As Lee's army collapses, he begins a final attempt to save his men and their cause. It is no longer a gentlemen's fight, but a brutal, bloody and dehumanizing experience for both sides. Finally, Grant pens Lee up at Petersburg, and begins a siege that will do by attrition what the battles have not: reduce Lee's army until it can no longer make war.Īs the final days of the war unfold, all three men understand that wars will never be the same. What no one can know is that the war will continue for another bloody year, Grant pursuing Lee down into central Virginia, through fights at sites now famous for their horror, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor. Here Grant learns that mere numbers will not defeat Lee, and that there is still a great deal of fight left in the southern troops. In May 1864, the first great confrontation with Lee is the Battle of the Wilderness.
Grant begins to move the vast strength of the Union army southward. The third main character in this story is Ulysses S. So Lincoln brings a fresh face to the eastern theater of the war, a man who has built a reputation in Tennessee as a fighter and a winner. President Lincoln is frustrated that his great army has allowed the war to go on for too long, and has allowed Lee to escape too many times. As 1864 dawns, the North is desperate for new leadership. He is now a war hero, and is surprised to learn that the description means more than a medal on his chest. Chamberlain leaves Gettysburg carrying the sickness of malaria, returns briefly to Maine to find a different mood from his family.
As Lee moves his army back into Virginia, he must contend with the loss of many good commanders, and the knowledge that without Stonewall Jackson, his army must learn to fight a different kind of war if the South is to prevail. Lee and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain return, both men veterans now of a horror neither man thought he would ever see. As the two badly bruised armies withdraw away from Gettysburg, both sides understand there is something new about this war, and about the men fighting it.
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