Lincoln could not win the pivotal election of 1864 unless they started to win again. Everything depended on the fighting men of the Union. Historian James McPherson explains, “By the fourth of July the two main Union armies seemed to be bogged down in front of Richmond/Petersburg and Atlanta after suffering a combined total of ninety-five thousand casualties in the worst carnage of the war.” With the peace wing of the Democratic party gaining strength, the Confederacy pursued a military strategy of holding out until the Northern elections and inflicting heavy casualties on attacking Union forces to turn the electorate against President Lincoln. Farragut’s success set the stage for several more victories in the following months that ensured Abraham Lincoln’s reelection, which in turn guaranteed that the war would be carried on to a victorious conclusion.Īlthough the Northern people and their president had suffered many dispiriting moments throughout the war, at no time did their morale sink lower than in the summer of 1864. The Battle of Mobile Bay was the first unequivocal strategic Union victory of 1864. By sealing one of the last major Southern ports, another Confederate gate to the outside world had been nailed shut. Over the next two and one-half weeks, the Union ships, with the assistance of army troops, forced the surrender of all three of Mobile’s forts and gained control of the bay. The Union navy eventually sank or captured two smaller ships and damaged the Tennessee so badly that she surrendered. Once into the bay, Farragut’s force engaged in a bloody firefight with a small Confederate fleet led by the formidable ironclad CSS Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, Union Rear Admiral David Glasgow Farragut led his flotilla past the Confederate defenses at Mobile, Alabama.
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