How the period ended
From Appomattox to Liverpool
Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House
on 9 April 1865 essentially ended the war in
the Virginia Theater. Many thousands of
men had slipped out of the weary, retreating,
Confederate column as the cause became
patently hopeless, thus escaping the final
surrender. Some of those soldiers attempted
to head south into North Carolina to join
the Southern army still fighting there under
General Joseph E. Johnston. That forlorn
hope evaporated when Johnston surrendered
to General William T. Sherman near
Durham Station on 26 April, after
complicated negotiations involving
Washington politicians.
In the weeks that followed, Confederates
who had not signed paroles at either
Appomattox or Durham Station gradually
made their way to occupied towns and took
the oath of allegiance to the United States.
Some troops from the deep South took weeks
or even months to reach homes, many of
them desolated, in Alabama or Louisiana or
Texas. Soldiers who surrendered with Lee, or
took the oath separately later, missed the
ordeal suffered by their comrades who had
been taken prisoner just a few hours before
the Appomattox ceremony. Confederates
captured during the retreat from Richmond
and Petersburg, including thousands of men
who surrendered at Sayler's Creek, went off
to prison camps as though the war still raged
on. Most did not secure their freedom until
mid-June 1865.
Meanwhile, the triumphant Federal
armies converged on the national capital
for a mass celebration of the war's end. On
23 and 24 May, hundreds of thousands of
blue-uniformed veterans marched in serried
ranks. As the victorious divisions and
brigades and regiments began to muster out
of service, far-flung Confederate
detachments continued to fight forlornly,
and finally to give up the struggle. On
2 June, General E. Kirby Smith formally
accepted terms at Galveston, Texas, and
surrendered the Confederate forces in the
Trans-Mississippi. Weeks later the
Confederate cruiser CSS Shenandoah was
still capturing whalers in the Bering Sea.
Lieutenant James I. Waddell, CSN, finally
surrendered the Shenandoah to British
officials at Liverpool on 6 November 1865.
The reconstruction of the desolated
Southern states remained to be done, and
the healing of divisions, and the reunion of
the United States in fact as well as in law.
None of those tasks would be easy; nor could
they be accomplished to the satisfaction
of everyone.