Grant ordered a massive frontal assault on entrenched Confederate positions. In the main attack on June 3rd, Union forces suffered 7,000 casualties in under an hour. Grant later called it the only assault he regretted ordering.
Demonstrated the power of defensive entrenchments. Grant's casualties alarmed the North and nearly cost Lincoln the 1864 election, but Grant pivoted to Petersburg.
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The Peace of Vereeniging, signed on May 31, 1902, formally ended the Second Boer War after two years and eight months of fighting. Boer delegates — including Botha, Smuts, and de Wet, none of whom had been captured — agreed to accept British sovereignty over the former republics. In return, Britain promised £3 million for reconstruction, amnesty for all combatants, and a promise that the question of political rights for Black Africans would be decided after responsible government was granted — a promise that effectively deferred the question indefinitely and paved the way for the racial segregation that would follow. The treaty was debated for three days in a building at Vereeniging by 60 Boer delegates, 30 of whom voted against it.
The Peace of Vereeniging ended the conventional war but planted the seeds of South Africa's political future. By deferring Black African political rights, the treaty gave Afrikaner politicians — who would eventually form the National Party and implement apartheid — the framework within which to construct racial segregation. Louis Botha became the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa in 1910, with Jan Smuts as his deputy — former enemies who proved far more valuable to Britain as allies than as subjects. The promise of eventual self-government for the Boer republics was honored remarkably quickly, within eight years — but the African majority whose rights had been 'deferred' were not given the vote for nearly a century.
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The only major fleet engagement of the war, fought off the coast of Denmark. Germany's High Seas Fleet inflicted greater losses on the Royal Navy but failed to break the British blockade. The German fleet retreated to port and never challenged Britain's naval supremacy again. Winston Churchill said Jellicoe was the only man who could lose the war in an afternoon.
Despite German tactical success (more British ships sunk), Britain retained strategic control of the North Sea. Germany's surface fleet was bottled up for the rest of the war, forcing a shift to unrestricted submarine warfare — which would eventually bring the United States into the conflict.
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