The Great Escape
In some ways, the summer of 1864 was the darkest of the entire Civil War. After the failure of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign, Abraham Lincoln adopted a policy of total war. Desperate to win at the polls in November against the peace candidate George B. McClellan, he launched a war of attrition. All prisoner exchanges would be stopped; Gen. Phil Sheridan would devastate the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia; Gen. William T. Sherman would drive toward Atlanta.
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