The election of 1864 returned Abraham Lincoln to office, with the promise that the war would be carried on to the bitter end. Although the North had won important victories, many Northerners considered the conflict a stalemate and believed that the South would never be completely defeated. A large faction of war-weary Northerners, among them Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune, demanded a cease-fire and negotiations to end the war. But Lincoln would accept nothing less than the complete restoration of the Union, and President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy would accept no terms for peace except the total independence of the South.

In the spring of 1865, the outcome of the war was finally decided on the battlefield. After a long campaign through eastern Virginia, the Confederate army, commanded by Robert E. Lee, was in a desperate situation. In April, troops...