HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
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.
(from oyc.yale.edu)
Lecture 19 - To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings
Time
Lecture Chapters
[00:00:00]
1. Introduction: Melville's "On the Slain Collegians"
[00:05:21]
2. Grant's Strategic Changes from the West to the East
[00:13:26]
3. The Psyche of Robert E. Lee
[00:19:17]
4. Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Crater: Grant and Lee in 1864