Total War, Union Victory, and the War's Legacy

Lincoln named Ulysses S. Grant general-in-chief of all Union armies in March 1864, and Grant pressed a coordinated, multi-front strategy of continuous attrition that the Confederacy's more limited resources could not sustain. His costly Overland Campaign against Lee in Virginia — including the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor — gave way to a nine-month siege of Petersburg, while General Philip Sheridan devastated the agricultural Shenandoah Valley, long considered the Confederacy's breadbasket.