14 - Making Peace

Summary

Robert E. Lee’s surrender to U. S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865 marked the effective end of the Civil War, as it symbolized the downfall of the Confederacy’s most powerful institution and spelled the doom of Southern independence. But the mythical Appomattox – a sweet and swift reconciliation that closed the book on the war – was not the one Americans chose in the spring of 1865 or in the months that followed. As soon as Lee and Grant left the stage, the nature and terms of surrender immediately became sources of contention. Grant’s magnanimity and Lee’s stoic resignation were politicized: Northerners generally saw the surrender as a vindication of the way the Union had waged the war and of the superiority of the free labor system, while former Confederates saw it as a promise of restoration – of their political voice and of the racial caste system. African Americans saw Appomattox, together with subsequent Confederate surrenders, especially in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, as a crucial phase in the long, ongoing process of emancipation.