The stalemates at Petersburg and Atlanta spread despair throughout the North. Many felt Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's strategies had turned the war into a draw. The high Union death rate in all theaters (110,000 in three months), coupled with reports that Northern prisoners at Andersonville, Georgia, were dying at a rate of one hundred a day, combined to revive antiwar sentiments. Even faithful Republicans became swept along by Northern discontent; some called for President Abraham Lincoln to drop emancipation as a war aim. Many Republicans became convinced that the president would lose in the upcoming November 1864 elections to his Democrat opponent, former Union general-in-chief George B. McClellan.

Atlanta.

Nevertheless, the war still raged, and Northern morale continued to swing in response to reports from the battlefield. A glimmer of optimism first emerged in August when Adm. David Farragut's wooden fleet maneuvered around underwater...