Battle of Appomattox Courthouse

The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse (April 9, 1865) was the final engagement of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia before it surrendered to the Union Army under Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant near the end of the American Civil War.

Background

On April 1, 1865, Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's cavalry turned Lee's flank at the Battle of Five Forks. The next day Grant's army achieved a decisive breakthrough, effectively ending the Siege of Petersburg. Lee abandoned Petersburg and Richmond and headed west to Appomattox Station, where a supply train awaited him. From there he hoped to move south to join with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army in North Carolina. On April 8, 1865, Union cavalry under Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer captured and burned three supply trains waiting for Lee's army at the Battle of Appomattox Station. Now both the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James were converging on Appomattox.

The road to Appomattox

With his supplies at Appomattox destroyed, Lee now looked to the railway at Lynchburg, where more supplies awaited him. While the Union Army was closing in on Lee, all that lay between Lee and Lynchburg was Union cavalry. Lee hoped to break through the cavalry before infantry arrived. He sent a note to Grant saying that he did not wish to surrender his army just yet but was willing to discuss how Grant's terms would affect the Confederacy. Grant, with a throbbing headache, stated that "it looks as if Lee still means to fight." [Korn, p. 137.] The Union infantry was close, but the only unit near enough to support Sheridan's cavalry was Maj. Gen. John Gibbon's XXIV Corps of the Army of the James. This corps traveled 30 miles (50 km) in 21 hours to reach the cavalry. Maj. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord, commander of the Army of the James, arrived with the XXIV Corps around 4:00 a.m. with the V Corps close behind. Sheridan deployed three divisions of cavalry along a low ridge to the southwest of Appomattox Court House.

The last battle

At dawn on April 9, the Confederate Second Corps under Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon attacked Sheridan's cavalry and quickly forced back the first line. The Confederate cavalry under Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee moved around the Union flank. The next line, held by Brig. Gens. Ranald S. Mackenzie and George Crook, fell back. Gordon's troops charged through the Union lines and took the ridge, but as they reached the crest they saw the entire Union XXIV Corps in line of battle with the Union V Corps to their right. Fitz Lee's cavalry saw these Union forces and immediately withdrew and rode off towards Lynchburg. Ord's troops began advancing against Gordon's corps while the Union II Corps began moving against Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's corps to the northeast. Colonel Charles Venable of Lee's staff rode in at this time and asked for an assessment, and Gordon gave him a reply he knew Lee did not want to hear: "Tell General Lee I have fought my corps to a frazzle, and I fear I can do nothing unless I am heavily supported by Longstreet's corps." Upon hearing it Lee finally stated the inevitable: "Then there is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant and I would rather die a thousand deaths."

Many of Lee's officers, including Longstreet, agreed that surrendering the army was the only option left. The only notable officer opposed to surrender was Longstreet's chief of artillery, Brig. Gen. Edward Porter Alexander, who predicted that if Lee surrendered then "every other [Confederate] army will follow suit". At 8:00 a.m., Lee rode out to meet Grant, accompanied by three of his aides. With gunshots still being heard on Gordon's front and Union skirmishers still advancing on Longstreet's front, Lee received a message from Grant. After several hours of correspondence between Grant and Lee, a cease-fire was enacted and Grant received Lee's request to discuss surrender terms. Lee's aide, Col. Charles Marshall, was sent to find a location for Grant and Lee to meet. Marshall selected the home of Wilmer McLean, coincidentally the same man who was forced to lend his home to Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard at the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the war.

The surrender

Dressed in an immaculate uniform, Lee waited for Grant to arrive. Grant, whose headache had ended when he received Lee's note, arrived in a mud-spattered uniform—a government-issue flannel shirt with trousers tucked into muddy boots, no sidearms, and with only his tarnished shoulder straps showing his rank. [Smith, pp. 403-04.] Suddenly overcome with sadness, Grant found it hard to get to the point of the meeting and instead the two generals briefly discussed a previous encounter during the Mexican-American War. Lee brought the attention back to the issue at hand, and Grant offered the same generous terms he had before:

In addition to his generous terms, Grant also allowed the defeated men to take home their horses and mules to carry out the spring planting and provided Lee with a supply of food rations for his starving army; Lee said it would have a very happy effect among the men and do much toward reconciling the country. As Lee left the house and rode away, Grant's men began cheering in celebration, but Grant ordered an immediate stop. "I at once sent word, however, to have it stopped," he said. "The Confederates were now our countrymen, and we did not want to exult over their downfall."

The formal surrender of arms

On April 10, Lee gave his farewell address to his army. The same day a six-man commission gathered to discuss a formal ceremony of surrender, even though no Confederate officer wished to go through with such an event. Brig. Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain was the Union officer selected to lead the ceremony, and later he would reflect on what he witnessed on April 12, 1865, and write a moving tribute:

That day, 27,805 Confederate soldiers passed by and stacked their arms.

Aftermath

Roughly 175,000 Confederates remained in the field across the country.Fact|date=February 2008 Just as Porter Alexander had predicted, it was only a matter of time before the other Confederate armies began to surrender. As news spread of Lee's surrender, other Confederate commanders realized that the Confederacy was all but dead, and decided to lay down their own arms. Joseph E. Johnston's army in North Carolina, with which Lee had hoped to combine forces, surrendered to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman on April 26. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department in May and Brig. Gen. Stand Watie surrendered the last sizable organized Confederate force on June 23, 1865.

There were several more small battles after the surrender, with the Battle of Palmito Ranch commonly known as the final military action of the Confederacy.

Lee never forgot Grant's magnanimity during the surrender, and for the rest of his life would not tolerate an unkind word said about Grant in his presence. Likewise, General Gordon cherished Chamberlain's simple act of saluting his surrendered army, calling Chamberlain an example of the "purest of knights".

References

* Chamberlain, Joshua L., "The Passing of Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac", Bantam reprint, 1992, ISBN 0-553-29992-1.
* Freeman, Douglas S., [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/People/Robert_E_Lee/FREREL/home.html "R. E. Lee, A Biography"] (4 volumes), Scribners, 1934.
* Grant, Ulysses S., [http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/4367 "Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant"] , Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885–86, ISBN 0-914427-67-9.
* Korn, Jerry, and the Editors of Time-Life Books, "Pursuit to Appomattox: The Last Battles", Time-Life Books, 1987, ISBN 0-8094-4788-6.
* Salmon, John S., "The Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide", Stackpole Books, 2001, ISBN 0-8117-2868-4.
* Smith, Jean Edward, "Grant", Simon and Shuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-84927-5.
* [http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/abpp/battles/va097.htm National Park Service battle description]

Notes

Further reading

* Marvel, William, "A Place Called Appomattox", University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
* [http://www.footnote.com/image/4346760 Original Document: Confederate Surrender at Appomattox] Virginia April 10, 1865