BATTLES 1864-1865
Grant vs Lee
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Grant verses LeeGENERALS OF THE OVERLAND CAMPAIGN
HALLOWED GROUND MAGAZINE, SPRING 2014 ISSUE
GRANTHiram Ulysses Grant — a West Point clerical error gave him his more famous sobriquet — was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, in 1822. He was a mediocre cadet — graduating 21st out of 39 in the class of 1843 — but performed well in battle, winning two citations for gallantry and one for meritorious conduct in Mexico. But when the fighting stopped and Grant was assigned monotonous duties at remote posts far from his wife and family, he turned to the bottle. He resigned his commission in 1854 to avoid being drummed out of the service.
After several unsuccessful, short-lived pursuits — including a brief episode as a farmer — he moved to Galena, Ill., to be a clerk in his family’s store. When the Civil War began, Grant eagerly jumped back into military service, where his talents and experience were recognized. By September 1861, he was given command of the District of Southeast Missouri.
Triumphs at Forts Henry and Donelson and the hard-won capture of Vicksburg made Grant the Union’s premier commander. In March 1864, Lincoln named Grant general-in-chief of the Federal armies and, although the casualties incurred were unprecedented, his campaigns in Virginia forced the war’s conclusion.
In 1868, Grant was elected the 18th president of the United States. His administration was riddled with corruption and scandal, although apparently the graft did not reach to the Oval Office itself. After losing his fortune to a corrupt bank in 1884, Grant began writing about his wartime experiences as a means of financial support. The final chapter of his two-volume Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant was completed just days before he succumbed to cancer at age 63.
Born to Revolutionary War hero Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee in Stratford Hall, Va., on January 19, 1807, Robert Edward Lee graduated second in the class of 1829 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point — without earning a single demerit — and was assigned to the Corps of Engineers. Two years later, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis, a descendant of George Washington. During the Mexican War, Lee served on Gen. Winfield Scott’s staff and earned three brevets for gallantry, both of which contributed to his subsequent appointment as superintendent of West Point.
Because of his exceptional reputation, Abraham Lincoln offered Lee the command of Federal forces in April 1861. But Lee declined and tendered his resignation from the army when Virginia seceded, arguing that he could not fight against his own people. Instead, he accepted a commission in the newly formed Confederate army.
In June 1862, Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia, and his military genius soon became readily apparent. Through masterful and audacious maneuvers, he was able to consistently defeat numerically superior foes; moreover, his integrity earned him the respect and admiration of his men. Despite his considerable efforts, on April 9, 1865, Lee was forced to surrender his weary and depleted army, effectively ending the Civil War.
Lee returned home on parole and eventually became the president of Washington College (now known as Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Va. He remained in this position until his death on October 12, 1870, and is buried in a chapel on campus. His beloved horse Traveller is interred nearby.
Grant verses LeeGENERALS OF THE OVERLAND CAMPAIGN
HALLOWED GROUND MAGAZINE, SPRING 2014 ISSUE
GRANTHiram Ulysses Grant — a West Point clerical error gave him his more famous sobriquet — was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, in 1822. He was a mediocre cadet — graduating 21st out of 39 in the class of 1843 — but performed well in battle, winning two citations for gallantry and one for meritorious conduct in Mexico. But when the fighting stopped and Grant was assigned monotonous duties at remote posts far from his wife and family, he turned to the bottle. He resigned his commission in 1854 to avoid being drummed out of the service.
After several unsuccessful, short-lived pursuits — including a brief episode as a farmer — he moved to Galena, Ill., to be a clerk in his family’s store. When the Civil War began, Grant eagerly jumped back into military service, where his talents and experience were recognized. By September 1861, he was given command of the District of Southeast Missouri.
Triumphs at Forts Henry and Donelson and the hard-won capture of Vicksburg made Grant the Union’s premier commander. In March 1864, Lincoln named Grant general-in-chief of the Federal armies and, although the casualties incurred were unprecedented, his campaigns in Virginia forced the war’s conclusion.
In 1868, Grant was elected the 18th president of the United States. His administration was riddled with corruption and scandal, although apparently the graft did not reach to the Oval Office itself. After losing his fortune to a corrupt bank in 1884, Grant began writing about his wartime experiences as a means of financial support. The final chapter of his two-volume Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant was completed just days before he succumbed to cancer at age 63.
Born to Revolutionary War hero Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee in Stratford Hall, Va., on January 19, 1807, Robert Edward Lee graduated second in the class of 1829 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point — without earning a single demerit — and was assigned to the Corps of Engineers. Two years later, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis, a descendant of George Washington. During the Mexican War, Lee served on Gen. Winfield Scott’s staff and earned three brevets for gallantry, both of which contributed to his subsequent appointment as superintendent of West Point.
Because of his exceptional reputation, Abraham Lincoln offered Lee the command of Federal forces in April 1861. But Lee declined and tendered his resignation from the army when Virginia seceded, arguing that he could not fight against his own people. Instead, he accepted a commission in the newly formed Confederate army.
In June 1862, Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia, and his military genius soon became readily apparent. Through masterful and audacious maneuvers, he was able to consistently defeat numerically superior foes; moreover, his integrity earned him the respect and admiration of his men. Despite his considerable efforts, on April 9, 1865, Lee was forced to surrender his weary and depleted army, effectively ending the Civil War.
Lee returned home on parole and eventually became the president of Washington College (now known as Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Va. He remained in this position until his death on October 12, 1870, and is buried in a chapel on campus. His beloved horse Traveller is interred nearby.
The Overland Campaign
Sheman's March
Andersonville Prison Camp
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Andersonville PrisonANDERSONVILLE, GEORGIA
The deadline that kept prisoners back from the walls of the stockade was marked by a simple fence. Prisoners who crossed the line were shot by sentries who sat in “pigeon roosts” located every 90 feet along the wall. The man in this image was shot reaching under the fence as he tried to obtain fresher water than was available downstream. (Andersonville National Historic Site)
Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was known officially, held more prisoners at any given time than any of the other Confederate military prisons. It was built in early 1864 after Confederate officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners in and around Richmond to a place of greater security and more abundant food. During the 14 months it existed, more than 45,000 Union soldiers were confined here. Of these, almost 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements.
The prison pen was surrounded by a stockade of hewed pine logs that varied in height from 15 to 17 feet. The pen was enlarged in late June 1864 to enclose 261/2 acres. Sentry boxes—called “pigeon roosts” by the prisoners—stood at 90-foot intervals along the top of the stockade and there were two entrances on the west side. Inside, about 19 feet from the wall, was the “deadline,” which prisoners were forbidden to cross. The “deadline” was intended to prevent prisoners from climbing over the stockade or from tunneling under it. It was marked by a simple post and rail fence and guards had orders to shoot any prisoner who crossed the fence, or even reached over it. A branch of Sweetwater Creek, called Stockade Branch, flowed through the prison yard and was the only source of water for most of the prison.
In an emergency, eight small earthen forts around the outside of the prison could hold artillery to put down disturbances within the compound and to defend against Union cavalry attacks.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The first prisoners were brought to Andersonville in late February 1864. During the next few months, approximately 400 more arrived each day. By the end of June, 26,000 men were penned in an area originally meant for only 10,000 prisoners. The largest number held at any one time was more than 33,000 in August 1864. The Confederate government could not provide adequate housing, food, clothing or medical care to their Federal captives because of deteriorating economic conditions in the South, a poor transportation system, and the desperate need of the Confederate army for food and supplies.
These conditions, along with a breakdown of the prisoner exchange system between the North and the South, created much suffering and a high mortality rate. “There is so much filth about the camp that it is terrible trying to live here,” one prisoner, Michigan cavalryman John Ransom, confided to his diary. “With sunken eyes, blackened countenances from pitch pine smoke, rags, and disease, the men look sickening. The air reeks with nastiness.” Still another recalled, “Since the day I was born, I never saw such misery.”
When General William T. Sherman’s Union forces occupied Atlanta, Georgia on September 2, 1864, bringing Federal cavalry columns within easy striking distance of Andersonville, Confederate authorities moved most of the prisoners to other camps in South Carolina and coastal Georgia. From then until April 1865, Andersonville was operated in a smaller capacity. When the War ended, Captain Henry Wirz, the prison’s commandant, was arrested and charged with conspiring with high Confederate officials to “impair and injure the health and destroy the lives…of Federal prisoners” and “murder in violation of the laws of war.” Such a conspiracy never existed, but public anger and indignation throughout the North over the conditions at Andersonville demanded appeasement. Tried and found guilty by a military tribunal, Wirz was hanged in Washington, D.C., on November 10, 1865. Wirz was the only person executed for war crimes during the Civil War.
Andersonville prison ceased to exist when the War ended in April 1865. Some former prisoners remained in Federal service, but most returned to the civilian occupations they had before the War. During July and August 1865, Clara Barton, along with a detachment of laborers and soldiers, and former prisoner Dorence Atwater, came to Andersonville cemetery to identify and mark the graves of the Union dead. As a prisoner at Andersonville, Atwater had been assigned to record the names of deceased Union soldiers for Confederate prison officials. Fearing loss of the death records at war's end, Atwater made his own copy of the register in hopes of notifying the relatives of the more than 12,000 dead interred at Andersonville. Thanks to Atwater’s list and the Confederate death records captured at the end of the War, only 460 of the Andersonville graves had to be marked “Unknown U.S. soldier.”
--Adapted from National Park Service brochure "Andersonville"
Andersonville PrisonANDERSONVILLE, GEORGIA
The deadline that kept prisoners back from the walls of the stockade was marked by a simple fence. Prisoners who crossed the line were shot by sentries who sat in “pigeon roosts” located every 90 feet along the wall. The man in this image was shot reaching under the fence as he tried to obtain fresher water than was available downstream. (Andersonville National Historic Site)
Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was known officially, held more prisoners at any given time than any of the other Confederate military prisons. It was built in early 1864 after Confederate officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners in and around Richmond to a place of greater security and more abundant food. During the 14 months it existed, more than 45,000 Union soldiers were confined here. Of these, almost 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements.
The prison pen was surrounded by a stockade of hewed pine logs that varied in height from 15 to 17 feet. The pen was enlarged in late June 1864 to enclose 261/2 acres. Sentry boxes—called “pigeon roosts” by the prisoners—stood at 90-foot intervals along the top of the stockade and there were two entrances on the west side. Inside, about 19 feet from the wall, was the “deadline,” which prisoners were forbidden to cross. The “deadline” was intended to prevent prisoners from climbing over the stockade or from tunneling under it. It was marked by a simple post and rail fence and guards had orders to shoot any prisoner who crossed the fence, or even reached over it. A branch of Sweetwater Creek, called Stockade Branch, flowed through the prison yard and was the only source of water for most of the prison.
In an emergency, eight small earthen forts around the outside of the prison could hold artillery to put down disturbances within the compound and to defend against Union cavalry attacks.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The first prisoners were brought to Andersonville in late February 1864. During the next few months, approximately 400 more arrived each day. By the end of June, 26,000 men were penned in an area originally meant for only 10,000 prisoners. The largest number held at any one time was more than 33,000 in August 1864. The Confederate government could not provide adequate housing, food, clothing or medical care to their Federal captives because of deteriorating economic conditions in the South, a poor transportation system, and the desperate need of the Confederate army for food and supplies.
These conditions, along with a breakdown of the prisoner exchange system between the North and the South, created much suffering and a high mortality rate. “There is so much filth about the camp that it is terrible trying to live here,” one prisoner, Michigan cavalryman John Ransom, confided to his diary. “With sunken eyes, blackened countenances from pitch pine smoke, rags, and disease, the men look sickening. The air reeks with nastiness.” Still another recalled, “Since the day I was born, I never saw such misery.”
When General William T. Sherman’s Union forces occupied Atlanta, Georgia on September 2, 1864, bringing Federal cavalry columns within easy striking distance of Andersonville, Confederate authorities moved most of the prisoners to other camps in South Carolina and coastal Georgia. From then until April 1865, Andersonville was operated in a smaller capacity. When the War ended, Captain Henry Wirz, the prison’s commandant, was arrested and charged with conspiring with high Confederate officials to “impair and injure the health and destroy the lives…of Federal prisoners” and “murder in violation of the laws of war.” Such a conspiracy never existed, but public anger and indignation throughout the North over the conditions at Andersonville demanded appeasement. Tried and found guilty by a military tribunal, Wirz was hanged in Washington, D.C., on November 10, 1865. Wirz was the only person executed for war crimes during the Civil War.
Andersonville prison ceased to exist when the War ended in April 1865. Some former prisoners remained in Federal service, but most returned to the civilian occupations they had before the War. During July and August 1865, Clara Barton, along with a detachment of laborers and soldiers, and former prisoner Dorence Atwater, came to Andersonville cemetery to identify and mark the graves of the Union dead. As a prisoner at Andersonville, Atwater had been assigned to record the names of deceased Union soldiers for Confederate prison officials. Fearing loss of the death records at war's end, Atwater made his own copy of the register in hopes of notifying the relatives of the more than 12,000 dead interred at Andersonville. Thanks to Atwater’s list and the Confederate death records captured at the end of the War, only 460 of the Andersonville graves had to be marked “Unknown U.S. soldier.”
--Adapted from National Park Service brochure "Andersonville"
http://www.civilwar.org/maps/animated-maps/civil-war-animated-map/