Confederate Surrender and the Assassination of Lincoln

Confederate soldiers had been deserting to save their families and farms, and many farms had been stripped of food and animals by the Confederate commissary. Davis, pressured by top advisers, asked for a peace conference in hope of obtaining from Lincoln a negotiated settlement. Lincoln responded that the war would end "whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it."

A conspicuous frivolity appeared among wealthy Confederates -- the kind of "what the hell" desperation that sometimes emerges when hopes are dashed. Poor whites resented banquets that seemed to them to mock their poverty and hunger.

Sherman's army at Savannah was re-supplied by the Union Navy, and, in February, Sherman and his army were marching northward into South Carolina, pursuing his policy of devastation as he went, including the burning down of homes of the wealthy or prominent Confederates, feeding his anger and trying to drive fearful Confederates to surrender. In March he crossed into North Carolina.

On March 25, General Lee attacked Grant's forces near Petersburg, but without success, and on April 1 he attacked again without success. It was Lee's last effort to hold to his positions at Richmond and Petersburg, and having failed, on the night of April 2-3, he evacuated Richmond and slipped away from the line between Petersburg and the Union army. The next evening, Union forces entered Richmond, the capitol of the confederacy. Grant's army pursued Lee and his army of 30,000 men eastward, surrounded them near a place called Appomattox Courthouse and, on April 7, Grant called on Lee to surrender. Lee's troops were exhausted, and rather than try to cut through to the Allegheny Mountains and pursue guerrilla warfare, Lee agreed to meet his fellow Mexican-war veteran, Grant. A truce was called on April 9, and, on that day, Lee and Grant met at a home in Appomattox Courthouse and agreed to the terms of surrender.

Grant wanted no unnecessary humiliations and did not require Lee's officers to surrender their swords, their personal baggage and horses or side arms. Outside, Grant saluted Lee by taking off his hat, and Lee saluted back by taking off his hat. The war was over.

Battle deaths for the two sides added together have been counted as a little over 200,000 (110,070 for the Union and roughly 90,000 for the Confederacy). Deaths in the military from disease on both sides was over 414,000. Taking the battlefield deaths alone, with a population of 31 million at the beginning of the war, that was one for every 155 persons (white, black, North and South). For the year 2006, with a population of 300 million, one in every 155 persons would be 1,935,484, in other words around 2 million battle deaths -- about 645 times the 3,000 Americans killed in Iraq from 2003 through 2006.

Another killing took place on April 14. President Lincoln was watching a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater in Washington. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an actor from Maryland who believed that he was avenging the Confederate defeat. Lincoln died the next morning. People in these times in the United States were for the most part still thinking biblically. Believing that Lincoln had created evil, Booth recorded his thought that "God made me the instrument of his punishment." As he died he whispered the words, "Tell mother I died for my country."

As usual, assassination did nothing for the cause espoused by the assassin, however much the association with God.

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Before the Civil War a difference of opinion existed over whether the U.S. Constitution was a treaty between states or a founding document of a single country. After the Civil War it was more commonly agreed that the U.S. Constitution did not grant states the right of secession. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1856, reinforced this view. No state was to deny a citizen his right to remain a citizen of the United States, and states were not to conduct their own foreign policy.

to "Japan from Tokugawa to Meiji"

Books

Clash of Extremes: the Economic Origins of the U.S. Civil War, by Marc Egnal, 2009

America's Civil War, by Brooks D. Simpson, published in 1996, 239 pages.

War and Ruin: William T. Sherman and the Savannah Campaign, by Anne J Bailey, 168 pages.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: the End of Slavery in America, by Allen C Guelo.

The Civil War, by Shelby Foote, three volumes and more than 2,500 pages.

Last of the War, the Confederate Surrender and the Assassination of Lincoln

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