all right guys welcome back to unit 14 the civil war the american iliad uh just to review we've already covered part one the civil war awakening already covered part two the war intensifies we covered part three last time with the turning of the tide this is going to be part 4 then the union grinds down the confederacy 1864 to 1865. what we're going to cover in this part 4 is kind of the overall strategy by the union to ultimately win the war beginning in 1864. uh we'll talk briefly about what the overall strategy was then get into to the particular strata campaigns that end up winning the war such as the overland campaign and sherman's invasion of the deep south then we'll finish out with how the war came to a conclusion by our having a discussion about the appomattox campaign but let's briefly talk about what the overall strategy beginning in 1864 was to win the war now so far you've you've gotten the idea that you know lincoln has gone through a lot of generals you know we had irvine mcdowell to begin with he was fired we got george b mcclellan he was fired get a guy named ambrose burnside we didn't talk about him but he he's he's a commander he's fired we get another guy named joseph hooker we never talk about him either but he was a commander and he got fired then there was george mead at gettysburg but even he was demoted but finally we have ulysses s grant so just you know lincoln had never found a general that understood the situation the same way lincoln did lincoln had always wanted his generals to attack the confederate army regardless of a victory or a defeat in battle and in april of 1864 lincoln finally has that commander in ulysses grant that understands the situation and so beginning in 1864 lincoln and grant came up with a plan to ultimately win the war and the way they came up with this plan is that you know they asked themselves how is it that the union is still fighting this war when the union was so heavily favored in manpower and resources and what they decided was that the union up to this point had not put enough pressure on the confederacy on all fronts of the war at the same time rather what the war had been characterized by this point was uncoordinated attacks at certain spots of the confederacy and that that had been a losing strategy so far because this had allowed it allowed robert e lee to shift confederate forces around uh than they around the uh the theaters of the war wherever they were needed well so what lincoln and grant come up with was a plan to deprive lee of this ability so ultimately what they decided on was that on a certain day every single union army across all of the battlefronts across all the theaters of the war would attack the confederate border all at once and win or lose they would continue the assault this would prevent lee from shifting forces around in order to uh stop these stop uncoordinated attacks and in some places lee may be successful in stopping the union assault but he wouldn't be able to stop it everywhere abraham lincoln kind of uh he said of this strategy that it just described that it reminded him of his hog killing days back in illinois when he was a kid you know he said that everybody had a job when it came to hog killing and even if you weren't killing the hog or even if you weren't skinning the hog you could at least hold one of the legs and that's kind of what's going on here is that grant and lincoln are coming up with a strategy to grind down the confederacy by attacking on every single front and win or lose in those engagements the union armies will continue to attack attack attack and now he has a commander in ulysses s grant that finally understands the situation so here's a great uh picture of ulysses s grant it's been touched up modern day to uh to color but i think it's really good because every every photo we've seen on so far has just been in black and white so he now has grant uh in early may 1864 grant will send out orders to every single union army to move against the confederacy on all fronts the main thrust of the union assault is going to come in northern virginia moving south to invade to engage robert e lee's army but another main thrust of the union army will be made out of tennessee into georgia trying to destroy the western confederate armies what we want to do is take both of those main thrusts grants thrust through northern virginia and then talk about the one made in the west into the heartland of the confederacy for sherman's invasion of the deep south let's focus on grant first grant's uh assault on the confederacy became known as the overland campaign and the reason it was called this is because that harkens back to the peninsula campaign of george b mcclellan you remember mcclellan wanted to assault the confederacy by landing forces amphibiously grant's not going to do that what you have taking place here in northern virginia is the ultimate showdown of american military commanders pitting ulysses says grant for the union against robert e lee for the confederacy winner take all no no you know just a cage match is going to be fought here in northern virginia as part of grant's overland campaign here's the campaign grant strategy to win the war he is going to begin moving the largest union army south from washington dc the ultimate goal is to capture the confederate capital of richmond and to destroy lee's army along the way and regardless of the battles that grant will fight here during the overland campaign whether he wins them whether he loses that loses them he will continue to push south and it will force then robert e lee to continuously engage grant's army and that's exactly what grant wants now here that you don't these are some of the major battles of the overland campaign and you don't need to know them but i want you to see what's going on here this is how the numbers game plays out every single one of these battles are a defeat for grant and the union and you can see how many casualties they will lose in each of these three major battles of the overland campaign in many cases especially that last one this was a major defeat for the union but what matters are the casualties that the confederacy takes see all those casualties the union is suffering they can be easily replaced and quickly but the confederacy simply doesn't have enough men to be able to lose this many casualties in each of these battles and that's how it's a numbers game if you have enough of these battles you will grind down lee's army to nothing now we'll see by the end of this uh this this part by the end of this lecture that's exactly what's going to happen so it's all about the numbers game and beginning in in may of 1864 grant's army will begin moving south the ultimate goal is to grind down lee's army and capture the confederate capital of richmond thereby ending the war now by the summer of 1864 grant very quickly is at the gates of the confederate capital of richmond the problem is that the confederates have been preparing for this and they have dug in really deep in and around richmond and a town south of it called petersburg the union therefore will spend almost an entire year trying to turn the flank of the confederate lines south of the city of petersburg and this is going to go on for nearly a year for nearly a year both sides are just going to lay siege warfare towards one another the union repeatedly trying to either break the lines of the confederacy which is going to be damn near possible or at the very least you can see way down there at the the bottom end of that map turn the flank of the confederate lines and if you can do that the confederacy will have to choose with either being surrounded and and ultimately captured inside richmond or they'll have to flee the area so the point here is that by the fall of 1864 this siege warfare has been going on and around richmond and it will last almost a year so this was the overland campaign this was the main thrust of the general strategy to win the war uh here's a picture of some of the confederate earthworks i mean you can see how formidable petersburg and richmond were this was not going to be a city uh that the union army was going to be able to just stroll right into think of vicksburg but on a much larger scale so the goal here for the union is going to be then to turn the flanks of the confederate army force them into retreating or force them into being surrounded now while this siege of richmond and petersburg is taking place the other main thrust of the union strategy is taking place in georgia and that's where i want to turn to next what i'm really talking about here is what is known as sherman's invasion of the deep south uh now sherman who is this guy sherman is william t or william tecumseh sherman sherman was one of the most trusted subordinate generals to ulysses s grant sherman understood everything grant understood he understood what it would take to win the war he understood that win or lose a battle you gotta keep pushing sherman is in charge of the union armies in the west and when grant goes back to virginia to take over command of the armies in virginia he leaves sherman in charge now sherman's part in all of this strategy is to invade the deep south that's exactly what he begins to do it will take him nearly a year but he will slug it out through the mountains of northern georgia repeatedly he'll be defeated in small battles but he doesn't care it keeps pushing further and further and further the ultimate goal for him is to capture the city of atlanta this was the second largest city in the confederacy and it was a major producer of firearms and iron and railroad equipment and all the stuff the south is using to make war atlanta was a big prize it took a very very long time for sherman to move just from chattanooga to capture the city of atlanta but he will capture the city of atlanta uh just around uh uh september of 1864. uh the city of atlanta was burned by the confederates as they were treated so the sherman will get nothing of gain here but the city of atlanta will fall to william t sherman in the west now there is actually a reason i'm telling you about the fall of atlanta in terms of military strategy it was a big success but it was also a political effect of the fall of atlanta let me explain you know in 1863 we discussed how the turning of the tide against the confederacy occurred but the war is now a year removed from all that and it shows little signs of ending and many northerners were not happy about this in fact they were very upset with abraham lincoln and the president himself believed that because of this anger by the northern people that he would not win re-election in 1864. and again the reason for all this is that americans in the north just believe the war just we thought the war was almost over after gettysburg vicksburg and chattanooga but here we are almost a year later and it's still going so morale in the north is dipping very badly and lincoln was convinced that he was not going to win re-election but atlanta changed all that atlanta came at a time when americans were about to go to the polls in the north in november of 1864 and they responded by the union capture of atlanta by voting abraham lincoln right back to office and that in itself is kind of significant because it means the war will continue okay after the fall of atlanta sherman decided that rather than rely on supply lines coming from the north that he would embark on what became known as the march to the sea in which he would march his about a hundred thousand man army from atlanta to the coast of georgia relying on the land and taking what his army needed from the confederate sympathizers along the way now depending on who you are today this is either a famous march to the sea or an infamous march to the sea because what sherman's troops did here was they brought what was known as the heavy hand of war to the confederacy sherman wanted the confederates to feel this war he argued that they had really not felt the ravages of war and he was in a position now to make them feel it now he didn't go out and just murder and massacre thousands of confederate civilians but what he did do was anything that the confederacy was using to support the war effort he destroyed it and oftentimes this resulted in near destructions of entire cities along the way here's a picture of one of the cities along his march through the sea you can see it's completely bombed out completely uh burned out he would have also been ripping up railroad tracks all along the way one of the favorite things his soldiers would do is take rail lines heat them up over fire and then wrap them around trees so they could never be used again this this tactic became known as sherman's bow ties as you would have seen these all along the route from atlanta to the sea in which sherman's army was marching and so you can see here there's the the utter devastation that that sherman's army is is is bringing forth upon the uh the heart of the confederacy this was a very demoralizing moment for the confederacy largely because there was no confederate army here to stop this from happening there was really nothing opposing sherman's arm except for uh you know local militia which are just old men and boys you know no professional soldiers or anything like that this was absolutely demoralizing to the confederacy uh just on an interesting side note if anyone's familiar with the song by the charlie daniels that the devil went down to georgia that that song is based loosely on sherman's march to the sea uh still today people in georgia uh do not look upon william t sherman with uh with much gratitude in fact he is considered in many parts of the south to be uh the devil because of what uh what he did on along the march to the sea i want to be clear that you know he was well within the rules of engagement for 19th century warfare that this was nothing new uh but for the confederacy this was something new in terms of feeling the war the heavy hand or the hard hand of war of which sherman uh definitely made them feel and feel and that that was certainly his intention uh after arriving at the coast in savannah he will be resupplied by the union navy and he's not done there from there completely unopposed he will take his uh hundred thousand man army into the heart of the confederacy where it all began he'll invade south carolina he will capture the capital of south carolina colombia he will burn it to the ground from there he will then move into the carolinas along the way doing the same things that he was doing in georgia and in south carolina by the spring of 1865 he will be in north carolina at bentonville in north carolina uh his army will defeat a very large confederate army um and and again it's all just very very demoralizing for the confederacy it is a sign that it is all over now here's the thing sherman's actions out here in the west uh were very demoralizing but if robert e lee's army survives everyone agreed the confederate cause is still alive so all eyes turned to what was taking place uh in and around richmond and petersburg if the war was going to be lost by the confederacy that's where it was going to have to occur lee's army was the lightning rod destroy it and you win the war and that was the purpose of the overland campaign so i want to now talk about how uh the war came to an end uh kind of the end result of the overland campaign in early april 1865 the union finally turns the confederate flanks south of petersburg at this point that the confederate government and lee's army has a decision if they remain where they are they will be encircled and they will be wiped out or they can flee to the west lee decided to continue the war by fleeing to the west his ultimate goal was to link up with remnants of the confederate western armies in lynchburg virginia and you can see on this map this became known as the appomattox campaign and as lee's army moved west he is relentlessly pursued by grant and the union army uh a bunch of small scale battles will take place as lee's army moves west every single one of these battles lee will be losing more and more soldiers either killed wounded or in most cases captured and so as leed was moving west his army is dwindling dwindling and dwindling even more lee's army is now in shambles and he becomes and what is left of his army becomes trapped uh and surrounded by a by grant in the union army near a small town in virginia known as appomattox courthouse uh now it's not appomattox it's appomattox courthouse here is a wide screen shot of the town it's a very small town the building right in the middle is the courthouse but the town is called appomattox courthouse it was around this city that lee realized something on april 9 1865 lee realized that his army is gone in fact he only had about 30 000 men left and it was on that day in april 9th 1865 that lee decided that he needed to surrender to ulysses s grant and the union army here is a painting depicting the ceremony in which grantor lee was signing his uh signing the surrender of his army that scene took place in this house right here this was known as the wilbur mclean house this is what it looked like at appomattox in 1865. it still stands today this is what it looks like today uh here's a picture of that same uh painting just in real life now the tables there are not the original tables and chairs those are reproductions if you want to see the original tables and chairs you can go to our nation's capital in washington dc and you can see the original chair and table at which this surrender ceremony took place april 9th 1865. now an interesting thing here lee's army was not the only army left for the confederacy but everyone agreed that lee's surrender at appomattox uh was the practical end to the war by may of 1865 all the other confederate armies will have surrendered and this war is now over okay so this concludes part four of unit 14. in part five we'll discuss the cost and the ultimate significance of the american civil war