Nevertheless, up to the middle of October the positions of the armies remained unaltered.On the 27th of that mouth the Federals made another general attack, but were repulsed with a loss of 1,500 men.During the next three months there was little fighting, the Confederates having now so strengthened their lines by incessant toil that even General Grant, reckless of the lives of his troops as he was, hesitated to renew the assault.
But in the South General Sherman was carrying all before him.
Generals Hood and Johnston, who commanded the Confederate armies there, had fought several desperate battles, but the forces opposed to them were too strong to be driven back.They had marched through Georgia to Atlanta and captured that important town on the 1st of September, and obtained command of the network of railways, and thus cut off a large portion of the Confederacy from Richmond.Then Sherman marched south, wasting the country through which he marched, and capturing Savannah on the 21st of September.
While he was so doing, General Hood had marched into Tennessee, and after various petty successes was defeated, after two days' hard fighting, near Nashville.In the third week in January, 1865, Sherman set out with 60,000 infantry and 10,000cavalry from Savannah, laying waste the whole country-burning, pillaging, and destroying.The town of Columbia was occupied, sacked, and burned, the white men and women and even the negroes being horribly ill-treated.
The Confederates evacuated Charleston at the approach of the enemy, setting it in flames rather than allow it to fall into Sherman's hands.The Federal army then continued its devastating route through South Carolina, and at the end of March had established itself at Goldsboro, in North Carolina, and was in readiness to aid Grant in his final attack on Richmond.
Lee, seeing the imminence of the danger, made an attack upon the enemy in front of Petersburg, but was repulsed.He had now but 37,000 men with which to oppose an enemy of nearly four times that strength in front of him, while Sheridan's cavalry, 10,000strong, threatened his flank, and Sherman with his army was but a few days' march distant.There was fierce fighting on the 29th, 30th, and 31st of March, and on the 2d of April the whole Federal army assaulted the positions at Petersburg, and after desperate fighting succeeded in carrying them.The Confederate troops, outnumbered and exhausted as they were by the previous week's marching and fighting, yet retained their discipline, and Lee drew off with 20,000 men and marched to endeavor to effect a junction with Johnston, who was still facing Sherman.But his men had but one day's provision with them.The stores that he had ordered to await them at the point to which he directed his march had not arrived there when they reached it, and, harassed at every foot of their march by Sheridan's cavalry and Ord's infantry, the force fought its way on.The horses and mules were so weak from want of food that they were unable to drag the guns, and the men dropped in numbers from fatigue and famine.Sheridan and Ord cut off two corps, but General Lee, with but 8,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, still pressed forward toward Lynchburg.But Sheridan threw himself in the way, and, finding that no more could be done, General Lee and the infantry surrendered, and a few days later Generals Lee and Grant met and signed terms of peace.
General Johnston's army surrendered to General Sherman, and the long and desperate struggle was at an end.
It was a dreadful day in Richmond when the news came that the lines of Petersburg were forced, and that General Lee no longer stood between the city and the invaders.The president and ministers left at once, and were followed by all the better class of inhabitants who could find means of conveyance.The negroes, Irish, and some of the lower classes at once set to work to pillage and burn, and the whole city would have been destroyed had not a Federal force arrived and at once suppressed the rioting.
Whatever bad been the conduct of the Federal troops during the last year of the war, however great the suffering they had inflicted upon the unarmed and innocent population of the country through which they marched, the terms of peace that General Grant agreed upon, and which were, although with some reluctance, ratified by the government, were in the highest degree liberal and generous.
