MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · May 21 · 1864
ON THIS DAY · 21 MAY 1864
Spotsylvania
8–21 May 1864 — Two weeks of entrenched slaughter; at the Bloody Angle, men fight hand-to-hand for twenty hours in the rain. Grant to Washington: “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
The West finishes first. At Chickamauga (September 1863) the Confederacy wins its last great battle and then besieges the loser in Chattanooga — whereupon Grant arrives, reopens the supply line in five days, and in November his armies storm Missionary Ridge, the center taken by soldiers who charged up the mountain without orders. The gateway city falls (watch the grey-tan spread over East Tennessee), and in March 1864 Lincoln does what no president had done since Washington: gives one man, Grant, command of all the armies. Grant brings a theory, not a route: the Union’s advantage is simultaneous pressure everywhere — five armies advancing at once, so that no Confederate force can reinforce another. “Those not skinning can hold a leg,” says Sherman, translating.
From Chapter 8 — Hard War of The American Civil War, 1861–1865 (JUL 1864).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — Grant’s theory of simultaneity. Since 1861 the Confederacy had survived by railroad — losing one theater’s battle and lending its divisions to another’s (Chickamauga itself was won…
- The turn — The Brock Road crossroads, 7 May 1864. After two days of horror in the burning scrub — a battle Lee arguably won on points — the Army of the Potomac expected the familiar ritual: retreat,…
- What it changed — Petersburg: the siege that is not called one. Pinned to Richmond’s rail junction, Lee’s army digs thirty miles of works it cannot afford to man. Grant extends left, railroad by railroad, for…
Then ask the room: Was Grant a “butcher” — and what would answering that question rigorously require? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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