*Includes nearly 50 pictures taken at Petersburg during and after the fightingFrom May-June 1864, newly installed U.S. Army Commander Ulysses S. Grant attached himself to George Meade’s Army of the Potomac and directed that army’s confrontation of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in a series of very high casualty battles known as the Overland Campaign. Despite being stopped at the Battle of the Wilderness, Grant proceeded south and nearly dealt the Confederate army a fatal blow at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, and the armies kept maneuvering toward Richmond and fought near the North Anna River before the Battle of Cold Harbor in early June.Eventually the Overland Campaign ended in a stalemate siege at Petersburg that could accurately be described as a forerunner of the trench warfare of World War I. With both armies hunkered down in trenches and fighting tooth and nail over a few miles of ground, the Union’s war effort was able to coordinate George H. Thomas’ victories against John Bell Hood in the West while General William Tecumseh Sherman “marched to the sea”, taking Savannah and then Charleston on his way north. Eventually, Grant broke Lee’s lines in early April, forcing the Confederates to abandon Petersburg and Richmond, their capital. A week later, Lee would famously surrender to Grant at Appomattox, an event many consider the end of the Civil War.