On this day in 1865,

LEE SURRENDERS

Civil War Begins and Ends at Homes of Wilmer McLean

McLean Appomattox Home Looted By Union Soldiers

On this day in 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant after getting trapped in Appomattox Valley.   The Confederate armies had been on the defensive for several weeks and Lee was trying to join forces with the Army of Tennessee, led by Joseph Eggleston Johnston, the great grandfather of one of my neighbors.  While the surrender terms offered by Grant were generous, Lee said in 1870 he would not have surrendered, but would have preferred to be killed, if he had known how the post-Grant Radical Republicans would treat the South during Reconstruction.

While Lee’s surrender brought an effective end to the Civil War, other Confederate generals fought on, including Confederate General Johnston, who surrendered a few weeks later, coincidentally, the same day Lincoln was assassinated.

In a little known coincidence, Lee’s surrender occurred in the living room of Wilmer McLean, who had converted Appomattox Courthouse into his new home.  Years before McLean had left his original home because the first battle of the Civil War had been fought in his front yard along the banks of Bull Run.  After the surrender, Union soldiers took almost all of the furniture and other artifacts from McLean’s home to save as mementoes.  McLean commissioned the print above in what turned out to be a failed attempt to recover his losses.