In the execution of this undertaking, geography, as usual, played a significant part in the disposition of forces.  The Appalachian ranges, stretching through the Confederacy to Northern Alabama, divided the campaigns into Eastern and Western enterprises.  Both were of signal importance.  Victory in the East promised the capture of the Confederate capital of Richmond, a stroke of moral worth, hardly to be overestimated.  Victory in the West meant severing the Confederacy and opening the Mississippi Valley down to the Gulf.

As it turned out, the Western forces accomplished their task first, vindicating the military powers of union soldiers and shaking the confidence of opposing commanders.  In February, 1862, Grant captured Fort Donelson on the Tennessee River, rallied wavering unionists in Kentucky, forced the evacuation of Nashville, and opened the way for two hundred miles into the Confederacy.  At Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, desperate fighting followed and, in spite of varying fortunes, it resulted in the discomfiture and retirement of Confederate forces to the Southeast into Georgia.  By the middle of 1863, the Mississippi Valley was open to the Gulf, the initiative taken out of the hands of Southern commanders in the West, and the way prepared for Sherman’s final stroke—­the march from Atlanta to the sea—­a maneuver executed with needless severity in the autumn of 1864.

[Illustration:  GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT]

[Illustration:  GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE]

For the almost unbroken succession of achievements in the West by Generals Grant, Sherman, Thomas, and Hooker against Albert Sidney Johnston, Bragg, Pemberton, and Hood, the union forces in the East offered at first an almost equally unbroken series of misfortunes and disasters.  Far from capturing Richmond, they had been thrown on the defensive.  General after general—­McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade—­was tried and found wanting.  None of them could administer a crushing defeat to the Confederate troops and more than once the union soldiers were beaten in a fair battle.  They did succeed, however, in delivering a severe check to advancing Confederates under General Robert E. Lee, first at Antietam in September, 1862, and then at Gettysburg in July, 1863—­checks reckoned as victories though in each instance the Confederates escaped without demoralization.  Not until the beginning of the next year, when General Grant, supplied with almost unlimited men and munitions, began his irresistible hammering at Lee’s army, did the final phase of the war commence.  The pitiless drive told at last.  General Lee, on April 9, 1865, seeing the futility of further conflict, surrendered an army still capable of hard fighting, at Appomattox, not far from the capital of the Confederacy.

[Illustration:  Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y.

THE FEDERAL MILITARY HOSPITAL AT GETTYSBURG]