The Civil War Ends, 1865: The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War, General Sherman, Grant, Lee, Beauregard, Federals, Confederates, Carolinas Campaign, Potter's Raid, Surrender at Citronelle

Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this excellent book by the U.S. Army provide unique insight into the events at the end of the American Civil War. Regardless of the factors tearing the nation asunder, the soldiers on each side of the struggle went to war for personal reasons: looking for adventure, being caught up in the passions and emotions of their peers, believing in the Union, favoring states' rights, or even justifying the simple schoolyard dynamic of being convinced that they were "worth" three of the soldiers on the other side. Nor can we overlook the factor that some went to war to prove their manhood. This has been, and continues to be, a key dynamic in understanding combat and the profession of arms. Soldiers join for many reasons but often stay in the fight because of their comrades and because they do not want to seem like cowards. Sometimes issues of national impact shrink to nothing in the intensely personal world of cannon shell and minie ball. Whatever the reasons, the struggle was long and costly and only culminated with the conquest of the rebellious Confederacy, the preservation of the Union, and the end of slavery. These campaign pamphlets on the American Civil War, prepared in commemoration of our national sacrifices, seek to remember that war and honor those in the United States Army who died to preserve the Union and free the slaves as well as to tell the story of those American soldiers who fought for the Confederacy despite the inherently flawed nature of their cause. The Civil War was our greatest struggle and continues to deserve our deep study and contemplation.

The year 1864 ended triumphantly for the Union armies of the Western Theater. On 16 December, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas' Army of the Cumberland routed Confederate General John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee at Nashville, Tennessee. Five days later, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's army group concluded the "March to the Sea" by capturing Savannah, Georgia. In contrast, the Union war effort in the east appeared less than impressive. On Christmas Day, a Federal joint expeditionary force failed to capture Fort Fisher, a massive earthen fort that guarded Wilmington, North Carolina, the Confederacy's last open seaport. In Virginia, the armies led by Union General in Chief Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Confederate adversary, General Robert E. Lee, remained deadlocked around Richmond—the capital of the Confederacy—and Petersburg. Despite the apparent stalemate in the east, Grant and Sherman, the senior Union general in the West, were confident that their strategy to defeat the Confederacy was working. While Grant's Army of the Potomac and Army of the James kept Lee's Army of Northern Virginia pinned down in its fortifications, Sherman had torn a swath of devastation across Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah, and Thomas had crushed the Confederacy's second-largest field army.