Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (39 page)

August 21
While most of the war is fought between organized armies, in the western states of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas a cruel form of partisan war takes place, with its roots in the Bloody Kansas wars. Of these partisan guerrillas, the most vicious is William C. Quantrill, whose “raiders” include the psychopathic “Bloody Bill” Anderson, who carries his victims’ scalps on his saddle, and the future outlaws Jesse James and Cole Younger. With 450 men, Quantrill raids Lawrence, Kansas, and slaughters more than 150 civilians. The following October, he commits another such raid of terror in Baxter Springs, Kansas. In 1865, Quantrill will head east, intending to assassinate Lincoln, but will be killed in Kentucky by Union soldiers in May after the war’s official end.

September 19–20
The Battle of Chickamauga (Georgia). The Union armies led by Generals William Rosecrans (1819–98) and George H. Thomas (1816–70) are defeated by Confederates under General Braxton Bragg (1817–76). Once again, losses for both sides are extremely high: 16,000 Union casualties to 18,000 Confederate. The Union army retreats to Chattanooga.

October 16
Grant is given command of Union forces in the West; Grant replaces Rosecrans in Chattanooga with General George Thomas, nicknamed the Rock of Chickamauga for his heroic stand in that battle.

November 19
Dedicating a military cemetery on the notorious Pennsylvania battlefield, Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address, one of the immortal speeches in history. (Written in snatches over several days and completed the morning he delivered it, the speech was not written on the back of a letter, as myth has it.)

November 23–25
In a stunning assault, Grant sweeps up over mountains to drive General Bragg’s Confederate forces away from Chattanooga. Tennessee is again brought under Union control. Grant’s Union forces, having split the South east from west by controlling the Mississippi, can now split it horizontally with a march through Georgia to the sea that will be led by General Sherman.

December 8
Looking toward the end of the war, Lincoln offers a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction that will pardon Confederates who take an oath of loyalty.

1864

January 14
General Sherman begins his march across the South by occupying Sheridan, Mississippi. His strategy is simple—total war. Sherman either destroys or takes anything that might be used by the enemy to continue fighting. He demonstrates his planned tactics for the march ahead by burning and destroying railroads, buildings, and supplies.

March 10
His star rising after Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Grant is named commander of the Union armies, replacing General Halleck.

April 17
Grant suspends prisoner-of-war exchanges with the Confederates. His intention is to further weaken the Confederate forces. While it is effective, this strategy leads to the deaths of many Union soldiers held prisoner in overcrowded camps where food supplies are meager.

May 4
Grant begins an assault on Virginia with an army of 100,000 aimed at Lee’s Virginia army.

May 5–6
Battle of the Wilderness (Virginia). During two days of inconclusive but bloody fighting, many of the wounded on both sides die when caught by brushfires ignited by gunfire in the dense woods of the battleground.

May 8–12
Battle of Spotsylvania (Virginia). Another five days of inconclusive fighting make Grant’s plan clear: a war of attrition that will wear down Lee’s outnumbered, poorly fed, and ill-clothed forces.

May 13–15
In Georgia, with an army of 110,000, Sherman defeats General Johnston, but Johnston preserves his smaller army with a skillful retreat.

June 3
Battle of Cold Harbor (Virginia). Ignoring horrible losses, Grant continues to assault Lee’s impregnable defenses, a ghastly mistake that Grant later admits. To date, in this campaign, Grant has suffered more than 60,000 casualties, a number equal to Lee’s entire army. One southern general comments, “This is not war, this is murder.” But Grant’s costly strategy is accomplishing its purpose of wearing out Lee’s army.

June 15–18
Grant begins the long siege of Petersburg, Virginia, recalling the tactics he used earlier against Vicksburg.

June 27
Johnston’s Confederate forces turn back Sherman at Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia.

July 2–13
A year after Gettysburg, Confederate forces under General Jubal Early (1816–94) raid Maryland, heading toward Washington, D.C. With a small force, Early continues to harry Union troops in Virginia.

July 14
General Early is slowed down by Union General Lew Wallace (1827–1905). The lightly defended city of Washington is reinforced, although Early reaches the District of Columbia but then withdraws. (Later governor of New Mexico and minister to Turkey, General Wallace gains his greatest fame as the author of the novel
Ben Hur
.)

July 17
Despite his success at preserving his forces against Sherman’s assault, Johnston is replaced by General John B. Hood (1831–79), who attempts to take the offensive against Sherman.

July 22
General Hood’s first attack on Sherman outside Atlanta is turned back, as is a second assault six days later.

July 30
At Petersburg, General Burnside oversees the mining of Confederate fortifications. In a disastrously miscalculated explosion, his own force suffers nearly 4,000 casualties. Burnside is relieved of any command.

August 5
In a Union naval attack on the key southern port of Mobile, Alabama, Admiral David Farragut (1801–70) orders his fleet to continue to attack after mines in the harbor sink one of his ships. From the rigging of his flagship, Farragut shouts, “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!” He successfully closes the port, cutting off the South from vital supplies being smuggled in by blockade runners. Farragut is given the new rank of vice admiral, created especially for him, and ecstatic wealthy New Yorkers give him a purse of $50,000.

A
MERICAN
V
OICES

G
ENERAL
W
ILLIAM T. SHERMAN,
in a letter to the mayor and councilmen of Atlanta (September 1864):

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought this war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. . . . You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. . . . The only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

After capturing the city, Sherman gave orders for it to be evacuated and burned.

September 2
Sherman takes Atlanta after Hood’s withdrawal. Much of the city is set on fire. With Atlanta and Mobile in Union hands, northern morale is lifted, providing Lincoln a much-needed boost in the coming election, in which Lincoln’s chances do not look good.

September 19 and October 19
Union forces under General Philip Sheridan (1831–88) twice defeat Jubal Early’s Confederates while taking heavy losses. The Confederates are driven from the Shenandoah Valley, one of their remaining supply sources.

November 8
Lincoln has been campaigning against two generals he has sacked, John C. Frémont and George McClellan. Although Frémont withdraws from the race, Lincoln wins reelection by less than a half-million popular votes, but his margin in the electoral vote is sweeping.

November 16
Sherman begins his notorious march from Atlanta to the sea at Savannah, destroying everything in his path by cutting a forty-mile-wide swath through the heart of the South, earning him the title Attila of the West in the southern press. A Confederate attempt to cut Sherman’s supply lines is crushed, effectively destroying General Hood’s army. Three days before Christmas, Sherman marches into Savannah unopposed, completing the horizontal bisection of the South. He sends Lincoln a telegram offering Savannah as a Christmas present. Of his march, Sherman comments, “We have devoured the land. . . . To realize what war is, one should follow our tracks.”

January 15
Fort Fisher, North Carolina, falls to Union land and sea forces, closing off another southern port of supply.

January 16
Sherman’s army wheels north through the Carolinas on a march as destructive as his Georgia campaign.

February 4
Robert E. Lee is named commander-in-chief of the Confederate army, accepting the post despite the seeming hopelessness of the cause.

February 17
Columbia, South Carolina, is burned; General Sherman and retreating Confederate forces are both blamed for setting the fires. A day later, Sherman occupies Charleston.

February 22
Wilmington, North Carolina, the last open southern port, falls to Union forces.

March 4
Lincoln is inaugurated for a second term.

A
MERICAN
V
OICES

From
ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S
second inaugural address:

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.

April 1
The Battle of Five Forks (Virginia). In the last major battle of the war, General Sheridan throws back a Confederate assault.

April 2
Lee withdraws from Petersburg, ending the six-month siege. He advises President Jefferson Davis to leave Richmond. A day later, Union troops enter Petersburg and Richmond. Two days after that, Lincoln tours Richmond and sits in President Davis’s chair.

April 8
Surrounded and facing starvation, Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. At Lincoln’s request, the terms of surrender are generous, and Confederate officers and men are free to go home with their horses; officers may retain their sidearms, although all other equipment must be surrendered.

April 11
In his last public address, Lincoln urges a spirit of generous conciliation during the reconstruction.

April 14
While watching a comedy at Ford’s Theatre, Lincoln is shot and mortally wounded by the actor John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. The first president to be assassinated, Lincoln dies the following day, and Andrew Johnson, the vice president, takes the oath of office.

April 26
Booth is cornered and shot dead near Bowling Green, Virginia.

April 18
Confederate general Johnston surrenders to Sherman in North Carolina. Scattered resistance continues throughout the South for several weeks, ending in May, when Confederate general Richard Taylor surrenders to Union general Edward R. S. Canby, and General Kirby Smith surrenders western Confederate forces.

May 10
Captured in Georgia, Jefferson Davis, presumed (incorrectly) to be a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination plot, is jailed awaiting trial. Later released on bail, he is never tried. The only southern officer executed for war crimes was Major Henry Wirz, commander of the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia, despite evidence showing he had tried to ease the suffering of his prisoners. In 1868, as one of his final acts in office, President Johnson grants amnesty to all southerners, including Davis, who declines to accept it.

What did the Civil War cost America?

The federal army began force reductions on April 13, 1865. According to Senate figures at the time, the Union had enlisted 2,324,516 soldiers, approximately 360,000 of whom were killed. The Confederate army peaked at about one million soldiers, with losses of some 260,000. The war cost the Union side more than $6 million and the Confederate states about half that much.