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Army of the Potomac

George Henry Sharpe’s Bureau of Military Information helped win the Civil War, and is especially worth remembering today.

The Union Army’s siege ended in 1865, but it still has a grip on Petersburg, Virginia.

Once the South was beaten, Eastern and Western troops of the Union army resented each other so violently that some feared for the survival of the victorious government. Then, the tension disappeared in one happy stroke that gave the United States its grandest pageant, and General Sherman the proudest moment of his life.

When the Civil War sputtered out early in May 1865, there were two huge Union armies within a few days’ march of Washington, D.C. One was the Army of the Potomac, winner of the war in the East, commanded by Major General George Gordon Meade.

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