9. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
1865: THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOUTH
CONTENTS
 Sherman heads north from Savannah through the Carolinas
 Lincoln begins his second term (March 4)
 The crushing of the Deep South (March-April)
 The Fall of Petersburg and Richmond
 Lee's surrender at Appomattox (April
9)
 Lincoln is assassinated (April 14)
 Taking stock of it all
The textual material on this webpage is drawn directly from my work
America – The Covenant Nation © 2021, Volume One, pages 314-318.
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A Timeline of Major Events during this period
| 1865 |
The collapse of the South
Jan Congress passes the 13th Amendment ending slavery in the US
Feb-Mar Sherman heads his troops north from Savannah through the Carolinas ... with Confederate resistance collapsing everywhere
Mar Lincoln delivers his famous Second Inaugural Address ... reminding Americans of their covenant with God
Apr Both Petersburg and Virginia's capital at Richmond are brought to defeat (Apr 3)
Lee surrenders to Grant at the Appomattox Court House (Apr 9)
Lincoln is assassinated by Booth (Apr 14)... ending any possibility of reconciliation between the North and the South
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SHERMAN HEADS NORTH FROM SAVANNAH THROUGH THE
CAROLINAS |
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After a month's rest in Savannah, Sherman turned
his army northward toward Virginia, with the same intention as had been
the object of his march through Georgia: to cut a wide swath of
destruction through the South in order to cripple Southern morale – and
help bring the war to an end. Again, with little Confederate
resistance, by mid-February he had reached the South Carolina capital
city of Columbia, whose central city – like Atlanta – proceeded to burn
to the ground (to this day no one is sure whether by Union troops or by
retreating Confederate forces). A week later Wilmington, North
Carolina, surrendered, the Confederacy thus losing its final seaport
(although it had been largely shut down earlier by the Union blockade).
As he headed his troops through North Carolina, he encountered
torrential rains and snake-infested swamps along the way. But North
Carolina had never been very enthusiastic anyway about the Confederate
cause and Sherman's troops made their way through the state without
their usual devastation along the way. In the only serious engagement
with enemy troops in North Carolina, Sherman's forces overran
Confederate General Johnston's Confederates at Bentonville on March
19–21. At this point Confederate resistance was collapsing rapidly.
|
 Columbia, South Carolina,
after Sherman's army came through
National
Archives
LINCOLN
BEGINS HIS SECOND TERM |
|
In the meantime, Lincoln was sworn in to the
office of the Presidency for a second term. Lincoln sensed that the war
was finally drawing to a close, although exactly when the killing might
end was still an uncertain matter. But in his Second Inaugural Address,
Lincoln was already looking to what lay ahead as the Union moved to
reunite and mend the wounds of the war. He reviewed the course of the
war, spoke lengthily of the hand of God in using the war to transact
justice in a morally challenged (slavery) America, and looked forward
to a postwar healing of the entire nation, North and South. In the
first part of this address he went over the origins of the war. He then
continued:
... Neither
party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it
has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the
conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should
cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental
and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and
each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any
men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread
from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be
not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither
has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
He then explained that slavery was one of
those offenses against God that God would allow – but only until such
time as he was ready to exact his judgment, through the terrible war
they had been experiencing.
If we shall
suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through
His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both
North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the
offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of
war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until
all the wealth piled by the bond man's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said the judgments of the
Lord, are true and righteous altogether.
He concluded:
With malice
toward none; with charity for all; with a firmness in the right, as God
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are
in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves,
and with all nations.
These were the words of a great leader,
made ever wiser by the very impossibility of meeting the challenges he
had facing him solely through his own intellectual abilities. Lincoln
had learned to persevere in the face of massive uncertainty and huge
risk, simply by trusting that he was merely a servant of the will of
God himself and that it was up to God – not Lincoln – to bring the true
and the good to bear in this Covenant nation that God himself had,
centuries earlier, called into being. Indeed, this was the kind of
wisdom that few American leaders after Lincoln were able to match even
on a partial basis.
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Abraham Lincoln's 2nd
Inauguration
- March 4, 1865
Library of Congress
THE
CRUSHING OF THE DEEP SOUTH
(March-April) |
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After his victory at Nashville, Thomas sent
General James Wilson to head south through Alabama all the way to the
Gulf coast. Following a policy similar to Sherman's, Wilson destroyed
the last of the South's industrial capacity as he went, notably at
Birmingham and Selma (where he also crushed Nathan Forrest's
Confederate cavalry), and even burned down the University of Alabama at
Tuscaloosa in the process.
At the same time a Union army under
Edward Canby overwhelmed the Confederate defenses at Spanish Fort,
which in turn finally brought the town of Mobile to surrender (April
9).
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Confederate Cavalry General (and future KKK leader) Nathan Bedford Forrest
Union Gen. James H. Wilson
Union Gen. Edward R.S. Canby
THE FALL OF PETERSBURG AND RICHMOND
(April
1-3) |
|
Upon Sheridan's return to Petersburg from the
Shenandoah Valley, he was given orders by Grant to undertake a flanking
attack to the West of Petersburg, to cut off the final supply line
supporting Petersburg. Confederate General Pickett was sent by Lee to
counter Sheridan's move, a move initially successful, but then set back
with a major defeat at Five Forks delivered by Sheridan on April 1st.
The next day Grant's forces attacked a greatly weakened and thinly
stretched line of Confederate troops south and southwest of Petersburg,
and swept away the Confederate defense. Lee pulled his forces from both
Petersburg and Richmond and headed them west with the intention of then
turning south to join up in North Carolina with what was left of
General Johnston's Confederate army. Both cities were quickly occupied
by Union troops on April 3rd, though most of the Union troops were sent
in pursuit of the fleeing Confederates. But the Confederate army was
finding itself cut off from supplies and was being forced in huge
numbers into surrender.
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Richmond after the surrender
- 1865
Richmond in ruins – April
1865
National
Archives
The Richmond Arsenal
National
Archives
Silhouette of ruins of Haxall's mills -
1865
National
Archives
The ruins of the Gallego
Flour Mills, Richmond – 1865
Matthew Brady – National
Archives
The Confederate Capitol building
- Richmond
Jefferson Davis's house -
Richmond
LEE'S SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE
(April 9) |
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Lee's hope to join his forces with Confederate
troops still operating in North Carolina was anticipated by Union
cavalry, who positioned themselves in front of his path of retreat.
When in attacking these cavalry units at dawn on the 9th, Lee came
immediately to realize that they had been joined by two corps of Union
infantry, and that effectively he was surrounded by a Union army far
larger than his. He also was running very short on food and supplies.
At this point Lee knew that it was time to surrender. At 8:00 in the
morning he rode to the McLean House to meet Grant to sign the terms of
surrender.
Lee's surrender effectively brought the Confederate will to continue to
a nearly complete halt. Skirmishes here and there between the two sides
would continue for a while longer. But for all practical purposes, the
war was over.
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LINCOLN IS ASSASSINATED
(April
14) |
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Lincoln was already at work seeking ways to bring
the nation back together ... minus slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, ending slavery anywhere within the United
States, had been ratified by the Senate in April of 1864 and in the
House of Representatives finally (following a bitter contest there) at
the end of January (1865), just a few months previously. It was yet to
be submitted to the states – Northern only at that point – for their
ratification. But the amendment was expected to be easily approved by
the states.
As Lincoln had stated in his second
inaugural address, he was indeed looking for ways "to bind up the
nation's wounds; . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just,
and a lasting peace." That would not be an easy task, given the level
of hatred still smoldering in many Northern hearts, and given the
bitterness Southerners felt about their humiliating loss to the
Unionists. However, achieving a just and lasting peace was where he was
now directing all his efforts
.
But success in that endeavor was not to be. On the night of April 14th
the actor John Wilkes Booth was able to complete part of his plot to
kill Lincoln and Grant while attending together the play Our American
Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington (but Grant had instead left to
visit his children in New Jersey), as well as Vice President Johnson
and Secretary of State Seward (the legal successors to a vacated
presidency). Lincoln was shot in the back of the head – and then Booth
escaped by leaping from the balcony to the stage and then fleeing the
city. Lincoln died early the next morning. Meanwhile Seward was
attacked and nearly killed the same night by another of the plotters,
who after repeated attempts to stab Seward to death finally fled into
the night when confronted by other members of Seward's family. Seward
survived. Booth was found with a co-conspirator in Virginia twelve days
later, surrounded and shot. Arrests of other members of the plot soon
followed. On July 7, four of the conspirators were hanged.
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Lincoln's last portrait photo
- showing a very wearied President
Ford's Theater (April 14)
John Wilkes
Booth
Lincoln Dies (April 15)
Tracking down and executing
the conspirators
Reward poster for Booth and
associates
The hanging of the conspirators
in Lincoln's assassination
The hanging of the conspirators
in Lincoln's assassination
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And so the war was over. The South found itself
desolate and the North simultaneously found itself in a condition of
profound mourning. The whole thing had been a sad tragedy, pushed to
monumental proportions by the inability or unwillingness of American
leaders before Lincoln to confront the slavery issue directly. It
finally took not political reason, but war and devastation of
monumental proportions to bring this burning issue to a resolution. But
so often is this the case. Passion, not Reason, plus the mysteries of
circumstances seemingly beyond human control, quite frequently bring
human crises to a resolution ... not pretty, but well resolved.
Most tragically of all, a Southern bullet
had taken the life of the one person who could have healed the nation's
wounds and brought the South back to life more quickly than turned out
to be the actual case. As it was, the bullet left many in the North
without pity for the South and its vast suffering, and left the South
itself to begin a process of recovery that would take generations to
complete. Such is often the cruel irony of history.
1Of
the approximately 2.6 million who had enlisted in the Union army and
the 1 million in the Confederate army, 360 thousand Union and 258
thousand Confederate soldiers had died either from battlefield deaths
or eventually from wounds, disease, etc. The total casualty count is
around 1.5 million of those 3.6 million men serving. In addition to the 620 thousand
deaths, there were 476 thousand counted as wounded and another 400
thousand as captured and dying in prison, or missing. One in four of
the Civil War soldiers never returned home after the war. The number of
Americans killed in the Civil War exceeded the total of the American
losses in all of its other wars from the War of Independence through
the Korean War (battlefields.org/ learn/articles/civil-war-casualties).
Fredericksburg, Virginia,
after two battles
 Atlanta at war's
end
Charleston's Broad Street
at war's
end
Preparing for the public execution of Henry Wirz,
former commander of the Confederate Prison at Andersonville, Georgia – November
1865
Library of Congress
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