1864

As the third full year of fighting dawned, questions abounded. Grant had captured two Confederate armies numbering over 40,000 men. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had suffered huge casualties, not only at Antietam and Gettysburg but also in their victorious engagements. If the outcome of the Civil War was inevitable, one might ask, how was the South able to carry on in the face of such losses? At the same time one might ask how the men of the Union, and their women at home, remained willing to accept such sacrifice in the face of an enemy that seemed determined to continue the slaughter at all costs.

In his classic history of the Army of the Potomac, historian Bruce Catton, discussing the reasons why thousands of veterans whose three-year enlistments had expired in the early 1864 were willing to sign up for further service wrote that, "the dominant motive, finally, seems to have been a simple desire to see the job through."94 The same sort of motivation drove Confederates to continue the struggle in the face of difficult odds. Both sides had invested an enormous amount of blood and treasure in the conflict, and it was difficult to cast aside such a costly investment and give up the fight. So the fight went on.

President Lincoln, finally realizing that he had found a general who could finish what others had started, brought Grant east to take command of all the Union armies. Lincoln awarded him the rank of lieutenant general, the first officer since George Washington to have been given that honor. Although Grant was warmly received in Washington, he did not take well to the political environment of the city and quickly made his way to the Army of the Potomac headquarters where he conferred with General Meade, who officially remained the Army's commanding general. Grant went back to Washington for conferences, but when he returned two weeks later, the Army of the Potomac was for all practical purposes now Grant's army. Waiting to take the measure of their new opponent were Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. The war was about to enter its final stage.

As commander of all Union forces, Grant was now able to devise a strategy that would take advantage of the North's superior numbers and the South's dwindling resources. General William T. Sherman had taken over command of the Army of the Tennessee and was prepared to move into Georgia. Grant's strategy was to have his Army of the Potomac capture Richmond while Sherman captured Atlanta, then the two armies would execute a pincer movement on Lee's army in Virginia. Grant assigned additional missions to other officers, Generals Butler and Sigel, but the focus of the final year of fighting was on Grant and Sherman.