29 March 1865 A.D. Appomattox Campaign Begins
29 March 1865 A.D. Appomattox Campaign Begins Editors. “Appomattox campaign begins.” History. 2009. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/appomattox-campaign-begins . Accessed 27 Mar 2015. On this day in 1865, the final campaign of the Civil War begins in Virginia when Union troopsunder General Ulysses S. Grant move against the Confederate trenches around Petersburg. General Robert E. Lee’s outnumbered Rebels were soon forced to evacuate the city and begin a desperate race west. Eleven months earlier, Grant moved his army across the Rapidan River in northern Virginia and began the bloodiest campaign of the war. For six weeks, Lee and Grant fought along an arc that swung east of the Confederate capital at Richmond. Theyengaged insome of the conflict’s bloodiest battles at Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor before settling into trenches for a siege of Petersburg, 25 miles south of Richmond. The trenches eventually stretched all the wayto Richmond, and d...