American History Hit - Did Lee's Surrender End the Civil War?

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

When and where did the Civil War end? Was it really over when Lee surrendered at Appomattox?Don is joined for this episode by Caroline E. Janney, Professor at the University of Virginia and author of 'Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox'.Listen to hear why Lee's and Grant's armies ended up at Appomattox Court House, what the terms of surrender were, and when the war actually ended.Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's April 1865. America has been at war for almost exactly four years, four bloody, excruciating years.

Brothers fighting brothers, towns dividing, a nation riven deep by civil crisis. Across the south, the Confederate armies are spent exhausted. Food, ammunition, forces, medical needs, all in short supply. While the union has seized momentum, its greater population and industrial capacity, finally tipping the balance. It has been a brutal, bloody conflict, worse than either side had ever imagined. Now be transported to a plain, modestly furnished house in rural Virginia. It is a Sunday afternoon. Sunlight streams through the windows, illuminating dust particles in the air. It is sedate and quiet. Suddenly, the dust shifts, as a door opens, revealing General Robert E. Lee,

standing dignified and formal in full military dress. He has come to discuss an ending, a surrender, and possibly a new beginning. Hey everyone, I'm Don Wilde, and welcome to American History Hit. The Civil War is, of course, one of the most formative events of American history, but despite that, there is plenty of confusion about its results, about how it ended, literally its surrender, where and why it happened, and what were the stakes involved. For this, I'm joined by Caroline E. Janie.

Carrie is Professor in History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia, and author of Ends of War, the Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox. Caroline Janie, welcome to American History here. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Appomatics. We are obviously at the end of the Civil War, but I want to get an understanding from this conversation of what brings us to this moment. And these are questions I've had since I stood in that room with my father.

He took me as a kid and we stood there in that room, which is dressed as it was that day. And you stand there and think, how did the whole Civil War come down to this one table and these two men? And that's the conversation we're having today. So at this point, where are we in the Civil War? It's still a vast conflict going across the entire South, right? It is. So we are in the fourth year of the war, a war that people didn't. think would last longer than maybe one battle at most three months. And here we are four years

into the war. And by this point, things are absolutely not going well for the Confederacy. So if we situate ourselves in the winter, early winter of 1865, in January and February, Lee's Army, which is the most important army in the Confederacy, has been bogged down in siege war fair outside of Petersburg, Virginia since June. Sherman, with his vast army, has made his way through Georgia to Savannah. He's captured Savannah by Christmas of 64. He's turned north with his army, taking the war into South Carolina, which his soldiers believe had started the war in the first place. And so they unleash a raft that they hadn't even shown during the campaign in Georgia in South Carolina. They're heading north into North Carolina. And so we're having what is essentially

a pincor movement where we're going to have Grant in Virginia and Sherman with his large army that are going to come. And if they join up together, then Lee's army will be absolutely crushed. Standing in the way of Sherman's army is one other Confederate army, the army that's under the command of Joseph E. Johnston. And they too are in North Carolina trying to. to either hook up with Lee or at least prevent Sherman from joining forces with Grant. And so this is the dire situation for the Confederacy, but it is also the moment that unionists really, really now finally have hope that this war has the potential to come to an end. So when Lincoln gives his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, he's talking about

peace. He's talking about how the nation can come back together. His famous words of malice toward none. I mean, this is setting up the political circumstances for what he and other loyal unionists believe will happen when Grant and Sherman finally crushed those last remnants of Confederate resistance. It has gone very well for the union in recent times, very recently, in the last year or so. the Confederates, and really since the Gettysburg onward, Lee's strategy is basically to bring them to the table, bring the union to the table for a conditional conversation, you know, and try to get out of this thing through treaty. Is he still thinking this at this point? Is there any hope in his mind? Well, I would push back against that because I don't think Lee is thinking that in the summer of 1863.

He's not thinking that in the spring of 1864 when we have what becomes the Overland campaign. In fact, if we look back at morale on the home front and among soldiers, the low point, we have a couple of different low points for union morale, but the summer of 1864, things are not looking good for the United States, at least not looking good in terms of crushing the rebellion. And so we have the election of 1864 that ends up, it's not even certain that Lincoln will be the candidate, but ends up being Lincoln and Andrew Johnson under the banner of the Union Party. So the party that will, not the Republican Party, but the Union Party, the party that will preserve the Union, while the Democratic Party, which their nominee is the former Union General

George B. McClellan, they're the ones who are talking about coming to the table to negotiate peace. So it's not that Lee is thinking that way. It's in fact, unionist or not even unionists, but But Democrats in the north that are thinking maybe this war isn't worth fighting anymore. So, yeah, things are not going as badly for Confederates as we think in hindsight if we stop and pause the frame in August of 1864 before Sherman captures Atlanta, before Sheridan routes the Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Things might have turned out very differently if those battles had gone differently on a political front.

What becomes Lee's final campaign late March 1865 is attacking Fort Stedman, which is near Petersburg, Virginia, right? Correct. What was his strategy here at this particular moment? So Grant had been extending his lines surrounding Petersburg ever westward throughout December and early January. And it becomes apparent by late March that Lee really has. to punch out of that siege. He had never wanted to end up in a siege anyway. His last Confederate forces

that are in the Shenandoah Valley kind of holding back some of the Union forces under Philip Sheridan, they collapse in early March. And so by March 25th, Lee believes, probably rightfully so, that his only option is to try to punch out of the Union line and head south and join forces with Joseph E. Johnston. And so that's precisely what he, he tries to do on March 25th. It ends up being a bloody fiasco for the Confederates. They make no progress. And then it becomes even clearer to grant at this moment that if he can attack the Confederate right, that he could roll up the Confederate line and force Lee to surrender or at the very least to abandon Petersburg. And abandoning Petersburg is the last safeguard, protect.

Richmond. So if Petersburg falls, Richmond falls as well. And sure enough, Richmond, the Confederate Capitol, falls on April 2nd, 1865, and that's when they begin to face reality, if they haven't already been talking about it. Lee advises President Jefferson Davis to do this. It's time to end this thing, right? Correct. So once Lee pulls out of Petersburg on the evening, about eight o'clock on the evening of April 2nd, he has wired Richmond. He's, as you said, advised. Davis that he needs to leave. Davis absolutely high tails it out of Richmond, he and several of other members of the Confederate cabinet board trains heading south, which will take them toward Danville, Virginia. The troops that are in and around Richmond burn Confederate records,

and they too head west out of the city. And the notion is that those forces, Lee has about 60,000 men, if we count the men that had been in and around Petersburg as well as those guarding Richmond. The notion is that they will join forces, they will meet up somewhere along a railroad line leaving west, south and west from Richmond at Amelia Courthouse. And so those 60,000 men roughly are supposed to come together there. There they will find supplies, they hope. And from there, then they're going to look for a route south along the railroad lines, again, to get into North Carolina, to meet up with Joe Johnston, who is in and around. His army is spread out, but roughly in the vicinity of Raleigh, Durham. These are starving troops, right? They don't have those supplies.

They are. And when they get to Amelia Courthouse, they find that what has arrived is ammunition. There's no food that's arrived. And so they're now scouring the country. side, egging, forcing civilians to try to provide whatever limited food they have left to provide to Lee's army. So yes, men are starving, horses are starving. Things are looking pretty dire. We think of Appomatics as the courthouse. That's the name. It's the legend. But there was an actual battle of Appomattox, at least planned, right? There was. So if we, I'll back up just a little bit and say that one of the things that's always pet peeve is the notion that Lee's men were headed to Appomattox courthouse. And to clarify for listeners, the county seat of many counties

in Virginia was called whatever county courthouse. So Louisa Courthouse, Orange Courthouse. So Appomatics Courthouse is not just physically the building that's there. It's the name of the county seat. And so Lee's Army was not headed to Appomattox Courthouse. They were headed to any spot along the railroad where they thought they could could find a line that would take them south. But all along the way, Grant and the Union Army is chasing them and trying to cut them off and they're cutting off every railroad line that is heading south into North Carolina. And so the ultimate goal for Lee, by the time we get to April 5th, certainly by April 6th, he's thinking Lynchburg, Virginia. Appomattox Courthouse just happens to be the place. And so, the place,

that he reaches by the evening of April 8. And it's clear now that the Union Army is both on his tail. The Union cavalry is in front of him blocking that road to the west. And so on the evening of April 8th, he meets in what we now call the last council of war, meets with his leadership. And the conversation is, what will we do tomorrow morning? We are hemmed in by the James River to the north. Grant and Mead are on our tail behind us to the east and to the south.

We think there's just Union cavalry in front of us. And on the morning of April 9th, the Army in Northern Virginia starts to stir around 3 or 4 a.m. They start to get in battle line. They're on these small rolling hills that surround the village of Appomattox Courthouse. And that morning, about 9.5. thousand of his men get in line and they think that it's just union cavalry in front of them. And if it's union cavalry alone, they can probably infantry with some artillery support can probably punch through that. And so the battle begins early that morning. Again, we have about

9,000 Confederates that are facing off against the cavalry. And initially, they make some progress. And there's some North Carolinians that manage to sweep the field. They're pushing the cavalry back. It seems that that road to Lynchburg is going to be opened, and then it becomes clear that the infantry had arrived. About 25,000 men composed both of parts of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James, which includes about 5,000 United States colored troops, has blocked that road. And it's at this point that Lee recognizes that the game is over. Some of his cavalry escapes, Confederate Cavalry escapes, but the infantry, it's clear. that Lee is going to have to surrender his army. Grant has initiated communications prior to this, right?

On April 7th, he sends a letter requesting surrender. He sees that Lee is out of options. Right. So all along, as soon as the Army in Northern Virginia has left the trenches of Petersburg and the defenses of Richmond, they have been attacked. There's been a series of battles, skirmishes, and otherwise all along this trek. westward. But on April 6th, there had been a bloodletting at Sailor's Creek. It's actually three separate engagements. Lee loses about a quarter of the army that he has left. And he famously says when he looks out up on the field and sees what's happening, my God has the army been dissolved.

And so the day after that, Grant at this point is in Farmville, Virginia. And he sends Lee a note and says, by now, the situation from yesterday, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, must convince you of the hopelessness of the situation. And he asks Lee if he's ready to surrender. Lee receives that note. So again, we're talking the evening of April 7th. He turns to Longstreet, who is his trusted core commander. And Longstreet says, not yet. And so Lee replies, to Grant and says, you know, I'm not quite convinced of the situation as you see it. In other words, he's not convinced that it is a hopeless situation. But if I were, what would be your terms of surrender? He asked for, he turns from unconditional surrender grant. Exactly. Exactly.

And he doesn't get them, right? Yeah, that's the thing. Well, he great and has the reputation of unconditional surrender. But in fact, there will be conditions. at this surrender, which will be a surprise to many of Lee's men. But that doesn't, I'm saying in that communication, they're not, that does not become clear because this battle then ensues. Well, so Grant gets the message late that night. And one of his aides is insulted that Lee would respond as such and says, you know, essentially, why is he asking for terms?

It's clear that he's in no position to ask for terms. At this point, Grant is suffering from one of his many debilitating migraines. And so he has gone or trying to sleep anyway. And he will respond later that evening in a note that will reach Lee on the 8th that says, if you were to surrender, my terms would be that your men would lay down their arms to no longer fight again until properly exchanged. And so this is the information that Lee has on the evening of April 8 when he's meeting and what we describe as the last counsel of war. So he knows that this offer is on the table, that his men will be paroled, they'll be sent home until properly exchanged. And so he gets some terms.

I want to conclude with the information on that battle. There were 652 casualties from that battle. This was a big deal for the moment. It was a matter of a few hours. 500 of those casualties are Confederate. This is the final moment when Lee really takes a look at the situation in general and says this is enough. And between 10 and 11 o'clock on the 9th, Lee orders his troops to retreat through the village and back across the river. Did he have any other choice?

No. Yeah. I mean, he really didn't. The night before or early that morning, as they're getting into position for, what will become that last battle. One of his artillerist, Edward Porter Alexander, suggests to him that, you know, if it becomes clear that we can't break through,

maybe you should just disperse the army. Maybe they should take to the woods, to the mountains, rather than surrendering. And Lee says, no. If I do that, my army will be under no authority, no command, men will take to plundering, and pillaging, and we can't have that. So if there is an option, that's the option, but Lee doesn't see it as one. And he is hemmed in by the morning of April night. He is completely surrounded on

three sides by Union forces and on the fourth side by the James River. So there really isn't much choice for him at this point. Carrie, how do they reach the conclusion that they need to meet at what is called the Appomattoe Courthouse? How does that communication happen. So once Lee realizes that his army is completely surrounded, that he has no option, he sends a letter to Grant asking for a meeting. So this is going to have to go through a courier. A career is going to have to ride with a white flag of truce. And he's got to find Grant. And Grant has not been with, he's not with those immediate forces that are right in front of Lee. So it's going to take a while. He's about eight miles away. And so there's,

There's a time lag in between this. So that courier will eventually find Grant, and Grant will try to make his way as quickly as possible to Appomattox Courthouse. Some of the aides had gone through the village and tried to find a reasonable place, and that's when they settle on the McLean House. I mean, it's often confused with Appomattox Courthouse, which is actually the name of the village, right? Right.

It's very confusing. So Appomattox Courthouse is both the name of the village, but there is also a courthouse there. They don't meet at the courthouse. They meet at a private home. It's a very, very modest structure. It's a beautiful place, actually. And you walk up those stairs. I remember as a kid going in there. It's just a few rooms that you walk into. It's very, very sedate. And the simplicity of it speaks to this singularity of what's happening. You know, these two men are coming to sit at this table. It's a small little table. And it has none of the grandeur that you would imagine. Yeah, there's actually two tables that are there. They don't

step at a table is another one of the ways in which Hollywood and fiction and otherwise have, you know, painted a different picture from what happened. There were two tables and Grant sat at one, writing the terms out, Lee sat at the other, and there's two tables then people take immediately. People take everything out of the room, union officers and otherwise as relics as pieces to to remember. There's even a doll that belonged to McLean's daughter that someone grabs and says, you know, this is, this is, this is historic moment. It's history. Yeah, this is it. And everything you see today is all replaced, you know, with facsimiles, I guess, right?

Well, you know, I'm not quite sure that's the case. I think there might be a handful of things that are originals. In fact, those two tables still exist. One, I believe, is at Appomattox. But what people might be interested to know is that the village was not necessarily a sacred place at first. It grew up. And, in fact, the courthouse was moved to another spot in town. several years later, but the home itself in the McLean House was dismantled at one point. And a business

owner wanted to take it to Chicago as a tourist destination, the same way that Libby Prison, which had been in Richmond, was dismantled brick by brick and taken to Chicago. John Brown's Fort from Harper's Ferry was also a tourist destination. Wow. So the McLean House was dismantled, brick by brick. Every piece of lumber was saved, numbered, but it laid in piles for years and years and years. And in the early 20th century, there was an effort to build a peace memorial at a village. And for reasons that maybe shouldn't come as a surprise, white Southerners wanted no such peace memorial at the place where their army had finally succumbed. And moreover, Grant's reputation by that point, was not good in the South because of what he had done for reconstruction and fighting the Klan and otherwise.

So the peace memorial doesn't happen, but instead the McLean House was rebuilt under the guidance of the United Daughters of Confederacy, and then eventually it becomes part of the National Park Service. So the bricks are all original, but you have to imagine that at one point it was a pile of bricks before it was rebuilt. Let's talk about the day of the surrender. It's the 9th of April, 1865. General Robert E. Lee arrives and surrenders the army of Northern Virginia. Can you describe the scene we've all seen the movie? How true was it?

Lee has put on his very best uniform, complete with a sash and his dress sword. He has no idea what's going to happen to him. And he might be taken prisoner. He doesn't know. but he's going to look the part of a distinguished general. He arrives at the McLean House, which the village of Appomattox Courthouse is a small little village. It has a post office, has a couple of stores. It has the courthouse.

And the McLean home, Wilmer McLean's home, is the largest, most substantial building there. And so the parlor there has been chosen. Lee will arrive with one aide with Charles Marshall. And he gets there before Grant does. Grant has been past the note that morning that Lee is ready to surrender. And so he has ridden as hard and as fast as he possibly can. He shows up wearing an officer's sack coat with only the insignia of a lieutenant general on his shoulder strap. So he's not wearing the formal uniform.

In other words, he has mud splattered pants. And some people have taken this as evidence that Grant, was either insulting Lee or didn't care. Really and truly, he's trying to get there as fast as he can, and this baggage train can't keep up. He arrives about 1.30, and he has an entourage with him. Throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, as Lee has been waiting.

Other union officers have been gathering in the village. They've been standing and talking. Many of these men had gone to West Point together, and so we have officers of both sides that are, talking to one another, men who haven't seen each other in four plus years. Grant enters the McLean parlor and there is Lee with his one aide. Grant comes in with an entourage of people. We don't know how many and exactly who was there because everyone claimed to be there, but

certainly they weren't. Anyway, there's some small talk at first. Grant says to Lee that he remembers him from the Mexican War and Lee, you know, doesn't really remember him, at least suggests that they get down to business. And so at this point, Grant sits down with a manifold book, which is essentially a book that allows you to make three copies at once. And he starts writing the terms. And as he's written out the terms, he will later say that he knew not what to say, only what came to his mind. But he certainly had an idea of what he was supposed to say. He had had that exchange of letters with Lee. He knew that Lincoln had told him

he's only to deal in the surrender of a single army. This is this is not a peace negotiation. This is not an armistice. So he writes out the terms. He hands the terms to Lee. Lee reads over them and he realizes that there's a passage that's been left out about until properly exchanged. And so Grant will fix that. Lee also asks that his men be allowed to keep their horses because in the Confederate cavalry and artillery men had to supply their own horses. And so Grant allows that as well. But one of the things that listeners should keep in mind is that this is not a treaty. They don't both sign. They don't sit down and, you know, you have Grant's signature and Lee's signature. You have Grant write out the terms and he signs them. And then Lee writes out a response. And he, he's

he signs that response. So again, there is never a peace treaty in the American Civil War. There could not have been a peace treaty because that would have meant that the United States recognized the Confederacy as a separate nation. So this is the surrender of a single army. The terms are kind. I mean, they're generous. And I want to read a quote from Grant, from his memoirs, I suppose, I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly and had suffered so much for cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which people ever fought and one for which there was the least excuse. How much does this speak to the respect that Grant had for Lee? So he does have respect for Lee, but he also thinks that Lee is fighting for a treasonous cause. What it speaks to first and foremost is the goal of the war for Grant, for Lincoln, and other like-minded unionist. And that is, we have to remember that this was a civil war and the goal of the union was always reunion. first and foremost was putting the nation back together. And so Grant sees in this moment that the most expedient path toward peace and toward genuine reunion is to be magnanimous. And it is to offer terms that are not retribution.

He also sees in this moment and recognizes the dual. status of the Confederacy. On one hand, the United States has treated Confederates as rebellious citizens, but on the other hand, in having prisoners of war and blockading the South, they have treated them as a belligerent foe. In other words, they had treated them as you might have treated France or England or Mexico if you had been at war with them. You can't blockade your own country. You can't take your own countrymen as prisoners of war. So the United States has simultaneously treated Confederates as rebellious citizens and belligerent foes. Under the laws of war, which Grant knows well, you cannot punish a belligerent foe. You can't punish enemy soldiers.

You can take them as prisoner. You can parole them, but you cannot punish them. And so he is, is thinking of this, the laws of war, the goals of the United States, and precisely what Lincoln has said to him, there's been a meeting of Grant and Sherman and Admiral Porter in late March, where they talk about, okay, it seems that the Confederate armies are dissolving. How are we moving forward? And Grant says, number one, you can only deal in military terms. And number two, we will be magnanimous and just. Again, he has said that in his second anogyn. That has been the message. How do you end a civil war and bring people back together? You don't seek vengeance. You don't seek retribution. And so this is all of this is in Grant's mind is also very pragmatic on his part. There are roughly 28,000 Confederate. Is he going to take all of those as prisoners of war? And where is he going to send those? You're speaking directly to a reason we didn't even talk about, which is that, you know, there's this duality between the, in the situation. You have one of a kind of a foreign enemy who's declared themselves foreign from us anyway. And then the only hand is your own countrymen. So the dealing with the aftermath is so confusing in that regard because it doesn't fit any of the models, right? And it was for them as much as it is for eyes. One of the things that that I've really tried to do in my book is to slow down the pace and to, to,

take things day by day, even hour by hour, whether we're talking Grant or Lincoln or the Secretary of War, Stanton, or Lee, how are people processing, how are they reacting in the moment, knowing what they knew them? You know, it's easy for us to look back and say, oh, they did this or didn't do this. I think they are working with the best information that they have, and there are all of these unforeseen consequences and decisions that end up being made, that it's certainly not clear when Grant is sitting there on April 9th that there's going to be a question about whether men from loyal states such as Maryland and Kentucky, states that haven't seceded and left the union, are they allowed to go home? Grant doesn't discuss that on April 9th, but by April 18th, he's changed his mind and says,

or at least he's come up with an opinion and says, no, they can't go home. And so we have all of these different ways in which the ending, you know, Appomatics, I keep saying that Appomattox is both an end and a beginning. It's this period that is the end of the formal warfare for the Army in Northern Virginia. And yet it's the beginning of this process. of demobilizing Confederate armies that was as cumbersome and problematic and big as enrolling men in the first place. You've got Lee surrendering the Army of Northern Virginia, which is to say there are other armies elsewhere. And this will take some time to unfold over the course of months, right?

I mean, you have the famous events of Davis running. He's a fugitive for the next six weeks until it gets captured. Lincoln, of course, is assassinated five days after this on April 14th. General Joseph Johnson's Army of Tennessee surrenders two weeks later, April 26th. Taylor's forces in Alabama, Mississippi, part of Louisiana, May 4th. So you kind of see this sort of rolling process, right? Yes. And again, I would encourage readers to hit the, maybe not the pause button, but the slow down the speed of the frames, if you will.

And we now take all these things for granted as if they were destined to come. And we see Appomatics as, I mean, I still use it as shorthand. You know, appomatics equals the end of the war. But it's only the beginning of the end. And things might have gone any different way. Well, the final battle of the Civil War takes place in Texas on May 11th, 12th, right? I mean, part of this is communications. Part of this is just geography.

This is a vast distances this news has to travel. But were there other factors at work here? Were these guys refusing to give up? Well, there were. There were quite a few that refused to give up, including a significant number from Lee's army. And so I'm going to do some very rough math here. So let's go back to the number of men that Lee had when he left Richmond and Petersburg on the night of April 2nd into April 3rd. He has roughly 60,000 men. Along that what becomes known as the Appomattox campaign has pushed westward to find that route south. He loses somewhere between 10 and 11,000 men as casualties, so either prisoners of war or victims of the skirmishes and battles along the way. When he gets to Appomatics, he formally surrenders a little over 28,000 men. And so if you're doing this very rough math with me and remember I'm a historic story.

I work in dates, but we have roughly 20,000 men who are unaccounted for. Those 20,000 men are men who have fallen out of the ranks, either because they can't keep up with the relentless pace of Lee's Army as it pushes ever westward, men who see the riding on the wall and decide that they're simply going to leave and go back home. This is especially true for troops from Virginia. But we also have a significant number who decide that they, too see the riding on the wall. They don't want to surrender, but they're going to continue fighting. And this is the case, especially among cavalry and artillery, men who have horses and can get

away from the field of battle faster. So I mentioned that cavalry battle on the morning of April 9th, the Confederate cavalry are involved. They managed to get past the Union Corridan. So this is Fitzhue Lee, who is Robert Lee's nephew, Tom Rosser, Tom Munford, and others. They make their way to Lynchburg, which was the destination of Lee's Army to begin with. They get there by mid-morning April 9th, and they decide they're not included in the surrender. They're going to continue fighting. And so they disperse into the Blue Ridge Mountains. And on April 12th, the day that Lee's infantry will be formally participating in a surrender ceremony where they march up the Appomatic Stage Road, lay down their weapons, lay down their flags.

on that very day, Tom Rosser, who gives himself a nice promotion to Lieutenant General, issues an order from what he describes as the headquarters of the Army in Northern Virginia. So just to reiterate, the day that the Army in Northern Virginia is laying down their weapons, Tom Rosser issues an order from the headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia, that his men will rise again and defeat this dastardly foe. Other troops are making their way to Joe Johnston in North Carolina. and to continue the fight. So it's not the end of the war for even many members of Lee's Army. I mean, it's June 23rd that Brigadier General stand waiting. The first Native American to serve as a Confederate general finally acknowledged defeat and surrendered his unit of Native American troops in Dokesville down near Oklahoma. What is today? It's not until 16 months after Abimatics, August 20th, 1866 did the president formally declare an end to the war.

So lots and lots of loose ends that most people, including myself, have not tied up in their heads, you know, that really actually extend the war much further on, which actually has a really resonant effect on reconstruction and then all the thinking that's being done in the federal government is how are we going to heal this thing up. It actually goes on a lot longer, maybe not so actively, but it's still out there, isn't it? Correct. And there's a difference between an active state of war where you have armies in the field and the legal state of war. And so what Johnson has declared an into is the legal state of war. And if we go back, we didn't really talk about what the paroles mean at Appomatics,

but these men are paroled and free to go home so long as they don't break any law in effect where they are. In other words, they won't be bothered by union forces as long as they go home and obey the law. This is a provision that grant ads that hadn't been part of previous surrenders, surrenders that he had overseen or otherwise. But that protection, the parole, you know, Confederates, many of them read this as the equivalent of amnesty or pardon. But it protects them only during a state of war. And so there's a great irony in the fact that the longer the state of war continues, the more protection exists for paroled Confederates.

Now, at the same time, many of them have been covered by Johnson's amnesty and or have received individual pardons. So that process begins in late May of 1865. But there are countless others, especially high-ranking generals, people like Longstreet, for example, that are protected principally by the parolars. role, not because Johnson has refused to pardon Longstreet. So that difference, we are splitting hairs in some ways, but the legality of war, or the legal state of war, rather, it matters.

Yes, the complications make for a difficult final conclusion on the war, so it gets taught otherwise, doesn't it? Especially in the high school area. The book we're talking about is Ends of War, the unfinished fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox, the author, has been with us, Dr. Carolyn Janie. She's then John L. Now, the third professor in history of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia. Thank you so much for this storytelling. Really appreciate it. Of course, my pleasure.

Thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, please share with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman.

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