Civil War

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. In his overland campaign, General U.S. Grant planned to destroy the Confederate army and capture Richmond.

The news of the fall of Atlanta on July 22, 1864, was a much-needed boost to Union morale. He surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant at The killing lasted for most of the day. The result was a compressed tangle of men with nowhere to go and exposed to deadly Confederate fire. Grant, who said it was “the saddest affair I have ever witnessed in the war.” At the cost of over 5,000 casualties for both sides, at the end of the day, nothing had been gained by a bold Union plan to blow a hole in the Confederate lines at Petersburg. On the first day’s fighting, this weakness nearly resulted in a Confederate defeat as the Union army overran and captured about 2,000 Confederate defenders, only to be routed and pushed back during the disorganized chaos of the aftermath. So, the Battle of the Wilderness was Grant’s “right of passage” in his first encounter with the legendary General Robert E. In the words of Grant, “…the fact of having safely crossed (the Wilderness) was a victory.” Just five days after the Battle of the Wilderness, instead of giving up and heading home, Grant decided to continue his Overland Campaign. The desperation arose from close quarters of the battle area. In the end, the Confederates lost the numbers game. From the Union Army’s running the gauntlet in the Virginia Wilderness to the siege of Petersburg, about 55,000 Union soldiers died in frontal assaults on dug-in Confederates during a series of Civil War battles.