They felt that it was in their power to bring the struggle to an end at once, and they pressed forward with prodigious vigor and with complete success.

General Grant with his characteristic energy insisted that "active and continuous operations of all the troops that could be brought into the field regardless of season and weather were necessary to a speedy termination of the war." He had seen, as he expressed it in his own terse, quaint language, that "the armies of the East and the West had been acting independently and without concert, like a balky team, no two of them ever pulling together." Under his direction the forces of the Union, however distant from each other, were brought into harmonious co-operation and with the happiest results.

The discipline of the Union army was never so fine, its vigor was never so great, its spirit was never so high, as at the close of that terrible campaign which under Grant's command in the East began at the Wilderness and ended with Lee's surrender, and which under Sherman's command in the West began with the march towards Atlanta, and closed with the complete conquest of Georgia and the Carolinas.
A grave moral responsibility rests upon those who continue a contest of arms after it is made clear that there is no longer a possibility of success.

However far the laws of war may justify a belligerent in deceiving an enemy, the laws of honorable and humane dealing are violated with one's own partisans when a brave and confiding soldiery are led into a fight known by their commanders to be hopeless.

Early in January, 1865, Jefferson Davis indicated the desire of the Confederate authorities to negotiate with the National Government for the arrangement of the terms of peace, and as a result the famous conference was held at Fortress Monroe.