At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.
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In retreating from the Union army’s Appomattox Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had actually outrun Lee’s army, blocking their retreat and taking 6,000 prisoners at Sayler’s Creek. Desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Confederates were surrounded with no possibility of escape. On April 9, Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender. The two generals met in the parlor of the Wilmer McLean home at one o’clock in the afternoon.
Lee and Grant, both holding the highest rank in their respective armies, had known each other slightly during the Mexican War and exchanged awkward personal inquiries. Characteristically, Grant arrived in his muddy field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword. Lee asked for the terms, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. All officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property–most important, the horses, which could be used for a late spring planting. Officers would keep their side arms, and Lee’s starving men would be given Union rations.
Shushing a band that had begun to play in celebration, General Grant told his officers, “The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.” Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks, for all practical purposes the Civil War had come to an end.
“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relation of campaigns and battles and generals or other individuals, but that which shows the principles for which the South contended and which justified her struggle for those principles ” Robert E. Lee
“Let us go home and cultivate our virtues.”
Robert E. Lee, addressing his soldiers at Appomattox
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte
As a Southerner, I wish the South had won. It would be better than the deprivations and destitution the South, and, later, now, the entire countrym has had to endure.
Don’t believe history written by the victors.
As an American I wish the slave issue had been allowed to die off on its own as industrialization and mechanization eliminated the need for it. Farm machinery is more efficient and cheaper than large numbers of slaves.
Other Western countries just did away with is as it was no longer viable and we would have done the same over the next twenty years, at most, as well.
But, but, but, regardless of what you learned in school, slavery was NOT the cause of our civil war. Lincoln didn’t give a damn about slaves. There are Lincoln writings stating this. The New England yankees, who were the major force pushing for emancipation, grew tiring of funding the war. Money & power talked even then. Lincoln schemed that if he did something about the slavery issue they would continue to support the military effort. History shows us he was right. Note when the war started & when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. There are also letters showing that old Abe didn’t know what to do about all the freed negroes & was considering shipping them back to Africa, at least until he sat in John Wilkes’ booth at the Ford Theater. Government funded schools=government mandated lesson plans. The old guy who pays the piper calls the tune trick.
Lincoln ran as an anti slavery candidate and was elected as such.
You are correct. Read Frederick Law Olmsted’s “A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States” written before the War For Southern Independence. Not one person he met liked the thought of slavery, and hoped it would just go away because it was not economical.
I read this collection of reports Olmsted wrote for the Times, its like three volumes of considerable size, back in the old college days of early 1970s. He even met slaves that were a couple of hundred miles from the plantation selling tobacco for their owners.
My ancestors were in the Tenn brigade that fought in the eastern theater with the army of northern Virginia. The 7th Tenn out of Wilson co. Started the war with a thousand men. Surrendered at Appomattox with 47.
A sad day indeed. Here’s Johnny Cash singing “God Bless Robert E Lee”:
https://vid.me/DtOL
“The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.” Jefferson Davis He was 100% correct and this is the time; the place is God’s Country vs Cityasylums; and the form of the outcome will be the Whites and Asians regain their freedom. Since 1964-2017 was the Second Reconstruction Period (that caused the war), there will be no need for a Postwar Reconstruction Period and God willing the Cityasylums will remain as Memorials to Progressive Stupidity and Tyranny for a thousand years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8ZA_8l3YVg