Lee, unable to hold Petersburg or Richmond, evacuated those cities and was forced to surrender on April 9, 1865. By April, Sherman was pursuing Confederates under Joseph Johnston in North Carolina. Sherman’s army stormed out of Georgia and through South Carolina, where Charleston fell in mid-February. The year 1865 opened with Union victories in the East that closed Lee’s most vital supply line. But the South continued to fight the end was not yet in sight. Throughout the year, the Union pursued a “hard war” policy, aimed at destroying all resources that could aid the Rebellion. Civilians on both sides strained to help their governments cope with never-ending waves of the sick and wounded, as well as white and black refugees fleeing before armies or following in their wake. Casualty lists had grown to the hundreds of thousands. In spring 1864, the Union and the Confederacy plunged into bloody campaigns that inaugurated a fourth year of fighting, prolonging and increasing the horrors of war. In his brief and eloquent “Gettysburg Address,” Lincoln articulated the purpose of the war and looked beyond it to a time when the nation would once again be made whole. On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln offered “a few appropriate” remarks at the dedication of a cemetery to fallen Federal troops at Gettysburg.
