On this day (April 9) in 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his exhausted, demoralized Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen. Ulysses Grant’s Army of the Potomac at the sleepy southern Virginia village of Appomattox County House (25 miles east of Lynchburg).
Although there was sporadic fighting following this widely reported Palm Sunday surrender, the capitulation of the once vaunted Army of Northern Virginia meant that the Civil War was all but over.
The now-famous surrender took place in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s house. Interestingly, McLean had lived near Manassas, where his house had been used as a Confederate headquarters (and was partially destroyed) during the opening major battle of the Civil War – the July 21, 1861, First Battle of Bull Run.
Thereafter, but before the Aug. 29, 1862, Second Battle of Bull Run, McLean had moved from Manassas to what he thought was the out-of-the-way village of Appomattox Court House, hoping therefore to escape further involvement in the war. Therefore, it can be said that the Civil War started at, or at least near, McLean’s Manassas house and effectively ended at his Appomattox Court House home.
By early April 1865, Lee’s predicament had become grave. On April 2, Union forces finally had captured the Confederate capital, Richmond. By the fourth, Lee’s once mighty army had been reduced, through battle casualties and increasingly through desertion, to a little more than 30,000 men. Many of them were not fit to fight.
Earlier, on April 1, Union forces under Philip Sheridan had won a decisive battle at Five Forks, thus forcing Lee to abandon Petersburg. The loss of Petersburg meant that Lee’s escape route south to join Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army in North Carolina was closed.
Being aware of Lee’s plight, Grant, on April 7, sent a letter to Lee asking for his long-hoped-for surrender. On Sunday, April 9, after having failed in an early morning attempt to force a passage through the besieging Union army, Lee is reported to have exclaimed: “It would be useless and therefore cruel to provoke the further effusion of blood, and I have arranged to meet with Gen. Grant with a view to surrender ...”
The two generals agreed to meet in the early afternoon in the parlor of McLean’s tidy brick house.
Lee, in his dress uniform and with his engraved ceremonial sword, arrived about 1 p.m. with a single aide, Charles Marshall. Grant, in a private’s uniform and muddy boots, arrived a half hour later with a large entourage.
For the first time since the Mexican War, the two generals would be meeting face-to-face. Grant, in his memoirs written in the mid-1880s, recounted the surrender scene.
“We soon fell into a conversation about old army times ... He remarked that he remembered me very well in the old army; ... After the conversation had run on in this style for some time, General Lee called my attention to the object of our meeting ...”
Grant’s surrender terms were generous and humane. Parole, not imprisonment, for all Confederate soldiers. All Confederates who claimed to own their horses were allowed to keep them, and the starving Confederates were given three days’ rations and told to go home and adhere to the terms of their paroles.
After carefully reading over the surrender terms, Lee signed the surrender letter, shook hands with Grant, strolled outside, mounted Traveller, and returned to his defeated army, where he was heard to remark: “Go home now, and if you make as good citizens as you have soldiers, you will do well, and I shall always be proud of you.”
• Crystal Lake resident Joseph C. Morton is professor emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University and author of “The American Revolution” and “Shapers of the Great Debate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.” He is available for tutoring, talks, and workshops on American history. Email him at demjcm@comcast.net.