The End of the Civil War

The American Civil War ended not with a bang, or a whimper, but with something in between. It was not a decisive battle, a Waterloo, as such, that drew the war to a close, but rather the culmination of defeats that brought the weakened Confederacy to its knees, making it impossible to continue either the war or the “lost cause,” as it would later become known.

The end of the Civil War began in late 1864. After three years of fighting to a draw, Federal Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman began a strategy of total war, a war that would not only be fought on the battlefield, but against the civilians of the already starving South. Sherman and his army swept through the South on an infamous March to the Sea that decimated both Atlanta and Columbia, terrorizing civilians, burning and looting public buildings and homes alike.

This was a war the struggling Confederate Army could not fight. With barely enough men to fight back Grant’s Overland Campaign in Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had no men to spare to defend civilians from Sherman’s scorched earth campaign. As conditions deteriorated throughout the South, with food and money both in short supply, Confederate soldiers, tiring of fighting a losing battle and fearful for their families at home, deserted in large numbers. The Confederate Army had been outnumbered from the beginning; desertion and casualties together left only a skeleton of an army remaining.

The tide continued to turn against the South in early 1865. Fort Fisher, the last major port open to the Confederacy, was captured by the Union in January, effectively cutting the Confederacy off from the rest of the world. Battles and skirmishes further reduced the size of the dwindling Confederate Army. In March, Grant’s Overland Campaign made its way to Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capitol, and by the beginning of April, the Union XXV Corps, comprised of African-American soldiers, ran the Confederates out of their own capitol.

By April 9, 1865, knowing that his remaining army could no longer fight off the inevitable, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at the McLean House, pictured above in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee, once a promising officer in the U.S. Army, was allowed to surrender with honor, keeping his saber and his prized horse, Traveller. The other men in the Army of Northern Virginia were allowed to keep their side arms, horses and mules, Grant knowing that these men, unlike those in the Union Army, had been forced to supply their own arms and animals.

But even to the end, some Confederates were less willing surrender than others. General James Longstreet was purported to have told Lee, “General, unless he offers us honorable terms, come back and let us fight it out!” as Lee approached Grant to surrender.

Lee, however, knew that the war was lost, and knew, too, that surrender and submission were the only options available to the Confederates following the end of the war. In the days after the war, Lee stated that “I believe it to be the duty of everyone to unite in the restoration of the country and the reestablishment of peace and harmony.”

The reestablishment of peace and harmony that Lee asked for had been years coming, and it would be many years to come before the war was truly over in the South.