150 a short history of the united states
With these victories and those at Lookout Mountain and Mission-
ary Ridge around Chattanooga, which routed the Confederates in
late November 1863 , thereby opening a route through Georgia to the
sea, Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction
on December 8 , 1863, that declared that when ten percent of those
persons in the seceded states who voted in the presidential election of
1860 swore an oath of loyalty to the United States, they might then
form a government without slavery, which he would recognize, and
reestablish themselves within the Union. It was the first effort to
bring about a reconstruction of the fractured nation. And it was a
relatively mild plan, one Radical Republicans strongly opposed. In
their view Congress must administer the restoration of the Union, not
the President.
Meanwhile the war ground to an inevitable end. General Ulysses S.
Grant, promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and given supreme
command of the Union forces, assumed control of the Army of the
Potomac, now numbering over 100 , 000. On May 5 , 1864 , he began his
monthlong Wilderness campaign in which he planned to pursue his
line of attack if it took all summer and thereby shred Lee’s army of
60 , 000 to bits. But the slaughter was horrendous. It is estimated that in
the battles of Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, Grant’s losses added up
to nearly 60 , 000 , as against half that number suffered by Lee. But
there was no way the Confederates could replace their losses. The
Confederacy was bleeding to death. Grant then swung his army south
to Petersburg, about twenty miles below Richmond, expecting to cut
Lee’s supply lines. He was unable to capture Petersburg and so laid
siege to the city in June 1864 ; the siege lasted nine months.
Meanwhile, General William T. Sherman set out with 100 , 000 troops
from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and headed toward Atlanta, Georgia. As
Vicksburg had sliced the Confederacy vertically, east from west, the
Chattanooga victory allowed Sherman to initiate an invasion that would
bisect the South horizontally, upper from lower. On September 2 he oc-
cupied Atlanta, and after destroying whatever supplies or materials that
might prove helpful to the enemy, he headed for the sea.
In Congress, Radical Republicans responded to Lincoln’s ten-percent
plan by passing the Wade-Davis bill, which required a majority of
the electorate—not ten percent—to swear to past and present loyalty