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Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had moved his army deep into Tennessee and was encamped at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the river, awaiting reinforcement from Buell's Army of the Ohio. Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack on Grant there. What followed was the bloodiest day's fighting of the war to that time.
After pursuing Confederate General Robert E. Lee into Maryland, Union Army Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan launched attacks against Lee's army, in defensive positions behind Antietam Creek.
The Battle of Antietam, the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil, was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties.
The Chancellorsville campaign began with the crossing of the Rappahannock River by the Union army on the morning of April 27, 1863. Greatly outnumbering Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, they were confident of success.
Chancellorsville is known as Lee's "perfect battle" because of his risky but successful division of his army in the presence of a much larger enemy force.
Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
When two major assaults were repulsed with heavy casualties, Grant decided to besiege the city . What followed was a critical struggle of endurance for control of the mighty Mississippi.
After his success at Chancellorsville, Lee led his army through the Shenandoah Valley to begin his second invasion of the North. With his army in high spirits, he intended to move the focus of the summer campaign from war-ravaged northern Virginia and hoped to influence Northern politicians to give up their prosecution of the war by penetrating as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even Philadelphia.
The opposing armies began to collide at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, as Lee urgently concentrated his forces there, his objective to engage the Union army and destroy it. Low ridges to the northwest of town were defended initially by a Union cavalry division, which was soon reinforced with two corps of Union infantry. This began a 3-day battle which many consider determined the fate of the War in the Eastern theatre.
After his successful Tullahoma Campaign, Union General Rosecrans renewed the offensive, aiming to force the Confederates out of Chattanooga. In early September, Rosecrans consolidated his forces scattered in Tennessee and Georgia and forced Bragg's army out of Chattanooga, heading south. The Union troops followed it and brushed with it at Davis's Cross Roads. Bragg was determined to reoccupy Chattanooga and decided to meet a part of Rosecrans's army, defeat it, and then move back into the city.
The Battle of the Wilderness was the first battle of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Virginia Overland Campaign against Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Both armies suffered heavy casualties, a harbinger of a bloody war of attrition by Grant against Lee's army and, eventually, the Confederate capital, Richmond.
Union General Ulysses Grant decided that there was a way to get at Richmond and Lee. A few miles to the south, the city of Petersburg contained crucial rail links supplying the capital. If the Union Army could seize it, Richmond would be taken. Through the fall and winter, both armies constructed elaborate series of trenches, eventually spanning more than 30 miles, as the Union Army attempted to get around the right (western) flank of the Confederates and destroy their supply lines.
By March, the siege had taken an enormous toll on both armies, and Lee decided to pull out of Petersburg. He led his army in a desperate dash to Appommatox, hoping to unite with the forces of General Johnston in North Carolina.
