Lecture 19 - To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings

Professor Blight uses Herman Melville's poem "On the Slain Collegians" to introduce the horrifying slaughter of 1864. The architect of the strategy that would eventually lead to Union victory, but at a staggering human cost, was Ulysses S. Grant, brought East to assume control of all Union armies in 1864. Professor Blight narrates the campaigns of 1864, including the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. While Robert E. Lee battled Grant to a stalemate in Virginia, however, William Tecumseh Sherman's Union forces took Atlanta before beginning their March to the Sea, destroying Confederate morale and fighting power from the inside. Professor Blight closes his lecture with a description of the first Memorial Day, celebrated by African Americans in Charleston, SC 1865. Transcript Lecture Page

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Lecture 19 - To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings is an episode from HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877 by Open Yale Courses - David Blight.

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This episode was published on Aug 25, 2017.

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