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7 H the fall of the confederacy july 1864–march 1865 Lincoln and Seward met them at Fortress Monroe and told them that nothing but unconditional surrender would be accepted. That is we would lay down our arms—go to our homes and submit to the laws of the Washington government; in other words have our property confiscated, our slaves emancipated, our leaders hung, and we become serfs in the land of our fathers, then he (Abraham 1st) might exercise his pardoning power with liberality. We have the alternatives of submission or war. —Charles F. James, February 7, 1865 V irginia Confederates started the second half of 1864 in their weakest military position since the war began. Although they had inflicted massive casualties on Grant’s armies, they had su√ered immensely. The Overland campaign cost Lee’s army 33,000 casualties.∞ Worse still, they had been driven back to within twenty miles of Richmond. The summer of 1864 brought uncertainty among Confederates, unsure if they could repulse the Yankees or even hold them at bay. In the Shenandoah Valley, long a bellwether of Confederate fortunes, Confederate troops were decisively beaten and driven into disarray. By late 1864, it became clear to most soldiers that the Union would defeat the Confederacy. The pressure on supplies denied sustenance to both civilians and soldiers, divisions among Confederates flared, and Lincoln’s reelection signaled the political failure of the Confederate military e√ort. In response to their impending defeat, men began leaving the army in the winter of 1864–65, and this process escalated through the spring. Poorer soldiers may well have been overrepresented among those men who abandoned the army in late 1864 and early 1865.≤ Their families su√ered more than wealthier families, and they may have decided that the likelihood of Union victory finally made resistance futile. Nonetheless, soldiers’ decisions to leave in late 1864 and early 1865 did not necessarily convey their abandonment of the Confederacy’s war goals.≥ Rather, they recognized the impending defeat of the Confederacy. As the debates over slave soldiers and the Peace Commission in early 1865 would show, many soldiers remained committed to the goals of the Confederacy even after they realized that the state 166 H war without end could not survive. The soldiers’ approach, of admitting military defeat but continuing to support the ideals for which they fought, cast doubt on northerners ’ accomplishment even before they attained it and predicted a dark future for a reunified America. L ocated twenty miles south of Richmond, Petersburg protected railroads entering the Confederate capital from the southeast, southwest, and west. Grant understood that if he could take Petersburg, Richmond would fall, and he began devising and implementing plans to drive the rebel forces from the line of entrenchments that circled it. The entrenchments at Petersburg encompassed more territory than any others in the Confederacy , and Grant lead nine di√erent o√ensives against the lines between mid-June 1864 and early April 1865. The defenses of Petersburg and the tenacity of Confederate soldiers manning the works ensured a long struggle to control the town; the siege at Petersburg lasted almost ten months. The stalemate produced another unpredictable shift in the nature of the war. Although Confederate soldiers contended with scarcity and hardship that reminded many of the lean days of 1862, the process of fighting at Petersburg mutated into something new and horrible. Most historians use the term ‘‘trench warfare’’ to characterize Petersburg, intentionally summoning images of World War I to describe the environment within which Confederate and Union soldiers fought. Contemporaries had no such example to reflect on, so they awkwardly constructed their own meaning out of the experience. Over the course of the conflict, most veterans developed a sense of the purpose behind their movement as well as a finely tuned sense of when to expect a battle, but the novelty of the situation at Petersburg weakened this ability. In response, most infantrymen simply resigned themselves to their place. Without a doubt, men considered where they were, complained about conditions, and argued over purposes, but the initial commitment to fighting at Petersburg was fueled by general confidence in their army, supreme confidence in Lee as a leader, and a limited ability to conceptualize the direction of the war. One Virginian serving under Lee noted how much he wished he were back home in the Valley, but knew that would come soon enough. ‘‘We are all in...

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