American Civil War Ends
Confederate General Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, ending the Civil War
April 09, 1865
Lee Surrenders at Appomattox
The American Civil War effectively ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, a small village in central Virginia. The meeting took place in the parlor of Wilmer McLean's home. Grant offered generous terms: Confederate officers could keep their sidearms, and soldiers could keep their horses to use for the spring plowing. Lee signed the surrender document and returned to his troops. When Union soldiers began firing celebratory salutes, Grant ordered them to stop, saying the rebels were now their countrymen again. The gesture set a tone of reconciliation that Grant believed was essential for healing the country.
The Final Days of the Confederacy
The road to Appomattox had been rapid. Grant's forces had broken through Confederate defenses at Petersburg, Virginia, on April 2, forcing Lee to abandon Petersburg and Richmond, the Confederate capital, on the same day. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his government fled south. Lee's army, already weakened and outnumbered, was pursued and cut off before it could escape. Other Confederate forces surrendered over the following weeks. The last significant Confederate army in the field surrendered on April 26, 1865, in North Carolina. Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia on May 10, 1865. The Confederate government simply ceased to exist.
A Nation to Rebuild
The end of the Civil War came just five days before President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington on the evening of April 14, 1865. Lincoln died the following morning. His death cast a shadow over the beginning of Reconstruction, the complex and often violent process of reintegrating Southern states and defining the status of four million formerly enslaved people. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which formally abolished slavery, was ratified in December 1865. The Civil War had saved the Union and ended slavery, but the work of building a just and equal society would take far more than a single conflict to achieve, and in many ways continues today.