SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE

Surrender at Appomattox Court House

In a small Virginia village, General Robert E. Lee met General Ulysses S. Grant to discuss terms, bringing the main Confederate field army in Virginia to surrender. Lee’s forces had been worn down by siege, shortages, and constant pressure, and the attempt to slip westward had been cut off by Union pursuit. The meeting between the two men, remembered for Grant’s plain uniform and Lee’s full dress attire, produced generous terms that allowed Confederate soldiers to go home with their horses and personal sidearms. This approach aimed to ease the transition from war to peace and avoid needless guerrilla resistance. While other Confederate forces would surrender in the weeks that followed, Appomattox became the symbolic end of the Civil War’s major fighting. In American memory, it stands beside Fort Sumter as a bookend, marking the close of a conflict that had cost hundreds of thousands of lives.