Eastern Theater of the American Civil War

The Eastern Theater of the American Civil War consists of the major military and naval operations in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina. (Operations in the interior of the Carolinas in 1865 are considered part of the Western Theater, while the other coastal areas along the Atlantic Ocean are included in the Lower Seaboard Theater.)

The Eastern Theater was the venue for several major campaigns launched by the Union Army of the Potomac to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia; many of these were frustrated by the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee. President Abraham Lincoln sought a general to match Lee's boldness, appointing in turn Maj. Gens. Irvin McDowell, George B. McClellan, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker, and George G. Meade to command his principal Eastern armies. While Meade gained a decisive victory over Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, it was not until newly appointed general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant arrived from the Western Theater in 1864 to take personal control of operations in Virginia that Union forces were able to capture Richmond, but only after several bloody battles of the Overland Campaign and a nine-month siege near the cities of Petersburg and Richmond. The surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox Court House in April 1865 brought major operations in the area to a close.