Chapter 11, Section 5Part 2

Decisive Battlesp. 407-411

The Union gains an upper hand with victories at Gettysburg & Vicksburg in

1863 and finally forces the South’s surrender in April 1865.

Gettysburg – Day 3: July 3, 1863• Rebels defeated (Lost 28,000)

• Confederate General George Pickett lost over 50% of his men during “Pickett’s Charge”

– “I have no division sir.” - Pickett to Lee

– Armistead’s “High Water Mark”

• Union Victory! (Lost 23,000)• Considered the beginning of the end

for the Confederacy. Custer’s cavalry beats Stuart.

“It’s all my fault.” - Lee

Battle of Vicksburg: July 4, 1863

• Six-week long siege of Vicksburg

• Grant ordered to take Vicksburg at ALL costs!– Over 10,000 Union

soldiers killed in action.

• Grant’s victory secures control of the entire Mississippi River. – Lincoln brings Grant east

to fight Lee – Grant named Lt. General

The Siege at VicksburgEnds on July 4, 1863

Gettysburg Address• Maybe the most famous speech

in American history• Address was given to dedicate

new National Cemetery • Only 262 words, 2 minutes• Expressed the feelings of the

nation.• Upstaged Edward Everett

• Speech carved into the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg AddressNovember 19, 1863

“The battle itself was less important than the speech." - Charles Sumner, 1865

Closing In On The ConfederacyMain Idea: With Grant in command, Union forces carry the war to the heart of the Confederacy.

• Lincoln finally finds his generals: Grant & Sherman

• Grant attacks Lee at the Battle of Petersburg – Like Vicksburg, he lays siege– Unlike McClellan, Burnside,

Hooker, or Meade - Grant keeps attacking

– Lee realizes he’s fighting a different kind of enemy.

• Sherman takes Atlanta – Lincoln is re-elected

William Tecumseh Sherman

Lincoln’s “Dream Team”

Ulysses S. Grant

“TOTAL WAR” against the South

• Sherman’s “March to the Sea” Nov. 15 - Dec. 21, 1864

• “War is cruelty. The crueler it is, the sooner it will end.” – W.T. Sherman

• Sherman marches from Atlanta to Savannah,GA– Destroying all land, property,

anything that might give support to the South!

– Over $100 million in property damage

– about $1.5 billion in today’s $

General William

Tecumseh Sherman: nickname

“Uncle Billy”

Peace At LastMain Idea: Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox, putting an end to the long and bloody war.

Surrender of General Lee to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, VA

April 9, 1865

• Knowing the end was near….- “With malice toward none, with

charity for all…” - Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865

• Lee surrenders to Grant April 9, 1865

• Grant gives generous terms– Confederate soldiers can go home

with their possessions.– Confederate soldiers given food for

their journey home.

• Cost of the war: Bloodiest Conflict in America History– Confederate Losses: 260,000– Union Losses: 360,000

• 37,000 African Americans

• Results of the War: reunited the country & ended slavery, but….

Before the war, why did the North fear the extension of slavery to the West?

Civil War Trivia: Wilmer McLean• Wilmer McLean (May 3, 1814 – June 5,

1882) a retired Major, was a grocer from Virginia.

• It is said that the Civil War started in Wilmer McLean's front yard and ended in his front parlor.

• July 1861 – P.T. Beauregard used McLean’s house at Manassas Junction as Confederate HQ.– A cannonball fell through the kitchen

fireplace

• McLean moved his family to Appomattox Courthouse in 1863

• Lee surrendered to Grant in McLean’s house

• The initial enagagements on July 18, 1861, in what would become the First Battle of Bull Run, fought on July 21, took place on McLean's farm, the Yorkshire Plantation, in Manassas, Prince William County, Virginia. Union Army artillery fired at McLean's house, headquarters for Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, and a cannonball dropped through the kitchen fireplace. Beauregard wrote after the battle, "A comical effect of this artillery fight was the destruction of the dinner of myself and staff by a Federal shell that fell into the fire-place of my headquarters at the McLean House."[1] McLean was a retired major in the Virginia militia, but was too old to return to active duty at the outbreak of the Civil War; he did make his living during the war as a sugar broker supplying the Confederate States Army. He decided to move because his commercial activities were centered mostly in southern Virginia and the Union army presence in his area of northern Virginia made his work difficult. He undoubtedly was also motivated by a desire to protect his family from a repetition of his battle experience. In the spring of 1863 he and his family moved about 120 miles (200 km) south to Appomattox County, Virginia, near Appomattox Court House.

• On April 9, 1865, the war came back to Wilmer McLean when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant in the parlor of McLean's house near Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the Civil War. Later, McLean is supposed to have said "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor".[2] Once the surrender was over, members of the Army of the Potomac began taking the tables, chairs, and various other furnishings in the house—essentially, anything that wasn't tied down—as souvenirs. They simply handed the protesting McLean money as they made off with his property. George Custer was given the table on which the surrender document was drafted by Grant. McLeans' second home is now part of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Monument operated by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior.

• After the War, McLean and his family sold their house in 1867, unable to keep up the mortgage payments, and returned to their home in Manassas. They later moved to Alexandria, Virginia. He worked for the Internal Revenue Service from 1873 to 1876.

McLean residence in 1865, Appomattox Court House, VA