MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · December 16 · 1864
ON THIS DAY · 16 DECEMBER 1864
Nashville
15–16 Dec 1864 — Thomas comes out of his works and annihilates what Franklin left. The Confederacy’s second great army effectively ceases to exist; the West is decided.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
Hold the summer of 1864 in mind as the Confederacy’s last real chance of victory — not on any battlefield, but at the Northern ballot box. By August Lincoln himself writes a memorandum expecting to lose; the Democrats nominate McClellan on a platform declaring the war a “failure” and demanding an armistice — which every belligerent understands would be independence. Then the map votes first: Farragut closes Mobile Bay in August (“Damn the torpedoes”); on 2 September Sherman wires “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won”; Sheridan burns Early out of the Shenandoah in October. The despair of August becomes the landslide of November: Lincoln, 55% and 212 electoral votes — with the soldiers, voting in the field in the middle of the war they would have to keep fighting, going for him roughly three to one. Pause on the plain fact: a democracy held a free, contested, scheduled election during a civil war, and the losing side accepted the result. That — as much as any battle — is what survived 1864.
From Chapter 9 — The Ballot and the March of The American Civil War, 1861–1865 (NOV 1864).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — Why the election was the real front. The Confederacy’s theory after Gettysburg was explicit in Richmond’s papers: hold everywhere until November, bleed every assault, and let Northern…
- The turn — 8 November 1864 — the Union votes. Had McClellan won, armistice talks — however he personally wavered — would have stopped the armies with the Confederacy intact and slavery…
- What it changed — The Confederacy’s interior collapses. After the march, Confederate soldiers’ letters change: desertion becomes an epidemic driven by letters FROM home — armies can survive defeat, but…
Then ask the room: Sherman’s march is still argued over: atrocity, or the most humane way to shorten a war? Set the terms of a fair verdict. The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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