The US Civil War ended with the meeting of Lee and Grant at Appomattox.
Lee sat in a tall caned armchair and Grant in a swivel chair with a padded leather back next to a small oval side table.
After near five years of savage fighting, 600,000 dead, hundreds of thousands wounded when an arm or leg wound almost
automatically mean sawing off that limb in a field tent, and billions in wasted treasure... it was over.
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The terms of surrender, however, would be a simple gentlemen’s agreement. Healing the country, rather than vengeance, directed Grant’s
and the Lincoln administration’s actions. There would be no mass imprisonments or executions, no parading of defeated enemies through
Northern streets. Lincoln’s priority—shared by Grant—was “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and unite the country together again as a
functioning democracy under the Constitution; extended retribution against the former Confederates would only slow down the process.
The Army of Northern Virginia would surrender their arms, return home, and agree “not to take up arms against the Government of the
United States.” At Lee’s request, Grant even allowed Confederates who owned their own horses to keep them so that they could tend their
farms and plant spring crops. A Union officer wrote down the terms. Grant then signed the document on the side table next to his chair and
passed it to Lee for his signature.
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