American Civil War

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The Wilderness Campaign

In late March, the Army of the Potomac, numbering 115,000 men, began its march. When it reached a desolate area near Chancellorsville, known as the Wilderness, the Union forces encountered Lee's army of 62,000 men. In a two-day battle (May 5-6), fought largely in a thick, almost impenetrable forest, both sides suffered heavy casualties. Unlike his predecessors, though, Grant continued his march, determined to keep the pressure on the enemy. The two armies clashed again at Spotsylvania Courthouse (May 8-12), in Virginia, with both sides sustaining heavy losses and neither able to score a decisive victory. After Lee repulsed him at Cold Harbor, Virginia, just north of Richmond, Grant chose to bypass the Confederate capital. He crossed the James River and advanced on Petersburg, Virginia, a railway centre critical to Richmond's supply line. This attempt to isolate Richmond failed when a reinforced Confederate army successfully maintained its position around Petersburg. On June 20, Grant laid siege to the city, but the defenders held out for another nine months. Several attempts to breach the defences, as in the Battle of the Crater, were beaten back, and Grant's offensive operations in Virginia were brought to a temporary halt.

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The Capture of Atlanta

In the Shenandoah Valley, Sheridan's army engaged Confederate forces commanded by General Jubal A. Early and forced them to retreat from the region. With even more devastating success, in the summer of 1864, Sherman's army of 90,000 advanced towards Atlanta, Georgia. Several attempts to turn them back, including a battle at Kennesaw Mountain, ultimately failed. Sherman cut Atlanta's principal supply line, and on September 1 Confederate troops abandoned the city. The war-weary North, frustrated by the continuing stalemate in Virginia, enthusiastically greeted the victories of Sheridan and Sherman, no doubt helping to ensure Lincoln's re-election in November.

After losing Atlanta, the Confederate army under the command of General John Bell Hood tried to undermine Sherman's extended supply line, boldly moving into Tennessee on the assumption that Sherman would be forced to follow them to protect Chattanooga. Instead, Sherman dispatched part of his forces to counter Hood and readied his army for a march across Georgia to Savannah and the sea. On November 30, Hood battled a Union force under General John M. Schofield at Franklin, Tennessee; his troops sustained heavy losses in several unsuccessful charges against the Union lines. Subsequently, in the Battle of Nashville (December 15-16), a Union force commanded by Thomas scored a decisive victory over Hood, crushing Confederate resistance in the West.

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The Defeat of the South

On November 15, Sherman began his march to the sea. Leaving Atlanta in flames, his army of 60,000 men moved virtually unopposed through Georgia on a 96-km (60-mi) front. Living off the land as they advanced, the Union troops systematically destroyed anything that might help sustain the Confederate war effort. Savannah fell shortly before Christmas, and Sherman's army continued northwards into the Carolinas, meeting little opposition. In April 1865, Mobile, Selma, and Montgomery in Alabama fell to Union forces. At the same time, Sheridan prepared to join Grant for a conclusive assault on Lee's army.

In Virginia, Grant, in April 1865, finally succeeded in seizing the railway line supplying Richmond. Forced as a consequence to abandon both Petersburg and Richmond, Lee retreated westward, hoping to join with the Confederate army of Joseph Johnston in North Carolina. Grant blocked his way, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at the small settlement of Appomattox Court House in south-western Virginia. With Lee's surrender, the remaining Confederate armies quickly collapsed.

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The War at Sea

After the fall of Fort Sumter, Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of all Southern ports in order to stop the flow of essential supplies to the Confederacy. A Union navy barely existed at this time, its ships having been designed to fight on the high seas, not to blockade ports. Thus, before the blockade could be implemented, new ships had to be designed and several battles had to be fought.

To break the blockade, which had become effective by 1862, the South unveiled a new weapon, the Merrimack, an abandoned Union steam frigate that the Confederates covered with sheets of metal armour, converting it into an ironclad capable of destroying Northern shipping. On March 8, 1862, the Merrimack (renamed the Virginia) sailed out of Norfolk harbour in Virginia into Hampton Roads and easily sank two Northern vessels. This was an impressive demonstration of the superiority of ironclads to the now-obsolete wooden ships. When the Merrimack reappeared the next day, however, it encountered a newly arrived Northern ironclad, the Monitor, a spectacular battle lasting several hours, neither ironclad sustained a substantial amount of damage, and neither was able to win a decisive victory. Although the Merrimack returned to the safety of Norfolk harbour, its presence forced McClellan to alter his route of march to Richmond.

Throughout the war, the Union navy conducted important operations in support of the army. In 1861, joint operations secured Union beachheads at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, and at Port Royal, South Carolina. The capture of Fort Henry in February 1862 and the fall of New Orleans on May 1, both with critical naval assistance, enabled the Union to control the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers. Farragut's success in entering Mobile Bay in August 1864, destroying a small Confederate fleet there, deprived blockade runners of a safe harbour. With similar impact a joint naval-army operation in January 1865 effectively closed down Wilmington, North Carolina, which had been the South's principal base for blockade runners.

Although the South lacked a substantial navy, Confederate raiders carried on warfare in various parts of the world against Union merchant ships. The raider responsible for inflicting the most damage, the Alabama, was built in England and commanded by Raphael Semmes. On June 19, 1864, a Union ship, the Kearsarge, engaged the Alabama off the coast of France and ended its career as a Confederate raider.

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The War and Foreign Relations

To make its bid for independence credible, the Confederacy expected foreign recognition and support, especially from the two leading European powers, Great Britain and France. That confidence rested in large measure on the dependence of both nations on Southern cotton for their textile industries. England, for example, imported 75 per cent of its cotton from the South. With trade now imperilled by the Union naval blockade, the South looked to European intervention on its behalf.

When Britain and France formally declared their neutrality in the American Civil War in 1861, that constituted recognition of the Confederacy as a belligerent power. The move encouraged the South, while it prompted a vigorous protest from the Lincoln administration. When two Confederate representatives were forcibly removed by Union authorities from the British steamer Trent in 1861, Lincoln released them in response to British pressure. In 1863, on the other hand, Britain agreed to forbid construction of Confederate warships in British shipyards.

The Confederacy's “cotton diplomacy” was undermined in several ways. Before the outbreak of the war, British cloth manufacturers had stockpiled large quantities of cotton. Great Britain and the North, moreover, were engaged in a mutually profitable trade, the Union purchasing arms and manufactured goods and Britain purchasing Northern wheat. Finally, with the Emancipation Proclamation, public opinion abroad strongly favoured the Union cause. That, coupled with the changing tide of the war after 1863, doomed the Confederacy's quest for foreign recognition and intervention.