United States History Student Edition

The War Ends GUIDING QUESTION How did the Union drive the Confederacy to surrender? From the beginning of the war, a goal of the Union was to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond. Petersburg had been the last roadblock. Richmond would not last much longer. The March to the Sea When Sherman took Atlanta in November 1864, he burned much of the city. He then led his troops across Georgia to the coastal city of Savannah, burning towns and crops as they went. This trail of destruction is known as Sherman’s March to the Sea. From Savannah, Sherman went north. Union troops took food, burned houses, tore up railroad lines and fields, and killed livestock. General Sherman’s march was part of a strategy called total war. Total war involves targeting not only the enemy’s army but also its land and people. Sherman hoped that by bringing the horrors of the war to the Southern population, he could help end the war. White Southerners were outraged by the destruction of Sherman’s march. Thousands of enslaved African Americans, however, left their plantations to follow under the protection of Sherman’s army. For them, the March to the Sea was a march to freedom. Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis and his cabinet gathered documents in Richmond. They ordered that bridges and weapons useful to the enemy be burned. Then they fled the city. The next day, as fires continued to destroy the city, Union forces marched in and raised the Union flag over the Confederate capital. The Surrender at Appomattox Court House Lee’s army in northern Virginia was exhausted from weeks of being chased by Grant’s troops. On April 9, 1865, Lee finally agreed to meet with Grant. Union forces had captured the train carrying food to his soldiers and had completely surrounded his army. Lee knew it was over.

Grant accepted Lee’s surrender in a small Virginia town called Appomattox Court House. He provided rations to feed the Confederate troops, allowed them to keep their horses, and promised they could go home undisturbed. Farther south, in North and South Carolina, Alabama, and Texas, fighting continued for several weeks. By the end of May, the rebellion was over. In some places, enslaved African Americans learned for the first time that slavery had ended. One such instance in Texas came to be celebrated as Juneteenth, short for June Nineteenth, which is today a national holiday. The Costs of the War More lives were lost in the Civil War than in any other conflict in American history. The war cost billions of dollars and left many Southern cities and farms in ruins. The North’s victory saved the Union. The war also made clear that the national government was more powerful than the states. Finally, the war freed millions of African Americans. Many questions remained. No one yet knew how to bring the Southern states back into the Union, nor what the status of formerly enslaved African Americans would be in Southern society. Americans would struggle to answer these questions in the years ahead. 7 CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING 1. Identifying Cause and Effect Why did General Lee finally surrender? 2. Explaining How did Sherman’s March to the Sea aid in ending slavery in the South? LESSON ACTIVITIES 1. Narrative Writing Suppose you are a reporter covering Lee’s army at the time of his surrender. Write an article describing the events surrounding his meeting with Grant. 2. Collaborating With a partner, write five questions about the battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Use appropriate military terms such as entrench, flank, charge, and siege . Then research and write the answers to your

questions. Take turns presenting your questions to another pair of students.

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