GETTYSBURG TO APPOMATTOX
Yet none of the Confederate vic- tories was decisive . The Union sim- ply mustered new armies and tried again . Believing that the North’s crushing defeat at Chancellorsville
gave him his chance, Lee struck northward into Pennsylvania at the beginning of July 1863, almost reach- ing the state capital at Harrisburg . A strong Union force intercepted him at Gettysburg, where, in a titanic three-day battle — the largest of the Civil War — the Confederates made a valiant effort to break the Union lines . They failed, and on July 4 Lee’s army, after crippling losses, retreated behind the Potomac .
More than 3,000 Union soldiers and almost 4,000 Confederates died at Gettysburg; wounded and missing totaled more than 20,000 on each side . On November 19, 1863, Lincoln dedicated a new national cemetery there with perhaps the most famous address in U .S . history . He concluded his brief remarks with these words:
… we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. On the Mississippi, Union con-
trol had been blocked at Vicksburg, where the Confederates had strong- ly fortified themselves on bluffs too high for naval attack . In early 1863 Grant began to move below and around Vicksburg, subjecting it to a six-week siege . On July 4, he cap- tured the town, together with the strongest Confederate Army in the West . The river was now entirely in Union hands . The Confederacy was broken in two, and it became almost
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impossible to bring supplies from Texas and Arkansas .
The Northern victories at Vicks- burg and Gettysburg in July 1863 marked the turning point of the war, although the bloodshed continued unabated for more than a year-and- a-half .
Lincoln brought Grant east and made him commander-in-chief of all Union forces . In May 1864 Grant advanced deep into Virginia and met Lee’s Confederate Army in the three-day Battle of the Wilderness . Losses on both sides were heavy, but unlike other Union command- ers, Grant refused to retreat . In- stead, he attempted to outflank Lee, stretching the Confederate lines and pounding away with artillery and infantry attacks . “I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all sum- mer,” the Union commander said at Spotsylvania, during five days of bloody trench warfare that charac- terized fighting on the eastern front for almost a year .
In the West, Union forces gained control of Tennessee in the fall of 1863 with victories at Chattanoo- ga and nearby Lookout Mountain, opening the way for General Wil- liam T . Sherman to invade Georgia . Sherman outmaneuvered several smaller Confederate armies, occu- pied the state capital of Atlanta, then marched to the Atlantic coast, sys- tematically destroying railroads, factories, warehouses, and other facilities in his path . His men, cut off from their normal supply lines, ravaged the countryside for food .
From the coast, Sherman marched northward; by February 1865, he had taken Charleston, South Caro- lina, where the first shots of the Civil War had been fired . Sherman, more than any other Union general, un- derstood that destroying the will and morale of the South was as impor- tant as defeating its armies .
Grant, meanwhile, lay siege to Pe- tersburg, Virginia, for nine months, before Lee, in March 1865, knew that he had to abandon both Petersburg and the Confederate capital of Rich- mond in an attempt to retreat south . But it was too late . On April 9, 1865, surrounded by huge Union armies, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appo- mattox Courthouse . Although scat- tered fighting continued elsewhere for several months, the Civil War was over .
The terms of surrender at Ap- pomattox were magnanimous, and on his return from his meeting with Lee, Grant quieted the noisy dem- onstrations of his soldiers by re- minding them: “The rebels are our countrymen again .” The war for Southern independence had become the “lost cause,” whose hero, Rob- ert E . Lee, had won wide admiration through the brilliance of his leader- ship and his greatness in defeat