In the East, Hooker had intended to launch another campaign against Lee after Chancellorsville. On May 13, Lincoln met with Hooker in Washington. There he gave the general a letter indicating that the time to hit the enemy’s extended lines of communication had passed. Lincoln now expected Hooker to do no more than keep the Confederates at bay with occasional harassing cavalry raids while he put the Army of the Potomac back in good condition.

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Over the course of the next few weeks, General Robert E. Lee launched his second invasion of the North in less than a year. It was Hooker’s job to shadow the Confederates and keep his army between the enemy’s forces and Washington. Every decision had to be checked with Lincoln, for he had by then lost nearly all confidence in the Army of the Potomac’s commander. Realizing that the president had no faith in him, Hooker offered his resignation, and perhaps to his surprise, Lincoln immediately accepted it.

The president promoted Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, a corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, to command the army. Halleck informed Meade that he was ‘free to act as you may deem proper under circumstances as they arise.’ Lincoln had chosen Meade because the general hailed from the state in which a major battle was likely to be fought. Lincoln believed that Meade, a Philadelphian, would lead his army well in Pennsylvania, ‘on his own dunghill.’

The Army of the Potomac met the enemy near the town of Gettysburg, Pa., on July 1. Once the battle was joined, Lincoln kept up with the action via telegrams sent to the War Department. There he read Meade’s dispatches on the first, second and third days of the battle. The last told of the enemy’s withdrawal from the battlefield. Victory had been achieved.

Meanwhile, Grant’s campaign to capture Vicksburg was making steady progress. His main problem was that he faced two separate Confederate armies in Mississippi. One occupied Vicksburg, while the other was assembling at Jackson. Not wanting these two forces to unite, Grant moved his army between them.

Grant’s forces clashed with elements of the Confederate troops from Vicksburg at Champion’s Hill on May 16, and the Southerners then retreated into the defenses around Vicksburg. Grant quickly attempted to take the city by assault, but failed and then turned to a siege to starve out the defenders. As the weeks went by, Halleck reminded Grant that time was of the utmost importance and that the siege’should be pushed day and night.’ But Grant could do lit-tle but wait out the enemy.

Finally, on July 4, the waiting ended for Grant, Lincoln and the country. Grant sent a message up the Mississippi to be telegraphed Halleck, informing him that the ‘enemy surrendered this morning.’

The president was in the War Department when the announcement came over the wire on July 7. A humble Lincoln sent Grant a gracious letter of appreciation: ‘I do not remember that you and I have met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgement for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you finally did….When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgement that you were right and I was wrong.’

Following Grant’s success, Meade came under pressure to finish off Lee’s army before it could retreat back across the Potomac River. Halleck telegraphed Meade on July 7 that he had given the Confederates a hard blow and that he should follow it up and ‘give him another before he can reach the Potomac.’ On the same day, Halleck forwarded to Meade the text of a note from Lincoln stating that Vicksburg had fallen and ‘if General Meade can complete his work…by the literal or substantial destruction of Lee’s army, the rebellion will be over.’

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