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The Civil War’s final battlefront

Desperation set in among the Confederacy’s remaining troops throughout the final nine months of the Civil War, a state of despair that Union General Ulysses S. Grant manipulated to his advantage. From General William T. Sherman’s destructive “March to the Sea” that leveled Georgia to Phillip H. Sheridan’s bloody campaign in northern Virginia, the Union obliterated the Confederacy’s chance of recovery.

As Civil War historian Elizabeth R. Varon recounts in Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War, by April 1865, General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was primed for defeat. Here, we trace the events that led to Lee’s surrender to Grant, agreed upon in the parlor of a civilian home in Appomattox Court House, Virginia.


Featured image: Robert E. Lee accepts Ulysses S. Grant’s terms for surrender at the McLean home on April 9, 1865. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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