Original subtitles

The armies were now all ready to move for the

accomplishment of a single object.

They were acting as a unit so far as such a thing was

possible over such a vast field.

Lee, with the capital of the Confederacy,

was the main end to which all were working.

Johnston, with Atlanta, was an important obstacle in the way

of our accomplishing the result aimed at,

and was therefore almost an independent objective.

It was of less importance only because the capture of

Johnston and his army would not produce so immediate and

decisive a result in closing the rebellion as would the

possession of Richmond, Lee and his army.

All other troops were employed exclusively in support of

these two movements.

In the first years of the Civil War,

both sides engaged in a limited war,

with armies focused primarily on fighting each other.

Though there had been exceptions,

neither side had made a practice of destroying

property belonging to non-combatants.

But by 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant, along with his General

William Tecumseh Sherman,

and President Abraham Lincoln, had come to realize that this

strategy was simply prolonging the war.

To defeat the Confederacy, they must also target the

Southern economy - private farms,

factories, and the cities of the South.

Total war.

So in the late Spring of 1864, Grant and the Army of the

Potomac lay siege to Petersburg, Virginia.

Over the next ten months, the armies there constructed a

series of forts and trenches, the likes of which would not

be seen again until World War I.

Grant's goal was both the actual assault on Petersburg -

and then on to Richmond - and to capture or destroy General

Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

At the same time, Grant sent General William Tecumseh

Sherman to strike out towards Atlanta,

and towards General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee.

He wrote to Sherman:

You I propose to move against Johnston's army,

to break it up and to get into the interior of the enemy's

country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you

can against their war resources.

The capture of either major Confederate city,

or the destruction or surrender of either great

Confederate Army, would be a major turning point in the war.

As Grant said, all other actions would be in

support of those two major drives.

One of those supporting actions was the Valley

Campaign led by Major General David Hunter.

To deal with Hunter's advance into the Valley,

Robert E. Lee sent General Jubal Early.

Early was to drive Hunter out of the Shenandoah Valley,

and then to move North, in the Confederacy's third and final

invasion into Union territory.

Lee hoped Early could threaten Washington, D.C.,

forcing Grant to send troops to support the capital.

This would weaken Grant's force in Petersburg,

and give Lee some breathing room.

Early was campaigning under the shadow of the late

Stonewall Jackson, whose own Valley Campaign in 1862

was already legend.

In June, Early defeated Hunter at the Battle of Lynchburg.

Hunter's force, now low on supplies,

was forced to withdraw to the west.

Early pushed through the Valley,

crossed the Potomac River into Maryland.

Grant sent two brigades of the Sixth Corps

north, under Brigadier General James Ricketts,

to help put the capital into that "state of preparation."

Wallace's six thousand men needed to delay Early's

fourteen thousand long enough

for those reinforcements to arrive.

To achieve that delay, they would guard the bridges and

fords crossing the Monocacy River.

Most of Wallace's soldiers were Hundred Days Men,

who had just enlisted for one hundred days for the specific

purpose of repelling this invasion.

They had not yet been in combat,

and they faced veteran troops.

But at the last minute, the first contingent of Rickett's

brigades from the Sixth Corps reached Baltimore.

These veteran units jumped on trains and rushed to join

Wallace at the Monocacy.

Lieutenant George Davis and seventy-five of his men from

the 10th Vermont Regiment, of the Sixth Corps,

were placed with a portion of a Maryland regiment,

commanded by a Captain Charles Brown.

Brown and his two hundred men were inexperienced,

having just recently entered service.

Davis later described his experiences on July 9, 1864.

Our orders were to hold the two bridges across

the river at all hazard, and prevent

the enemy from crossing...

Other union forces were on the south bank of the river...

We were the only Union troops on the north side...

confronted with General Ramseur's division of

Confederate troops.

When the enemy advanced, about 3:30 A.M.,

along the pike from Frederick City,

Captain Brown allowed them to come within fifteen or twenty

rods of our position, thinking they were Union troops because

dressed in blue clothing which they had recently

captured at Martinsburg.

I stoutly protested, telling him our friends were behind us.

He was convinced when one of his men was killed and several

wounded; then he turned to me in disgust and insisted upon

my taking command.

I assumed command instantly; brought up my Tenth Vermonters

to this point, and after a severe fight of about one hour,

the enemy retired...

The third and last attack began about 3.30 P.M.

The situation was critical; the enemy came upon us with

such overwhelming numbers and desperation that it seemed we

should be swept into the river...

Nevertheless we fought for over an hour and kept back a

much larger force than ours...

Lieutenant Davis received the Medal of Honor

for his defense of the two bridges,

against repeated assaults of superior numbers,

which materially delayed Early's advance on Washington.

Early had won the battle, but it cost him a day's march.

A delay so crucial that the Battle of Monocacy is called

the battle that saved Washington.

Early's force reached the outskirts of the capital,

near Silver Spring, Maryland, around noon on July 11.

He sent out his skirmishers to feel out the fortifications.

Those fortifications were strong.

But on the 11th, they were undermanned,

held by Home Guards, clerks, and wounded soldiers who were

in the capital convalescing.

Despite the insufficient lines and the threatening

Confederate army, Fort Stevens received a notable

visitor that day.

President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln

visited the wounded in the fort's hospital.

Jubal Early determined that his men were too weary from

their recent battle and march.

Add on to that the sweltering heat of that July day,

and the trenches they faced, and Early decided to wait a

day before attacking.

That night, the additional reinforcements sent by Grant

arrived, and added their considerable strength

to the city's fortifications.

The next day, Early saw that his chance at capturing

Washington was gone, though he had been successful in drawing

some of Grant's troops away from Petersburg and Richmond.

Union and Confederate troops skirmished during the day,

as Early prepared to leave.

Though the actual battle was small,

it almost cost the Union dearly.

President Lincoln, still at the fort to observe the

attack, came under fire from sharpshooters.

A surgeon near Lincoln was shot by a marksman.

The president himself was ordered to take cover,

reportedly with a brusque, "Get down, you fool!"

The Union commanders sent a few veteran brigades out of

the fort, to push the Confederates back

beyond the fortifications.

That night, under cover of darkness, Early slipped away.

In March 1864, General Sherman had been made

commander of Military Division of the Mississippi,

more commonly called the Army of the West because it

controlled all Union military operations

in the Western Theater.

He replaced Grant, when Grant was promoted to command all of

the Union armies.

Grant trusted Sherman, and the two worked well together.

Sherman and Grant worked out an ambitious,

aggressive plan to bring the war to an end.

Grant would focus on General Robert E. Lee's army,

centered around Richmond, Virginia.

For Grant to succeed, Sherman would need to keep the

Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's army tied up,

unable to reinforce Lee.

Sherman's plan to achieve that was breathtaking in its

simplicity, and its promise of destruction.

He would march his armies across Georgia,

and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean,

laying waste to all Confederate assets along the

way, including the city of Atlanta,

the Heart of the South.

The clock was ticking.

In August of 1864, the former Union commander,

George McClellan, who had been fired by Lincoln,

was nominated as the Democratic Party's

candidate for president.

His platform called for peace negotiations based on the

recognition of the Confederacy's independence.

It looked bad for Lincoln.

The war had dragged on, there had been too many Union

losses, and many in the North just wanted it over.

Grant and Sherman needed to give Lincoln a clear and

convincing victory, to convince the people -

the voters - that they would win the war if they held firm.

War is politics and politics is war.

Lincoln had made clear that he would accept no peace with the

Confederacy that did not both return them to the Union and

require their acceptance of emancipation.

Much was riding on Sherman's march on Atlanta.

Sherman's forces set out in late April of that year,

moving South out of Tennessee into Georgia.

They stuck with the Western and Atlantic Railroad as much

as possible, their supply line back north.

At places like Rocky Face Ridge and Resaca,

Sherman would repeatedly flank the Rebel Army,

sending a portion of his forces around the enemy's

extreme left or right, getting behind them,

and forcing them to pull back to their next set of defenses.

For two months, the march toward Atlanta was hard,

but progress was steady.

Then Sherman reached Kennesaw Mountain.

Kennesaw Mountain - and the smaller Little Kennesaw,

and other rocky hills - is about fifteen miles north of Atlanta.

The battle began at 8 a.m. on June 27th.

General McPherson's artillery opened up on Kennesaw,

and the Confederates fired right back.

Three brigades of the 15th Corps attacked at Pigeon Hill,

a small bump on Little Kennesaw Mountain.

They faced Confederate General Loring's Corps.

The three Union brigades had about fifty-five hundred men,

attacking about five thousand Rebels.

But the Confederates were deeply entrenched,

and the federals were climbing,

cutting, and crawling through dense brush and steep,

rocky slopes.

One brigade managed to overrun the Rebels' rifle pits

but were stopped there.

Caught between Confederate General Walker's rifles on

their south and Rebel cannons based on Little Kennesaw,

they were being cut to pieces and had to fall back.

The other brigades had similar trouble,

eventually hiding behind trees and rocks and taking shots at

the Confederate works, which seemed all but invulnerable.

Finally General Logan himself rode up to survey the scene,

saw his men were being butchered for no benefit,

and ordered them to withdraw and entrench.

General Thomas, charged with carrying the main attack,

had to delay an hour to give his infantry time to arrange.

His cannons opened up at 8 a.m.,

but it was another hour before his infantry could move forward.

Unfortunately for the Union troops,

the Confederate units holding the center were the two least

likely to fold under pressure.

Generals Patrick Cleburne and Benjamin Cheatham were

blooded, veteran commanders who had seen tough fighting in

prior battles, and emerged victorious.

They were well-entrenched, and supported by cannons.

Colonel's McCook and Mitchell attacked the hill,

but they were cut down.

McCook himself took a fatal wound.

His replacement ordered a retreat,

but many of their men were either unable to retreat,

or unwilling to leave cover to flee.

Two thousand union troops surrendered,

while others feigned death to escape in the night.

At around 10 a.m., the hot shells and wadding started a

fire in the woods, and wounded Union soldiers were trapped,

facing a fiery death.

Then Confederate Lt. Colonel Will Martin made a makeshift

white flag of truce and waved it, shouting to Union troops to,

"Come and get your wounded, they are burning to death!

We won't fire till you get them away!"

And both sides ceased fighting long enough for Union - and

some Confederate soldiers - to rescue wounded Union troops.

Once done, fighting resumed.

The only success of the day was General Schofield's.

While carrying out his orders to demonstrate on his extreme

right, he found a place where Sherman's army could move

around the Confederates.

Late that night, Sherman finally agreed that this was

the best strategy.

Once again, he flanked Johnston's army,

and once again Johnston felt forced to withdraw

to a new line of defense.

Johnston continued to fall back as Union forces

continued to move forward, and Sherman gathered willing Rebel

prisoners - deserters - by the hundreds.

Eventually, Jefferson Davis relieved Johnston of his

command, replacing him with the more aggressive

General John Hood.

The Confederate force was unhappy with the change,

not liking to see politicians pulling down a commander who

had recognized the importance of keeping his army in the

field and alive.

Johnston's policy of strategic withdrawal had delayed

Sherman's army at minimal cost to his own.

Hood's strategy, while more aggressive,

would be no more successful and considerably more

hazardous to his troops.

General Hood had lost the use of his left arm during the

Battle of Gettysburg, and lost his right leg

in the battle of Chickamagua.

He had lost none of his fight, however.

As Sherman's armies approached Atlanta,

Hood ordered an assault on Thomas's forces,

at Peach Tree Creek.

He lost badly, taking around five thousand casualties to

fifteen hundred on the Union side.

On that day, July 20, the first artillery shells

fell on Atlanta.

Hood prepared another attack for July 22,

this time against McPherson's Army of the Tennessee.

That morning, Sherman heard reports of the Confederates

abandoning Atlanta.

But this wasn't a withdrawal.

General Hardee - who was angry over being passed over for

promotion when Hood was placed in command - made a wide swing

around McPherson's flank, so that he could attack

from the south.

But he mis-timed his march, turning too early and hitting

the sixteenth Corps head on.

The sixteenth held Hardee off, but not without a cost.

General McPherson, riding almost alone,

came upon a group of Confederate soldiers.

They ordered him to surrender, but he just doffed his hat

and galloped off.

A Confederate sharpshooter shot him off his horse.

He made it back to Union lines,

but he was mortally wounded.

In all, the Confederates took heavier losses,

with almost 2,500 killed and 4,000 wounded to the Union's

500 killed and just over 2,000 wounded.

But the loss of McPherson was a personal blow

to General Sherman.

When the battle was ended, Sherman settled himself in

for a siege of Atlanta.

As part of the siege,

Sherman needed to cut off all railroad lines into the city.

Just as rail lines had served to keep him supplied on his

march to Atlanta, they now provided supplies to the city

and more importantly, to Hood's army.

Sherman tried several raids on the rail.

The first two were unsuccessful,

one resulting in the capture of Union cavalry

General George Stoneman.

In mid-August, Sherman tried again,

sending the cavalry Brigadier General Hugh Kilpatrick to

tear up the Confederate supply lines.

After this and the other failures of the cavalry to

seriously disrupt the rail into Atlanta,

Sherman decided that cavalry simply could not

manage this mission.

He planned now to send his infantry to do the job.

On August 25th, Sherman had held Atlanta under

siege for over a month.

He ordered six of his seven divisions,

over sixty thousand men, to begin moving toward the

Macon and Western Railroad, the last of the

supply lines into Atlanta.

The Battle of Jonesboro smashed Hood's men once again

to a terrible effect.

After the battle, General Hood,

who was still in Atlanta, feared that Sherman was about

to attack the city.

He suspected that the move on Jonesboro was a ruse,

designed to draw Confederate troops out of Atlanta.

The Union forces attacked at about 4 p.m.

The 14th Corps delivered the brunt of the attack,

striking the Confederate line and capturing Brigadier Daniel

Govan and some 600 others.

By night fall, the Confederate line was pierced in multiple

places, completely overrun.

General Hardee sent a message to Hood that Jonesboro was

lost, and the railroad cut.

He moved his corps down the railroad to Lovejoy's Station,

where he entrenched.

That night, Hood ordered the evacuation of Atlanta.

The next day, September 2nd, the city belonged to General

William Tecumseh Sherman.

Once taking the city,

Sherman ordered the evacuation of all remaining citizens.

He corresponded with Hood for help in arranging the details

of their removal so this withdrawal,

"may be made with as little discomfort as possible..."

In late September, General Hood took his army away from

Atlanta, toward Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Sherman sent General George Thomas with a part of his army

to follow, harass, and ultimately destroy Hood's force.

Meanwhile, the remainder of Sherman's army rested in what

was left of the prized city.

Sherman kept his army in Atlanta for almost two and a

half months, while they rested and healed.

Then he continued his march to the sea.

He finally cut loose from the railroad,

and his men were forced to live off the land.

They cut a path sixty miles wide and three hundred miles

long, destroying everything of possible military value

as they passed.

Sherman wrote to Grant, after they reached Savannah

in mid-December:

We started with about five thousand head of cattle,

and arrived with over ten thousand;

of course, consuming mostly turkeys,

chickens, sheep, hogs, and the cattle of the country...

The custom was for each brigade to send out daily a

foraging party of about fifty men,

on foot, who invariably returned mounted,

with several wagons loaded with poultry,

potatoes, etc., and as the army is composed of about

forty brigades, you can estimate approximately the

number of horses collected.

Great numbers of these were shot by my order,

because of the disorganizing effect on our infantry of

having too many idlers mounted...

although the result aimed at was attained...

to deprive our enemy of them...

Not surprisingly, there were many complaints

about the seizures of food, livestock,

and other property by the invading Union army,

and the people of Georgia would never forget or forgive

Sherman for the destruction wrought in the Union's name.

One of those people was Mrs. Dolly Lunt Burge,

a widow who had inherited about a hundred slaves

from her husband.

Her plantation was about thirty miles east of Atlanta

during Sherman's march to the sea.

She wrote of the experience of Yankee soldiers seizing food,

supplies, and slaves from her and her neighbors.

...like demons they rush in...

To my smoke-house, my dairy, pantry,

kitchen and cellar, like famished wolves they come,

breaking locks and whatever is in their way.

The thousand pounds of meat in the smokehouse is gone in a

twinkling, my flour, my meat, my lard,

butter, eggs, pickles...

wine, jars, and jugs are all gone.

My eighteen fat turkeys, my hens,

chickens, and fowls, my young pigs are shot down in my yard

and hunted as if they were rebels themselves.

Utterly powerless I ran out and appealed to the guard.

"I cannot help you, Madam;" he said, "it is orders."

...my dear old buggy-horse... old Mary, my brood mare...

my two-year old mule, and her last little baby colt.

There they go!

There go my mules, my sheep, and, worse than all, my boys!

Sherman's army stripped everything it could

find as it moved and continued its March to the Sea.

It finally reached the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah,

Georgia in December 1864.

He then turned north, marching through South Carolina and

North Carolina, adding pressure to Lee's army in Virginia.

Trailing behind his army on the way to Savannah were

thousands of freed slaves.

Sherman had been exasperated by these slaves,

who needed to remain near the army to stay free,

but they were a drag on resources.

His men traded food with the freed slaves,

in exchange for their work in camp.

At the same time, Sherman discouraged them from

following his army.

Sherman and some of his generals were accused of

treating the freedmen poorly.

Sherman later explained that certain hard decisions

had to be made in war.

Whatever the reason or excuse with regard to individual

incidents, these accusations, combined with Sherman's own

derisive comments about black soldiers in the Union army,

served to make Sherman look more like the plundering

invader described by Georgians like Dolly Burge,

and less like the liberator of Georgia's slaves.

But as Sherman himself would later say, "War is Hell."

Sherman's record with regard to treatment of

freed slaves and black soldiers shows that racist

attitudes were not limited to the south.

But it does not compare with the official policy

of the Confederacy.

On January 12, 1863, less than two weeks after the

Emancipation Proclamation, the Confederate Congress gave its

response: All white officers leading black troops would be

"deemed as inciting servile insurrection,

and sentenced to death.

Slaves captured in arms against the Confederacy would

be turned over to the civil authorities of the state,

to be handled as slaves in rebellion.

The Confederacy's policy did not change.

Former slaves captured in war would be returned to their

masters, where they would face horrific punishment.

Their white officers faced execution.

No black soldiers suspected of being fugitive slaves would be

exchanged for other prisoners.

Lincoln's administration was outraged at the Confederacy's

refusal to include black troops in its prisoner exchanges.

In response, Lincoln halted all prisoner exchanges.

The population of the POW camps on both sides grew far

beyond the governments' capacities to manage them

safely and humanely.

But Lincoln's administration refused to,

as General Butler put it, "barter away the honor and

faith of the Government of the United States,

which has so solemnly been pledged to the colored

soldiers in its ranks."

Many black soldiers, even after surrendering to

Confederate troops, would neither suffer in rebel

prisoner camps nor be re-enslaved.

Instead they faced summary execution

on the field of battle.

The most notorious such incident was at Fort Pillow,

where, on April 12, 1864, rebel forces under the command

of Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest killed dozens

of black soldiers - and their white officer -

after their surrender.

An African-American cook at Fort Pillow described the scene.

They just called them out like dogs,

and shot them down.

I reckon they shot about fifty,

white and black, right there.

They nailed some black sergeants to the logs,

and set the logs on fire.

A Confederate soldier,

Achilles Clark, offered a similar description

in a letter to his sister:

The slaughter was awful.

Words cannot describe the scene.

The poor, deluded, negroes would run up to our men,

fall down upon their knees, and with uplifted hands scream

for mercy but they were ordered to their feet

and then shot down.

I, with several others, tried to stop the butchery,

and at one time had partially succeeded,

but General Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs

and the carnage continued.

Finally our men became sick of blood and the firing ceased.

The war's slaughter grew in the west,

and in the eatern theater of the war...

By June, Grant and his generals were in the

Richmond-Petersburg area, and were digging trenches.

Throughout June and July 1864,

the Union and Confederate armies battled each other in

the trenches around Petersburg.

Grant didn't want a siege, after his experience at Vicksburg.

It sapped the sieging army's morale, and cost it dearly.

At the end of July, the Union Army undertook an ambitious

operation that they hoped would lead to the fall of

Petersburg and a quicker end to the war.

Coal miners in a Pennsylvania regiment had dug a long

mineshaft under Confederate lines,

ending under a Confederate battery.

The plan was to pack gunpowder under the battery,

and then blow it open.

In the resulting confusion, Union troops would rush into

the gap that the explosion would create

in the Confederate lines.

Major General Burnside's plan was to send in two brigades of

the United States Colored Troops,

under Brigadier General Ferrero,

to lead the assault.

Those brigades trained specifically for this task,

to be ready to handle the confusion that would surely

result from the explosion.

One would go around the crater on the right, one on the left.

They would seize key strategic positions,

while Burnside followed behind with troops

to head to Petersburg.

But at the last moment, Major General Mead ordered that the

black brigades not be used to lead the assault,

claiming that if the assault failed and the black troops

were killed, there would be too much political fallout.

The white troops who were given the task were weary from

manning the front lines for weeks.

Their commander was undistinguished,

and there were rumors that he was a drunk.

The massive explosion in the mine killed hundreds of

Confederate troops, and so stunned the others that they

did not direct concentrated fire on the enemy

for fifteen minutes.

Unfortunately, the Union troops newly assigned to lead

attack were unprepared for the explosion,

and waited ten minutes before leaving their own trenches.

And when they reached the site of the explosion,

rather than go around it, they went into the crater

and used it as a rifle pit.

By this time, the Confederates had regrouped and began firing

down into the pit.

It was, to quote Confederate Brigadier General William

Mahone, a "turkey shoot."

Although the plan had failed, Burnside did not recall

the white troops.

Instead he sent in the USCT brigades to help.

But now, it was impossible to go around the crater,

as the flanking fire from the enemy was too great.

The black troops were driven into the pit as well. Trapped.

For the next few hours, the men in the pit,

black and white, were slaughtered by Confederate

rifle and artillery fire.

Panicked soldiers trampled their own men in a desperate

effort to escape.

Eventually Union troops were able to draw Confederate

forces away so that survivors could escape the pit.

But the Union lost fifty-three hundred men in that battle,

about half from the USCT.

Grant would later testify:

General Burnside wanted to put his colored division

in front, and I believe if he had done so

it would have been a success.

Still I agreed with General Meade as to his objections

to that plan.

General Meade said that if we put the colored troops in

front [we had only one division] and it should prove

a failure, it would then be said and very properly,

that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed

because we did not care anything about them.

While Grant, Meade, and Butler maneuvered against

Lee in Central Virginia, and Sherman marched against

Johnston on his way to Atlanta,

Grant still needed someone to deal with Jubal Early in the

Shenandoah Valley.

After turning from Washington in mid-July,

Early defeated a Union force outside of Winchester, Virginia.

He pushed Brigadier General George Crook out of the

Valley, and back across the Potomac.

He sent a cavalry raid up into Pennsylvania,

burning Chambersburg.

Grant needed a new commander in the Valley,

who could take on Early and fight.

He selected General Phillip Sheridan.

Sheridan and Early maneuvered around each other for a month,

before Sheridan struck, on September 19,

near Winchester, Virginia.

Early's forces were dispersed, but Sheridan brought his full

forty-thousand man force.

The yankees pushed the rebels back,

marking a turning point in the war in the Valley.

Sheridan, still commanding a force three times the size of

Early's, defeated the Confederates again

at Fisher's Hill a few days later.

Early withdrew his troops to Waynesboro.

With Early's forces withdrawn, Sheridan's began a march down

the Valley that seemed a prelude to Sherman's March

to the Sea, that would take place two months later.

His army burned crops, mills, barns,

and factories which locals would long after call

"the burning":

It was important for the Union to make sure Early's forces

were not reinforced.

Not only did Grant seek to pin Lee's forces to Richmond,

he was also hoping Lee would move some of the troops

defending Petersburg up to defend

the Confederate capital.

The Tenth and Eighteenth Corps were both part of the Army of

the James, commanded by Benjamin Butler.

Butler recommended that Brigadier General Charles

Paine's USCTs lead the attacks,

wanting to give the troops a chance to show their worth.

On September 29, 1864, three brigades of USCTs crossed the

James River at Deep Bottom, and soon took heavy fire

from Confederate defenders.

The rifle and artillery fire was intense,

and the Confederates were protected by marshy land

and thick breastworks.

The brigades made multiple attempts to break through the

lines, only to be repulsed or pinned down.

But they kept hammering, and eventually

the defenders fell back.

In a little over an hour of fighting,

Paine's USCTs took eight hundred casualties.

As their white officers fell, black sergeants and corporals

took command and led their companies forward.

Their determination and valor earned the Medal of Honor for

fourteen of the African-American soldiers.

Meanwhile, west of New Market Heights,

the Eighteenth Corps was assaulting Fort Harrison.

They were able to take the fort, but go no further.

Lee shifted his forces, reinforcing his lines

north of the James.

A Confederate counter-attack on September 30th failed,

and the armies settled into the trench warfare on this

new line, closer to Richmond.

But as Grant had hoped, Lee shifted troops from Petersburg

to defend this threat to the Confederate capital.

But Grant's hope that the actions would keep Early from

being reinforced in the valley proved false.

The valley was so very important,

however, to the Confederate army that,

contrary to our expectations, they determined to make one

more strike, and save it if possible before the supplies

should be all destroyed.

Reinforcements were sent therefore to Early...

While Sheridan was in Washington meeting with the

War Department in mid-October, Early positioned himself to

attack Sheridan's forces at Cedar Creek,

about twenty miles south of Winchester. Grant writes:

Sheridan having left Washington on the 18th,

reached Winchester that night.

The following morning he started to join his command.

He had scarcely gotten out of town,

when he met his men returning in a panic from the front.

Jubal Early's Army of the Valley had launched a

brilliantly successful surprise attack before dawn

on October 19th.

Seven Union infantry divisions had been pushed back,

as the Confederate forces swept up prisoners

and seized artillery.

Sheridan was now running into the panic-stricken,

routed troops who were now in full retreat.

The Battle of Cedar Creek was an overwhelming

Confederate victory.... Or so it seemed.

the road... was thickly lined with unhurt men,

who, having got far enough to the rear to be out of danger,

had halted, without any organization,

and began cooking coffee, but when they saw me they

abandoned their coffee, threw up their hats,

shouldered their muskets, and as I passed along turned to

follow with enthusiasm and cheers.

Early, having seemingly won the day by ten

a.m., had called a halt to the advance.

His men plundered the Union camp, and moved no further.

By four p.m., Sheridan had whipped his own army back into

shape, and smashed into Early's line.

As Early's left flank faltered,

Union General George Armstrong Custer - yes,

that Custer - drove his cavalry around and into the

rear of the Confederate forces,

threatening their escape route across Cedar Creek.

As they withdrew, a bridge collapsed,

preventing the rebels from carrying either the captured

Union guns or even most of their own.

Early blamed the defeat on his men,

but his officers blamed the decision to call a halt after

their initial success in the morning.

Regardless, the battle had turned from a humiliating rout

of the Union forces, into a crushing blow to the

Confederate war effort.

They would never again command the Shenandoah Valley in the

same way, nor threaten the north with invasion.

Sheridan's success in the Valley, and the capture

of Atlanta, turned the tide in the election of 1864.

He had faced both the Democratic candidate -

the former commander of the Army of the Potomac,

General George McClellan - and a challenger within his own

party, General John Fremont.

Fremont was supported by Radical Republicans who were

impatient with his actions so far against slavery.

Fremont eventually saw that the Democratic Party's

willingness to pursue peace at almost any cost meant that

dividing the anti-slavery vote could mean disaster

for the abolitionist cause.

He withdrew his nomination and endorsed Lincoln in September

as part of a back-room political deal,

and, not coincidentally, after Sherman had captured Atlanta.

Dolly Lunt Burge, the widow who wrote of Sherman's

soldiers plundering her plantation on their march to

the sea, wrote on the day of the election:

Today will probably decide

the fate of the Confederacy.

If Lincoln is re-elected I think our fate will be a hard

one, but we are in the hands of a merciful God,

and if He sees that we are in the wrong,

I trust that He will show it unto us.

Lincoln - and his running-mate,

Andrew Johnson - won fifty-five percent of the

popular vote, and ninety-one percent of the electoral vote.

With Lincoln's re-election - the trajectory of the war

would not abate.

The vice would continue to close,

and an end was fast approaching for the Confederacy.

Actions around Petersburg and Richmond continued through the

fall, and even into winter.

A series of skirmishes and smaller battles were

occasionally producing victories for the Confederacy,

but were wearing away at Lee's resources.

September through December 1864,

brought the campaign and battles of Franklin and

Nashville, also known as Hood's Tennessee Campaign.

Hood hoped to be able to finally defeat and turn back

north the two Union Armies under the command of Major

Generals John Schofield and George H. Thomas

before they could converge and join forces.

At the Battle of Spring Hill on November 29th,

confusingly coordinated Confederate attacks did little

to slow the Union advance and the next day,

Hood's Confederates mimicked Longstreet's Assault at the

Battle of Gettysburg more than a year earlier with a series

of futile frontal assaults against entrenched Union

troops in the sad, destructive Battle of Franklin.

Hood's men, bled and battered and suffered,

but General Schofield still advanced and successfully

linked with General Thomas' Army in Nashville, Tennessee.

December 15th and 16th brought another bloody conflict -

the Battle of Nashville where this combined Union Army

attacked Hood's depleted ranks and routed and drove these

Confederates into a retreat into Mississippi and

effectively out of the war.

Winter in the Virginia, Grant and Lee locking horns

in a siege of Richmond and Petersburg, passed slowly.

By March of 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia had been

seriously weakened.

After four years of war, rebel soldiers were worn down.

Food shortages and disease had taken their toll,

and more men were disappearing in the night,

leaving behind a shrunken army.

Lee now had about fifty-thousand men in Petersburg.

Grant had more than twice that number.

And things were about to get worse for Lee.

Sheridan's force had just beaten Early for good,

at the Battle of Waynesboro, which meant that Sheridan and

fifty-thousand more Union soldiers were likely on the

march to support Grant.

And while Sheridan was coming from the Valley,

Sherman was coming up from the Carolinas.

Should all these Union forces converge on Petersburg,

Lee would be outnumbered four to one.

Lee ordered what would be the last real attempt

to break the siege.

On March 25, Major General John Gordon led about twelve

thousand men in a surprise pre-dawn assault against the

Union right flank, at Fort Stedman.

The initial assault was successful,

the men capturing the fort.

Many of his hungry soldiers took the opportunity to eat

Union rations that were left behind.

But once nearby Union artillery realized that their

men were clear of Fort Stedman,

they turned all their fire upon it.

The Confederates were driven out, taking heavy casualties.

The fort was retaken.

Despite its initial success, the assault on Fort Stedman

cost Lee's army another four thousand casualties,

four times the number on the Union side.

And Lee simply could not afford these losses.

More losses were to come.

Sheridan was now less than twenty miles southwest of

Petersburg, trying to flank Lee's defensive line.

On a rainy, muddy March 31st, Confederate Major General

George Pickett's infantry and Major General Fitzhugh Lee's

cavalry divisions drove Sheridan's cavalry corps back

off of its advance.

Fighting elsewhere, and muddy conditions,

prevented infantry support being sent to Sheridan.

But Pickett didn't follow his successful assault

with another strike.

He pulled back to the intersection called

Five Forks, and received a dispatch from Robert E. Lee

that he was to "Hold Five Forks at all hazards."

General Grant directed me to go to Sheridan

and explain what was taking place...

I found Sheridan a little north of Dinwiddie Court

House, and gave him an account of matters on the left of the

Army of the Potomac.

He said he had had one of the liveliest days in his

experience, fighting infantry and cavalry with cavalry only,

but that he was concentrating his command on the high ground

just north of Dinwiddie, and would hold that position

at all hazards.

He did not stop here, but becoming more and more

animated in describing the situation and stating his

views and intentions, he declared his belief that with

the corps of infantry he expected to be put under his

command he could take the initiative the next morning

and cut off the whole of the force that Lee had detached.

He said:

This force is... cut off from Lee's army,

and not a man in it should ever be allowed to get back to Lee.

We at last have drawn the enemy's infantry out of its

fortifications, and this is our chance to attack it.

At 4 p.m., the Union assault began.

But faulty intelligence led to one infantry division missing

the Confederate line entirely, and the other,

under Major General Ayres, was exposed to flanking fire.

Sheridan now began to exhibit those traits

that always made him such a tower of strength in the

presence of the enemy.

He put spurs to his horse and dashed along in front...

from left to right, shouting words of encouragement...

The battle - soon known as "The Waterloo of the

Confederacy" - was a tragic defeat for Lee's men,

and General Pickett's loss in prisoners was untenable.

The general, as was expected,

asked his usual question:

"How many prisoners have been taken?"

This was always his first inquiry when an

engagement was reported.

No man ever had such a fondness for taking prisoners...

much better to win in this way

than by the destruction of human life.

I was happy to report that the prisoners this time were

estimated at over five thousand,

and this was the only part of my recital that seemed to call

forth a responsive expression from his usually

impassive features.

The jubilant Union command guessed correctly

that Sheridan's success at Five Forks was the beginning

of the end.

The next day Union troops would break through the

Petersburg line, and both Petersburg and Richmond -

the capital of the Confederacy - would be abandoned.

In less than ten days' time, Grant and Lee would face

each other at Appomattox Court House.

A meeting that would lead to joyful celebrations

all across the North.

Celebrations that would end with a bullet.

Joy that would turn to mournful rage,

and a desire for retribution, as the nation moved from

Civil War to Reconstruction.

With malice toward none,

with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God

gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the

work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds,

to care for him who shall have borne the battle,

and for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may

achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace,

among ourselves, and with all nations.