surrender at appomax court house General Lee's final campaign began on March 25, 1865, with a Confederate attack on Fort Stedman, near Petersburg. General Grant’s forces counterattacked a week later on April 1 at Five Forks, forcing Lee to abandon Richmond and Petersburg the following day. The Confederate Army’s retreat moved southwest along the Richmond & Danville Railroad. Heavily outnumbered by the enemy and low on supplies, Lee was in dire trouble. Nevertheless, he led a series of grueling night marches, hoping to reach supply trains in Farmville, Virginia, and eventually join Maj. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army in North Carolina. Union troops captured the valuable supplies at Farmville on April 7.
On April 8, the Confederates discovered that their army was blocked by Federal cavalry. Confederate commanders tried to break through the cavalry screen, hoping that the horsemen were unsupported by other troops. But Grant had anticipated Lee’s attempt to escape and ordered two corps (Twenty-fourth and Fifth), under the commands of Maj. Gen. John Gibbon and Bvt. Maj. Gen. Charles Griffin, to march all night to reinforce the Union cavalry and trap Lee. On April 9, those corps drove back the Confederates.
Rather than destroy his army and sacrifice the lives of his soldiers to no purpose, Lee decided to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia. Three days later, a formal ceremony marked the disbanding of Lee's army and the parole of his men, ending the war in Virginia. The Grant-Lee agreement served not only as a signal that the South had lost the war but also as a model for the rest of the surrenders that followed.
Battle of Appomattox Court House
April 9, 1865
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