March 26, 1865: Lincoln at City Point, Planning the Beginning of the End

[Draggingtree]

Focus On: Civil War

 

March 26, 1865: Lincoln at City Point, Planning the Beginning of the End

 

By: George S. McGovernDate:March27 , 2012

 

General Sherman’s mighty and relentless march continued through the winter. He had reached Savannah at Christmas, and then turned his destructive machine north into South Carolina. “The devil himself couldn’t restrain my men,” said Sherman. “I almost tremble at her [the South’s] fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems to be in store for her.” Charleston fell in mid-February, and Sherman set his sights on the rear of Lee’s faltering Army of Virginia.

 

Since June 1864, Lee had been rendered immobile at Petersburg, just a few miles south of the capital city of Richmond. The junction point of five railroads, Petersburg was the Confederacy’s essential supply center, and Grant knew that if he could take it, he could take Richmond itself. The federals matched rebel fortifications with trench lines that extended for thirty miles along its southern and eastern perimeters. For ten months Grant had launched a series of assaults on the city but had been met with stubborn, if ever-weakening, resistance on all fronts. Eventually, Grant believed, Lee’s line of defense would be stretched so thin that it would break.

 

Grant invited the Lincolns to Union headquarters at City Point, Virginia, just ten miles northeast of Petersburg. On March 23, Lincoln and Mary, her maid, twelve-year-old Tad, and two guards boarded the River Queen and sailed down the Potomac, while Edwin Stanton, concerned for Lincoln’s safety http://www.commandposts.com/2012/03/march-26-1865-lincoln-at-city-point-planning-the-beginning-of-the-end/