Civil War Ends

By the spring of 1865 the American Civil War, which had raged since 1861 between the Union and the secessionist Confederacy, was reaching its conclusion. After the long siege of Petersburg, Virginia, the Union armies under General Ulysses S. Grant finally broke through the Confederate lines defending the approaches to Richmond, the Confederate capital, forcing General Robert E. Lee to abandon the city.

On April 2, 1865, word reached Richmond that the lines had collapsed, and the Confederate government and army evacuated the city, setting fire to military stores as they fled. The following day Union troops occupied Richmond, and President Abraham Lincoln himself walked through the fallen capital. Lee's hungry and exhausted army retreated westward, pursued relentlessly by Grant's forces.

Trapped and surrounded near Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the war, though scattered Confederate forces would lay down their arms in the weeks that followed. The Union was preserved and slavery was abolished, but the triumph was quickly darkened by the assassination of Lincoln on April 14, leaving the difficult work of reconstruction to a grieving nation.