The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume 2 (of 2) A Narrative and Critical History

There the contending armies ceaselessly threatened the two capitals, the conquest of either of which would have been decisive. There both sides concentrated their best armies. T...

When the campaign of Chancellorsville ended in defeat for the Federals, the two armies returned to their former positions at Fredericksburg, confronting each other with a river...

While all this was going on around Petersburg, Sherman, under Grant's instructions, was carrying out the other part of the lieutenant general's program. After securing possessio...

After Shiloh, Grant was left, as he himself has told us, in a state of grave uncertainty as to the limits of his command, and even as to the question whether or not he had any c...

Strategically considered there was no point in the middle South so important to either side at that time as Chattanooga. Either side having possession of that place could hold i...

When Grant took command at Corinth he found matters in an exceedingly confused and embarrassing condition. In the first place his authority was so ill defined that he could do n...

In the meantime great events were occurring which were in some respects more important in their bearing on the war than battles would have been. In these events the war recogniz...

Sherman almost immediately decided to depopulate the town and make of it a rigidly military stronghold. To that end he ordered all the inhabitants, old and young, sick and well,...

The operations of the Confederate war covered a vast area, and included a multitude of actions severe in themselves, and often rising to the dignity of great battles so far, at...

The plan by which General Grant hoped to crush the Confederacy during the summer of 1864 and to make an end of the resisting power of its armies has been set forth already. In t...

All day during the seventh of May the two armies lay still. There was a little cavalry fighting at Todd's Tavern, but the two great armies did not again engage each other in con...

A week of desperate fighting had convinced Grant that he could not break through or overlap or force back Lee's stubborn line of defense at Spottsylvania. After another week dev...

It has already been related that at the end of the battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam, neither army cared to renew the contest. The two confronted each other within deadly firing...

The climatic conditions of the disputed country south and west were excellent for campaigning during the autumn, and tolerable during most of the winter. As neither side was sat...

While Lee was fighting his tremendous campaigns in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and while Grant was battling for Vicksburg, two other armies confronted each other near t...

General Grant was a man of skill and genius in the game of war. But until the summer of 1864 he had never played that game against another great master of it. He had baffled and...

The summer of 1863 presented the most interesting epoch of the war. The baffling of Lee's second attempt to invade the North left the struggle in Virginia about as it had been b...

The Confederate war necessarily involved military operations at very widely separated points at one and the same time. The telling of its story, therefore, of necessity involves...

In the mine operation General Grant had been baffled even more conspicuously than at the Wilderness or at Spottsylvania or at Cold Harbor. All his efforts to break through Lee's...

With the coming of May, 1864, the two great commanding geniuses of the War--Lee and Grant--met each other in conflict. The exact forces commanded by each have never been ascerta...

At this time there was a presidential campaign in progress at the North. Throughout the war, the South had the advantage of a practically united people, while at the North there...

When Halleck assumed command at Pittsburg Landing after the battle of Shiloh he seemed intent, not only upon depriving Grant of the privilege of vigorously following up the vict...

Upon reaching this decision, which had the approval both of General Grant and of the War Department, Sherman's first thought was to equip Thomas for the task of dealing successf...

As the month of April neared its end Grant prepared to execute the plans he had so laboriously formed, and for which he had given to all his lieutenants in every quarter of the...

The situation of the Confederates was now desperate in the extreme. During January an expedition ordered by Grant captured Fort Fisher, at the mouth of Cape Fear river, and made...

Toward the last his lines were swept by a fire from a battery on James Island and by a cross fire of infantry and sharpshooters from a point in Fort Wagner itself. With the inge...

The reader will doubtless remember that when Farragut captured New Orleans in April, 1862, he desired at once to move against Mobile in the hope and confident expectation of cap...

It will be remembered that General Grant set out upon his Virginia campaign of 1864 with the definite and avowed purpose of crushing and destroying Lee in the field. The complet...

From the beginning of the war the Federals had enjoyed the very great advantage of having possession of a navy, and of shipyards in which that navy could be increased almost at...

In the meanwhile Hood had moved northward from in front of Atlanta. His hope had been to draw Sherman in pursuit and induce him to leave the Confederate city. When Sherman shunn...