Surrender at Appomattox & Lincoln's Assassination: Fifth Grade Social Studies
In April 1865, within the span of just six historic days, the United States witnessed both the triumphant preservation of the Union with General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox and the catastrophic murder of President Abraham Lincoln.
Grant Takes Command: The Overland Campaign (1864)
In March 1864, President Abraham Lincoln found the military commander he had searched for throughout three agonizing years of war: General Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln promoted Grant to the rank of Lieutenant General—a rank previously held only by George Washington—and named him General in Chief of all United States Armies.
Grant brought a unified, relentless grand strategy: rather than having Union armies operate independently in different regions, all Union forces would attack simultaneously, preventing Confederate armies from reinforcing one another. Grant ordered General William Tecumseh Sherman to invade Georgia, seize Atlanta, and break the Southern interior, while Grant personally traveled with General George Meade's Army of the Potomac to relentlessly hunt down General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
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| GRANT'S OVERLAND CAMPAIGN (MAY-JUNE 1864) |
| |
| - BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS: Savage combat in burning, |
| tangled brush; armies cannot see 10 feet ahead. |
| - BATTLE OF SPOTSYLVANIA: 24 hours of hand-to-hand combat at |
| the "Bloody Angle"; rain and mud soaked with blood. |
| - BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR: Grant orders frontal assault on |
| impregnable trenches; loses 7,000 Union men in 20 minutes! |
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| GRANT'S CRUCIAL PLEDGE: |
| Unlike previous Union generals who retreated after a defeat, |
| Grant continually SIDESTEPPED TO THE LEFT and kept marching |
| SOUTH toward Richmond: |
| "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all |
| summer." |
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Between May and June 1864, Grant and Lee clashed in the brutal Overland Campaign. Grant lost fifty-five thousand men in six weeks, earning the unfair label of "the Butcher" from Northern critics. However, Grant understood the brutal mathematics of the war: the Union could replace its lost soldiers and equipment with fresh recruits and factory supplies, but the depleted Confederacy could not.
Unable to take Richmond by direct assault, Grant secretly crossed the wide James River and laid siege to Petersburg, Virginia, a vital railroad junction twenty miles south of Richmond. For nine agonizing months (June 1864 to April 1865), the two armies lived in fifty miles of muddy trenches, presaging the trench warfare of World War I.
Sherman's March to the Sea: Total War
While Grant pinned Lee at Petersburg, General William Tecumseh Sherman advanced through northern Georgia toward Atlanta. In September 1864, Sherman captured Atlanta, the industrial and railroad heart of the Deep South.
The capture of Atlanta was a monumental political turning point. Northern morale soared, and in November 1864, Abraham Lincoln won a crushing re-election victory over Democratic candidate General George McClellan, ensuring that the war would be fought to complete victory and the eradication of slavery.
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| SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA (NOV-DEC 1864) |
| |
| - Sherman burns Atlanta's military infrastructure. |
| - 62,000 Union troops march 285 miles to Savannah, Georgia. |
| - Cuts loose from all supply lines; "lives off the land"! |
| - Marches in a destructive swath 60 MILES WIDE: |
| * Destroys Confederate railroads (heats & twists rails into |
| "Sherman's Neckties") |
| * Confiscates livestock, crops, and burns cotton gins |
| * Spares private homes, but destroys military logistics |
| - "TOTAL WAR": Making Southern civilians feel the hard hand |
| of war so they will never dare rebel again! |
| - DEC 21, 1864: Captures Savannah; telegraphed to Lincoln as |
| a "Christmas gift"! |
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In November 1864, Sherman launched his famous "March to the Sea." Cutting loose from his telegraph and supply lines, Sherman led sixty-two thousand soldiers on a 285-mile march across Georgia from Atlanta to the Atlantic port of Savannah.
Sherman practiced "total war"—waging war not just against enemy soldiers, but against the economic resources and psychological will of the Confederate population. Sherman's army marched in four columns spanning a sixty-mile-wide path of destruction: destroying railroads, confiscating cattle, burning cotton warehouses, and liberating thousands of enslaved people who joined the march.
On December 21, 1864, Sherman captured Savannah, sending a famous telegram to President Lincoln: "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." Sherman then turned north, marching through the Carolinas to join Grant.
Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address: A Vision of Reconciliation
On March 4, 1865, standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol under a clearing spring sky, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address. With the war clearly drawing to a victorious conclusion, many expected the President to deliver a triumphal, boastful victory speech punishing the South.
Instead, Lincoln delivered a profound, humble, and spiritual sermon. Lincoln acknowledged that slavery was the foundational cause of the war and suggested that the horrific bloodshed was God's punishment visited upon both North and South for the national sin of slavery: "Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword... still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"
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| LINCOLN'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS (1865) |
| |
| "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness |
| in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us |
| strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the |
| nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the |
| battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which |
| may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among |
| ourselves, and with all nations." |
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Lincoln concluded with the most compassionate, magnanimous words in American political literature: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."
Surrender at Appomattox Court House (April 9, 1865)
On April 2, 1865, Grant's forces finally broke through the Confederate lines at Petersburg. General Lee evacuated Petersburg and Richmond. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet fled south on the last train, while Confederate soldiers set fire to bridges and warehouses, leaving Richmond in flames. On April 3, Union troops marched into Richmond, and Abraham Lincoln walked the streets of the fallen rebel capital, mobbed by joyful African Americans who knelt to kiss his hands and hailed him as their liberator.
Lee's starving army retreated westward along the Appomattox River, hoping to link up with Confederate forces in North Carolina. But Grant's cavalry, commanded by General Philip Sheridan, outraced Lee and blocked his path at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
Surrounded on three sides by over sixty thousand Union soldiers and with his men starving, Lee recognized the end: "There is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths."
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| THE SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX (APRIL 9, 1865) |
| |
| - Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865: Lee and Grant meet inside the |
| parlor of Wilmer McLean's home in Appomattox Court House. |
| - LEE: Immaculate, crisp dress uniform with jeweled sword. |
| - GRANT: Mud-splattered private's uniform, unbuttoned collar. |
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| GRANT'S MAGNANIMOUS SURRENDER TERMS: |
| 1. Confederate officers and soldiers surrender their weapons |
| and sign paroles promising not to fight again. |
| 2. Confederate soldiers allowed to KEEP THEIR HORSES and |
| mules to "put in a crop" for their families back home! |
| 3. Officers allowed to keep their sidearms and personal bags. |
| 4. NO PRISON; NO TREASON TRIALS: Soldiers allowed to return |
| peacefully to their homes without fear of prosecution! |
| 5. Grant orders 25,000 UNION ARMY RATIONS distributed |
| immediately to feed Lee's starving soldiers! |
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On Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, Lee and Grant met inside the brick home of Wilmer McLean in Appomattox Court House (ironically, McLean had moved there from Manassas in 1861 to escape the war after the first battle of Bull Run had raged across his farm!).
Carrying out President Lincoln's instructions for a compassionate peace, Grant offered remarkably generous surrender terms:
- All Confederate soldiers were paroled and allowed to return peacefully to their homes, shielded from prosecution for treason as long as they obeyed the laws.
- Confederate officers kept their sidearms and horses.
- Grant allowed Confederate cavalrymen and artillerymen to keep their horses and mules, noting that they would need them for spring plowing on their farms.
- Grant immediately ordered twenty-five thousand Union military rations to be distributed to feed Lee's starving men.
When Union artillery began firing victory salutes as Lee rode away, Grant immediately ordered the firing stopped: "The war is over; the rebels are our countrymen again, and the best sign of rejoicing after the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations."
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (April 14, 1865)
Five days after Lee's surrender, on the evening of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, a jubilant Washington was celebrating the end of the war. That morning, Major General Robert Anderson had returned to Fort Sumter to raise the smoke-stained Union garrison flag over the fortress, exactly four years to the day after surrendering it.
That evening, President Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln attended a performance of the British comedy Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre, accompanied by a young military officer, Major Henry Rathbone, and his fiancée Clara Harris.
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| THE TRAGEDY AT FORD'S THEATRE (APRIL 14, 1865) |
| |
| - JOHN WILKES BOOTH: Famous 26-year-old Shakespearean actor |
| and rabid Confederate sympathizer. |
| - Motivations: Furious over the fall of the Confederacy; was |
| enraged days earlier when Lincoln gave a speech advocating |
| voting rights for educated African American soldiers! |
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| 10:15 PM: Booth slips into the unguarded presidential box. |
| - Fires a single-shot .44-caliber derringer pistol into the |
| back of Lincoln's head. |
| - Slashes Major Rathbone's arm with a hunting knife. |
| - Jumps 11 feet to the stage, breaking his fibula bone; |
| shouts Virginia's state motto: "SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!" |
| ("Thus always to tyrants!") and escapes on horseback. |
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John Wilkes Booth, a famous actor and fanatical Confederate sympathizer, had organized a conspiracy to decapitate the Union government by simultaneously murdering President Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward (Seward was brutally stabbed in his bed by co-conspirator Lewis Powell, but survived).
At 10:15 PM, knowing the play by heart, Booth waited for the laughter following the funniest line in the play. Slipping into the unguarded presidential box, Booth fired a bullet into the back of Lincoln's head. Slashing Major Rathbone's arm with a dagger, Booth leaped eleven feet down to the stage, snagging his riding spur on an American flag draping the box and snapping his leg bone. He limped across the stage, raised his bloody dagger, and shouted to the stunned audience: "Sic semper tyrannis!" ("Thus always to tyrants!"), fleeing out the back stage door into the dark night.
Lincoln was carried across Tenth Street into the boardinghouse of William Petersen. Doctors worked frantically, but the wound was fatal. Lincoln never regained consciousness.
At 7:22 AM on Saturday, April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln breathed his last. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton stood by the bedside, saluted, and whispered through his tears: "Now he belongs to the ages."
Booth was hunted down twelve days later by Union cavalry and shot dead inside a burning tobacco barn in Virginia. Four co-conspirators (including Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the federal government) were convicted and hanged.
A funeral train draped in black carried Lincoln's body on a seventeen-hundred-mile journey back to Springfield, Illinois, as millions of weeping citizens lined railroad tracks in cities, small towns, and fields across the North.
The loss of Lincoln was a catastrophic tragedy for the American nation. The South had lost its most compassionate protector who favored generous reconciliation, and the nation was left without the moral compass, political genius, and unifying vision needed to guide the country through the stormy waters of Reconstruction.
Chapter Review and Exercises
Summary Review Exercises
Exercise One asks students to explain General Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign strategy in 1864, analyzing why Grant refused to retreat after costly battles like the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. The response should explain that Grant pursued a strategy of simultaneous, relentless pressure on Confederate armies, understanding that the Union could replace its casualties while the Confederacy could not, leading to the nine-month Siege of Petersburg.
Exercise Two asks students to define General William Tecumseh Sherman's concept of "total war" during his March to the Sea in late 1864, detailing the military and psychological impact of the campaign on the Confederacy. The response should explain total war as destroying civilian infrastructure and economic logistics that supported enemy armies, detailing how Sherman's sixty-mile-wide swath of destruction through Georgia shattered Southern morale and hastened Confederate defeat.
Exercise Three requires students to contrast the magnanimous surrender terms granted by General Grant at Appomattox with the tragic events of Lincoln's assassination five days later. The response should describe the terms allowing Confederate soldiers to keep their horses and return home without treason trials, recounting John Wilkes Booth's murder of Lincoln at Ford's Theatre and analyzing why Lincoln's death devastated hopes for a smooth and compassionate Reconstruction.
Detailed Solutions
Solution to Exercise One clarifies that Grant shifted Union warfare from territorial conquest to the destruction of the enemy army. By constantly flanking southward rather than retreating after tactical stalemates, Grant maintained relentless pressure on Lee's forces, bleeding Confederate manpower until the army was pinned in the Petersburg trenches.
Solution to Exercise Two reveals that Sherman recognized that modern warfare depended on civilian home front support. By dismantling railroads, burning cotton stores, and demonstrating the Confederacy's inability to protect its interior, Sherman severed supply lines to Lee's army and broke the South's psychological will to continue the conflict.
Solution to Exercise Three details that Appomattox and Ford's Theatre formed a tragic contrast of triumph and grief. Grant's generous terms fulfilled Lincoln's vision of national reconciliation without vengeance, but Lincoln's sudden murder removed the one leader possessing the moral authority and political skill to reintegrate the South while securing equal civil rights for four million emancipated citizens.