Original subtitles

1863 had seen the Federal Army win several key victories.

The fall of Vicksburg, the bloody defensive stand at Gettysburg, and the

capture of Chattanooga had all occurred in the last half of the year.

The Union appeared poised to win the war with one final campaign.

Yet in spite of this string of costly Southern defeats, the Confederacy and

its cause remained defiant and unbroken.

For almost three years, Lincoln had searched in vain for a general with the

skill and resolve to defeat Robert E. Lee and end the war.

Bungled campaigns, lost opportunities, and tragic loss returns had all tainted

the Army of the Potomac's history.

No Union general had been able to organize and fight a successful

offensive effort against Lee.

And without such a campaign, the war would drag on indefinitely.

Lincoln needed a man with broad strategic vision and the resolve to

carry the fight directly to the Confederacy.

And as 1863 drew to a close, the president's support of Meade began to

waver. In 63, after the Battle of Gettysburg, he followed Lee back into

Virginia and tried to do a campaign that became known as the Mine Run Campaign,

which was just...

an ineffectual attempt to get at Lee's army. It never worked out, and it just

failed. And Lincoln was now just convinced that Meade was still not the

man that he needed in the East to do the job.

Lincoln is now looking for a general that has what we might call today the

killer instinct, the gopher, the juggler.

He doesn't see that in Meade.

Having run out of options in the East, Lincoln looked west for new blood,

untainted by defeat at the hands of Robert E. Lee.

After asking Congress to reinstate the position of lieutenant general, held

only by George Washington and Winfield Scott in the past, the president

appointed Ulysses S. Grant to fill that rank in March of 1864.

The hero of Vicksburg had at last become general-in-chief of all federal armies.

Grant's a simple person. Lincoln's a simple person. From simple roots with

sophisticated thoughts behind it, but they can relate to each other.

He's been victorious at Vicksburg.

The Grant-Sherman team survived the confusion of Shiloh.

He raised the siege of Chattanooga. This guy's a winner.

He doesn't seem to accept defeat.

Enormous pressure came with Grant's selection.

Lincoln knew the country needed military victories in 1864 or else the Democrats

might win the upcoming election and recognize the Confederacy. He turned to

Grant to save the nation.

They were poised in 1864 to not only get a military success.

but more importantly, ensure that Lincoln would be reelected, which was

critical in 64 because in November, whether the country was fed up with the

war and replaced Lincoln or whether they reaffirmed that he was the man to do the

job was really what it was all about. And he needed Grant to have military

success to prove that Lincoln's policies were working and therefore he should be

retained by the voters.

The new general-in-chief went to work on a plan to defeat the South.

He designed the 1864 campaign to bring all Union armies into contact with the

Confederates, all pushing simultaneously to negate the South's advantage of

interior position.

No longer would mere territory be the Army's main objective.

Instead, the Confederate armies were Grant's targets.

They would be brought into battle and destroyed.

If he exhausted his own armies in the process, he knew it would exhaust the

rebels even more.

For the first time, all the Union armies would launch simultaneous offensives. In

the east, three federal forces would seek to wear down Lee's Army of Northern

Virginia. Grant would move with Meade and the Army of the Potomac as it swung

around Lee's right flank through the wilderness and cut off the Confederates

from Richmond.

Meanwhile, General Ben Butler would operate up the James River to distract

Lee from the main effort.

A smaller force under General Franz Siegel, would deny the Shenandoah

breadbasket to the Confederate Army.

In the West, General Sherman, now in command of Grant's former army, was to

move into northern Georgia, destroy the Confederate Army under Joseph Johnston,

and seize the industrial center of Atlanta.

General Nathaniel Banks would operate from New Orleans to capture Mobile,

Alabama, and seal off the Gulf ports east of the Mississippi to Confederate

shipping. To assist the Army, Grant appealed to the Navy to tighten its

blockade of the South and raid coastal areas.

The combination of force brought to bear on the Confederacy would be

unprecedented. Grant's master plan for 1864 was to simultaneously put

pressure on the South at different points. In fact, there would be five

armies operating in different areas so that they couldn't shift troops back and

forth from one to the other to make sure that...

This inability on the South meant that they not only would not be able to

defend successfully, but also not counterattack, not reinvade the North

again as they had in 1863.

And while Grant realized that not every one of these operations was going to

succeed, he only needed one or two to be successful.

And that's all Lincoln needed in order to have a political plum with which to

get reelected. Meanwhile, the strategy of the South remained mainly defensive,

directed solely by Jefferson Davis.

The Confederate president was counting on Lee and Johnston to hold their own,

even as hopes for a negotiated peace and possible foreign intervention waned. In

the spring of 1864, Grant saw an opportunity to deal a telling blow to

the southern economy.

What he did was he ordered all POW exchanges stopped, which meant the South

had one of their major sources of manpower shut off.

And in fact, this contributed materially to the collapse of the Southern armies

and the collapse of the Confederate economy.

Grant's strategy of waging war on Southern resources would inflict maximum

damage where the Confederacy could least afford it.

The stakes were high, and Grant had no illusions about the difficulties ahead.

What had begun as a struggle for states rights three years earlier had been

transformed into total war.

While the Army of the Potomac waited for roads to dry and Sherman made

preparations for his offensive, Grant's ambitious plan went into action in

Louisiana. One of the things about Grant's strategy was, and it's never

really examined as closely as it should be, because after all, the North won,

but it failed from the very beginning. Grant's strategy started to unravel very

quickly. Part of it wasn't his fault. For example...

banks down in New Orleans had a force that was supposed to capture Mobile,

which was the last open port the Confederates had in the Gulf of Mexico,

and then move up through Alabama, maybe to Selma if possible, and capture the

manufacturing plants there.

Well, there were people in the government that had a reason to try and

make some political hay out of this, and also some that saw making profit on

captured cotton another reason for banks to go the other direction.

So instead of going to Mobile, they sent him into Texas and the so-called Red

River Campaign, which ended in a fiasco. The river fell, the boats were nearly

trapped, the Confederates were able to ambush him all along the way, and it

ended up in a catastrophe and took troops out of the campaign that would

have gone to Mobile and Selma, Alabama.

And instead, one of the five fingers that were going to squeeze the South, as

Grant intended, was eliminated.

Banks, a former governor of Massachusetts without formal military

training, was an inept general.

He botched the Red River campaign from the outset.

Soundly defeated at the Battle of Sabine Crossroads, some 20 miles from

Shreveport, Banks essentially gave up and returned to Union lines.

By the time he rejoined Admiral Porter's fleet on the Red River, its level had

fallen and the gunboats were trapped.

An ingenious system of dams had to be constructed to allow the fleet to

escape. The campaign ended in disgraceful failure.

Grant's grand strategy for defeating the Confederacy had gotten off to a rocky

start.

As Banks' disastrous Red River campaign petered out, in the East...

Grant unleashed his main strategic thrust on the Fourth of May, when the

Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River.

Moving south, the columns of blue-coated warriors sought to engage the Army of

Northern Virginia and bring it to its knees.

In his offensive southward, Grant used Virginia's waterways for his supply

lines, which increased his mobility.

Although there was a risk in moving laterally across the front of the Army

of Northern Virginia, grant planned to move quickly through the tangles and

thickets of the wilderness and draw lee into battle on the open ground beyond

where union numbers and artillery superiority would be a factor Lee had

not only fewer cannon, but the quality of his ammunition was much worse than

the northern ammunition.

And this advantage that the north had, that had really helped the north at

Gettysburg, for example, was thrown away by Grant when he charged into the

wilderness because he moved through that territory where Lee's smaller army could

fight on a reasonably equal basis with him.

With only five understrength divisions at hand, Lee was too outnumbered to

launch a quick counterattack.

Yet if he waited for reinforcements, the Yankees might succeed in flanking him.

Daring as always, Lee sent Ewell and Hill forward with orders to delay the

Federals as they marched through the wilderness along the Germanna Plank

Road.

With luck, the Union troops might be held up long enough for Lee's

reinforcements to arrive and he could move to the offensive.

On the 5th of May, 1864, the Union divisions had been on the move for two

hours when their skirmishers encountered the oncoming gray and butternut-clad

attackers around 7 a.m.

Ewell and Hill were perfectly positioned to batter the Federal Army as it lay

strung out on the plank road.

If pressed fully, the attack could even cut the Union Army in two.

Warren and Sedgwick's men deployed and counterattacked the Confederates in the

woods on both sides of the road.

They achieved some success, but were soon driven back by the determined

rebels.

The fighting quickly deteriorated into a series of confused firefights in the

thick woods.

Units on both sides became intermixed and began shooting at anything around

them. Friendly fire killed hundreds that day as all semblance of order broke down

amidst the trees and scrub of the wilderness.

For hours the battle raged in a swirl of smoke and flames with neither side

gaining the upper hand.

Further south, A.P. Hill's troops attacked the rear of Hancock's Corps

along the Orange Plank Road.

The division of Richard Getty held on while Hancock rushed his men back to the

sound of the action and threw them into a counterattack.

However, Heth's Confederate division had thrown up a hasty breastwork where they

had been stopped by Getty.

They met Hancock's moves with a withering fire that staggered the

attackers. Again, The attacks degenerated into chaotic fighting

amongst the tangled woods.

The trees and shrubs soon caught fire, and men from both sides were consumed in

the growing conflagrations.

The wounded burned to death where they fell, screaming as they became human

pyres in this hellish scene.

A northern private wrote that it was a blind and bloody hunt to the death and

bewildering thickets rather than a battle.

Yet through it all, Grant remained calm at his headquarters, whittling, smoking

cigars, and giving commands.

When an overexcited subordinate overstated the size and success of a

rebel attack, Grant lost patience.

Some of you always seem to think he's going to suddenly turn a double

somersault and land in our rear and on both flanks at the same time.

Go back to your command and try to think what we are going to do ourselves

instead of what Lee is going to do.

And what Grant planned to do was attack as soon as possible.

He now had the entire Army of the Potomac in position as Burnside's 9th

Corps had arrived and moved into line.

He also had intelligence that Lee was still waiting for General Longstreet's

1st Corps and Richard Anderson's division, some 20,000 men.

Grant directed that Sedgwick should demonstrate to hold Ewell in position

while Hancock attacked around Hill's flank.

Burnside was directed to drive through the gap between the two rebel corps.

The Union attack went forward at 5 a.m., but did not work out as Grant had

planned.

sedgwick failed to tie ewell down and the ever-inept burnside was late getting

into position only on hancock's front was progress being made where hill's

weakened and outnumbered line collapsed

At this critical moment, Longstreet's veterans arrived.

They slammed into Hancock in a vicious assault that stopped the Federals cold.

By 8 a.m., Longstreet was pushing the Northerners back.

Longstreet's counterattack against Hancock just causes Grant's plan to

disappear in the smoke of the wilderness.

But instead of being disconcerted and confused by this, Grant just coolly

begins to reposition his forces and assumes the defensive posture.

Just as Longstreet prepared to launch a massive flank attack, fate intervened.

As Old Pete rode down the Orange Plank Road to control the attack, he was

accidentally wounded by his own men in a repeat of what had happened to Stonewall

Jackson at Chancellorsville.

Although not fatal, the wound sidelined Lee's most trusted subordinate until

October.

Longstreet's loss prompted Lee to cancel the flanking movement.

Instead, he launched a frontal assault against Hancock, which failed miserably

and cost the Confederates dearly.

In two days of confused fighting, the rebels managed to fight Grant's army to

a bloody standstill while inflicting more than 17,000 casualties on the

northern forces.

Grant is attacked by the equivalent of 60,000 gray wolves.

He experiences nothing he ever experienced before, and that is the full

focus of a well-organized machine, the Army of Northern Virginia.

This is probably Lee's army at its best.

The veterans of the Army of the Potomac knew what this setback meant, another

humiliating retreat to refit, followed by dreary months in camp while the

commanders plotted their next move.

Grant, however, would not retreat.

It's the middle of the night. The Army, the anatomic, is filing out. They come

to a crossroads. There's a big bonfire.

In front of this bonfire is Grant.

One part of the crossroad leads back across the river where everybody

expects. The other part leads south.

Grant's at this bonfire pointing south.

Take the road south.

And that, in my opinion, is the turning point of the Civil War.

Because from that point on...

The Army of the Potomac never retreated.

Grant set his sights on Spotsylvania, a crossroads settlement southwest of

Fredericksburg. It lay on Lee's road to Richmond, and if the Federals got there

first, they would be between the rebels and their capital.

Informed of the Federal movement, Lee put the Army of Northern Virginia in

motion. The race to Spotsylvania was one he could not afford to lose.

On the morning of May 8th, a sharp skirmish developed near Spotsylvania

between the leading cavalry units.

Both sides called for infantry support, but it was Anderson's Confederate

infantry brigades that arrived first after an all-night march.

The Army of Northern Virginia had won the race.

The fighting that began on May 8th near Spotsylvania Courthouse grew into a

battle that went on for 12 days.

Though the federal troops greatly outnumbered their rebel counterparts,

driving the Southerners from their fortified positions proved a bloody

task. On the 10th, Grant had launched a series of strong attacks on Lee's

entrenched positions, probing for a weak point throughout the day, but little

progress was made.

With casualties mounting, Grant sought an innovative way to break the stalemate

and overcome the strong Confederate position.

A young colonel in Wright's division named Emery Upton suggests the use of a

compact column formation to make the assault with.

And his idea is to close rapidly on the Confederate position, not stopping to

fire, to force a penetration in the lines, and then to fan out and open that

penetration up after they're through.

Wright liked the idea and gave Upton 5,000 men for the attack.

Shortly after 6 p.m., the assault column surged out of the woods toward the rebel

fortifications. The Union troops pressed the attack without opening fire.

Within five minutes, they had stormed the Confederate trenches and had driven

off the surprised defenders.

However, the rebels soon rallied and counterattacked.

As darts fell, the blue-clad troops withdrew the way they had come, taking

some prisoners with them.

Grant was clearly impressed and was heard to say to General Meade, a brigade

today will try a corps tomorrow.

General Hancock was ordered to reposition his corps for an attack in

the same compact formation used by Upton's men.

Throughout the night of May 11th, the Federals prepared for the assault

against what the Confederates now called the Mule Shoe.

Fifty ranks deep and led by Francis Barlow, they planned to attack at first

light, their rifles loaded but without firing caps in place.

Completely unaware of the massive Federal attack coiling into readiness in

the dark, the Southern soldiers tended their campfires and nibbled on their

meager rations.

The Federal attack formed up in the pre-dawn and moved out at 4.30 a.m.,

rapidly approaching the Muleshoe.

Rebel pickets sent back word of the Yankee approach, and the startled

defenders scrambled to face the onslaught.

Many of the Southern troops were unable to fire their rifles since their powder

had been soaked by the damp night air.

Ewell's men buckled under the surprise attack, and many surrendered as their

units broke and fled.

Elsewhere, Confederate outfits continued to fire, unaware that Union troops were

now behind them.

Hancock's men had cracked the mule shoe and were now poised to pierce the main

Rebel line.

It was not to be.

Dashing Confederate General John Gordon and his men quickly dug in along the

base of the Muleshoe and halted further Union assaults.

The issue hung in the balance as both sides rushed more men to the

breakthrough.

In the midst of it all, Grant telegraphed Washington that he intended

to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.

Lee himself appeared on the scene dangerously close to the front.

Shouts of, Lee to the rear, soon arose, and as the southern commander was led to

safety, the inspired Gordon's men stormed forward.

The ferocity of the rebel attack drove Hancock's veteran troops back to their

original lines.

The furious assault on the Muleshoe saw the most sustained and desperate hand-to

-hand fighting of the war.

The combatants, separated by the log and earth parapet, viciously attacked with

bayonets, pistols, rifles, swung as clubs, and even rocks.

Exhausted, both sides withdrew from the scene after dark, leaving behind piles

of mangled bodies in what would later be dubbed the Bloody Angle. The northern

attack captured the Muleshoe and inflicted some 10,000 casualties on the

south, which they really couldn't afford.

But in the end, they were unable to penetrate Lee's line.

And during the course of the following night...

Lee's troops fell back into positions prepared by some engineers who had built

another defensive line on the base of the Muleshoe.

And at that point, there was no way Grant's troops were ever going to be

able to penetrate. The line was just too strong there. The Union Army probed

Lee's defenses for several more days until on the 20th of May, Grant decided

to swing around his flank again.

He called for reinforcements and slipped southeast to turn the Confederate flank.

During the Battle of Spotsylvania, Phil Sheridan's cavalry corps had crossed the

Rapidan.

Sheridan proposed exploiting the move and raiding toward Richmond to draw off

Jeb Stuart.

Grant agreed, and on May 8, Sheridan led his 10,000 men deeper into the

Confederate heartland.

As Sheridan had hoped, Stuart set off in pursuit.

After a series of running skirmishes, a fierce battle erupted between the two

cavalry commands on May 11th at Yellow Tavern.

In the seesaw fighting

that followed, the Federals drove the outnumbered Confederates from the field.

During the action, Jeb Stuart fell mortally wounded.

Lee lost his best cavalry commander.

No one ever really filled his shoes. And this, of course, influenced what Lee

could and could not do with his cavalry after that point.

Stewart was irreplaceable, just as Jackson was irreplaceable. And as

certain commanders were killed or wounded, like Sedgwick on the Union

side, Reynolds at Gettysburg, Jackson on the Confederate side, these men couldn't

be replaced.

And as a result, what the armies were capable of doing, how much flexibility

they had, how much capability they had to do certain operations that took real

intuitive sense on the part of the commanders, that took...

their ability to be flexible and to be spontaneous.

When new men are in those positions that haven't been there before or are not as

capable, the Army just doesn't function as well.

And that's what happened to both sides in 64 as they suffered these losses in

leadership. The tremendous success of Sheridan's raid was soon overshadowed by

the ineptitude of Ben Butler and Franz Siegel.

Both generals had started operations on May 4th in coordination with the Army of

the Potomac.

Both efforts failed within two weeks.

Butler had steamed up the James River from Fortress Monroe with an army of 36

,000 men and explicit instructions from Grant regarding his mission.

He ignored Grant's orders and bungled the entire operation.

Timid and indecisive, his attempts to reach Petersburg and later Richmond were

turned back, both times by greatly outnumbered forces.

He withdrew to his camp at Bermuda 100, where he remained until Grant arrived

later in the month.

Meanwhile, General Franz Siegel was supposed to pin down the Confederates in

the Shenandoah Valley.

Siegel could not even do that.

On May 15th, he was thrashed at New Market by General Breckinridge's scratch

force that included the Cadet Corps from the Virginia Military Institute.

Bloodied, Siegel lost heart and withdrew to Cedar Creek.

Disappointed by these two disasters, Grant resolved to continue his offensive

against Lee.

By early June, he had reached Cold Harbor on the outskirts of Richmond.

Though he could no longer get between Lee and the Confederate capital, Grant

had at last maneuvered the rebels into relatively open country and scheduled an

immediate assault.

Lee has 40,000 men in his line, but it's six miles long, and so this isn't a

strongly held position.

So Grant's idea of an immediate assault might have worked and overwhelmed them.

The problem is there's a 24-hour delay while the Federals bring up additional

troops and get them in position ready to go. It's critical to the battle. Lee

used the reprieve to great advantage.

Defensive positions were vastly improved, and some 14,000 reinforcements

were brought in.

men that butler and siegel had failed to tie down on the morning of june 3rd

grant's assault waves at cold harbor charged lee's defensive works most of

the men knew the attack could not succeed but went forward anyway rebel

shot and shell ripped through the ranks leaving piles of dead and dying men

scattered all over the battlefield in less than an hour the attack had failed

7,000 Union troops had been killed or wounded.

Seeing the carnage, Grant fell into a deep depression.

After the assault failed, he left his troops out there to suffer. They didn't

pick up the wounded. They didn't call for a truce. And this is a very

important point. When you ask for a truce, you're admitting defeat.

You admit that you are defeated and that you want to retrieve your wounded.

Grant just wasn't in a position to do this. Some people criticized him

personally because his own pride wouldn't allow him to admit that Lee had

defeated him. But there were political considerations also because if he had

asked for that politically...

there would have been repercussions to the Lincoln administration.

So it may not have been just purely a question of personal pride on Grant's

part, but the net effect was awful.

Thousands of men were left out there for hour after hour all night, and many of

the wounded simply died, and the casualty rate was much worse than it had

to be in terms of killed.

After that point, many men in the Army of the Potomac really... disliked Grant

and never really respected him or trusted him. They didn't feel that he

had their best concerns in mind and in fact he got the reputation.

which was probably coined by lincoln's wife that he grant was a butcher and the

campaign in the east was not going well after the war a lot of veterans from the

army of the potomac remember him very bitterly and there was no fondness and

their memories about grant and it all stemmed from cold harbor and his frontal

attacks at petersburg after that

In the 30 days between the wilderness and Cold Harbor, the Army of the Potomac

suffered a staggering 52% casualty rate, while the Confederates lost nearly 60

% of their original combat strength.

Lee knew these were unsustainable casualty rates. There was just no way

the war-torn South could replace the men lost that spring.

Grant was beating it.

draining his strength in this brutal campaign of attrition.

So far, Grant had failed in his bid to turn Lee's right flank, but he was not

ready to give up quite yet.

He attempted one last strategic flanking maneuver designed to keep the rebel army

from retiring into Richmond's defenses.

One last time in 1864, Grant tried to force Lee into the open.

Petersburg became the Army of the Potomac's new objective.

Petersburg's rail line served as the vital logistical artery for Richmond and

Lee's army.

Its capture would force the Army of Northern Virginia into the open against

overwhelming Union power.

But to reach it before Lee could react called for some sleight of hand.

On the night of June 12th, Grant disappeared from the front at Cold

Harbor, leaving a covering force behind to deceive Lee.

It was a daring move, and for several days the Southern commander was unaware

of Grant's departure.

While Sheridan led the Confederate cavalry on a chase toward

Charlottesville and Warren's V Corps demonstrated toward Richmond, the Army

of the Potomac successfully reached the James on the 14th and began crossing.

A pontoon bridge nearly one-third of a mile long had been constructed by

federal engineers, and by the evening of the 16th, with Lee anticipating a full

-scale drive on Richmond, the Army of the Potomac was on the south bank of the

James, with its sights set on Petersburg.

As Grant's army continued their move, the Federal commander decided to send

General Butler and Smith's 18th Corps ahead to ensure the successful capture

of the city, guarded by little more than a skeleton force under the command of P

.G.T. Beauregard.

In perhaps his finest hour, the Confederate general put up a superb

fight. He wisely concentrated his small force and bluffed the Federals into

believing they faced much stronger opposition.

Beginning late on the 15th, the Federals probed the Rebel lines. Taking moderate

casualties, they succeeded in overrunning the outermost positions, but

instead of pushing into the nearly defenseless city, Smith paused for the

night. By the next morning, the reinforced Confederates had erected new

fortifications. Before noon, Beauregard's force had swelled to 14,000

men.

Federal attacks over the next three days failed to crack the Confederate

defenses, and by the 18th, Lee and most of A.P. Hill's corps were on the scene.

Grant realized that he could not take Petersburg by assault. He was forced to

accept the only alternative, a siege.

Ironically, the situation that's developed at Petersburg forces the war's

two most brilliant maneuver commanders into positional warfare.

And for the balance of the year, they'll essentially be maneuvering their

fortifications. Grant will continue to try and turn Lee's flank.

Lee will extend his fortifications to block those efforts.

To adequately supply his troops, Grant established a modern supply base at City

Point. It was the logistical marvel of its day and reflected the technological

innovations and latent power of the Union effort.

They get so organized that up in Philadelphia they'll load a boxcar full

with, and rather than just put stuff in it, they've got the requisition where

they see, okay, 2nd Division, 6th Corps needs this, 2nd Brigade needs this.

They'll put everything in there for 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, 8th Corps in the

boxcar, put a label on the side of it, put that boxcar on a ferry.

The ferry's put on with other boxcars.

Ferry is taken from Philadelphia. It's on a barge. A tugboat drags it down,

down to city points, unloaded.

Right off the barge, right where the barge has railroad tracks on it, they go

right into the pier, which has the railroad tracks. When Okamoto was hooked

up, they take that freight car right to the 2nd Brigade, X Division, X Corps.

Boom, here's your freight car.

This is modern war.

Prepared now to support his army indefinitely, Grant settled into the

siege line outside of Petersburg.

The American Civil War witnessed many changes in the way battles were

conducted. Initially, the troops had marched across open fields with flags

flying against an enemy who stood to face them just as they had for

centuries. The casualties inflicted by both sides in these mass attacks were

fantastic, and it soon became clear that a tactical change was essential.

While attack formations were slow to evolve,

defensive works became increasingly sophisticated.

By 1864, when the armies stopped, they dug.

Soon, elaborate defensive systems emerged, forerunners of the enormous

maze of trenches and fortifications that would exist in Europe during World War

I. Early in the Civil War, defensive positions were really ad hoc affairs

found on the battlefields, like sunken roads and stone walls and that sort of

thing. But by the time you get to Petersburg, you see the development of

fortifications in depth, very complicated, very intricate structures

and networks of trenches that really became a science.

The main line, usually a trench, was constructed under the supervision of the

engineers.

The trench would be wide and deep enough to protect the soldiers and would be

shored up with boards and upright supports.

Angles and distances were carefully calculated so that enfilading and

crossfire could be brought to bear on any assault that managed to break

through the initial line.

Transverses were added to protect the occupants of the main line, while zigzag

and even covered trenches shielded the men while entering or leaving.

Baskets filled with earth called gabions were used by the thousands by both

sides. To protect themselves from exploding shells, the soldiers

constructed underground bunkers called bombproofs. As the men settled into

their trenches, they soon learned that it was a good idea to keep your head

down. Each side employed snipers, and the loss of as many as 30 lives in a

single day was not unusual.

The practice of inviting a shot immortalized here by the artist Winslow

Homer was an act of defiance that underscored the tension and sheer

boredom on both sides of the narrow no-man's land in front of Petersburg.

Stalled by the Confederate works, officers on the Union side again sought

an innovative way to solve the problem.

Initially, the idea to break the siege at Petersburg came from some

Pennsylvania coal miners who happened to be in a military unit that decided they

could dig a mine to the Confederate side and blow up their line with explosives.

General Burnside, the Corps commander, approved the idea in spite of skepticism

on the part of his engineers.

Work began on June 25th and progressed rapidly.

Empty boxes were used to move the dirt from the face of the shaft to a point

behind Union lines.

The work went on day and night, and by the 26th of July, the tunnel was deemed

complete. Grant was greatly intrigued by the mining operation, and to make the

most of the opportunity the blast would create, he planned a diversion north of

the James for late July.

Hancock's Corps and three cavalry units under Sheridan were sent toward

Richmond, and as hoped, Lee quickly shifted his defenses to meet the threat.

On July 29th, with the chamber under the Confederate position filled with 8,000

pounds of powder, artillery registered, and troops in position to support the

attack, everything was in readiness.

Burnside had selected and trained a division of black soldiers to make the

initial assault through the expected breach.

They were eager to prove themselves and easily Burnside's fittest unit.

However, less than 24 hours before the scheduled detonation, a change of plan

was ordered.

Unfortunately, political considerations came into play because if the attack

failed,

Grant and others in the administration were worried that it would be seen as

needlessly sacrificing the former slaves, the men that were serving in the

African-American units. So instead of using these men who were trained for the

initial assault, they were replaced by white troops who did not know what to

do, and it ended up being a fiasco.

Discouraged by the sudden change, Burnside allowed his division commanders

to decide among themselves who would lead the attack by drawing straws.

Unfortunately for all concerned, the lot fell to James Ledley, a notorious

drunkard and the least experienced commander present.

Ledley made no effort to see that his troops were adequately informed or

equipped for their part in the assault and gave only the vaguest instructions

to his subordinates.

With little to go on but determination, the men awaited the coming dawn with

uncertainty.

Early on the morning of July 30th, the fuse to the mine was lit while the Union

troops waited in anticipation.

The explosion was set for 3.30 a.m.

But the time came and went without the expected detonation.

Two volunteers entered the mine and found that the fuse had gone out.

The fuse was relit, and at 4.40, the mine exploded with a tremendous roar.

The size of the blast stunned everyone in the vicinity, especially the waiting

assault division.

The first waves reached the crater and were so awed by the destruction there

that the men halted.

Many wandered into it to assist wounded Confederates and sightsee.

Discipline broke down and the attack dribbled to a halt.

General Ledley, who should have been rallying his division forward, was

nowhere to be seen.

He had retired to a bomb proof to get drunk with General Ferraro, the

commander of the Black Division originally slated to lead the assault.

Without their leader, Ferraro's troops formed the next wave of the attack, but

they were too late.

Confederate reinforcements arrived to block the gap and poured murderous

volleys into the brave regiments.

By 9.30, it was obvious that the attack had failed, yet Burnside delayed a

withdrawal.

Confederate General William Mahone appeared on the scene and led a

counterattack that pushed the small federal penetration back into the

crater.

Hand-to-hand fighting and devastating volleys ravaged the mass in the crater

as they struggled in vain to escape their predicament.

Retreating troops were cut down by Confederate fire, and many chose to

surrender.

Confederate troops, enraged at meeting black troops for the first time, shot

down many in cold blood.

By early afternoon, all the Federals in the crater had either been killed or

captured. The North forces suffered 3,500 casualties, including almost 1,000

men from Ferraro's division.

Nothing had been gained for the effort, and the day rivaled the futility of Cold

Harbor and Fredericksburg.

For their parts in the fiasco, General Burnside was relieved of command and

Ledley and Ferraro censured for their conduct.

Grant later wrote, Such an opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never

seen and do not expect again to have.

There would be no more dramatic assaults in 1864, only the boredom of life in the

trenches during a siege.

Grant returned to his strategy of extending his lines further to the south

and west around Lee's right flank, stretching the Army of Northern Virginia

to the breaking point.

As railroads and supply lines to Richmond fell one by one, the ability of

the Confederacy to wage war grew ever weaker.

Time was on Grant's side, and he would use his ally well.

Like its capital, Richmond, the entire Confederacy was slowly strangling under

the federal blockade.

Unable to challenge the Union fleet in a traditional naval engagement, the rebels

turned to commerce raiders.

One of the key elements of the Civil War that had major repercussions

internationally was the fact that since the Confederacy could not break the

blockade, they could only try and run through it with fast vessels, they had

to do something to strike back, and so they decided upon a piracy, literally.

policy of piracy, where they would outfit raiders who would sail upon the

ocean, come across Union shipping, obviously merchant shipping, and either

take them as prizes, destroy them, sink them, or whatever they could do damage

to the North in return for the damage being done to the South.

The Florida, the Shenandoah, the Alabama are very successful, and it really

irritates many of the Northern shippers, and they sense the great depredations of

this, that, or the other raider, and it's irritating as hell to the Union.

In late June 1864, the CSS Alabama was just ending a successful voyage

against Union merchant ships when the USS Kearsarge, a steam frigate under the

command of Captain John Winslow, caught up with her near the harbor at

Cherbourg, France.

In a major engagement, which the Confederates...

sailors really weren't geared for as opposed to the Union. This was a real

battleship whereas the Confederate Alabama Raider was going after on our

merchant vessels and they weren't really prepared to slug it out with a major

battleship in the Union forces and it got the upper hand and sank the Alabama.

Though the sinking of the Alabama did not mark the end of the Confederate

Raiders, the futility of the effort became increasingly clear to the South.

It is a hit and run type of thing.

And a hit-and-run operation, preying on just the merchant ships and everything,

raises the cost of doing war to your enemy, but it doesn't defeat him.

You just realize, okay, I've got to dig deeper into my pockets.

And the North had deep pockets.

As the Army of the Potomac settled down for a siege at Petersburg, Lee grappled

with the reality of this latest phase of the war.

Clearly, his outmanned force could not hope to hold off Grant's veterans

indefinitely. He needed a diversion that could draw Union troops away from the

siege and buy time for his battered army.

Even after all the fighting in the wilderness in Spotsylvania and all the

way down to Petersburg, where Lee was now trapped in the so-called siege, Lee

was still able to detach a third of his army under Jubal Early and send them up

into the valley all the way through the valley where it defeated a major force

of the Union and got as far as Monocacy, Maryland, where it defeated another

force, a scratch force thrown together, and in fact advanced almost into the

suburbs of Washington, D.C.

In response to Early's efforts, Grant sent the 6th Corps and parts of the 19th

Corps to reinforce Washington's garrison.

And through their combined efforts, Early was forced to withdraw after a

sharp skirmish on July 12th. In spite of the setback near Washington, Early

invaded the North again in late July, spreading death and destruction into

Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Exasperated by Early's continual depredations, Grant determined that they

could not be allowed to continue unchallenged.

Because of Jubal Early's raid on Washington, and the fact that even

though he retreated and was unable to capture Washington, he stayed in the

valley, and basically it was almost like the Confederates thumbing their nose at

the north, and you couldn't ignore the fact that the Confederates were doing as

they damn well pleased, it seemed, despite all of Grant's efforts.

So Sheridan was detached with the major portion of the Union forces in the east

to basically defeat Early, capture the valley, and also render it impossible

for the Confederates to use anymore as a breadbasket to feed Lee's army and make

sure that it would no longer help Lee's army and sustain it in its fight.

Sheridan proved more than worthy of his task.

Throughout August and September, both sides initiated skirmishes around

Winchester, Virginia.

Though indecisive, they pinned the rebels down long enough for Sheridan to

systematically destroy everything of value in the valley.

His scorched earth tactics forever earned him the wrath of the South.

The climax of this last campaign in the valley came on October 19th when Jubal

Early launched a surprise attack against Sheridan of Cedar Creek.

The assault initially succeeded and the Union troops fell back in disarray.

Absent when the fighting began, Sheridan soon appeared in one of the Civil War's

most stirring vignettes.

His army is being rolled up, and it looks like they're going to lose, and

Sheridan rides in shortly after that and is able to rally his forces and prevent

the disaster. In fact, he not only rallies them to make a successful

defense, but then leads a counteroffensive which crushes Early's

army and leads to the capture of the Shenandoah Valley.

Lee's effort to divert the Union, although partially successful, had

provided no real advantage.

Grant slowly extended his grip around Petersburg and Lee's threadbare

Confederates were trapped.

There would be no escape.

Grant had not blinked and the stage was being set for the final acts of the

Civil War as General Sherman's army bore down on the very heart of the

Confederacy.