Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - How the US Civil War REALLY Ended

Episode Date: March 13, 2021

According to most history books, the United States Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. This is a truth, but it really isn’t the truth. At best it could be described as the beginning of the end of the Civil War. Learn more about when the US Civil War really ended on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to most history books, the United States Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. This is a truth, but it really isn't the truth. At best, it could be described as the beginning of the end of the Civil War. Learn more about when the U.S. Civil War really ended on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by the Travel Photography Academy. In 2007, I sold my... home to travel around the world. I bought an expensive camera that I didn't know how to use and took a bunch of terrible photos. Several years, 100 countries, and tens of thousands of photos later, I'd improve my photography to the point where I was winning national awards, being named Travel Photographer of the Year three times in North America. I created the Travel Photography

Academy, so you don't have to spend the many years that I did to improve your photography. Even though we can't easily travel right now, you can still work on improving your photography at home and in your own community. Just go to travel photography academy.com or click on the link in the show notes to start improving your photography today. If you remember back to my episode about the last Germans to surrender in World War II, wars often have a very definitive start, but do not have a very definitive end. This was certainly the case in the U.S. Civil War.

Open hostilities began on April 12, 1861 with the bombardment of Fort Sumner in South Carolina. While there was violence around the issue of slavery for many years, the formal fighting between the two sides of the war began on that date and at that place. When General Lee surrendered in 1865, he wasn't the commander-in-chief of all Confederate forces. He was only the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. When he surrendered, it was only the end of the Army of Northern Virginia, not of the Confederacy. I often engage in hair-splitting on many of my episodes where I make technical distinctions to a lot of my episodes where I make technical distinctions to a war. explain things. However, in this case, it really isn't a matter of splitting hairs. The surrender of

the Army of Northern Virginia was significant as it was the biggest Confederate Army, and the war in Virginia was the focal point of the entire conflict. But just because Robert E. Lee surrendered didn't mean that any other general had to surrender. Moreover, there's also a slight problem with communication. Even though there were telegraphs in 1865, they weren't everywhere. If some other General wanted to follow the lead of General Lee, they might not even get the news of his surrender for weeks, if not months. So with that, and using the surrender of Robert E. Lee as the starting point, what happened after the surrender, and how long did it take for the war to finally end? Domino's started to fall within hours of Lee's surrender. Many of them were just

pure coincidence. Down in Alabama, the Battle of Fort Blake Lee was also fought on April 9th, while Lee was surrendering in Virginia. Just hours later, Confederate Brigadier General, St. John Richardson Little, was captured and he surrendered his forces. He was totally unaware of what General Lee had done. On April 14th, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Where did this spread quickly, but again, not everywhere. Union General James H. Wilson was leading a raiding party through Alabama and Georgia. He had not heard anything about Lee surrendering or Lincoln being killed.

He fought the Battle of Columbus, Georgia. Georgia on April 16th. This has often been called the last battle of the Civil War, but as we will see, it wasn't. One part of Lee's army was Colonel John S. Mosby, who had a unit called Mosby's Raiders. They were more of a guerrilla unit fighting in Northern Virginia. His unit never surrendered. They just disbanded, and he sent all of his troops back home, fully armed. He notified the troops with the following letter, quote, soldiers, I have summoned you together for the last time. The vision we of cherished of a free and independent country has vanished, and that country is now the spoil of a conqueror. I disband your organization in preference to surrendering it to our enemies.

I am no longer your commander. After association of more than two eventful years, I part from you with a just pride in the fame of your achievements and grateful recollections of your generous kindness to myself. And now at this moment of bidding you a final ado, accept this measure of assurance of my unchanging confidence and regard. Farewell, General John S. Mosby. Unquote. Because Mosby never surrendered, a bounty was placed on his head, and he finally surrendered in June. With the Army of Northern Virginia having surrendered, the next biggest Confederate Army in the field was the Army of General Joseph E. Johnson. Johnson had approximately 100,000 men under his command, but he saw the writing on the wall. He noted, quote,

With such odds against us, without the means of procuring ammunition or repairing arms, without money or credit to provide food, it was impossible to continue the war except as robbers, unquote. He began talks with Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on April 17th, and Sherman was rather generous with the terms he offered. However, it was rejected by Washington, and on April 26, Johnson surrendered to Sherman with the exact same terms that Grant gave to Lee. With both Johnson and Lee having surrendered, that was the majority of the Confederate Army. There was no realistic hope of any holdouts winning. From here on out, it was a matter of cleaning up all the loose ends. On May 5th, the Confederate Cabinet met for the very last time in the town of Washington, Georgia,

and it was there that they formally dissolved the Confederate States of America. On May 9th, the now President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation that the fighting was effectually over. The New York Times on May 9th noted, quote, President Johnson has issued a proclamation, declaring that whereas armed resistance to the authority of the government in certain states, heretofore declared to be an insurrection, may be regarded as virtually at an end, unquote. The next day, May 10th, the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was captured. On the 10th and the 11th, more Confederate troops in Florida, Georgia, and Arkansas surrendered. With the Confederate government gone, Jefferson Davis captured, and most of the military units surrendered,

certainly there wasn't anything left at this point, right? Well, on May 12th, more than a month after Robert E. Lee surrendered, was the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmeto Ranch. The battle took place near the Mexican border in Brownsville, Texas. Back in March, Union General Lou Wallace met with his Confederate counterparts who occupied the city of Brownsville, and said that it was stupid to fight at this point and that the two sides should establish an indefinite ceasefire. However, on May 12th, Union Colonel, Theodore H. Barrett, who commanded some forces in the area, explicitly went against orders. He wanted, quote, to establish for himself some notoriety before the war closed.

He wanted to take a fort outside of Brownsville before occupying Brownsville itself. He figured that the Confederates wouldn't put up a fight because everyone else had surrendered. 300 Confederates defeated a Union force of 1,700. wasn't a major conflict, there weren't a lot of casualties, and no one had a huge incentive to fight. Yet, nonetheless, the last battle of the U.S. Civil War was won by the Confederacy. And technically speaking at the time, the Confederacy didn't even exist. There were still some unsurrendered Confederate forces west of the Mississippi. On May 26, Confederate Lieutenant General E. Kirby Smith surrendered all Confederate forces west of the Mississippi except for forces

in what was then called the Indian Territory and what is now Oklahoma. However, Smith didn't really have much of an army to surrender at that point. Almost all of his men left and had gone home after News of Lee's surrender. Those troops that Smith didn't surrender in the Indian territory finally surrendered on June 23rd. The Cherokee Brigadier General Stand Wade surrendered to Union Forces becoming the last Confederate General to surrender. So that's it, right? No more Confederate government. no more Confederate Army, what else could be left?

Well, the Confederacy had a Navy, and a few of those ships were sent out on the high seas to hunt Union vessels. One ship in particular, the CSS Shenandoah was docked on the island of Ponte in Micronesia at the time Lee surrendered. They had absolutely no clue what was happening back home. Throughout June and July, they kept attacking American whaling ships in the Pacific. On August 2nd, they encountered a British ship when they got confirmation that the war had ended and that the Confederacy was no more. They were located in the Pacific Northwest

when they got the news and were on their way to raid the port of San Francisco. As they had attacked Union ships after the war technically ended, the captain feared that he would be tried for piracy and hanged if he were to surrender in an American port. Rather than going to San Francisco, they steered far clear of land

and went all the way around Cape Horn's South America and sailed all the way up to Liverpool, England. On November 6th, almost seven months after the surrender of General Lee in Virginia, the last Confederates surrendered to the Royal Navy. This isn't to say that everything was peaceful after this. Reconstruction was a painful period in the South for bitter defeated Confederates and freed slaves who had to bear the burden of their resentment. It wasn't until August of 1866.

Almost a year and a half after the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, that President Andrew Johnson officially and legally ended the war when he signed a proclamation, quote, declaring that peace, order, tranquility, and civil authority now exists in and throughout the whole of the United States of America. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities. for a show producer credit.

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