American History - Part 106 - Lincoln - Grant leads final campaign - Spotsylvania - Cold Harbor
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 2013-06-20

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.
The victory at Vicksburg went to General Ulysses Grant. He was named commander of all Union armies in the west. Then he was sent to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The Union army there had just been defeated in a battle along a little river called the Chickamauga. Now the Union soldiers were resting and re-organizing in Chattanooga. The Confederate line stretched halfway around the city.
The Confederates had artillery on Lookout Mountain. They controlled every road into the city except a rough one through the mountains. They had blocked the Tennessee River above and below the city. And they had cut the railroad. The Confederate general said he would let hunger force the Union Army to surrender.
Grant arrived in Chattanooga late in October. The city was full of hungry Union soldiers. They had been without supplies for almost a month.
Grant wasted no time. He quickly sent troops to fight the Confederate force blocking the Tennessee River. He sent others to fight the Confederates blocking the road to the nearest Union supply center. Within one week, supply wagons were rolling into Chattanooga. Within a few weeks, the defeated Union army was ready to fight again.
General Grant sent his men against the middle and ends of the Confederate line at the same time.
There were few Confederate soldiers at Lookout Mountain. That end of the line fell easily. The center of the line was along a low hill called Missionary Ridge. It held for a while. Then Union soldiers -- acting without orders -- forced their way to the top of the hill. The Confederate line broke. Southern soldiers threw down their guns and ran for their lives.
The Confederate army withdrew south into the state of Georgia. Tennessee was completely in Union hands. The way was now open for the armies of the North to march into the heart of the Confederacy.
The only general who seemed able to win victories was Ulysses Grant. That is why President Abraham Lincoln named Grant commander of all Union armies. Lincoln depended on him to end the Civil War.
Grant went east in March eighteen sixty-four, five months after the battle at Chattanooga. He decided to make his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac. He said he would not command from an office in Washington. But he went to the city to explain his plans to President Lincoln.
Grant noted that, in the past, the separate Union armies had moved and fought independently. He said they were like a poorly trained team of horses. No two of them ever pulled at the same time in the same direction.
Under his command, Grant said, the Union armies would pull together. They would hit the Confederates with so much strength in so many places that the rebels could not stop them.
Grant said all the armies would attack at the same time.
Grant spent the month of April preparing for the big campaign. The main target, once again, was the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia.
The final Union campaign of the Civil War began on May third, eighteen sixty-four.
So he began to march his men toward a place called Spotsylvania Court House.
Lee moved his men as fast as Grant. When the Union army got to Spotsylvania, the Confederates were waiting behind walls of earth and stone.
For several more days, the two armies fought. At times, they were so close they had no time to load and fire their guns. So they used their guns to hit each other.
The Confederate line bent. But it never broke. Once again, Lee had stopped the Union army.
Grant refused to accept defeat. He said he would fight to the finish, if it took all summer. Once again, he ordered his men to march around the end of Lee's line. Lee quickly pulled his men back to a place called Cold Harbor, not far from Richmond. There they waited.
As he had done in the wilderness and at Spotsylvania, Grant ordered his men to attack hard. It was a slaughter. In less than an hour, seven thousand Union soldiers fell dead or wounded.
Grant finally stopped the attack. The Union soldiers returned to their lines. They left behind hundreds of wounded men.
The campaign had brought it almost to the edge of Richmond, the Confederate capital. But Grant had paid a terrible   more than fifty thousand dead and wounded.
Confederate losses were much   about twenty thousand.
General Grant was beginning to learn an important lesson of the war. The methods of defense had improved much more than the methods of attack.
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