SHERMAN = 1864		Sherman’s March to the Sea	Atlanta to Savannah	Union	Gen. Sherman drove the Union armies of the West in the decisive push from south through Chattanooga, Atlanta and the "march to the sea" across Georgia. In these campaigns Sherman's troops blazed a wide path of destruction that destroyed the Confederacy's will and ability to fight.
GRANT = April 9	1865	Battle of Appomattox Courthouse	Virginia	Union	Early on April 9, the remnants of John Broun Gordon’s corps and Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry formed line of battle at Appomattox Court House. Gen. Robert E. Lee determined to make one last attempt to escape the closing Union pincers and reach his supplies at Lynchburg. At dawn the Confederates advanced, initially gaining ground against Sheridan’s cavalry. The arrival of Union infantry, however, stopped the advance in its tracks. Lee’s army was now surrounded on three sides. Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9. This was the final engagement of the war in Virginia.

he surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ended the Civil War. The nation’s return to peace marked the opening of an age that would raise the United States to new and undreamed of heights in wealth, productivity, and world influence. But few could sense that promising destiny then as Union and Confederate forces laid down their arms for good after four years of bloodshed. Whatever relief this event inspired was tempered by grieving on both sides for the great loss of human life the conflict had brought. In the devastated South, economic recovery seemed almost insurmountable; in the North, the joy of victory was quickly overshadowed with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Yet for the future of the reunited country, the fruit of victory, as Lincoln had eloquently stated in his second inaugural address, was the expulsion of slavery once and for all from the American soil. In this profound sense the war gave birth to modern America.