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Doc of the Day: Surrender of Army of Northern Virginia
06/02/11
On June 2, 1865, General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of forces west of the Mississippi, became the last Confederate leader to surrender, bringing a formal end to the American Civil War two months after Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House. Two months earlier, the Articles of Agreement Relating to the Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia were dictated by Union general Ulysses S. Grant and signed by Confederate general Robert E. Lee. After Grant captured the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, on April 3, 1865, Lee’s army of fewer than thirty thousand straggling men was on the run and pressured on three sides by three times as many men. Lee’s last hope to reach the food and provisions waiting at Appomattox Station was dashed when General Philip Sheridan’s cavalry arrived first on April 8. Realizing the futility of further resistance, Lee sent out flags of truce and wrote a note to Grant requesting an interview to arrange the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. After a series of notes, the two leaders agreed to meet in the village of Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. There, in a meeting lasting approximately two and a half hours, the two generals drafted and signed the surrender agreement.
Read our full coverage of the the Articles of Agreement Relating to the Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, with in-depth analysis by the historian Robert R. Montgomery.