As 1862 drew to a close, President Abraham Lincoln was desperate for a military victory. His armies were stalled, and the terrible defeat at Fredericksburg spread a pall of defeat across the nation. There was also the Emancipation Proclamation to consider. The nation needed a victory to bolster morale and support the proclamation when it went into effect on January 1, 1863. The Confederate Army of Tennessee was camped in Murfreesboro, Tennessee only 30 miles away from General William S. Rosecrans' army in Nashville. General Braxton Bragg chose this area in order to position himself to stop...

Gen. Robert E. Lee concentrated his full strength against Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac at the crossroads county seat of Gettysburg. On July 1, Confederate forces converged on the town from west and north, driving Union defenders back through the streets to Cemetery Hill. During the night, reinforcements arrived for both sides. On July 2, Lee attempted to envelop the Federals, first striking the Union left flank at the Peach Orchard, Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the Round Tops with Longstreet's and Hill's divisions, and then attacking the Union right at Culp's and East...

When the Southern States seceded and organized the Confederacy, Kentucky wavered between Union and Secession. The governor was for Secession, but the legislature was for the Union. So the State, which had been brought up in the school of compromise by her greatest statesman, Henry Clay, compromised in this instance by undertaking to remain neutral. For a time the United States and the Confederacy appeared tacitly to recognize the neutrality of her soil, while both recruited regiments among her people. The first violation of her neutrality was done by General Leonidas Polk, who, with a...

After the Tullahoma Campaign, Rosecrans renewed his offensive, aiming to force the Confederates out of Chattanooga. The three army corps comprising Rosecrans' s army split and set out for Chattanooga by separate routes. In early September, Rosecrans consolidated his forces scattered in Tennessee and Georgia and forced Bragg's army out of Chattanooga, heading south. The Union troops followed it and brushed with it at Davis' Cross Roads. Bragg was determined to reoccupy Chattanooga and decided to meet a part of Rosecrans's army, defeat them, and then move back into the city. On the 17th he...

From the last days of September through October 1863, Gen. Braxton Bragg's army laid siege to the Union army under Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans at Chattanooga, cutting off its supplies. On October 17, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant received command of the Western armies; he moved to reinforce Chattanooga and replaced Rosecrans with Maj. Gen. George Thomas. A new supply line was soon established. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman arrived with his four divisions in mid-November, and the Federals began offensive operations. On November 23-24, Union forces struck out and captured Orchard Knob and Lookout...

On April 27, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker led the V, XI, and XII Corps on a campaign to turn the Confederate left flank by crossing the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers above Fredericksburg. Passing the Rapidan via Germanna and Ely's Fords, the Federals concentrated near Chancellorsville on April 30 and May 1. The III Corps was ordered to join the army via United States Ford. Sedgwick's VI Corps and Gibbon's division remained to demonstrate against the Confederates at Fredericksburg. In the meantime, Lee left a covering force under Maj. Gen. Jubal Early in Fredericksburg and marched with the rest...

Having resolved to continue his advance southward from the Wilderness battlefield, and, if possible, to cut Lee off from Richmond, Grant set his army in motion on the evening of May 7, 1864. As the movement was to be made mainly with a view to getting outside of the Wilderness and inducing Lee to go out and give battle in the open, the first objective points assigned to the various army-corps, and the routes, were merely preliminary; subsequent movements would depend upon the movements of Lee's army. Hancock's corps Second], which occupied the left of the line, was to remain in position...

In the battle of the Wilderness General Grant's instructions to Sherman for his part in the general plan of combined operations, in the spring of 1864, directed him to move against Johnston's army, to break it up, and to get into the interior of the enemy's country as far as he could, inflicting all the damage he could against their war resources. Atlanta, eighty-five miles from Dalton, was Johnston's base. It was a large town at the junction of several railways of strategic importance. One leading through Dalton to Chattanooga, was the line of communications of both hostile armies; one to...

Marching from Cold Harbor, Meade's Army of the Potomac crossed the James River on transports and a 2,200-foot long pontoon bridge at Windmill Point. Butler's leading elements (XVIII Corps and Kautz's cavalry) crossed the Appomattox River at Broadway Landing and attacked the Petersburg defenses on June 15. The 5,400 defenders of Petersburg under command of Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard were driven from their first line of entrenchments back to Harrison Creek. After dark the XVIII Corps was relieved by the II Corps. On June 16, the II Corps captured another section of the Confederate line; on the...

General Sherman admits that in taking Atlanta he had not accomplished all, for Hood's army, the chief objective, had escaped. Yet Hood's demoralized army was left unmolested for three weeks at Lovejoy's Station, only thirty miles from Atlanta, and, was itself the first to resume offensive operations. The Union army spent this time of truce mainly in resting from the fatigues of the three-month campaign, and in making itself secure and comfortable at Atlanta. General Sherman says in his Memoirs: "All the army, officers and men seemed to relax more or less, and sink into a condition of...