The Shenandoah Valley Campaign March-November 1864 (The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War)
As 1864 began, the outlook was grim for Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his generals. The encouraging victories in 1863 at Chancellorsville, Virginia, and Chickamauga, Georgia, were diminished by the repulse of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and by the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The signs were clear that the Confederacy had lost the strategic initiative. Davis now had to conserve Southern resources to fight a defensive war. He had to hope that either Union defeats in 1864 would bring the North to the negotiation table or that a war-weary Northern electorate would oust President Abraham Lincoln from office in November and replace him with someone willing to make peace.
56 pages
