Covers the fourth and final year of the American Civil War, focusing on the Chattanooga Campaign, the battles between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, General Sherman's March to the Sea, the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Hampton Roads Conference, the fall of Richmond, the end of the war, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

1. A SURVEY OF
AMERICAN HISTORY
Unit 2: Westward Expansion and Civil War
Part 20: The Civil War (IV)

2. THE CHATTANOOGA
CAMPAIGN
• In November 1863, after the
Union forces in Tennessee
retreated to Chattanooga,
Ulysses S. Grant led his men
from Vicksburg to Chattanooga
to provide reinforcements.
• Grant worked with Major
General William T. Sherman to
break the Union forces in half.
• Grant’s strategy was to allow
Sherman’s detachment to
launch a surprise attack against
the Confederate forces while
they were in battle against
another Union detachment.

3. THE RISE OF
ULYSSES S. GRANT
• Grant’s strategy was successful
and proved to be a major
victory for Lincoln as he
prepared to run for re-election.
• In early 1864, however, rumors
abounded that the Republican
Party planned to nominate
Grant rather than Lincoln as its
candidate for the Presidency.
• After Grant publicly rejected
any notion of running for the
Presidency, Lincoln promoted
him from his command of the
Western theatre to place him in
charge of all Union forces.

4. THE UNION’S FINAL
STRATEGIC MOVES
• When Grant took control of all
Union forces, he gave Sherman
his old position and placed him
in charge of all Western forces.
• At Chattanooga, Grant again
split his forces in half, but this
time on a nationwide scale.
• Sherman and his men would
head south into Georgia, to
capture the city of Atlanta.
• Grant and his men would head
north through the Shenandoah
Valley into northern Virginia,
then south towards Richmond.

5. GRANT vs. LEE
• As he waged his Overland
Campaign in May and June
1864, Grant repeatedly battled
the forces of Robert E. Lee.
• His greatest loss came at the
Battle of Cold Harbor, when
59,000 Confederate forces
defeated 108,000 Union forces.
• Rather than capturing
Richmond, however, Grant sent
a large detachment of men to
the nearby city of Petersburg.
He placed Petersburg under
siege to use it as a base for a
later invasion of Richmond.

6. McCLELLAN’S
NOMINATION
• In a move calculated to
intimidate the Republican Party
in a Presidential election year,
the Democrats nominated
George B. McClellan as their
candidate for the Presidency.
• A high-profile military figure
breaking ranks with Lincoln was
bad for the President without
any end to the war in sight.
• McClellan ran on a platform
criticizing Lincoln’s conduct of
the war. His nomination gave
the pro-slavery party a shot at
recapturing the White House.

7. SHERMAN’S
MARCH TO THE SEA
• After Sherman and his men
captured Atlanta in July 1864,
they embarked on a sweep
through the South and a march
towards the seaside city of
Savannah, Georgia.
• Their intention upon reaching
Savannah was to march north
towards Richmond, to provide
Grant with reinforcements.
• They destroyed everything in
their path, burning entire towns
and huge swathes of land and
ripping up the railroads.

8. SHERMAN’S
MARCH TO THE SEA
• Sherman had left a similar trail
of destruction on his march
from Vicksburg to the town of
Meridian, Mississippi.
• His intention was to completely
decimate the South, to
adversely affect the lives of
ordinary people so badly that
they would cease to support
the Confederate Government.
• He allowed African American
soldiers to serve in battle.
• He captured Savannah four
days before Christmas 1864.

9. THE THIRTEENTH
AMENDMENT
• After Lincoln was re-elected in
November 1864, the chances of
a Union victory rose.
• Because the Emancipation
Proclamation was a war
measure, however, there was
still no guarantee that slavery
would remain abolished in the
United States whenever the war
came to an end.
• Lincoln feared that if he
defeated the Confederacy and
the seceded states returned to
the Union, they would simply
reintroduce slavery.

10. THE THIRTEENTH
AMENDMENT
• To avoid this scenario, Lincoln
had to ensure that slavery was
abolished nationwide before the
war ended and the seceded
states returned to the Union.
• In January 1865, he secured the
passage of a proposed thirteenth
amendment to the Constitution in
the House of Representatives.
• The amendment read: “Neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been
duly convicted, shall exist within
the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.”

11. THE HAMPTON
ROADS CONFERENCE
• In February 1865, Abraham
Lincoln and his Secretary of
State, William H. Seward, met
with three representatives of the
Confederate States at
Hampton, Virginia.
• They discussed possible terms
of surrender as well as the
possibility of compromising on
the continuation of slavery in
the United States.
• The representatives of the
Confederate States returned to
Richmond without having
secured a deal for peace.

12. LINCOLN’S SECOND
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
• On March 4, 1865, Lincoln
delivered the address at his
second inauguration.
• He clearly blamed the South for
the Civil War: “[F]our years ago
all thoughts were anxiously
directed to an impending civil
war. All dreaded it, all sought to
avert it. ... Both parties
[involved in conflict] deprecated
war, but one of them would
make war rather than let the
nation survive, and the other
would accept war rather than
let it perish, and the war came.”

13. LINCOLN’S SECOND
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
• At the same time, however,
Lincoln looked ahead to the
impending end of the war.
• “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.”

14. THE FALL OF
RICHMOND
• Ulysses S. Grant used hundreds
of miles of trenches to place
Petersburg under siege for nine
months from mid-1864.
• In March 1865, two weeks before
Lincoln’s inauguration ceremony,
Petersburg fell to the Union and
with it the supply lines to
Richmond were broken.
• Robert E. Lee retreated from
both cities and fled towards the
town of Appomattox.
• On April 4, Lincoln paid a visit to
Richmond, dramatizing the Union
conquest of the Confederacy.

15. THE END OF THE
CIVIL WAR
• On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee
surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant
at Appomattox Courthouse,
officially ending the Civil War.
• On April 15, Abraham Lincoln
was assassinated by John
Wilkes Booth, a stage actor and
Confederate sympathizer.
• That same day, Lincoln’s Vice
President, Andrew Johnson,
took the oath of office to
become the next President.

16. THE END OF THE
CIVIL WAR
• On April 26, after two weeks as
a fugitive, John Wilkes Booth
was tracked down and shot
dead by a Union soldier.
• On May 10, Jefferson Davis, the
President of the Confederate
States, was arrested by Union
cavalrymen. He was imprisoned
for two years, during which time
he defended the actions of the
Confederate States and
characterized their dream of
independence and sovereignty
as the South’s ‘Lost Cause.’

17. THE ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY
On December 6, 1865, after its
passage through the House of
Representatives and the Senate
and its ratification by the states,
the thirteenth amendment to the
Constitution was officially adopted
and slavery was forever abolished.

18. A SURVEY OF
AMERICAN HISTORY
Unit 2: Westward Expansion and Civil War
Part 20: The Civil War (IV)