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On this day, 150 years ago, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox, Virginia Courthouse. This event essentially ended the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in American history, which claimed the lives of over 600,000 soldiers.

Though the surrender at Appomattox did not officially end the fighting, the collapse of the Army of Northern Virginia signaled that victory for the Confederate cause would be impossible. Led by General Lee for most of its existence, the Army of Northern Virginia had bottled up the Union Army of the Potomac for four years, winning a series of stunning battles that have become legendary: Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and numerous others.

However, after the incredible 1863 Union victory in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Lee’s army had mostly been on the defensive, slowly succumbing to the better-armed and supplied Union forces. Once Ulysses Grant was given command in March of 1864, the primary Union army of the eastern theater had a general that could take it to ultimate victory.

In the waning days of 1865, Confederate arms were nearly spent. The once proud and dynamic Army of Northern Virginia had been reduced from about 100,000 men in 1862 to fewer than half of their initial ranks. Confederate soldiers were starving and under-supplied, missing many of their best commanders after losing them in battle, and without hope for reinforcements.

Lee’s Army was badly beaten at the Battle of the Five Forks in early April, which forced him to abandon his fortification at Petersburg, Virginia and leave a path open to the Confederate capitol city of Richmond.

In the last, desperate retreat through Virginia, the Confederate Army was in disarray and on the verge of collapse. After witnessing his army being badly thrashed at Sailor’s Creek, Lee cried out, “My God! Has the army been dissolved?”

In the final confrontation between the Army of the Potomac and Army of Northern Virginia near Appomattox Courthouse, it was clear that the Rebel army was indeed on the verge of being dissolved. Historian Bruce Catton wrote in The Army of the Potomac: Stillness at Appomattox about this last fight:

The blue lines grew longer and longer, and rank upon rank came into view, as if there was no end to them. A Federal officer remembered afterward that when he looked across the Rebel lines it almost seemed as if there were more battle flags than soldiers.So small were the Southern regiments that the flags were all clustered together, and he got the strange feeling that the ground where the Army of Northern Virginia had been brought to bay had somehow blossomed out with a great row of poppies and roses.

After receiving word of how badly his forces had been beaten by the Union army, Lee wrote a message to General James Longstreet, “There is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”

After receiving news that Lee had surrendered, President Abraham Lincoln prepared and delivered what would be his final speech on April 11. He exclaimed from the White House balcony, “We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten.”

Lincoln then called for a “national thanksgiving,” but said that the ultimate credit for victory belonged to the Union soldiers above anyone else. He said, “Their honors must not be parceled out with others. I myself was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honor, for plan or execution, is mine. To Gen. Grant, his skillful officers, and brave men, all belongs.”

The final parade and surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia took place on April 12. General Joshua Chamberlain, hero of the Battle of Gettysburg, would receive the formal surrender on behalf of General Grant. Chamberlain recorded what he saw in his memoir; an account that historian Emory M. Thomas called the “best” description of the Confederate Army’s final act:

Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond…

Instruction had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from left to right, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldiers salutation, from the “order arms” to the old “carry”—the marching salute. General [General John B.] at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual,—honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet, nor a roll of drum; not a cheer nor word, nor whisper of vainglorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, a breathholding, as if it were the passing of the dead!

Though some Confederate leaders wanted to continue the war through guerrilla style fighting, Lee completely rejected this tactic. The war was over, the fighting hopeless, and the long road to recovery and rebuilding the country had to begin.

Damn pucking Yankees....

We are much better off.

Yes, Barack Obama is a good reason to get down on your knees and thank Abraham Lincoln for preserving the Union so that we could be ruled by this wonderful man.

about two months after the sad event, my great Grandfather and his little ragged group of the 46th Georgia Infantry said to hell with it, refused to sign parole or surrender. They just walked home to Fayetteville Georgia, and went back to farming.

Good Lord, what an idiot. Is Lincoln also responsible for Ronald Reagan becoming president? The fact that one event follows another in time does not mean A caused B. I notice that roosters crow every morning when the sun comes up. The rooster crowing does not cause the son to rise Joe Bob.

It never ceases to amaze me how people who ostensibly believe in liberty can villify the man who stopped the greatest affront to liberty in our time (chattel slavery) from becoming entrenched as a positive moral good.

The last time in history a Yankee and a Southerner shook hands. Many people claim this is photoshopped...

He enslaved an entire nation to free some. Yes, what a great man he was.

Let me ask you a question or two. A marriage is meant to be perpetual is it not? The vows literally say "To death do us part" do they not? So, if we take that literally, and the wife is bound to the husband no matter what and there is nothing she can do to leave, and if she tries, he can forcibly bring her back to the marriage bed, is she a wife or a slave?

Actually, that "last time in history" is a bit of hyperbole, if you skip to 2:25.

Agreed, this nation is much better off today then ever. One only needs to see what a glimmer of hope and prosperity that is California.

Whatever happened to the table that the treaty was signed on?

Didn't Custer get it?

Yes, the Yankees stole the damned furniture from the homeowner too.

Oh....my....[bleep].....God. Are you kidding me? Are you really that mentally challenged? The Founders believe the Union they had created in the Declaration of Independence would exist in perpetuity. However, axiomatic to everything they did was their recognition of the very right of revolution that gave rise to the new nation they were instrumental in forming and which they perfected in adopting the Constitution of 1787. They never repudiated the words of the Declaration of Independence and the right of revolution (the right to revolt against tyranny) recognized therein, which is a natural right, by the way. But the south did not revolt against tyranny, they rebelled in order to perpetuate and extend tyranny---the tyranny of chattel slavery which they asked the rest of the nation to accept as a positive moral good! Even the South was careful not to call their actions revolutionary. They spoke instead of "deratification"--of deratifying the Constitution. Their mistake however was in thinking that the Union was formed by the Constitution and therewith by the States. As Lincoln pointed out, this was "an ingenious sophism". Both propositions were and are false. The Union was perfected by the adoption of the Constitution of 1787 and it was perfected by the People (We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union...."

The Declaration of Independence makes clear that the people of the 13 united colonies were declaring their independence from Great Britain, not from one another. The express plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen colonies in the Articles of Confederation and two years later that the Union shall be perpetual is most conclusive.
In the words of Lincoln "Having never been States (they were colonies), either in substance or in name outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "States Rights" (in this case, the right of states to deny to human beings the right to put in their own mouths the fruit of their own labor and to substitute bullets for the ballot box simply because they did not like the outcome of a free election!) asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself.

There is no denying that the balance of power between the states and the federal government is way, way out of balance but criticizing that lack of balance on the basis of the argument that states ought to be free to enslave other human beings as if they were dog or oxen or horses is not the way to make a winning "states rights" argument!

Jordan

It is tyranny to hold someone against their wishes, regardless of the reason they wish to leave. Period.

Just fifty years or so after the Civil War, the United States fought another war and brokered the entire peace based on the right of "self determination" yet when that principle was acted upon in the United States, it was bloodily rejected.

And I have never said that states ought to be free to enslave other human beings, you have an extreme disconnect there. I've merely said that the federal government does not have the right to enslave them in order to keep them from it. You don't get to rape, pillage, and destroy just because you think the other guy is a bad guy. Well, I guess they did and got away with it. That is why things are so fricked up today. The federal government can do as it pleases and if the states try to leave, they'll be brought back kicking and screaming after having been practically destroyed.

Then the son will get his ass kicked.

My Great Great Grandfather was wounded at Chickamauga and fought at the Battle of Franklin a few days later where he was captured and paroled. Rode his horse down south of Vicksburg, jumped him in the Mississippi River and swam across. Rode to Alto, La. where he started his family and farmed cotton and cattle and from his loins my family came about! In the family today he is known as 'Pappy Pete'! May God rest his soul!!

PeterSMulhern by Sharps45 2 7/8, on Flickr

"But the south did not revolt against tyranny, they rebelled in order to perpetuate and extend tyranny---the tyranny of chattel slavery which they asked the rest of the nation to accept as a positive moral good!"

TOTAL BULLSCHITT!!

A sad day in American History, and even a sadder day for the South. My family fought at Gettysburg and Shiloh for the South. Fugg Lincoln!!!

Lincoln ought to be dug up and shot again.

Chamberlain, however, appears to be a morally upright and worthwhile character.

Too bad he was on the wrong side.