The Fall of Petersburg and Appomattox

Abstract

Americans experienced the last months of the Civil War as uncertain and full of dramatic events that together finally spelled the Confederacy’s doom. The Union capitalized on its advantages in manpower and materiel, on the command harmony of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his team, and on the political momentum of President Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation policy to seize the prizes of Richmond and Petersburg and send the Confederate government and Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia into flight. Confederates, confronting shortages of manpower and materiel, debated how to prolong the fight and clung to the hope that Lee’s army would win victories that breathed new life into the Confederate project. President Lincoln framed this last season of war as a moral reckoning with slavery and the moment to advance the work of reunion. The final campaigns were a watershed in the process of emancipation, as Lee’s surrender brought many slaves their de facto freedom.