The Battle of Antietam
There were a few more battles after Fort Sumter, the confederates were winning at the beginning of the Civil War, but that all stopped after the battle of Antietam, Maryland. Once the confederates lost that battle it set back their campaign. If they won then the British would have intervened, if the british intervened then they were going to assist the confederates. It was a good thing they lost. A few days after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. In the west, the summer of 1862 the Union destroyed the destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies. Also the Union at Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lee's Confederate incursion north ended at the battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grant command of all Union armies in 1864. At the Wesertern theater, Willliam T. Sherman went east to capture Atlanta, then he marched to sea, destroying Confederate infrustructure along the way. The Union took the remaining resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions, now they could afford to fight battles of attrition through the Overland Campaign going towards Richmond. The Confederate armies that were defending failed which caused Lee's surrender to Grant at the Appomattox Court house on April 9, 1865.
The Battle of Cold Harbor
The battle of Cold harbor was fought during May 31 to June 12, 1864. It was one of the final battles of Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign. This battle is known to be one of the bloodiest battles in the entire Civil War. This battle occured 10 miles northeast of Richmond, Virginia. Thousands of Union soldiers were killed or wounded in a hopeless frontal assault against the fortified positions of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's army. They were able to hold until infantry arrived, which came just in time. But both Grant and Lee, whose armies had suffered enormous casualties in the Overland Campaign, received reinforcements. On the evening of June 1, the Union VI Corps and XVII Corps arrived and assaulted the Confederate works to the west of the crossroads with some success. On June 2, the remainder of both armies arrived and the Confederates built an elaborate series of fortifications 7 miles long. At dawn on June 3, three Union corps attacked the Confederate works on the southern end of the line and were easily repulsed with heavy casualties. Attempts to assault on the northern end of the line and to resume the assaults on the southern were unsuccessful. Grant said of the battle in his memoirs, "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made. No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained." The armies confronted each other on these lines until the night of June 12, when Grant again advanced by his left flank, marching to the James River.