Existing comment:
Final Months of the War:
Total War in the Shenandoah Valley:
The near-disaster after Monocacy inspired Grant to ensure that such an assault on the capital would never happen again. He called on Major General Phillip Sheridan to mount a campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. Grant directed Sheridan to destroy Early's army and the fertile valley that provisioned it. In the fall of 1864, the Union would succeed on both accounts.
"If the enemy has left Maryland, as I suppose he had, he should have upon his heels veterans, militiamen, men on horseback, and everything that can be got to follow to eat out Virginia clear and clean as far as they go, so that crows flying over it for the balance of this season will have to carry their provender with them."
-- Lieutenant General U.S. Grant to Major General Halleck
Union Victory at Petersburg:
For nine months the armies of Grant and Lee locked in deadly siege around Petersburg. On April 2, 1865 Lee's lines around Petersburg collapsed and Richmond fell to the Union. Lee and his army fled westward, only to be trapped at Appomattox Court House, where they surrendered on April 9. Other Confederate armies soon surrendered as well, ending the Civil War.
Lincoln Assassinated:
Just five days after Lee's surrender, disaffected Southern John Wilkes Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. A nation buffered by four years of bloody turmoil now confronted a shock unique in its history. |