Unit 3: The American Civil War: a nation Divided Fifth Grade Social Studies merit

In 1857, the Supreme Court issued its controversial decision in the Dred Scott case, declaring African Americans were not citizens and had no inherent rights. Though Abraham Lincoln felt African Americans were not equal to whites, he believed the America’s founders intended that all men were created with certain inalienable rights. Lincoln decided to challenge sitting U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat. In his nomination acceptance speech, he criticized Douglas, the Supreme Court, and President Buchanan for promoting slavery and declared “a house divided cannot stand.” The 1858 Senate campaign featured seven debates held in different cities all over Illinois. The two candidates didn’t disappoint the public, giving stirring debates on issues ranging from states’ rights to western expansion, but the central issue in all the debates was slavery. Newspapers intensely covered the debates, often times with partisan editing and interpretation. In the end, the state legislature elected Douglas, but the exposure vaulted Lincoln into national politics.

In 1860, political operatives in Illinois organized a campaign to support Lincoln for the presidency. On May 18th at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Abraham Lincoln surpassed better known candidates such as William Seward of New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Lincoln’s nomination was due in part to his moderate views on slavery, his support for improving the national infrastructure, and the protective tariff. In the general election, Lincoln faced his friend and rival, Stephan Douglas, this time besting him in a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of the Northern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitution Party. Lincoln received not quite 40 percent of the popular vote, but carried 180 of 303 Electoral votes.

Abraham Lincoln selected a strong cabinet composed of many of his political rivals, including William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates and Edwin Stanton

Formed out the adage “Hold your friends close and your enemies closer”, Lincoln’s Cabinet became one of his strongest assets in his first term in office… and he would need them. Before his inauguration in March, 1861, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union and by April the U.S. military installation Fort Sumter, was under siege in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, the guns stationed to protect the harbor blazed toward the fort signaling the start of America’s costliest and most deadly conflict.

Civil War

The Union Army’s first year and a half of battlefield defeats made it especially difficult to keep morale up and support strong for a reunification the nation. With the hopeful, but by no means conclusive Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, Abraham felt confident enough to reshape the cause of the war from “union” to abolishing slavery. Gradually, the war effort improved for the North, though more by attrition then by brilliant military victories. But by 1864, the Confederacy had hunkered down to a guerilla war and Lincoln was convinced he’d be a one-term president. His nemesis, George B. McClellan, the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, challenged him for the presidency, but the contest wasn’t even close. Lincoln received 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 of 243 Electoral votes. On March 28, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Virginia, surrendered his forces to Union General Ulysses S. Grant and the war for all intents and purposes was over.

Military leader and statesman Jefferson Finis Davis was born on June 3, 1808, in Christian County, Kentucky (now called Fairview). One of 10 children born into a military family, his birth took place just 100 miles from and eight months earlier than President Abraham Lincoln’s. Davis's father and uncles were soldiers in the American Revolutionary War, and all three of his older brothers fought in the War of 1812. His grandfather was a public servant to the U.S. southern colonies.

Though born in Kentucky, Davis primarily grew up on a plantation near Woodville, Mississippi, eventually returning to Kentucky to attend boarding school in Bardstown. After completing his boarding school education, Davis enrolled at Jefferson College in Mississippi, later transferring to Transylvania University in Kentucky.

In 1824, when Davis was 16 years old, President James Monroe requested that Davis become a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point (New York). One of Davis’s fellow cadets later described the burgeoning young leader as "distinguished in his corps for manly bearing and high-toned and lofty character." In 1828, Davis graduated from West Point, 23rd in his class

Upon graduating from West Point, Jefferson Davis was assigned to the post of second-lieutenant of the First Infantry. From 1828 to 1833, he carried out his first active service with the U.S. Army. Davis fought with his regiment in the Blackhawk War of 1831, during which they captured Chief Blackhawk himself. The Indian chief was placed under Davis’s care, with Davis winning Blackhawk over through his kind treatment of the prisoner.

In March 1833, Davis was promoted to first lieutenant and transferred to the First Dragoons, a newly formed regiment. He also served as the unit’s staff officer. Until the summer of 1835, Davis continued his service on the battlefield against Indian tribes, including the Comanche and Pawnees. In June 1835, Davis married his commanding officer’s daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor. Because his commanding officer, none other than future president Zachary Taylor, was opposed to the marriage, Davis abruptly resigned his military post to take up civic duties prior to the wedding. Sadly, Sarah died of malaria just a few months later, in September 1835.

After leaving the military, Davis became a cotton farmer while preparing for a career in politics as a Democrat. In 1843, he participated in the gubernatorial campaign and served as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention. His powerful speeches there placed him in high demand.

One year later, he became an elector for Pork and Dallas, taking the stance of state protection against federal interference and supporting Texas’ annexation in the process.

In December 1845, Davis won election to the U.S. House of Representatives and claimed a seat in Congress, which caused him to gain more public attention. Additionally, he remarried, this time to a woman named Varina Howell. The marriage helped further forge his connection with Mississippi planters, as Varina’s family was of that class.

As a congressman, Davis was known for his passionate and charismatic speeches, and he quickly became actively involved in debates about Texas, Oregon and tariffs. Davis’s congressional accomplishments include orchestrating the conversion of forts into military training schools. Throughout his congressional term, his support of states’ right remained unwavering.

In June 1846, Jefferson Davis resigned from his position in Congress to lead the First Regiment of the Mississippi Riflemen in the Mexican-American War. He held the rank of colonel under his former father-in-law, General Zachary Taylor. During the Mexican-American War, Davis fought in the Battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista, in 1846 and 1847, respectively. At the Battle of Monterrey, he led his men to victory in an assault at Fort Teneria. He was injured at the Battle of Buena Vista when he blocked a charge of Mexican swords—an incident that earned him nationwide acclaim. So impressed was General Taylor that he admitted he had formerly misjudged Davis’s character. "My daughter, sir, was a better judge of man than I was," Taylor reportedly conceded.

In 1847, following Davis’s heroic feat, Zachary Taylor appointed him U.S. senator from Mississippi—a seat that had opened as a result of Senator Jesse Speight’s death. After serving the rest of Speight’s term, from December to January of 1847, Davis was re-elected for an additional term. As a senator, he advocated for slavery and states’ rights, and opposed the admission of California to the Union as a free state—such a hot button issue at the time that members of the House of Representatives sometimes broke into fistfights. Davis held his Senate seat until 1851 and went on to run for the Mississippi governorship, but lost the election.

Explaining the way his position on the Union had evolved during his time in the Senate, David once stated, "My devotion to the Union of our fathers had been so often and so publicly declared; I had on the floor of the Senate so defiantly challenged any question of my fidelity to it; my services, civil and military, had now extended through so long a period and were so generally known, that I felt quite assured that no whisperings of envy or ill-will could lead the people of Mississippi to believe that I had dishonored their trust by using the power they had conferred on me to destroy the government to which I was accredited. Then, as afterward, I regarded the separation of the states as a great, though not the greater evil."

In 1853, Davis was appointed secretary of war by President Franklin Pierce. He served in that position until 1857, when he returned to the Senate. Although opposed to session, while back in the Senate, he continued to defend the rights of southern slave states. Davis remained in the Senate until January 1861, resigning when Mississippi left the Union. In conjunction with the formation of the Confederacy, Davis became was named president of the Confederate States of America on February 18, 1861. On May 10, 1865, he was captured by Union forces near Irwinville, Virginia, and charged with treason. Davis was imprisoned at Fort Monroe in Virginia from May 22, 1865, to May 13, 1867, before being released on bail paid partly by abolitionist Horace Greely.

Following his term as president of the Confederacy, Davis traveled overseas on business. He was offered a job as president of Texas A&M University, but declined. He was also elected to the Senate a third time, but was unable to serve due to restrictions included in the 14th Amendment. In 1881, he wrote The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in an effort to defend his political stance. Davis lived out his retirement years at an estate called Beauvoir in Mississippi.

Around 1 a.m. on December 6, 1889, Jefferson Davis died of acute bronchitis in New Orleans, Louisiana. His body was temporarily interred at New Orleans’s Metairie Cemetery. It was later relocated to a specially constructed memorial at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April, 27, 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio, near the mouth of the Big Indian Creek at the Ohio River. His famous moniker “U.S. Grant” came after he joined the military. Hiram was the first son of Jesse Root Grant, a tanner and businessman, and Hannah Simpson Grant. A year after Hiram was born, the family moved to Georgetown, Ohio, where he grew up in what he described as an “uneventful” childhood. He did, however, show great aptitude as a horseman in his youth.

Hiram Ulysses Grant was not a standout as a boy. Shy and reserved, he took after his mother rather than his outgoing father. He hated the idea of working in his father’s tannery business, a fact that Jesse begrudgingly had to acknowledge. When Hiram was 17, Jesse arranged for him to enter West Point. A clerical error had listed him as Ulysses S. Grant. Not wanting to be rejected, he changed his name on the spot. Grant didn’t excel at West Point, earning average grades and finding the academy “had no charms” for him. He received several demerits for slovenly dress and tardiness. He did well in mathematics and geology and excelled in horsemanship. In 1843, he graduated 21st out of 39 and was glad to be out. He planned to resign from the military after he served his mandatory four years of duty.

After graduation, Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant was stationed at St. Louis, Missouri, where he met his future wife, Julia Dent. Grant proposed marriage in 1844, and Julia accepted. But before the couple could wed, he was shipped off for duty. During the Mexican-American War, Grant served as quartermaster, efficiently overseeing the movement of supplies. Serving under General Zachary Taylor and then later General Winfield Scott, he closely observed their military tactics and leadership skills. He got the opportunity to lead a company into combat and was credited for his bravery under fire. He also developed strong feelings that the war was wrong and was being waged only to increase American’s territory for the spread of slavery.

In 1844, Ulysses and Julia finally married. Over the next six years, Grant was assigned to several posts, and the couple had four children. In 1852, Grant was sent to Fort Vancouver, in what is now Washington State. He missed Julia and his two sons, the second of whom he had not even seen. Grant became involved in several failed business ventures, trying to get his family to the coast so they could be closer to him. He began to drink, and a reputation was forged that dogged him all through his military career. In the summer of 1853, he was promoted to captain and transferred to Fort Humboldt on the Northern California coast, where he had a run-in with the fort’s commanding officer, Lt.

Col. Robert C. Buchanan. On July, 31, 1854, Ulysses S. Grant resigned from the Army amid allegations of heavy drinking and warnings of disciplinary action.

In 1854, Ulysses S. Grant moved his family back to Missouri, but the return to being a civilian led to a low point in his life. He tried to farm land given to him by his father-in-law, but after a few years it failed. Grant then failed in a real estate venture and was denied employment as an engineer and clerk in St. Louis. To support his family, he was reduced to selling firewood on a St. Louis street. Finally, in 1860, he humbled himself and went to work in his father’s tannery business as a clerk, supervised by his two younger brothers.

On April 13, 1861, Confederate troops attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. This act of rebellion sparked Ulysses S. Grant’s patriotism, and he volunteered his military services. Again he was initially rejected for appointments, but with the aid of an Illinois congressman, he was appointed to command an unruly Twenty-first Illinois volunteer regiment. Applying lessons he learned from his commanders during the Mexican-American War, Grant got the regiment combat-ready by September 1861.

When Kentucky’s fragile neutrality fell apart in the fall of 1861, Ulysses S. Grant and his volunteers took the small town of Paducah, Kentucky, at the mouth of the Tennessee River. In February 1862, in a joint operation with the U.S. Navy, Grant’s ground forces applied pressure on Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, taking them both. In the assault on Fort Donelson, he earned the moniker “Unconditional Surrender” Grant and he was promoted to major general of volunteers.

In April 1862, Ulysses S. Grant moved his men cautiously into enemy territory in what would prove to be one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Confederate commanders Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard led a surprise attack against Grant’s forces bivouacked nine miles south at Pittsburgh Landing. During the first wave of assault, fierce fighting occurred at an area known as the “Hornets’ Nest.” Confederate General Johnston was mortally wounded, and his second-in-command, General Beauregard, decided against a night assault on Grant’s forces. Reinforcement finally arrived and Grant was able to defeat the Confederates in the second day of battle. The Battle of Shiloh proved to be a watershed for the American military and a near disaster for Ulysses S. Grant. Though he was supported by President Abraham Lincoln, Grant faced heavy criticism from members of Congress and the military brass for the high casualties and for a time was demoted. A War Department investigation had him reinstated.

Union war strategy called for taking control of the Mississippi River and cutting the Confederacy in half. In December 1862, Ulysses S. Grant moved overland to take Vicksburg, a key fortress city of the Confederacy, but his attack was stalled by Confederate cavalry raider Nathan Bedford Forest and by getting bogged down in the bayous north of Vicksburg

In his second attempt Grant cut some, but not all, of his supply lines, moved his army down the western bank of the Mississippi River and crossed south of Vicksburg. Failing to take the city after several assaults, he settled into a long siege, and Vicksburg eventually surrendered on July 4, 1863.

Although Vicksburg was Ulysses S. Grant’s greatest achievement up to then and a moral boost for the Union, rumors of Grant’s drinking and being drunk followed him through the rest of the Western Campaign. Grant suffered from intense migraine headaches due to stress, which nearly disabled him and did much to spread the rumors he had been drinking and was suffering from a hangover. However, his closest associates said he was sober, polite and displayed deep concentration, even in the midst of a battle.

After Grant’s victory at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Ulysses S. Grant was given command of all the Union armies. Grant saw the military objectives of the Civil War differently than most of his predecessors, who believed that capturing territory was most important to winning the war. Grant, however, believed that the Confederate armies were most important. To that end he set out to track down General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and destroy it. From March 1864 until April 1865, Grant doggedly tracked Lee in the forests of Virginia, inflicting unsustainable casualties on Lee’s army. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered his army and the war was over. The two generals met at a farm near the village of Appomattox Court House and agreed to peace terms. In a magnanimous gesture, Grant allowed Lee’s men to keep their horses and return to their homes; none would be prisoners of war.

During the post-war reorganization, Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to full general and oversaw the military portion of Reconstruction. Grant was put in an awkward position during President Andrew Johnson’s fight with the Radical Republicans and his impeachment, and was eventually elected as the 18th president of the United States in 1868. When he entered the White House the following year, he was politically inexperienced and at age 46 was the youngest man theretofore elected president. Although scrupulously honest, Grant appointed people who were not of good character. Though he had some success pushing through ratification of the 15th Amendment and establishing the National Parks Service, his administration’s scandals rocked both his presidential terms and he lost his opportunity for a third term.

After he left the White House, Ulysses S. Grant’s poor luck at civilian life continued. He became a partner in the financial firm of Grant and Ward only to have his partner, Ferdinand Ward, embezzle investors’ money. The firm went bankrupt in 1884, as did Grant. That same year, he learned he was suffering from throat cancer, and although his military pension was reinstated, he was strapped for cash. He started selling short magazine articles about his life and then negotiated a contract with a friend, the novelist Mark Twain, to publish his memoirs. The two-volume set sold some 300,000 copies and became a classic work of American literature. Ultimately, this earned his family nearly $450,000. Grant died on July 23, 1885, just as his memoirs were being published, and is buried in New York City.

Confederate General who led southern forces against the Union Army in the American Civil War, Robert Edward Lee was born January 19, 1807, in Stratford Hall, Virginia.

Lee was cut from Virginia aristocracy. His extended family members included a president, a chief justice of the United States, and signers of the Declaration of Independence. His father, Colonel Henry Lee, also known as "Light-Horse Harry," had served as a cavalry leader during the Revolutionary War and gone on to become one of the war's heroes, winning praise from General George Washington.

Lee saw himself as an extension of his family's greatness. At 18, he enrolled at West Point Military Academy, where he put his drive and serious mind to work. He was one of just six cadets in his graduating class who finished without a single demerit, and wrapped up his studies with perfect scores in artillery, infantry and cavalry.

After graduating from West Point, Lee met and married Mary Custis, the great-granddaughter of George and Martha Washington. Together, they had seven children: three sons (Custis, Rooney and Rob) and four daughters (Mary, Annie, Agnes and Mildred).

But while Mary and the children spent their lives on Mary's father's plantation, Lee stayed committed to his military obligations. His Army loyalties moved him around the country, from Savannah to Baltimore, St. Louis to New York.

In 1846, Lee got the chance he'd been waiting his whole military career for when the United States went to war with Mexico. Serving under General Winfield Scott, Lee distinguished himself as a brave battle commander and brilliant tactician. In the aftermath of the U.S. victory over its neighbor, Lee was held up as a hero. Scott showered Lee with particular praise, saying that in the event the U.S. went into another war, the government should consider taking out a life insurance policy on the commander.

But life away from the battlefield proved difficult for Lee to handle. He struggled with the mundane tasks associated with his work and life. For a time, he returned to his wife's family's plantation to manage the estate, following the death of his father-in-law. The property had fallen under hard times, and for two long years, he tried to make it profitable again.

In 1859 Lee returned to the Army, accepting a thankless position at a lonely cavalry outpost in Texas. In October of that year, Lee got a break when he was summoned to put an end to a slave insurrection led by John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Lee's orchestrated attack took just a single hour to end the revolt, and his success put him on a short list of names to lead the Union Army should the nation go to war.

But Lee's commitment to the Army was superseded by his commitment to Virginia. After turning down an offer from President Abraham Lincoln to command the Union forces, Lee resigned from the military and returned home. While Lee had misgivings about centering a war on the slavery issue, when Virginia voted to secede from the nation on April 18, 1861, Lee agreed to help lead the Confederate forces.

Over the next year, Lee again distinguished himself on the battlefield. In May 1862, he took control of the Army of Northern Virginia and drove back the Union Army in Richmond in the Seven Days Battle. In August of that year, he gave the Confederacy a crucial victory at Second Manassas.

But not all went well. He courted disaster when he tried to cross the Potomac, just barely escaping at the bloody battle known as Antietam. In it, nearly 14,000 of his men were captured, wounded or killed.

From July 1 to July 3, 1863, Lee's forces suffered another round of heavy casualties in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The three-day stand-off, known as the Battle of Gettysburg, almost destroyed his army, ending Lee's invasion of the North and helping to turn the war around for the Union.

By the summer of 1864 Ulysses S. Grant had gained the upper hand, decimating much of Richmond, the Confederate's capital, and Petersburg. By early 1865 the fate of the war was clear, a fact driven home on April 2 when Lee was forced to abandon Richmond. A week later, a reluctant and despondent Lee surrendered to Grant at a private home in Appomattox, Virginia.

"I suppose there is nothing for me to do but go and see General Grant," he told an aide. "And I would rather die a thousand deaths."

Saved from being hanged as a traitor by a forgiving Lincoln and Grant, Lee returned to his family in April 1865. He eventually accepted a job as president of a small college in western Virginia, and kept quiet about the nation's politics following the war.

In October of 1870, he suffered a massive stroke. He died at his home, surrounded by family, on October 12, 1870.

Stonewall Jackson was born Thomas Jonathan Jackson on January 21, 1824, in Clarksburg (then Virginia), West Virginia. His father, a lawyer named Jonathan Jackson, and his mother, Julia Beckwith Neale, had four children. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was the third born.

When Jackson was just 2 years old, his father and his older sister, Elizabeth, were killed by typhoid fever. As a young widow, Stonewall Jackson’s mother struggled to make ends meet. In 1830 Julia remarried to Blake Woodson. When the young Jackson and his siblings butted heads with their new stepfather, they were sent to live with relatives in Jackson’s Mill, Virginia (now West Virginia). In 1831, Jackson lost his mother to complications during childbirth. The infant, Jackson’s half-brother William Wirt Woodson, survived, but would later die of tuberculosis in 1841. Jackson spent the rest of his childhood living with his father’s brothers.

After attending local schools, in 1842 Jackson enrolled in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. He was admitted only after his congressional district’s first choice withdrew his application a day after school started. Although he was older than most of his classmates, Jackson at first struggled terribly with his course load. To make matters worse, his fellow students often teased him about his poor family and modest education. Fortunately, the adversity fueled Jackson’s determination to succeed. In 1846, he graduated from West Point, 17th in a class of 59 students.

Jackson graduated from West Point in the nick of time to fight in the Mexican-American War. In Mexico he joined the 1st U.S. Artillery as a 2nd lieutenant. Jackson quickly proved his bravery and resilience on the field, serving with distinction under General Winfield Scott. Jackson participated in the Siege of Veracruz, and the battles of Contreras, Chapultepec and Mexico City. It was during the war in Mexico that Jackson met Robert E. Lee, with whom he would one day join military forces during the American Civil War. By the time the Mexican-American War ended in 1846, Jackson had been promoted to the rank of brevet major and was considered a war hero. After the war, he continued to serve in the military in New York and Florida.

Jackson retired from the military and returned to civilian life in 1851, when he was offered a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. At VMI, Jackson served as professor of natural and experimental philosophy as well as of artillery tactics. Jackson’s philosophy syllabus was composed of topics akin to those covered in today’s college physics courses.

His classes also covered astronomy, acoustics and other science subjects.

As a professor, Jackson’s cold demeanor and strange quirks made him unpopular among his students. Grappling with hypochondria, the false belief that something was physically wrong with him, Jackson kept one arm raised while teaching, thinking it would hide a nonexistent unevenness in the length of his extremities. Although his students made fun of his eccentricities, Jackson was generally acknowledged as an effective professor of artillery tactics.

Between late 1860 and early 1861, several Southern U.S. states declared their independence and seceded from the Union. At first it was Jackson’s desire that Virginia, then his home state, would stay in the Union. But when Virginia seceded in the spring of 1861, Jackson showed his support of the Confederacy, choosing to side with his state over the national government.

On April 21, 1861, Jackson was ordered to VMI, where he was placed in command of the VMI Corps of Cadets. At the time, the cadets were acting as drillmasters, training new recruits to fight in the Civil War. Soon after, Jackson was commissioned a colonel by the state government and relocated to Harper’s Ferry. After preparing the troops for what would later be called the "Stonewall Brigade," Jackson was promoted to the roles of brigadier commander and brigadier general under the command of General Joseph E. Johnston.

It was at the First Battle of Bull Run in July of 1861, otherwise known as the First Battle of Manassas, that Jackson earned his famous nickname, Stonewall. When Jackson charged his army ahead to bridge a gap in the defensive line against a Union attack, General Barnard E. Bee, impressed, exclaimed, "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall." Afterward, the nickname stuck, and Jackson was promoted to major general for his courage and quick thinking on the battlefield.

In the spring of the next year, Jackson launched the Valley of Virginia, or Shenandoah Valley, Campaign. He began the campaign by defending western Virginia against the Union Army’s invasion. After leading the Confederate Army to several victories, Jackson was ordered to join General Robert E. Lee’s army in 1862. Joining Lee in the Peninsula, Jackson continued to fight in defense of Virginia.

From June 15 to July 1, 1862, Jackson exhibited uncharacteristically poor leadership while trying to defend Virginia’s capital city of Richmond against General George McClellan’s Union troops.

During this period, dubbed the Seven Days Battles, Jackson did, however, manage to redeem himself with his quick-moving "foot cavalry" maneuvers at the battle of Cedar Mountain.

At the Second Battle of Bull Run in August of 1862, John Pope and his Army of Virginia were convinced that Jackson and his soldiers had begun to retreat. This afforded Confederate General James Longstreet the opportunity to launch a missile assault against the Union Army, ultimately forcing Pope’s forces to retreat.

Against terrible odds, Jackson also managed to hold his Confederate troops in defensive position during the bloody battle of Antietam, until Lee ordered his Army of Northern Virginia to withdraw back across the Potomac River.

In October of 1862, General Lee reorganized his Army of Virginia into two corps. After being promoted to lieutenant general, Jackson took command of the second corps, leading them to decisive victory at the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Jackson achieved a whole new level of success at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May of 1863, when he struck General John Hooker’s Army of the Potomac from the rear. The attack created so many casualties that, within a few days, Hooker had no choice but to withdraw his troops.

On May 2, 1863, Jackson was accidentally shot by friendly fire from the 18th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. At a nearby field hospital, Jackson’s arm was amputated. On May 4, Jackson was transported to a second field hospital, in Guinea Station, Virginia. He died there of complications on May 10, 1863, at the age of 39, after uttering the last words, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of trees."

Sherman, one of eleven children, was born into a distinguished family. His father had served on the Supreme Court of Ohio until his sudden death in 1829, leaving Sherman and his family to stay with several friends and relatives. During this period, Sherman found himself living with Senator Thomas Ewing, who obtained an appointment for Sherman to the United States Military Academy, and he graduated sixth in the class of 1840. His early military career proved to be anything but spectacular. He saw some combat during the Second Seminole War in Florida, but unlike many of his colleagues, did not fight in the Mexican-American War, serving instead in California. As a result, he resigned his commission in 1853. He took work in the fields of banking and law briefly before becoming the superintendent of the Louisiana Military Academy in 1859. At the outbreak of the Civil War, however, Sherman resigned from the academy and headed north, where he was made a colonel of the 13th United States Infantry.

Sherman first saw combat at the Battle of First Manassas, where he commanded a brigade of Tyler’s Division. Although the Union army was defeated during the battle, President Abraham Lincoln was impressed by Sherman’s performance and he was promoted to brigadier general on August 7, 1861, ranking seventh among other officers at that grade. He was sent to Kentucky to begin the Union task of keeping the state from seceding. While in the state, Sherman expressed his views that the war would not end quickly, and he was replaced by Don Carlos Buell. Sherman was moved to St. Louis, where he served under Henry W. Halleck and completed logistical missions during the Union capture of Fort Donelson. During the battle of Shiloh, Sherman commanded a division, but was overrun during the battle by Confederates under Albert Sydney Johnston. Despite the incident, Sherman was promoted to major general of volunteers on May 1, 1862.

After the battle of Shiloh, Sherman led troops during the battles of Chickasaw Bluffs and Arkansas Post, and commanded XV Corps during the campaign to capture Vicksburg. At the battle of Chattanooga Sherman faced off against Confederates under Patrick Cleburne in the fierce contest at Missionary Ridge. After Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to commander of all the United States armies, Sherman was made commander of all troops in the Western Theatre, and began to wage warfare that would bring him great notoriety in the annals of history.

By 1864 Sherman had become convinced that preservation of the Union was contingent not only on defeating the Southern armies in the field but, more importantly, on destroying the Confederacy's material and psychological will to wage war. To achieve that end, he launched a campaign in Georgia that was defined as “modern warfare”, and brought “total destruction…upon the civilian population in the path of the advancing columns [of his armies].” Commanding three armies, under George Henry Thomas, James B. McPherson, and John M. Schofield, he used his superior numbers to consistently outflank Confederate troops under Joseph E. Johnston, and captured Atlanta on September 2, 1864. The success of the campaign ultimately helped Lincoln win reelection. After the fall of Atlanta, Sherman left the forces under Thomas and Schofield to continue to harass the Confederate Army of Tennessee under John Bell Hood. Meanwhile, Sherman cut off all communications to his army and commenced his now-famous “March to the Sea," leaving in his wake a forty to sixty mile-wide path of destruction through the heartland of Georgia. On December 21, 1864 Sherman wired Lincoln to offer him an early Christmas present: the city of Savannah.

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
- William Tecumseh Sherman

Following his successful campaign through Georgia, Sherman turned his attentions northward and began marching through the Carolinas, chasing the Confederates under the command of Joseph E. Johnston. He continued his campaign of destruction, in particular targeting South Carolina for their role in seceding from the Union first. He captured Columbia, South Carolina, on February 17, 1865, setting many fires which would consume large portions of the city. He went on to defeat the forces of Johnston in North Carolina during the Battle of Bentonville, and eventually accepted the surrender of Johnston and all troops in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas on April 26, 1865, becoming the largest surrender of Confederate troops during the war.

Date: