Lee Surrenders To Grant – April 9, 1865
"It would be useless and therefore cruel, to provoke the further effusion of blood," said
Confederate General Robert E. Lee, "and I have arranged to meet with General Grant
with a view to surrender." After four years of fighting the Civil War, Lee knew it was
time to put an end to the fighting. Do you know where General Lee and the Confederate
Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to the Union Army?
Shortly after noon on April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S.
Grant, general-in-chief of all United States forces, at the home of Wilmer McClean in
the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The two generals met in the house you
see in the picture. Today, the house at Appomattox is a replica of the original. With this
meeting, the Civil War was effectively over.
In the weeks that followed, Confederate forces surrendered, and Confederate President
Jefferson Davis was captured. The bloody era that began four years earlier at Fort
Sumter, South Carolina, was over. General Grant and the Federal Army had finally won.
It was time for the people of both the South and the North to rebuild their lives. Can you
imagine what that must have been like?