March of Sherman to the sea
Sherman marched from Atlanta on November 15, 1864 in the direction of Savannah. In this case, the northerners had the problem of guarding communications from attacks by enemy units. Sherman solved this problem in an unusual and radical way, abandoning any supply lines and ordering the troops themselves to supply themselves with food at the expense of supplies confiscated from the local population. December 21, 1864 Savannah was captured.
On February 1, the Sherman army marched from Savannah to the north to join the main Grant forces. The advance through South Carolina, accompanied by significant damage, ended with the capture of Charleston on February 18 . A month later, Union armies met in North Carolina.
The Appomattox Campaign and the Final of the War
By the spring of 1865, Grant had an army of 115 thousand people. Lee had only 54 thousand people, and after the unsuccessful battle at Five Fox (April 1), he decided to leave Petersburg, and on April 2 to evacuate Richmond. The remnants of the army of the southerners retreated while fighting on April 9, 1865, surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. After his arrest on May 10, J. Davis and members of his government, the Confederation ceased to exist. The Battle of the Palmito Ranch took place on May 12-13 – the last battle of the civil war (won by the Southerners, but meaningless due to the general defeat of the Confederation).
Actions on the sea
By the beginning of 1865, military operations at sea were almost completed. The federal blockade has intensified so much that blockade breakers could no longer make their way to the ports of the southerners; thereby, the Confederation was finally cut off from Europe and deprived of supplies. A certain role in this was also played by the Confederation Government itself, which at the end of 1864 banned the importation of luxury goods (which the owners of blockade traders sold in the south at speculative prices). But this delayed measure only undermined the business of the owners of blockade breakers, making the blockade a less profitable business, despite the fact that during this period the danger of a seizure of a vessel by the federal fleet increased many times over.
The amphibious landing against Fort Fisher, under Wilmington, was the last large-scale operation at sea during the war. This port was the last to which blockade breakers could sometimes make their way. He played a critical role in supplying General Lee’s army near Richmond. To solve this problem, the federal fleet assembled almost all of the available forces into the strike squadron and, after a long bombardment from the sea, took up Fisher’s assault landing on January 23-25, 1865.
The end of the war
The capitulation of the remaining units of the Confederation army continued until the end of June.
A group of confederate naval forces continued to function after the official surrender. The CSS cruiser Shenandoa, operating in the Pacific, caused significant damage to the northerly whaling fleets before the captain found out that the war was over. In the Atlantic, the French battleship CSS “Stonewall Jackson” built in France crossed the ocean and arrived in Havana just a few days after the war ended.
A great consequence of the war was the death of President Lincoln. April 14, 1865 a supporter of southerners committed an assassination attempt on him ; Lincoln was mortally wounded and, without regaining consciousness, died the next morning.
Sources:
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