We Have Done All That It Is Possible for Men to Do and Must Be Resigned to the Result

2018 ◽  
pp. 170-212
Author(s):  
A. Wilson Greene
Keyword(s):  
Army Of Northern Virginia ◽  
Harris Line

This chapter details the heavy fighting that occurred on June 18, 1864 near Petersburg. General Beauregard had withdrawn a second time during the night of June 17-18 and created a new defensive position styled the Harris Line, named after the engineer officer who developed it. Union commander George G. Meade attempted unsuccessfully to orchestrate a coordinated attack against the Harris Line. As during the previous two days, individual corps and divisions assaulted, leading to another series of frustrating and bloody failures. The 1st Maine Heavy Artillery suffered the largest single loss sustained by any regiment during the entire war during one of those attacks and the well-known Colonel Joshua Chamberlain sustained a serious wound during another charge. Robert E. Lee, at last aware of the presence of Grant’s entire force at Petersburg, rapidly shifted the Army of Northern Virginia to reinforce Beauregard. At the end of the day, the Union Ninth Corps came close to breaching the Confederate line, but by sunset the First Petersburg Offensive concluded with the Confederates still in possession of Petersburg.

The Fall of Petersburg and Appomattox

2021 ◽  
pp. 601-618
Author(s):  
Elizabeth R. Varon
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Army Of Northern Virginia ◽  
The Moment

Americans experienced the last months of the Civil War as uncertain and full of dramatic events that together finally spelled the Confederacy’s doom. The Union capitalized on its advantages in manpower and materiel, on the command harmony of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his team, and on the political momentum of President Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation policy to seize the prizes of Richmond and Petersburg and send the Confederate government and Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia into flight. Confederates, confronting shortages of manpower and materiel, debated how to prolong the fight and clung to the hope that Lee’s army would win victories that breathed new life into the Confederate project. President Lincoln framed this last season of war as a moral reckoning with slavery and the moment to advance the work of reunion. The final campaigns were a watershed in the process of emancipation, as Lee’s surrender brought many slaves their de facto freedom.

The Gettysburg Campaign

2021 ◽  
pp. 390-404
Author(s):  
Carol Reardon
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Central Region ◽  
The South ◽  
South Central ◽  
Army Of Northern Virginia ◽  
Significant Area ◽  
General Order

When Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia marched into Pennsylvania in June 1863, five counties in the south-central region of the Keystone State became the first significant area of free soil to experience the destruction that accompanied the passage of rival armies. Despite Lee’s General Order No. 72 that prohibited unauthorized confiscation of civilian property, residents of the Chambersburg area experienced nearly a week of depredations and saw local freeborn African Americans rounded up and sent south into slavery. The major battle around Gettysburg on July 1–3 inflicted massive destruction on the landscape and residents’ livelihoods, in some cases forcing the sale of damaged properties that became the foundation of today’s National Military Park.

The Battle of Fredericksburg

2021 ◽  
pp. 316-330
Author(s):  
Barton A. Myers
Keyword(s):  
Capital City ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Direct Role ◽  
Army Of Northern Virginia ◽  
Army Of The Potomac ◽  
Combat Casualties ◽  
Military Campaign ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

The December 13, 1862, Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, marked the defeat of Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, an important setback for the Union cause and military effort to seize the Confederate capital city of Richmond, Virginia. The battle and military campaign preceding it, which occurred primarily along the Rappahannock River at the city of Fredericksburg and in adjacent Stafford and Spotsylvania counties, was the most lopsided victory the Army of Northern Virginia achieved during the American Civil War, with the Union Army sustaining combat casualties equivalent to more than double those suffered by Confederates. The campaign also saw the use of urban combat, military occupation, and the direct role of civilians at the center of the November and December military maneuvers around the city, which was positioned approximately equidistant between Washington, D.C., and Richmond. Principal battle locations included the Confederate position of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s corps on Marye’s Heights behind the city, the Union artillery position on Stafford Heights, the position of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Confederate corps at Prospect Hill south of the city of Fredericksburg, and the Rappahannock River itself, which was crossed only after Union engineers built a pontoon bridge under fire. The campaign is noted for Union Army shelling of the city itself as a military position, the failed, multiwave Union infantry assaults against fortified positions, and the destruction of property on December 12 as the town itself was sacked.

Confederate Gibraltar

2019 ◽  
pp. 278-291
Author(s):  
Philip Gerard
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Army Of Northern Virginia ◽  
Cape Fear River ◽  
Cape Fear ◽  
Open Port ◽  
The U.S

An immense sand fort guards the entrance to the Cape Fear River and the fairway to Wilmington, the last major open port of the Confederacy, through which blockade runners supply vital materiel for Gen. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. On Christmas Eve 1864, a U.S. Navy armada unleashes the heaviest bombardment in history on the fort, in advance of landing 6,500 assault troops. But the U.S. commander, Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, falters, and only 2,300 troops make it ashore in roughening weather. They are stranded on the cold beach overnight without shelter. In the morning, the fleet sails away. Just three weeks later an even more powerful assault force returns, including USCT, who will play a crucial role in the battle. This assault is led by Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry and after six hours of heavy hand-to hand fighting forces the surrender of the fort.

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