How did the Union Destroy the Confederates The American Civil War 1864

The Battle of Gettysburg had been the final straw for many. People on both sides of the war were ready for it all to be over. So many men had already died in a war of brother against brother and father against son. What more was it worth to continue? Well, for the Union leaders, quite a bit. Gettysburg and the aftermath, though tragic, had seen a turning point for the North. At the start of the war, the South seemed to have gained and reasonably well held the upper hand. But that was now changing. As the Confederates were running out of steam and money, the Yankees were finally building solid momentum. So, as 1863 turns to 1864, the war continued. By now, the Union was ready to try and truly cripple the Confederacy by launching a campaign aimed at digging even deeper into important Southern territories. This would be the largest Army-Navy combined campaign to be launched at any point throughout the war. The main target was the capital of Louisiana, Shreveport, which, if captured, could potentially give the Northerners an opportunity to next dig into Texas. The whole thing, however, was problematic from the very start. For one, on the Navy side, Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter had agreed to join the campaign under the assumption that Major General William T. Sherman would be the land commander, and Sherman himself had intended to do so. But, with General Ulysses Grant preoccupied with other Northern objectives and insisting that Sherman stay and assist him, Major General Nathaniel P. Banks would instead be the one to take the reins, something Porter nor Sherman were pleased to hear. In fact, Sherman even went as far to send a contingent of his own men, 10,000 of his very best, to Porter, specifically stating that this favor was in case Banks abandoned the naval forces if his own land troops got into trouble. And the problem with General Banks was that he wasn't even much of a military man. Technically, he wasn't one at all. He was a politician more than anything, which is exactly why he needed this campaign for the military experience, and hopefully success, that it would bring him. The problem then with Banks' plan was the fact that he intended to use three entirely separate forces, Porter's 90-boat strong fleet, Banks' own 20,000 men from the New Orleans area, and Major General Frederick Steele with another 10,000 coming from Little Rock. Since none of these groups could communicate with each other easily throughout the campaign, the entire plan begs to become an unorganized disaster, or as one Union general said, one damn blunder from beginning to end. The Red River Campaign ended in a Yankee retreat and a much-needed break for the rebels. The Confederates also managed to seize Fort Pillow in Tennessee around the same time, murdering 300 surrendered Union soldiers in the process, many of whom were black. General Grant shortly after demanded that all prisoner exchange talks be halted until the South agreed to treat black prisoners of war the same as white. Grant was also busy preparing for what would be one of the most horrendous engagements of his entire career, the Battle of the Wilderness. Lee's army will be your objective. Where he goes, there you will go also. And thus, the Northerners would. This Lee-chasing army consisted of Grant's Army of the Potomac, jointly commanded by Major General's Governor K. Warren, Winfield S. Hancock, and John Sedgwick, alongside Ambrose Burnside and his Independent Ninth Corps. On the Confederate side was General Lee, the chaste at the helm. Working with him, however, was a bit of a ragtag group of commanders, as the South was still reeling and struggling to recover from the loss of Stonewall Jackson, Lee's right hand. Nevertheless, A.P. Hill and Richard S. Ewell, though not as skilled as Stonewall, were ready to fill the gaps, and Lee's close friend James Longstreet was prepared to tag along. In the early days of May, General Grant had opted to take his men out of the wilderness of Spotsylvania and into open ground in their preparations for a face-off with the Confederates. Lee, on the other hand, had ordered his men to try and trap the Union troops in a battle within the wilderness, as the difficult terrain would give the Southerners the upper hand. These simultaneous strategies eventually led to the Northerners catching wind of the approaching rebels. General Warren reacted by sending out a division to investigate the situation, while the rest of the Union forces attempted to avoid a possible clash before escaping the wooded terrain. The situation, however, would not end in the Yankees' favor. The very moment we appeared, they gave us a volley at long range, but evidently with very deliberate aim, and with serious effect, a Union officer would later testify. The Confederate force that Warren had aimed to simply investigate was actually the entire Corps under General Ewell, and upon being watched, they reacted with rapid hostility. The battle began at Saunders Field, and evolved into what one described as bushwhacking on a grand scale, as the thick foresting made for a confusing battlefield. Over with General Hill, another battle had broken out along the Plank Road, as the Confederates there ran into General Sedgwick's division in their attempts to cut the Northerners off from the highly important Brock Road. For the first portion of each engagement, the favor seemed to shift back and forward with no clear winner, but the outnumbered Southerners were surely disadvantaged under Hill. General Longstreet was intended to come and assist Hill and his attack as night fell, which caused the latter to hold off from re-engaging at dawn, as Longstreet was yet to arrive. This meant that the Union attacks that morning proved disastrous for Hill, that is, until Longstreet's heroic arrival hours behind schedule. The battle around Plank and Brock Roads would thus carry on for a while longer, with what seemed to be a growing Confederate favor for some time, but would eventually end in an eventual, though partial, Union victory. The Southerners would complete the endeavor with the upper hand, however, after General John B. Gordon routed Yankee troops along the Turnpike on May 6th, even taking two Union generals as prisoners in the process. The consequence for the North was damning. The battle had cost them double the number of South, and the situation became so dire that General Grant, wildly uncharacteristically, broke down in tears in his tent at word of the situation. Yet, Grant, nor the North, was ready to give up. Instead of following the battle with a full retreat, they marched on, deeper south, to Richmond. Throughout May, the Union was now daringly carrying out two simultaneous campaigns, Grant's Overland and Sherman's Atlanta. The Overland campaign had begun with the Battle of the Wilderness, and the depressing draw, at best, coupled with the raging fire the battle had caused, it all seemed like a bad omen for the launched campaign. But, as Grant told a reporter, there is no turning back. The campaign was far from over. In fact, the next clash occurred only hours later at the Spotsylvania Courthouse, where Lee managed to stall his adversary yet again for two weeks straight, until Grant finally disengaged. After losing roughly another 18,000 men, the Union general pushed on for Richmond. Off and on clashes would follow, as Grant and his men trudged towards the Confederate capital, and the Battle of Cold Harbor would see the Union take another unwanted hit. After six weeks, the campaign came to a close, but not before racking up around 55,000 northern casualties, and seeing the third and fourth bloodiest battles of the entire war. Still, Grant was aiming for a war of attrition now, and to this extent, with the Battle of the South having totaled around 33,000 casualties, the Union had actually claimed a strategic victory. Over with General Sherman, he and his men had been ordered to take the key Confederate city of Atlanta, and thus, beginning in Tennessee, they started their march. As the campaign carried on, a few things were happening elsewhere in the Union. On June 8th, 1864 for example, Abraham Lincoln officially received the nomination for re-election. Unfortunately for Grant, news for him was less positive, as many in D.C. were now calling him the Butcher, due to his strategy of sacrificing tens of thousands of men now in hopes of saving more later by ending the war sooner. Furthermore, other battles were ongoing, such as the Battle of Bryce's Crossroads, where General Samuel Sturgis was crushed by the highly outnumbered Confederate force under General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Sherman, however, was ill-concerned about his comrades' labors, as his campaign would prove triumphant. After a string of combat along the way, the Confederates, under General John Hood, would eventually retreat from the city of Atlanta entirely, surrendering it to the incoming Yankees. The latter would hold the city until November, at which point Sherman had ordered for all military resources in the city to be burned to the ground, which would unintentionally result in an out-of-control fire that leveled the city. As the heat of the summer beat down on both battle-worn and battle-ready men of North and South, the Confederates, too, were attempting to make significant moves. Confederate General Jubal Early was hoping to take pressure off of Petersburg and Richmond, which had been under siege by the Union since the end of the Overland Campaign. Thus, he clashed with Northerners at the Battle of Monocacy in Maryland, where he would ultimately win, but many from the North still claimed it to be a tactical victory in stopping the Confederates from reaching D.C. Early would eventually reach the defenses of Washington nonetheless, but he would withdraw from the attack the same day. As the war thus raged on through the summer, it wasn't just land forces who saw battle. One contest, in particular, saw joint effort at the start of August when the North aimed its sights at Mobile, Alabama. The Battle of Mobile Bay, technically just outside of Mobile, Alabama, was a joint land and naval effort by the North to capture the Confederate port that had become increasingly crucial for the South after the fall of New Orleans. Union Admiral David Farragut sped his fleet through the bay behind four ironclads to take on the small Confederate flotilla and two formidable forts standing in the way. The battle was well fought by the Confederates, but ultimately ended in a Union victory, though the city of Mobile itself would remain in Confederate hands. Nevertheless, the port now belonged to the North. Violence was still at a high around Petersburg as well, due to the ongoing siege, and the following month, a battle broke out at Winchester, again for the third time. Following his attempted attack on Washington, General Jubal Early had remained in the Shenandoah Valley, which the South had been using for some time now to launch their incursions against the North. This eventually led to the Union deciding it was time to free the Shenandoah of their adversaries, sending General Philip Sheridan to do the deed. The battle officially broke out at Winchester when General Sheridan and his army of the Shenandoah were attempting to pass through the narrow canyon near Berryville Pike. The Confederates, in the form of General Stephen D. Ramser's division, opened fire, essentially trapping the soldiers and wagon trains within the canyon. The goal wasn't necessarily to defeat the drastically larger Union force, but rather to stall its advance, giving General Early enough time to race the remainder of his forces to join the defense after having heard of Sheridan's upcoming attack. By the time the Northerners finally gathered themselves enough to launch their own assault, Major General Robert E. Rhodes and John B. Gordon had arrived to aid Ramser, and the fight was on. The Yankees slowly but surely beat down the Confederates under Ramser, while his comrades fought their own battles all around him. General Gordon and his men were locked in one of those clashes, although they seemed to be faring a bit better for the time being. The grass and earth was cut and torn up by a perfect sheet of lead. Bullets sought the hiding places of the men with fatal accuracy. Blood was on everything, was everywhere, was spattered on bushes, was gathered in ghastly puddles on the ground, was the description given by one of the Union soldiers present. General Rhodes was also launching a strong counterattack nearby, as both Ramser and Gordon were gaining ground, even if it was ground they had previously lost. As the battles raged on, the Northerners began to worry that the whole exertion could end up going in the rebels' favor. Thus, General Sheridan decided to call in backup from an old friend. I've got Crook here with 10,000 men, and I am going to throw them in and whip these fellows. In the end, Sheridan wasn't entirely wrong. The Confederates would face defeat and the city fell to the Union. In what seems to be a pattern of recent, this would prove to be the bloodiest battle ever fought in the Shenandoah Valley, with Sheridan losing over 10% of his entire army in the hard-fought victory. The Confederates would lose roughly 4,000, scarcely less than the much larger Union force they had faced. Yet, Sheridan wasn't done with Jubal early. In fact, he still wanted him out of the Shenandoah entirely. After the Battle of Third Winchester, Early had worked to withdraw back to Fisher's Hill, which he believed would provide safety for his absolutely rattled troops. Known as the Gibraltar of the Valley, the hill could be a crucial ground to hold if properly defended. Early, however, was unable to even set up proper defenses before Sheridan and his army arrived on their heels. General Crook, sent off by Sheridan, ambushed Jubal Early and his men on their left flank, while the other Union forces served as a distraction. The Confederates, despite their best efforts, were forced to retreat yet again, being chased until Woodstock. The following months would see the Union enact the Burning, to downright destroy the breadbasket of the Confederacy and eventually wrestle the whole of the Shenandoah Valley from the south altogether. The Union was looking more and more grim for the rebels. Over in the Union, it appeared that the war was as close as ever to ending. In the previous months, it had been General Robert E. Lee's belief that if he and his Confederates could hold off for just long enough, the war-exhausted and dissatisfied Northerners would choose to elect a Southern-sympathizing president in their upcoming election. This never came to fruition, however. The election had come down to a face-off between the Republican incumbent, President Abraham Lincoln, of course, and his old wishy-washy general, George McClellan of the Democratic Party. President Lincoln and his VP, Andrew Johnson, would win in an Electoral College landslide. Though the popular vote wasn't embarrassingly far off, between the two candidates, the electoral votes divided up to 212 votes for the commander-in-chief and 21 for his challenger. If Lee had any hopes left of the Union government ending the war favorably for both sides, they must have been like a dying flame. Rubbing salt into the wound, in November, General Sherman of the North began his march to the sea. After the fall of Atlanta and the subsequent Confederate retreat, Sherman decided to really hammer home his triumph. Splitting his army in two, Sherman himself took one portion, 62,000 strong, on a journey through the state of Georgia until they reached Savannah, with the sole goal of wreaking havoc. The Northerners, on one hand, began to destroy Confederate infrastructure and necessities, such as farms, railroads, and the like. At the same time, while Sherman ordered his men to refrain from murdering any Southern civilians, he also wanted to make their lives absolutely miserable. The thought process was that if the rebels lost mass amounts of infrastructure and material, as well as the support of their everyday people, their war effort would collapse and the Union would officially win once and for all. Thus, the Yankees did just that as they marched towards the Savannah. For the most part, no one disturbed their destruction effort. Though, at one point, Sherman and his army skirmished with a wildly outnumbered Confederate cavalry that ended up having to flee altogether. They, too, ironically, took a scorched-earth approach on their march ahead of the Union men, burning bridges, barns, and anything the Northerners could have used to their advantage. The latter still reached Savannah as planned and took the city, presenting it to the newly re-elected President as an early and grandiose Christmas gift. The end of the year also saw the battle move to Tennessee, where the Southerners were crushed at the Battle of Nashville and as the holidays passed, 1864 wound to a close as the war still failed to be resolved. Though the South appeared to be losing steam and the North quite the contrary, the Confederates were yet to consider surrender. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to carry on. And so, they would.