First Two Years of War

The first big battle was fought at Bull Run in July, 1861, almost in sight of Washington; and the Federal army was badly beaten and retreated in disorder. One reason for the Confederate success was the courage of General T. J. Jackson of the Southern army. Somebody said, "See Jackson there; he stands like a stone wall," and Stonewall Jackson he was called to the end of his life. General George B. McClellan was called to reorganize the Northern army, and he was not ready to move until 1862.

The march of his Army of the Potomac toward Richmond, the Southern capital, was almost stopped (April, 1862) by the coming out of Hampton Roads of a Confederate iron-clad ship -the old naval vessel Merrimac, rechristened the Virginia. Just in the nick of time arrived from the North a little iron ship, Monitor, with a revolving turret, which defeated the Merrimac in the first fight between iron-clads in history. McClellan pushed within sight of Richmond, but was finally beaten by the Confederate army commanded by General Robert E. Lee.

A few weeks later Admiral Farragut captured the city of New Orleans, and thus gained control of the lower Mississippi for the Union.

Another field of warfare in 1861 and 1862 was in the West, where General U. S. Grant, formerly an officer in the Mexican War, was put in command, captured the Confederate forts of Donelson and McHenry, and pushed the whole line farther south. The Confederates at

tacked and were at last repulsed in the fierce battle of Pittsburg Landing, or Shiloh. Four great battles were fought on the Virginia front in the fall of 1862 and the spring of 1863-Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

The critical period of the war came in the summer of 1863. In the East, for the first and only time the main Confederate army advanced into Pennsylvania. It was there headed off by the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, commanded by General Meade. After a terrible three days' fight, ending with the famous charge by Pickett's division, called the "high tide of the Confederacy," Lee's army was beaten and compelled to retreat (July 3, 1863). On the next day, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi, was taken by Grant's army. New Orleans was already in the hands of the Federals, and Lincoln said, "The Father of the Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."

War at Sea

At sea the Federal blockading squadrons reduced the trade of the Confederacy from the British islands of the Bahamas and Bermuda to and from Charleston and Wilmington and other ports. This was part of the so called" anaconda policy" of enclosing the South in a ring of enemies by land and sea, so that the Confederates could not get military and other supplies from outside. Not being a manufacturing region, the South was unable to provide all its own cannon and small arms.

On the other hand, the South fitted out and sent to sea several commerce destroyers, and bought or built several others in England, especially the famous ship of war, Alabama, commanded by Admiral Semmes. This ship and small vessels working with it, captured 65 American merchant ships. These captures aroused a feeling of anger and hostility toward England, which as a neutral power ought not to have allowed either side to build or fit out ships of war on English territory.

The Last Two Years of Fighting

Space does not allow an account of all the important battles, or of the outstanding generals on both sides. After the capture of Vicksburg, the Union armies began to move South to the Tennessee River. Here in 1863 the Union army was badly defeated at Chickamauga by General Bragg's forces. The Federal general, Thomas, held his ground when his commander lost his nerve; and fought so hard. that he earned the name of "The Rock of Chickamauga." The Union army was cooped up in Chattanooga till Grant was put in command, and with him came. General Sherman, who was perhaps the greatest practicer of the art of war in either army. They attacked Bragg's forces on the top of Lookout Mountain; and in the battle of Missionary Ridge (November, 1863), drove him out of his lines, and from that time held the state of Tennessee.

In the spring of 1864 came the final measuring up of strength. Grant was made commander in chief of all the armies, and took

Thomas Jonathan Jackson

Joseph Eggleston Johnston

command in the East. The Confederates gathered all possible force to oppose him under Lee, who blocked him in the terrible Battle of the Wilderness. Then he pushed Lee down, army nearly parallel with army, till they reached the neighborhood of Petersburg, which was the key to Richmond. There the Confederates held and a siege began which lasted all winter.

All this time Sherman was fighting down through the mountains from Chattanooga to Atlanta, which he captured. On the way he fought the battle of Kenesaw Mountain, on the side of which Borglum, the sculptor, is now making tremendous sculptures as a war monument. Admiral Farragut attacked Mobile, and was able to stop up that port, in spite of the use of submarine torpedoes.

Sherman with difficulty obtained permission from Grant to cut through the South. He left Atlanta with about 60,000 men, on his famous "march through Georgia"; and at Christmas reached the seacoast at Savannah, destroying crops and plantations far and wide, and carrying along with him thousands of negro contrabands" who had left the plantations, and also a lot of camp followers called "Sherman's bummers." Charleston was soon after captured, and Sherman marched north through the Carolinas.

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End of the War

The last two great struggles of the war were the battle of Nashville in the west, where General Thomas broke up the Confederate army under General Hood; and the campaign in Vir

ginia when (April, 1865) Lee was obliged to give up his lines at Petersburg. He retreated westward, but was headed off by Grant's army with the aid of the great cavalry general, Sheridan; and Lee was compelled to surrender, at Appomattox, his remaining force to Grant, April 9, 1865. The two commanders had been students at West Point, and when Lee intimated that his officers and soldiers needed their horses, Grant inserted in the terms of peace that they should have them-a fine courtesy from one great man to another, and an acknowledgment that the defeated Confederates were brave men who would go home and make good citizens.

There had been talk about "dying in the last ditch," but Richmond was captured as soon as Lee left Petersburg; the civil government was obliged to flee and President Davis was soon after captured. Lee and other leaders advised their friends that they had been defeated and there was no use in guerilla warfare. Within a few weeks all the Confederate armies and forts were surrendered and the war ended.

North During the War War is a dreadful business full of wounds and deadly sickness and suffering and death. Back of the lines on both sides there was also a chance to work and sacrifice and perhaps die for the cause. Two great organizations similar to the present Red Cross were formed in the North, the Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission; and all over the land were subscriptions and fairs and Ladies' Aid Societies and care for the sick and