In the biggest surrender of the Civil War, Johnston gave up around 90, soldiers in all—virtually all remaining Confederate troops in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. Richard Taylor, the son of President Zachary Taylor and commander of some 10, Confederate men, concluded a similar peace with his Union counterpart in the region and surrendered his army on May 4.
Diorama depiction of the Battle of Palmito Ranch. Theodore H. By that time, Lt. In Indian Territory now Oklahoma , Brig. Stand Watie, the first Native American to serve as a Confederate general, kept his troops in the field for nearly a month after Smith gave up the Trans-Mississippi Army. On June 23, Watie finally acknowledged defeat and surrendered his unit of Confederate Cherokee, Creek, Seminole and Osage troops at Doaksville, near Fort Towson, becoming the last Confederate general to give up his command.
The CSS Shenandoah, a former British trade ship repurposed as a Confederate raider in , continued terrorizing Union commercial ships in the Bering Sea long after the rebellion ended on land.
Only in August , when its skipper, Lt. James Waddell, got word that the war had definitively ended, did the ship stow its guns and make a covert escape to Liverpool, England, where it furled its giant Confederate flag for the last time. Its name would thereafter resound with courage, casualties and miscalculation: Gettysburg. In his dashing if sometimes depressive antebellum prime, he may have been the most beautiful person in America, a sort of precursorcross between Cary Grant and Randolph Scott.
He was in his element gossiping with belles about their beaux at balls. In theaters of grinding, hellish human carnage he kept a pet hen for company.
He had tiny feet that he loved his children to tickle None of these things seems to fit, for if ever there was a grave American icon, it is Robert Edward Lee—hero of the Confederacy in the Civil War and a symbol of nobility to some, of slavery to others.
We may think we know Lee because we have a mental image: gray. That is all that makes life valuable. As battlefield generals go, he could be extremely fiery, and could go out of his way to be kind. But in even the most sympathetic versions of his life story he comes across as a bit of a stick—certainly compared with his scruffy nemesis, Ulysses S.
For these men, the Civil War was just the ticket. Lee, however, has come down in history as too fine for the bloodbath of To efface the squalor and horror of the war, we have the image of Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves, and we have the image of Robert E.
Henry, the scion who was to become known in the Revolutionary War as Light-Horse Harry, was born in Washington became his patron and close friend.
With the war nearly over, however, Harry decided he was underappreciated, so he impulsively resigned from the army. In , he was elected to the Continental Congress, and in he was elected governor of Virginia.
In Washington put him in command of the troops that bloodlessly put down the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. In he was elected to the U. He and his second wife, Ann Hill Carter Lee, and their children departed the Lee ancestral home, where Robert was born, for a smaller rented house in Alexandria. Under the conditions of bankruptcy that obtained in those days, Harry was still liable for his debts. He jumped a personal appearance bail—to the dismay of his brother, Edmund, who had posted a sizable bond—and wangled passage, with pitying help from President James Monroe, to the West Indies.
In , after five years away, Harry headed home to die, but got only as far as Cumberland Island, Georgia, where he was buried. Robert was Robert appears to have been too fine for his childhood, for his education, for his profession, for his marriage, and for the Confederacy.
Not according to him. According to him, he was not fine enough. When he was superintendent of the U. Military Academy, Lee acquiesced to Mrs. By what can we know of him? The works of a general are battles, campaigns and usually memoirs. And he wrote no memoir.
He wrote personal letters—a discordant mix of flirtation, joshing, lyrical touches, and stern religious adjuration—and he wrote official dispatches that are so impersonal and generally unselfserving as to seem above the fray. During the postbellum century, when Americans North and South decided to embrace R.
Lee as a national as well as a Southern hero, he was generally described as antislavery. This assumption rests not on any public position he took but on a passage in an letter to his wife. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. He was not one to hide his looks under a bushel.
His heart, on the other hand. Perhaps it broke many years before the war. He only wanted a Virginia farm—no end of cream and fresh butter—and fried chicken. Not one fried chicken or two—but unlimited fried chicken.
The next morning, Lee faced Union cavalry and infantry in his front at Appomattox Court House and two Union corps to his rear three miles to the northeast at New Hope Church. At dawn, Confederate Gen. John B. Gordon's corps attacked Federal cavalry, but Gordon quickly realized he could not push forward without substantial help from other Confederate forces.
Lee, upon learning of this news and realizing his retreat had been halted, asked Grant for a meeting to discuss his army's surrender. He later asked for "a suspension of hostilities" pending the outcome of the surrender talks.
One of Grant's aides, Lt. Orville Babcock, and his orderly, Capt. The meeting place was left to Lee's discretion. Soon Lee sent the aides ahead to find a suitable location for the surrender. Soon after entering the village, the two Confederates happened upon a homeowner, Wilmer McLean, who showed them an unfurnished and somewhat run-down house. After being told that would not do for such an important occasion, he offered his own house for the surrender meeting. After seeing the house, they accepted and sent a message back to Lee.
Lee reached the McLean house around 1 p. Along with his aide-de-camp Lt. Grant arrived around Grant and Lee discussed the old army and having met during the Mexican War. Grant proposed that the Confederates, with the exception of officers, lay down their arms, and after signing paroles, return to their homes. Lee agreed with the terms, and Grant began writing them out. One issue that Lee brought up before the terms were finalized and signed was the issue of horses.
He pointed out that unlike the Federals, Confederate cavalrymen and artillerymen in his army owned their own horses. Grant stated that he would not add it to the agreement but would instruct his officers receiving the paroles to let the men take their animals home. Lee also brought up the subject of rations since his men had gone without rations for several days. Grant agreed to supply 25, rations to the hungry Confederate soldiers.
Most of the rations were provided from Confederate supplies captured by Sheridan when he seized rebel supply trains at Appomattox Station the previous day.
Lee and Grant designated three officers each to make sure the terms of the surrender were properly carried out. Grant and Lee met on horseback around 10 in the morning of April 10 on the eastern edge of town. There are conflicting accounts to what they discussed, but it is believed that three things came out of this meeting: each Confederate soldier would be given a printed pass, signed by his officers, to prove he was a paroled prisoner; all cavalrymen and artillerymen would be allowed to retain their horses; and Confederates who had to pass through Federal-occupied territory to get home were allowed free transportation on U.
Printing presses were set up to print the paroles, and the formal surrender of arms took place on April For those who stayed with Lee until the end, the war was over. It was time for them to head home. Lee left Appomattox and rode to Richmond to join his wife. Her assessment was spot on, for the Confederacy still lived. Joseph E. Johnston's army—the next largest after Lee's still at war—was operating in North Carolina. Richard Taylor controlled forces in Alabama, Mississippi, and part of Louisiana.
Edmund Kirby Smith's men were west of the Mississippi, and Brig. Stand Watie was in command of an Indian unit in the Far West. The day after Lee's surrender, the federal War Department was still trying to work out who was included in the terms of the agreement; its terms had not yet been received in Washington.
Was it all members of the Army of Northern Virginia or just those who were with Lee at the time of surrender? Godfrey Weitzel, the Union commander in charge of Richmond, telegraphed Grant that "the people here are anxious that [John] Mosby should be included in Lee's surrender.
They say he belongs to that army. In addition, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton requested from Grant further clarification about forces in Loudoun County, Virginia, that belonged to the Army of Northern Virginia and whether they fell under Lee's surrender. Grant clarified the matter in a telegram to Stanton on the night of April This matched a telegram sent mid-afternoon from Chief of Staff Gen.
Henry W. Halleck to Maj. Winfield Scott Hancock in which the chief of staff advised the general that the secretary of war wanted him to print and circulate the correspondence between Grant and Lee concerning the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Halleck then provided further guidance that "All detachments and stragglers from that army will, upon complying with the conditions agreed upon, be paroled and permitted to return to their homes.
John Mosby, the Gray Ghost. National Archives Identifier View in National Archives Catalog. Since not everyone was yet in a surrendering mood, Halleck further advised that those who did not surrender would be treated as prisoners of war.
He ended the telegram with one exception, "the guerrilla chief Mosby will not be paroled. Mosby's response was delivered to Hancock on April Mosby was not ready to surrender his command but would meet to discuss terms of an armistice. After reading the letter, Hancock agreed to meet at noon on April 18; a cease-fire would begin immediately. That evening the War Department wired that Grant had authorized Hancock to accept the surrender of Mosby's command.
In the days just after President Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 14, there were heightened personal safety concerns for top officers.
Hancock sent Brig. George Chapman, a Union cavalry officer, in his place to confer with Mosby on the April Mosby was still not ready to surrender and requested a hour extension of the cease-fire.
Chapman agreed and notified Mosby that the cease-fire would continue until noon on April The "Gray Ghost" chose to disband his unit rather than surrender en masse. In his announcement read to his men on April 21, Mosby told them, "I disband your organization in preference to surrendering it to our enemies. I am no longer your commander. Most of Mosby's officers, and several hundred of his men, rode into Winchester to surrender themselves and sign paroles. Federals allowed them to keep their horses.
Hancock estimated that around rangers were paroled. Others followed suit and started turning themselves in at other towns in Virginia.
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