By
the beginning of 1865, Fort Fisher, North Carolina, was the last port
under the control of the Confederate Army.
Fort Fisher fell to a combined effort of the Union
Army and the US Navy on 15th January.
By
the early weeks of 1865 the Union
Army removed all resistance in the Shenandoah
Valley. General William Sherman
and his army moved north through South Carolina. On 17th February,
Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, was taken. Columbia was virtually
burnt to the ground and some people claimed the damage was done by
Sherman's men and others said it was carried out by the retreating
Confederate Army.
Sherman
now headed towards central Virginia to unite with General George
Meade and his Army of the Potomac east of Richmond
and with General Benjamin
Butler and his forces at Bermuda Hundred.
On 1st April Philip H.
Sheridan attacked at Five
Forks.
The Confederates, led by Major General George
Pickett, were overwhelmed and lost 5,200 men. On hearing the news,
Robert E. Lee decided to abandon Richmond.
President
Jefferson Davis, his family and government
officials, was forced to flee from Richmond.
The Union Army quickly took control and
on 4th April Abraham Lincoln entered
the city. Protected by ten seamen, he walked the streets and when
one black man fell to his knees in front of him, Lincoln told him:
"Don't kneel to me. You must kneel to God only and thank him
for your freedom." Lincoln travelled to the Confederate Executive
Mansion and sat for a while in the former leader's chair before heading
back to Washington.
Robert E. Lee was only able to muster an
army of 8,000 men. He probed the Union Army
at Appomattox but faced by 110,000 men he decided the cause was hopeless.
He contacted Ulysses S. Grant and after
agreeing terms on 9th April, surrendered his army at Appomattox Court
House. Grant issued a brief statement: "The war is over; the
rebels are our countrymen again and the best sign of rejoicing after
the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations in the field."
Six days later, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated
by John Wilkes Booth. A Southern Democrat,
Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, was now
the president of the United States.
It has been estimated that 120,012 men were killed
in action during the American Civil
War. A further 64,582 died of their wounds. However, the greatest
danger facing soldiers during the war was not bullets but disease.
It is believed that 186,216 soldiers died of a variety of different
illnesses during the conflict. Large numbers of the soldiers came
from rural areas and had not been exposed to common diseases such
as chicken pox and mumps. Living in unhealthy conditions and often
denied properly medical treatment, soldiers sometimes died of the
these diseases. For example, 5,177 soldiers in the Union
Army died of measles during the war.
The main killer diseases were those that resulted from living in unsanitary
conditions. Union Army records show that a large number of its soldiers
died from diseases caused by contaminated food and water. This included
diarrhea (35,127), typhoid
(29,336) and dysentery (9,431). Drinking
from streams occupied by by dead bodies or human waste and eating
uncooked meat were the cause of large numbers of deaths. Regular soldiers
who had been trained to be more careful about the food and water they
consumed, were far less likely to suffer from intestinal disease that
volunteer soldiers.
Large numbers of soldiers died from tuberculosis
(consumption). Official records show 6,497 soldiers died of the disease
in the Union Army. However, a much larger
number were discharged because of poor health and died later. It is
estimated that smallpox killed 7,058
Union Soldiers. Another 14,379 died of malaria.
Although the exact number of Confederate
Army deaths from malaria is not known, there were 41,539 cases
in an 18 month period (January, 1862-July, 1863) in South Carolina,
Georgia and Florida. The cause of the disease was not known and soldiers
often slept without the protection of mosquito nets.
When the Union Army arrived in Andersonville
in May, 1865, photographs of the prisoners were taken and the following
month they appeared in Harper's Weekly.
The photographs caused considerable anger and calls were made for
the people responsible to be punished as war criminals. It was eventually
decided to charge General Robert Lee, James
Seddon, the Secretary of War, and several other Confederate generals
and politicians with "conspiring to injure the health and destroy
the lives of United States soldiers held as prisoners by the Confederate
States".
In August, 1865 President Andrew Johnson
ordered that the charges against the Confederate generals and politicians
should be dropped. However, he did give his approval for Henry
Wirz, the commander of Andersonville
to be charged with "wanton cruelty". Wirz appeared before
a military commission headed by Major General Lew
Wallace on 21st August, 1865.
During the trial a letter from Wirz was presented that showed that
he had complained to his superiors about the shortage of food being
provided for the prisoners. However, former inmates at Andersonville
testified that Wirz inspected the prison every day and often warned
that if any man escaped he would "starve every damn Yankee for
it." It also emerged that of the 49,485 prisoners who entered
the camp, nearly 13,000 died from disease and malnutrition.
Henry Wirz was found guilty on 6th November
and sentenced to death. He was taken to Washington
to be executed in the same yard where those involved in the assassination
of Abraham Lincoln had died. The gallows
were surrounded by Union Army soldiers
who throughout the procedure chanted "Wirz, remember, Andersonville."
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