Sherman tricked Hood into believing he was retreating from the vicinity of Atlanta, but in reality, he was moving to attack Atlanta from the South. The maneuver let Sherman take Atlanta. The Northern press “praised [Sherman] as the greatest general since Napoleon” (775) while pro-Confederacy Southerners were devastated. The victory also hurt McClellan, who had become the Democratic presidential candidate in the 1864 election. With the capture of Atlanta improving the Union’s chances, McClellan felt he could no longer adopt the Peace Democrats’ platform of immediate negotiations. It also helped guarantee that Lincoln would be the Republican nominee in the election despite some of the radical Republicans wanting to replace him with Frémont.

Grant ordered the general Philip Sheridan to raze the crops in the Shenandoah Valley, one of the major food sources for the Confederate armies in Virginia. Early tried launching a “surprise attack” (779) on Sheridan’s army at Cedar Creek. While at first the Union seemed like it was going to lose, it became “one of the more decisive Union victories of the war” (780).

There were still Copperhead conspiracies to incite pro-Confederate revolts in the North. The threat was exaggerated by “Republican propaganda” (783), but McPherson contends there were general insurrection plots. This was especially true in Missouri and Kansas, where violent tensions between anti-enslavement and pro-enslavement settlers, now called the Jayhawkers, remained. It was here that Jesse James and his brother robbed banks and railroads and to “the extent that ideology motivated their depredations, they fought for slavery and Confederate independence” (785). One notorious pro-Confederate guerilla leader was William Clarke Quantrill, whose group massacred 183 men in Lawrence, Kansas. When Confederate forces and the guerillas teamed up in an attempt to take the Missouri capital of Jefferson City, they were defeated so badly that it crushed most of the guerilla movement in Missouri and Kansas.

Reports of Copperhead conspiracies and guerilla activities in Missouri helped Republicans “discredit” the Democrats “as disloyal” (788). In turn, Democratic campaigning relied on “racism” (788), accusing the Republicans of promoting miscegenation (i.e., women and men of different races having children together). However, McPherson believes that racism did not really help Democrats since the war was a far more important issue on the minds of Northern voters. Also, news about the abuse of Black Union soldiers in Confederate prisons caused racist campaigning to backfire in some cases.

Originally prisoners were exchanged according to an agreement called an “exchange cartel” (791). However, this practice stopped in 1863 for two reasons. One was a new Confederate policy of executing or re-enslaving Black Union freeman soldiers, which the Union retaliated against by suspending most prisoner exchanges, and the other reason was that Davis’s government reenlisted Confederate prisoners from the Battle of Vicksburg without making the appropriate exchanges.

Captured Black Union soldiers were either soon killed by the Confederacy, re-enslaved, or even sold as an enslaved person. Lincoln threatened to execute a Confederate prisoner for every Union prisoner-of-war who was executed, but it was decided that such a policy of retaliation would be inhumane and would inspire “a never-ending vicious cycle” (794). When Confederates forced Black prisoners-of-war to work on fortifications, Union officers likewise forced Confederate prisoners to work, which “ended the Confederate practice” (795).

The Confederacy was often careful to distinguish between freemen and free Black Union soldiers. Nonetheless, even free Black prisoners were “singled out […] for latrine and burial details and other onerous labor” (795).

Overall, the treatment of prisoner soldiers was a sensitive issue for the Northern public. Reports of the brutal treatment at the prison camp of Andersonville in Georgia caused outrage and allegations of deliberate attempts to murder Union soldiers. The Northern public called for retaliation, leading the Union government to reduce “war prisoner rations to the same level that the Confederate army issued to its own soldiers,” something “indicative of a hardening northern attitude” (798). By January 1865, the exchange cartel was restored, in no small part because the Confederacy had changed their policies to try to recruit their own Black soldiers.

For the 1864 election, arrangements were made in most states to have Union soldiers vote from their camps. In a few states, Democrats managed to block these measures, due to a “recognition by Democrats that the army had become overwhelmingly Republican” (804). Lincoln won the election easily with “an electoral count of 212 to 21” (805).

In Georgia, Hood switched to guerilla tactics against Sherman’s Union army. Sherman responded by choosing to avoid Hood’s forces and “march through the heart of Georgia to the coast” (808). Along the way, Sherman destroyed anything that could be used by the Confederate army. The looting was also carried out by Georgia unionists and liberated formerly enslaved persons who “lost few chances to despoil their rebel neighbors and former masters” (810).

Unable to stop Sherman from his march east and from capturing the coastal city of Savannah, Hood’s army went to Tennessee to help defend the city of Nashville. However, the Battle of Nashville, fought from December 15th-16th, 1864, was a failure for the Confederacy.

Not only was the Confederacy losing the fight, but the North had gained more resources. While at the onset of the war the loss of the South’s raw materials had damaged the Northern economy, by 1864 the North’s agricultural and industrial production had both actually increased, even compared to pre-war years. This was made possible by the economic demand for war supplies, the creation of jobs for women, and the increased “mechanization of agriculture” (817).

The war also led to economic and industrial expansion in the South, but Northern attacks destroyed most new industry: “In 1860 the southern states had contained 30 percent of the national wealth; in 1870, only 12 percent” (819). This would have a lasting effect on the disparity of wealth between the North and the South for decades to come.

By the start of 1865, the Union had captured Fort Fisher and the city of Wilmington in North Carolina, which gave them control over most of North Carolina’s coast. On February 3rd at Hampton Roads, Virginia, Lincoln and Seward met with three Confederate representatives, Vice President Stephens, the President of the Confederate Senate Robert M.T. Hunter, and the Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell. The Union demanded that federal authority be restored in the South, that there would be no reversal of emancipation, and the total disbanding of the South’s military forces. In exchange, Lincoln offered widespread amnesty for Confederates and financial compensation to enslavers. In the end, instead of a true negotiation, it was a ploy by Davis to try to galvanize Southern resistance by portraying the Union as inflexible.

In the meantime, Sherman next pushed into South Carolina, where his soldiers wanted “to punish the state that had hatched this unholy rebellion” (826). Sherman’s own goal was to demoralize the South. Soon, Sherman was able to capture the major port city of Charleston, South Carolina. From there, Sherman planned to help Grant “‘wipe out’” (830) Lee’s forces in Virginia.

The Confederate press called for the government to take the radical step of enlisting Black soldiers. The move was also endorsed by General Patrick Cleburne, who argued that Black enlistment would help solve the Confederacy’s shortage of manpower and to counter the fact that emancipation had become a “moral cause” (832) for the Union. In 1861, many Southerners believed “slavery and independence were each a means as well as an end in symbiotic relationship with the other, each essential for the survival of both” (833), but desperation led Confederates to consider that they might have to sacrifice enslavement for national independence.

With Lee’s endorsement and after Virginia passed its own law allowing for the recruitment of Black soldiers (albeit without granting such soldiers freedom if they were enslaved), the Confederate Congress passed a bill to allow the establishment of Black regiments. Still, only Virginia recruited any Black regiments, but they “never saw action” (837).

Lincoln pushed for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment banning enslavement. In order to enact it, Lincoln had to lobby a number of Democratic members of Congress. On January 31st, 1865, Congress narrowly voted to approve the Thirteenth Amendment.

Lee’s forces were massively weakened by desertions by soldiers demoralized by the Confederacy’s recent losses. Lee’s army “was the only thread holding the Confederacy together” (845). Grant marshalled a successful assault on Petersburg, which would allow Union forces to finally take the Confederate capital of Richmond. On May 2nd, 1865, the Confederate government fled Richmond for Danville, Virginia, taking with them the Confederate treasury and archives. After Richmond was taken, Lincoln toured the city where liberated African Americans heartily cheered him on.

Lee’s forces tried to link up with the fugitive Confederate government in Danville, but they were surrounded, outnumbered, and demoralized. Lee was advised to turn what was left of his army into guerilla forces, but he refused, not wanting to cause Virginia further devastation. On April 9th, 1865, Lee formally surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse (today just Appomattox), Virginia. The news of the end of the war was welcomed with huge celebrations in the North.

On April 14th, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed by a Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth. The casualties of the war itself amounted to 620,000 soldiers, “360,000 Yankees and at least 260,000 rebels” (854). For Southerners, the war came to represent a point of pride since they believed their ancestors had fought honorably, but “in the long run it was a good thing they lost” (854). This concept became known as the “Lost Cause” (854).

Why did the Confederacy lose? McPherson believes that it was not just because of public demoralization, since the public in the North also had moments of division and pessimism. Nor does he believe it was entirely the fact that there was “a gradual development of superior northern leadership” (857) in both the military and political spheres.

Instead, McPherson argues for “four points” (858) that determined the course and outcome of the war: The early victories of Jackson and Lee “arrested the momentum of a seemingly imminent Union victory” (858); the decisive Confederate defeats at Antietam and Perryville fatally undermined Confederate attempts to win over European allies; the battles at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga made a Union victory much more likely; and finally, the capture of Atlanta and the victories in the Shenandoah Valley made the Union’s triumph inevitable. Such victories and defeats shaped public opinion on both sides. Ultimately McPherson believes it was “contingency” (858) resulting from every battle and election that resulted in the Confederacy’s defeat and the Union’s victory.

McPherson sees the important consequences of the Civil War as the cementing of the idea of the United States as a nation, rather than a collection of states; the strengthening of the national government and its increased involvement in matters of “social welfare” (859); and the North and its “future of industrial capitalism” (860) replacing the South with its traditional hierarchical society as the mainstream of political and social thought in the United States. McPherson concludes, “Union victory in the war destroyed the southern vision of America and ensured that the northern vision would become the American vision” (861).