

By carrying Sheridan into the fight,

From Winchester—twenty miles away!”^VI

When Sheridan arrived on the scene, he found that Wright’s corps, though beaten back, was holding firm in the Union center. Little Phil rallied the remainder of his army and late in the afternoon led the troops forward in a dazzling counterattack that swept the rebels from the field. Early’s army was demolished. Routed for the third time in thirty days, it would never again offer serious resistance in the valley. Sheridan was the hero of the hour. Single-handedly he had converted certain Union defeat into a tumultuous victory. “Such a scene as his presence and such emotion as it awoke cannot be realized but once in a century,” a Vermont veteran in the 6th Corps recalled.⁶⁶

Grant ordered another hundred-gun salute in honor of Little Phil’s victory, Lincoln wired his congratulations, and Meade, who had never been an admirer of Sheridan, called his victory at Cedar Creek “one of the most brilliant feats of the war.”⁶⁷ To follow up, Grant ordered Meade to hit both ends of Lee’s line at Petersburg. The assaults were unsuccessful, but Lee was forced to lengthen his defenses further, so that they now stretched thirty-five miles from Deep Bottom east of Richmond to the Weldon Railroad southwest of Petersburg. The Confederate line had become so extended that Lee informed Jefferson Davis that unless he received immediate reinforcements, “I fear a great calamity will befall us.”⁶⁸ Lee briefly attempted to find his own replacements by suggesting to Grant an informal “man for man” exchange of prisoners on the Petersburg front. Grant agreed, provided that black soldiers fighting for the Union be exchanged on the same basis as white. Lee declined. “Negroes belonging to our Citizens are not Considered Subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition,” he wrote. Grant then ended the correspondence by stating that the United States government insisted all soldiers be treated equally. Lee’s refusal to grant such rights to former slaves “induces me to decline making the exchange you ask.”⁶⁹

Sheridan’s triumph in the valley, combined with Sherman’s capture of Atlanta and the August victory of Admiral Farragut in Mobile Bay (“Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!”), paved the way for Lincoln’s landslide reelection. Having won by a mere plurality over a divided field in 1860, this time the president garnered 55 percent of the popular vote and swept the electoral college 212–21. The soldier vote, which some had assumed would swing to McClellan in protest against the war, went to Lincoln three to one, leaving Little Mac only the states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Kentucky.^VII “Congratulate the President for me,” Grant wired Stanton. “The election having passed off quietly, no bloodshed or riot throughout the land, is a double victory, worth more to the country than a battle won.”⁷⁰ Writing several days later to his friend J. Russell Jones in Chicago, Grant said, “I suppose you and [Elihu] Washburne are as happy over the result of the election as ‘Clams in high tide.’ The immense majority which Mr. Lincoln has received is worth more to us than a victory in the field, both in its effect on the rebels, and in its foreign influence.”⁷¹ To Julia he wrote that he hoped the results would be quietly accepted. “If there was less [dissension] in the North the rebellion would be much sooner put down.”⁷²

With Lincoln confirmed in office, Grant prepared for the final push to topple the Confederacy. First on his agenda was Sherman. Uncle Billy had taken Atlanta, but John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee^VIII was still in the field, depleted but eager for revenge. After the battle of Atlanta, Hood moved west, planning to circle around Sherman, cut his rail connection with Chattanooga, and pounce at leisure on the starving fragments of the isolated 120,000-man Union army. Jefferson Davis boasted that Sherman had no escape. “The fate that befell the army of the French Empire in its retreat from Moscow will be re-enacted,” to which Grant retorted: “Who is to furnish the snow?”⁷³

Sherman met the challenge by dividing his army. With Grant’s approval he sent George Thomas west toward Tennessee to contain Hood, while he took the remaining 60,000 eastward to the sea. Sherman told Grant that by moving on Savannah he could divide the Confederacy in two. “If you can whip Lee, and I can march to the Atlantic, I think Uncle Abe will give us a 20 days leave to see the young folks.”⁷⁴ At first, Grant was skeptical of the plan, but Sherman quickly convinced him. “We cannot remain here on the defensive,” he told Grant. “But I can make the march and make Georgia howl.”⁷⁵

Grant relied on Sherman’s judgment.^IX The march to the sea was entirely Sherman’s idea, but as general in chief Grant accepted final responsibility. “On reflection I think better of your proposition,” he wired Sherman. “You will no doubt clear the country where you go of railroad tracks and supplies. I would also move every wagon, horse, mule and hoof of stock as well as Negroes.”⁷⁶ Grant then took it upon himself to convince Stanton and Lincoln, who were initially opposed to the plan.⁷⁷ “Sherman’s proposition is the best that can be adopted,” Grant wired Stanton. “With a long railroad in rear of Atlanta Sherman cannot maintain his position. If he cuts loose . . . he leaves a wide and destitute country for the rebels to pass over. . . . Such an army as Sherman has, (and with such a commander) is hard to corner or capture.”⁷⁸ Given the go-ahead by Grant, Sherman moved out on November 16, cut a swath of destruction sixty miles wide from Atlanta to the sea, and on December 22 telegraphed the president: “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and about 25,000 bales of cotton.”⁷⁹

Except for 3,500 rebel cavalry commanded by Joseph Wheeler and a scattering of home guard militia, Sherman’s 285-mile march to Savannah was uncontested. George Thomas did not have it so easy. Hood was determined to avenge the fall of Atlanta and aggressively followed the Federals into Tennessee. Thomas husbanded his forces, withdrew to Nashville, and hunkered down to meet Hood’s attack. That was not Grant’s style. Concerned that Hood might bypass Nashville and head north into Kentucky, the general in chief peppered Thomas with orders to attack. As at Chattanooga, Old Tom would not be hurried. He patiently assembled his forces and readied a knockout blow to destroy Hood once and for all. Watching Thomas’s methodical style was like watching paint dry. Grant grew impatient, then exasperated. On December 8 he instructed Halleck to relieve Thomas if he did not attack immediately. “There is no better man to repel an attack than Thomas,” said Grant, “but I fear he is too cautious ever to take the initiative.”⁸⁰ Thomas stood his ground. Subordinate but immovable, he wired Grant, “I have done all in my power to prepare. If you should deem it necessary to relieve me I shall submit without a murmur.”⁸¹ Grant backed off. “I have as much confidence in your conducting a battle rightly as I have in any other officer,” he told Thomas, “but it has seemed to me that you have been slow, and I have had no explanation of affairs to convince me otherwise.”⁸²

Ready at last, the Rock of Chickamauga ordered an attack for dawn on December 10 only to have an ice storm intervene. Movement became impossible and Thomas waited for the storm to abate. Grant fumed helplessly. “Delay no longer for weather or reinforcements,” he telegraphed on December 11. “Will obey the order as promptly as possible however much I may regret it,” Thomas shot back. “The whole country is covered with a perfect sheet of ice and sleet.”⁸³ Frustration now got the better of Grant. Never having experienced the conditions Thomas confronted, he ordered Major General John Logan, who was visiting City Point on leave from Sherman’s army, to proceed immediately to Nashville and take command if Thomas had not moved by the time he arrived. Uncharacteristically, Grant made the decision in a moment of pique, and he soon became uncomfortable with it. He fidgeted for a day at City Point and then took the dispatch boat to Washington. If Thomas was to be relieved, Grant decided he owed it to Old Tom to do the job himself.

On the night of December 14, 1864, as Grant approached Washington, a thaw set in along the Cumberland. The ice melted and the next morning Thomas attacked all along the line. It was a typical George Thomas sledgehammer blow, similar to the assault of the Army of the Cumberland at Missionary Ridge. Hood reeled back, Thomas advanced aggressively, and after two days of intense fighting the Confederate Army of Tennessee was smashed beyond recognition. Hood limped back to Tupelo, Mississippi, with barely half of the 40,000 men he had led northward seven weeks earlier, a bedraggled and dispirited band that soon melted away.⁸⁴ Grant and Lincoln wired their congratulations to Thomas, another hundred-gun salute battered Lee’s line at Petersburg, and Logan returned to join his command with Sherman.

It was the beginning of the end. With Hood’s army dismantled, the Confederacy now consisted of little more than the Carolinas and the southern third of Virginia. Sherman was heading north through the former while Meade and Sheridan tightened their grip on Lee in the latter. On foreign exchanges, the Confederate dollar slipped to 2 percent of its 1861 value, and in Richmond—deprived of its breadbasket in the Shenandoah—food became scarce and meat virtually nonexistent. “The deep waters are closing over us,” wrote Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut on December 19.⁸⁵

Of more immediate military import, desertions from the Army of Northern Virginia now reached epidemic proportion. In January the army lost 8 percent of its strength and another 8 percent in February. “Hundreds of men are deserting nightly,” Lee informed Jefferson Davis. “Unless it can be changed, it will bring us calamity.”⁸⁶ But no change was in sight. Instead, Grant stepped up the pressure. Union armies fanned out throughout the South, snuffing what little resistance remained, while Sherman moved inexorably north from Georgia through South Carolina. At Petersburg, Meade continued to extend his lines, forcing Lee to do likewise. By mid-February the last road into town from the south was cut and the last railroad taken under fire.

Nevertheless, the lack of visible progress in Virginia caused some in Congress to become restive. Rumors swirled that legislation would soon be introduced to elevate Sherman to a second lieutenant generalcy and that he might supersede Grant. In Savannah, Sherman heard the rumors and asked his brother, Senator John Sherman of Ohio, to scupper the bill. “It would be mischievous,” he wrote Grant, “for there are enough rascals who would try to sow differences between us. I would rather have you in command than anyone else [and] I should emphatically decline any commission calculated to bring us into rivalry.”⁸⁷

Grant was unruffled. He wrote Sherman a warm reply that reflected his attachment. “No one would be more pleased at your advancement than I, and if you should be placed in my position and I put subordinate it would not change our relations in the least. I would make the same exertion to support you that you have ever done to support me and I would do all in my power to make our cause win.”⁸⁸ Whatever schemes were being hatched died stillborn. Grant continued to tighten the noose around Petersburg while Sherman moved on Columbia, South Carolina.

Already Confederate peace feelers were in the air. A brief conference between President Lincoln and rebel leaders at Hampton Roads in early February ended without results, and at the end of February Major General Edward Ord, who had succeeded Benjamin Butler as commander of the Army of the James, had a chance meeting with General Longstreet under a flag of truce to arrange an exchange of political prisoners. The two were old friends and after their business was completed began to talk about the chance for peace. Perhaps, Ord suggested, a meeting between Grant and Lee might pave the way. Longstreet took the suggestion back to Confederate headquarters and on March 3—the day before Lincoln’s second inaugural—Grant received the following letter from General Lee:

Lieutenant General Longstreet has informed me that in a recent conversation between himself and Major General Ord as to the possibility of arriving at a satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy difficulties by means of a military convention, General Ord stated that if I desired to have an interview with you on the subject you would not decline, provided I had authority to act. Sincerely desiring to leave nothing untried which may put an end to the calamities of war, I propose to meet you at such convenient time and place as you may designate, with the hope that upon an interchange of views it might be found practicable to submit the subjects of controversy between belligerents to a convention of the kind mentioned.⁸⁹

Grant had been handed a hot potato. He immediately forwarded the message to Washington and asked for instructions. Lincoln was on Capitol Hill when Grant’s telegram arrived, signing bills that had been passed during the last day of the session. After consulting Stanton and Secretary of State Seward, Lincoln wrote out a carefully worded reply, which was signed by Stanton and forwarded to Grant.

The President directs me to say that he wishes you to have no conference with General Lee unless it be for the capitulation of Gen. Lee’s army, or on some minor or purely military matter. He instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss or confer upon any political question. Such questions the President holds in his own hands; and will submit them to no military conferences or convention. Meanwhile you are to press to the utmost your military advantages.⁹⁰

Pressing his military advantages was precisely what Grant intended. Already he had instructed Sheridan to move out from the valley, destroy the rail junction at Lynchburg, then turn eastward toward Danville and an eventual linkup with Sherman approaching from the south.⁹¹ Grant was worried that after eight months of siege at Petersburg, Lee might imitate his own maneuver at Cold Harbor, silently steal away some moonless night, and march south to join the Carolina army of Joseph E. Johnston, the only other effective Confederate force still in the field.

Those last days of winter, Grant wrote later, were one of the most anxious periods of the war. “I was afraid, every morning, that I would awake from my sleep to hear that Lee had gone, and that nothing was left but his picket line. I knew he could move much more lightly and more rapidly than I, and that, if he got the start, he would leave me behind so that we would have the same army to fight again further south—and the war might be prolonged another year.”⁹² Sheridan’s job was to slam the door on Lee’s escape route. On March 2 Little Phil fell on the remnant of Early’s Shenandoah command at Rockfish Gap near Waynesboro, and annihilated it. At that point Sheridan found the road to Lynchburg impassable and headed east with two divisions of cavalry to join Grant on the James. With Sheridan’s arrival, Grant’s forces on the Richmond front totaled slightly more than 120,000 men: the Army of the Potomac under Meade, the Army of the James under Ord, and the mounted troops from the Army of the Shenandoah under Sheridan.

Lee, with his Army of Northern Virginia now down to 50,000 men, of whom only 35,000 were fit for duty, was stunned by Early’s defeat.⁹³ To wait for Grant to attack would be to court disaster. The thinly held Confederate line could be easily overrun by the mass of the Federal army, or encircled by Sheridan’s fast-moving troopers. Aggressive to the end, Lee decided to strike a surprise blow at the weakest point in Grant’s line, lock the Union army in place, and then under cover of the fighting withdraw quickly to the south. That would mean abandoning Richmond, but the alternative, as Lee saw it, was to lose the army. It was a desperate gamble, and to accomplish the task, Lee turned to his scrappiest subordinate, Lieutenant General John B. Gordon, now commanding Stonewall Jackson’s old corps. Gordon was instructed to hit Fort Stedman, a run-down Federal installation midway between the Crater and the Appomattox, at dawn on Saturday, March 25, puncture Grant’s line, and exploit whatever opportunity presented itself. Gordon moved forward aggressively and tore a three-quarter-mile hole in the Union front, but was quickly contained by the 9th Corps, Burnside’s old command, now ably led by thirty-six-yearold John G. Parke. A prompt Northern counterattack retook the ground, plus the forward trenches of the Confederate line as well, trapping many of Gordon’s men and forcing them to surrender. Lee lost 5,000 men, almost 15 percent of his combat effectives, against fewer than 1,500 Union casualties. The attack had never been more than a forlorn hope, and Lee now faced the inevitable Federal onslaught considerably worse off than before.

The attack on Fort Stedman, Lee’s last offensive gambit, had been so feeble that Grant scarcely took notice. At the time of the assault he was meeting with President Lincoln at City Point. Shortly after the inauguration, Grant had invited the president to come down from Washington (“I think the rest would do you good.”⁹⁴), and Lincoln had accepted with alacrity, arriving on the steamer River Queen at 9 P.M. the night before. Grant called Gordon’s foray “a little rumpus up the line,” and told the president it was a measure of Lee’s desperation and a likely signal that he was planning to withdraw.⁹⁵ As he usually did, Lincoln enjoyed his visit to headquarters enormously, reviewed the troops of Warren’s 5th Corps just hours after Gordon’s attack, and visited the wounded in an army field hospital, where he made a point of shaking hands with the wounded Confederates.⁹⁶

The president stayed busy for the next several days attending reviews and various inspections Grant arranged, and then on the morning of March 28 met with Grant, Sherman, and Admiral David Porter aboard the River Queen to discuss the progress of the war. Strictly speaking it was not a council of war, given Grant’s aversion to such meetings, but the four men roamed at length over the military situation, Sherman having come up from North Carolina especially for the meeting. Lincoln said his greatest worry was that his generals might let victory slip through their hands, permitting Lee and Johnston to escape and continue the fight for months to come. Grant and Sherman made it clear that would not happen, and then Sherman asked the president, “What is to be done with the rebel armies when defeated?” Lincoln replied at length, emphasizing his desire for reconciliation. He wanted to offer the most generous terms, he said, in order to “get the men comprising the Confederate armies back to their homes, at work on their farms and in their shops.” Warming to his subject, Lincoln observed that once the men surrendered and reached their homes, “they won’t take up arms again. Let them go, officers and all. I want submission and no more bloodshed. . . . I want no one punished; treat them liberally all round. We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws.”⁹⁷

Did that include Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy’s political leadership? the officers asked. Lincoln responded by telling the story of a teetotaler who was asked if he wanted his lemonade spiked with whiskey. The man replied that if he didn’t know it, he supposed it would be all right, from which Grant and Sherman concluded that if Davis and his colleagues quietly escaped abroad, the president wouldn’t mind.

When the meeting concluded, Lincoln, with a twinkle in his eyes, turned to Sherman. “Sherman,” he asked, “do you know why I took a shine to Grant and you?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Lincoln. You have been extremely kind to me, far more than I deserve.”

“Well,” said Lincoln, “you never found fault with me.”⁹⁸

Sherman left immediately after the meeting to rejoin his command. He never saw Lincoln again. Reflecting on the meeting years later, he wrote: “Of all the men I have met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other.”⁹⁹

The day after the conference with the president, Grant assumed the offensive. It was another sidle to the left. Sheridan, supported by the 5th Corps, was ordered to turn Lee’s right ten miles southwest of Petersburg. Meade followed laterally, the 2nd Corps in the van, while Ord’s army crossed the James and took up the positions the Army of the Potomac vacated. Sheridan was aiming for Five Forks, a critical road intersection vital to Lee’s withdrawal south. Lee responded by sending George Pickett with two reinforced infantry divisions and the remaining Confederate cavalry, about 12,000 men, to hold the crossing. A drenching downpour slowed Sheridan’s troopers, but by nightfall on the 29th he was at Dinwiddie Court House, five miles from his objective.

With Sheridan leading the way (“the left-hand man of Grant the left-handed,” wrote one reporter¹⁰⁰), Grant had remedied the lack of aggressiveness that had bedeviled the Army of the Potomac. That evening he turned Little Phil loose: “I feel like ending the matter,” he wired Sheridan. “In the morning push around the enemy, if you can, and get onto his right rear. We will all act together as one army until it is seen what can be done.”¹⁰¹ Grant was no longer trying to cut Lee’s line of retreat. Instead, he was preparing a knockout punch, looking for a final victory. Later, he wrote, “My hope was that Sheridan would be able to carry Five Forks, get on the enemy’s right flank and rear, and force them to weaken their center to protect their right so that an assault in the center might be successfully made.”¹⁰²

For two days the rain continued. Pickett held Sheridan at Dinwiddie Court House on March 31, but late the next afternoon, with the ground drying, Little Phil broke through, personally leading the final infantry charge that shattered Pickett’s line. Lee’s right flank was in shambles. Pickett lost more than 5,000 men, most of whom had been encircled and surrendered, at a cost of 634 for Sheridan. It was the most one-sided Union victory of the war. When the news reached Grant that evening, he ordered an attack all along the line at four the next morning, April 2, 1865.

Lee’s losses at Five Forks, combined with those a week earlier at Fort Stedman, had cost him a good fourth of his army. With his line now stretched beyond the breaking point, it was scarcely a contest when the Union troops went forward at dawn. Sheridan captured the last rail line into Petersburg from the south, while the 2nd, 6th, and 9th Corps punched through the main Confederate battle line. The first bank of rebel entrenchments fell under the onslaught, then the second, as the embattled Army of North Virginia fell back to Petersburg’s inner defenses. “I see no prospect of doing more than holding our position here till night,” Lee informed Jefferson Davis. “I am not certain that I can do that. If I can I shall withdraw tonight north of the Appomattox. . . . I advise that all preparations be made for leaving Richmond tonight.”¹⁰³

Richmond fell and the war became a footrace. Just before midnight, the Confederate army pulled back from the Petersburg defenses they had held with such fortitude for the past 293 days. Lee’s objective was Amelia Court House, forty miles to the west, a shipping point astride the Richmond & Danville Railroad, the last rail link to North Carolina and the forces of Joseph E. Johnston, a hundred or so miles to the south. For Grant, time was crucial. Lee had an eight-hour head start, but Grant had Sheridan’s fast-moving cavalry and five infantry corps closing in on the kill. “We never endured such marching before,” a footsore enlisted man wrote afterward.¹⁰⁴ Rather than pursue Lee (“A stern chase is a long one,” Sherman once said¹⁰⁵), Grant moved to block his route south by cutting the Danville–Richmond line ten miles below Amelia Court House. With Sheridan in the lead, the Union army raced westward alongside the Confederates, hell-bent for the railroad.

Reduced to little over 30,000 men, Lee took two days to assemble his army at Amelia Court House. The troops had withdrawn successfully from their entrenchments and moved by three separate columns toward their destination, but with none of the élan or enthusiasm of past campaigns. “We moved on in disorder,” wrote a captain from North Carolina, “keeping no regular column, no regular pace. When a soldier became weary he fell out, ate his scanty rations—if, indeed, he had any to eat—rested, rose, and resumed the march when his inclination dictated. There were not many words spoken. An indescribable sadness weighed upon us.”¹⁰⁶

At Amelia Court House the collapse of the Confederacy became apparent. The rations Lee had ordered for his hungry army failed to arrive. Instead, the waiting boxcars, the last to leave Richmond, were crammed with ammunition, of which the army already had more than it could carry. Lee’s only recourse was to call a halt while his commissary staff scrounged through the countryside for what food they could find. Another day was lost and on the morning of April 5 when what was left of the Army of Northern Virginia began to move south, the route was blocked by Sheridan’s dismounted troopers with their repeating Spencers and three corps of Union infantry. Lee veered west and headed for Farmville, eighteen miles away on the Southside Railroad, where he could draw supplies from Lynchburg, before continuing his effort to join Johnston.