Civil War PPT

1. Total War and the End of the
Confederacy
1864-1865

2. Rate your agreement with the following
statement: When fighting a war, an army
should destroy only military, not civilian,
targets.
A. Strongly agree
B. Somewhat agree
C. Somewhat disagree
D. Strongly disagree
A. A
B. B
C. C
D. D
0% 0% 0% 0%
A
B
C
D

3. What events led to the end of the war?

4. Total War Strikes the South
• General William
Tecumseh Sherman
destroyed Atlanta
• The city was burned
and citizens were
ordered to leave
• Sherman said: “War is
cruelty, and you
cannot refine it”
• The deliberate
strategy to bring the
horrors of war to the
Southern people is
called ttoottaall wwaarr
• Including terror,
starvation, violence,
and homelessness

5. Union Strategy
• By 1864- The Union
forces surrounded the
South
• Cut off imports and
exports
• The Union controlled
the Mississippi River
• Western Confederate
states were cut off
• General Grant would
draw up a bold plan of
attack

6. Grant
• Ulysses S. Grant was only
an average student
• And a failure as a farmer
and businessman
• But as a soldier was
brilliant
• Victories at Shiloh,
Vicksburg, and
Chattanooga
• March 1864- Lincoln put
Grant in charge of all the
Union armies

7. Grant in Charge
• Grant had a plan to deliver
killing blows from all sides
• Grant would attack
Richmond
• At the same time, Sherman
would lead his attacks
across the Deep South
• Grant’s 115,000 soldiers
met Lee’s 64,000 soldiers in
a sseerriieess of 3 battles at
Richmond
• Grant promised Lincoln,
“Whatever happens, there
will be no turning back”
• Grant was determined to
march southward, attacking
Lee’s forces
• Until they surrendered

8. The Wilderness Campaign
• Between Washington
D.C. and Richmond is
an area of dense
forests called the
Wilderness
• May 5, the 6 bloodiest
weeks of the war begun
• Grant and Lee
struggled through trees
• “It was a blind and
bloody hunt to the
death”
• Both sides had many
casualties
• Brushfires went through
the forest burning alive
200 wounded men

9. The Wilderness Campaign Continued
• Grant then moved south
toward Richmond
• The next battles were
fought at nearby
Spotsylvania Courthouse
and at Cold Harbor
• A Union general observed
me “writing their names
and home addresses on
slips of paper and pinning
them to the back of their
coats”
• To help people identify
their bodies
• Grant’s critics called him a
“butcher” because of the
huge loss of life among his
troops
• 50,000 deaths in 30 days

10. The Petersburg Siege
• A railroad center that was
vital to Confederate
movement of troops and
supplies
• If grant could take
Petersburg, Richmond
would be cut off from the
rest of the Confederacy
• Trains brought food and
reinforcements to the
Union troops
• The Confederates could
get neither
• For 9 months, the
Confederates held out
• The Union won

11. Sherman in Georgia
• Sherman reached
Atlanta and met the
Confederates under
John Hood
• Hood’s forced put
up major rreessiissttaannccee
• Finally, on Sept. 1,
Hood abandoned
the city
• The mood in the
South was
desperate
• “There is no hope,
but we will try to
have no fear”

12. Farragut at Mobile Bay
• DDaavviidd FFaarrrraagguutt was the
highest-ranking officer in the
Union
• Farragut joined the navy when
he was 12 years old
• Now in 1864 , he was leading a
fleet of 18 ships through a
narrow channel into Mobile Bay
in Alabama
• The Confederates had two forts
on either side of the channel,
and they mined the waters with
torpedoes
• Guns fired from both sides, what
should Farragut do?
• “Damn the torpedoes, full speed
ahead!”
• Farragut was suffering dizziness
and had himself tied to the ship
• The invasion worked, the Union
took the last Southern port east
of the Mississippi

13. The Election of 1864 • 1864- opposition to the
war grew in the North
• Lincoln was in danger of
losing the election
• After Atlanta fell and
Mobile Bay was blocked,
Northerners felt they could
win
• Lincoln won the election
• Lincoln iinntteerrpprreetteedd his
reelection as a clear sign
from the voters to end
slavery permanently by
amending the Constitution
• On January 31, 1865,
Congress passed the 13th
Amendment, banning
slavery in the US

14. Sherman’s March to the Sea
• The Union wanted to
break the will of the South
• Sherman and his men
became destroyers
• They burned cities and
farmlands across Georgia
to the Atlantic coast
• Known as Sherman’s
March to the Sea
• Sherman continued his
path of destruction
through the Carolinas
• Took food, tore up
railroad lines and fields,
and killed livestock in an
effort to destroy anything
useful to the South
• 1000s of enslaved people
were freed

15. Back to Grant
• Grant continued the
siege of Petersburg
• April 2, 1865,
Confederate lines
broke and Lee
withdrew
• As word got to
Jefferson Davis, he
and his cabinet
gathered documents
• Also ordered
bridges and
weapons useful to
the enemy be set on
fire
• Then Davis and the
cabinet fled the city

16. Richmond • The armory was set on
fire
• Lincoln and his son Tad
toured burning Richmond
and said:
• “Thank God I have lived
to see this. It seems to me
that I have been dreaming
a horrid nightmare for four
years, and now the
nightmare is over”
• Joyful African Americans
followed Lincoln
everywhere, singing,
laughing, and reaching
out to touch him
• At the Confederate
president’s house, Lincoln
sat in a chair in Davis’s
office and “looked far off
with a dreamy expression”

17. Surrender at Appomattox • Grant wrote to Lee- “The
result of last week must
convince you of the
hopelessness of further
resistance”
• Lee believed he needed to
fight on
• But then the Union captured
a train carrying food to his
troops and Lee was
completely surrounded, he
knew it was over
• In the little town of
AAppppoommaattttooxx CCoouurrtt HHoouussee,
Virginia, Grant met with Lee
• The troops kept their
weapons, officers kept their
horses, and no one would
disturb the soldiers on their
way home
• Grant also gave 25,000
rations to feed Lee’s troops
• The War was over

18. The Toll of War
• Deadliest war in US
history
• More than 600,000
soldiers died
• Cost billions of
dollars
• City and farmlands
were destroyed and
would take years to
rebuild
• The Union was saved
• The federal
government was
strengthened and
now clearly more
powerful than the
states

19. The Toll of the War Continued
• The war freed millions of
African Americans
• The end of slavery did not
solve the problems that the
newly freed African
Americans were to face
• Many questions remained
including- How to bring the
Southern states back into
the Union
• And- What the status of
African Americans would be
in Southern society
• Americans tried to answer
these questions in the years
following the Civil War- an
era known as
Reconstruction