Conclusion of the American Civil War

Conclusion of the American Civil War
The conclusion of the American Civil War commenced with the articles of surrender agreement of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, at Appomattox Court House, by General Robert E. Lee and concluded with the surrender of the CSS Shenandoah on November 6, 1865, bringing the hostilities of the American Civil War to a close. Legally, the war did not end until a proclamation by President Andrew Johnson on August 20, 1866, when he declared "that the said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States of America."
Lee's defeat on April 9 began the effective end of the war, after which there was no substantial resistance, but the news took time to spread. Some fighting continued, but mostly small skirmishes. President Abraham Lincoln lived to see Lee's surrender after four bloody years of war, but was assassinated just five days later. The Battle of Columbus, Georgia, was fought on April 16, the same day Lincoln died. For the most part though, news of Lee's defeat led to a wave of Confederate surrenders. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his large army and the southeastern department on April 26. The Confederate cabinet dissolved on May 5. Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor, declared on May 9 that the belligerent rights of the Confederacy were at an end, with the insurrection "virtually" over. Union soldiers captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis on May 10.
The last battle of the war was fought at Palmito Ranch on May 1213. The last large Confederate military department, the Trans-Mississippi Department, surrendered on May 26, completing the formalities on June 2. The last surrender on land did not come until June 23, when Cherokee Confederate General Stand Watie gave up his command. At sea, the last Confederate ship, CSS Shenandoah, did not surrender until November 6. It had continued sailing around the world raiding vessels until it finally received news of the end of the war. Shenandoah also fired the last shots of the war on June 22. By April 6, 1866, the rebellion was declared over in all states but Texas. Finally, on August 20, 1866, the war was declared legally over, though fighting had been over for more than a year by then.
The end of slavery in the United States of America is closely tied to the end of the Civil War. As the main cause of the war, slavery led to the Union Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederacy as the Union advanced. The last slaves in the Confederacy were not freed until June 19, 1865, now celebrated as the national holiday Juneteenth. After the end of hostilities, the war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the country and grant civil rights to freed slaves.
April
While president Abraham Lincoln had lived to see the effective end of the war, he did not live to see it through to its conclusion. Assassin John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865, and he died the next morning. The death of Lincoln was a shock to both North and South. Unaware of Lee's surrender on April 9 and the assassination on April 14, General James H. Wilson's Raiders continued their march through Alabama into Georgia. On April 16, the Battle of Columbus, Georgia was fought. This battle – erroneously – has been argued to be the "last battle of the Civil War" and equally erroneously asserted to be "widely regarded" as such. Columbus fell to Wilson's Raiders about midnight on April 16, and most of its manufacturing capacity was destroyed on the 17th. Confederate Colonel John Stith Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola, was wounded in this battle which resulted in his obsession with pain-killing formulas, ultimately ending in the recipe for his celebrated drink.
The next major stage in the peace-making process concluding the American Civil War was the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston and his armies to Major General William T. Sherman on April 26, 1865, at Bennett Place, in Durham, North Carolina. Johnston's Army of Tennessee was among nearly one hundred thousand Confederate soldiers who were surrendered from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The conditions of surrender were in a document called "Terms of a Military Convention" signed by Sherman, Johnston, and Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant at Raleigh, North Carolina.
The first major stage in the peace-making process was when Lee's surrender occurred at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. This, coupled with Lincoln's assassination, induced Johnston to act, believing: "With such odds against us, without the means of procuring ammunition or repairing arms, without money or credit to provide food, it was impossible to continue the war except as robbers." On April 17 Sherman and Johnston met at Bennett Place, and the following day an armistice was arranged, when terms were discussed and agreed upon. Grant had authorized only the surrender of Johnston's forces, but Sherman exceeded his orders by providing very generous terms. These included: that the warring states be immediately recognized after their leaders signed loyalty oaths; that property and personal rights be returned to the Confederates; the reestablishment of the federal court system; and that a general amnesty would be given. On April 24, the authorities in Washington rejected Sherman's proposed terms; two days later, Johnston agreed to the same terms Lee had received previously on April 9.
General Johnston surrendered the following commands under his direction on April 26, 1865: the Department of Tennessee and Georgia; the Army of Tennessee; the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; and the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia. In doing so, Johnston surrendered to Sherman around 30,000 men. On April 27 his adjutant announced the terms to the Army of Tennessee in General Orders #18, and on May 2 he issued his farewell address to the Army of Tennessee as General Orders #22. The remaining parts of the Florida "Brigade of the West" surrendered with the rest of Johnston's forces on May 4, 1865, at Greensboro, North Carolina.
On May 4, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck proposed "to issue an order that all armed men in Virginia who do not surrender by a certain date shall be held as outlaws and robbers." This was approved by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Halleck issued General Orders No. 6, Military Division of the James, on May 6, 1865, effective from May 20, 1865. The order stated that "all persons found in arms against the authority of the United States in the State of Virginia and North Carolina, will be treated as outlaws and robbers."
May and June
Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled Richmond, Virginia, following its evacuation in the early part of April 1865. On May 5, 1865, in Washington, Georgia, Davis had held the last meeting of his Cabinet. At that time, the Confederate government was declared dissolved. The meeting took place at the Heard house, the Georgia Branch Bank Building, with 14 officials present. Despite the fact that there were still small pockets of resistance in the South, the president declared that the armed resistance was "virtually" ended and that nations or ships still harboring fugitives would be denied entry into U.S. ports. Persons found aboard such vessels would no longer be given immunity from prosecution of their crimes. Premised on the surrender of all Confederate Armies east of the Mississippi River, on May 11, 1865, Gen. Grant issued General Orders No. 90 from the War Department stating "That from and after the first day of June, 1865, any and all persons found in arms against the United States, or who may commit acts of hostility against it east of the Mississippi River, will be regarded as guerrillas and punished with death."
Camp Napoleon Council (May 26, 1865)
The Native American tribes of the Indian Territory realized that the Confederacy could no longer fulfill its commitments to them. Therefore, the Camp Napoleon Council was called to draft an agreement to present a united front as they negotiated a return of their loyalty to the United States. Native American tribes further west, many of them also at war with the United States troops, were also invited to take part, and several of them did.
At the end of the meeting, on May 26, 1865, the council appointed commissioners (no more than five for each tribe) to attend a conference with the U.S. government at Washington D.C., at which the results of the Camp Napoleon Council would be presented and discussed. However, the U.S. government refused to treat with such a large group representing so many tribes. Furthermore, the government regarded the Camp Napoleon meeting as unofficial and unauthorized. President Johnson later called for a meeting at Fort Smith (called the Fort Smith Council), which was held in September, 1865.
Trans-Mississippi Department
Confederate leaders asked General Kirby Smith to send reinforcements from his Army of the Trans-Mississippi east of the Mississippi River, in the spring of 1864 following the Battle of Mansfield and the Battle of Pleasant Hill. This was not practicable due to the Union naval control of the Mississippi River and the unwillingness of western troops to be transferred east of the river. Smith instead dispatched Major General Sterling Price and his cavalry on an invasion of Missouri that was ultimately not successful. Thereafter the war west of the Mississippi River was principally one of small raids.
By May 26, 1865, a representative of Smith's negotiated and signed surrender documents with a representative of Major General Edward Canby in Shreveport, Louisiana, then took custody of Smith's force of 43,000 soldiers when they surrendered, by then the only significant Confederate forces left west of the Mississippi River. With this ended all organized Southern military resistance to the Union forces. Smith signed the surrender papers on June 2 on board the U.S.S. Fort Jackson just outside Galveston Harbor.
In view of the surrender of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department to Maj. Gen. Canby on May 26, 1865, Brig. Gen. Cyrus Bussey issued General Orders No. 24 from Headquarters Third Div., 7th Army Corps, Fort Smith, Ark., June 2, 1865, stating that "All such persons who remain in arms engaged in acts of hostility to the United States after a reasonable time to be informed of their surrender, will be regarded as guerrillas and outlaws, and when arrested will be shot."
Events of late June
Ending slavery had become a key war goal of the Union. This had been practically accomplished with the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in former Confederate territory as the Union took it. While slaves in much of the eastern Confederacy had already been freed by Union incursion, many of the further reaches of the Confederacy had not been touched by war, including much of Texas. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger gave General Order No. 3, declaring all slaves in Texas to be free. While practically the order took some time to spread and enforce, its date of enactment was momentous, marking the legal end of slavery in the Confederacy. This is now celebrated as the national holiday Juneteenth. The full end of slavery in the United States did not come until December 6, with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In Native American territories that had sided with the Confederacy, slavery did not end until 1866.
On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Orders No. 4, Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, Tex., stating that "All lawless persons committing acts of violence, such as banditti, guerrillas, jayhawkers, horse-thieves, &c. are hereby declared outlaws and enemies of the human race, and will be dealt with accordingly." President Andrew Johnson issued three proclamations in 1865 and 1866 that formally declared the end of the rebellion in different parts of the former Confederacy. The first, issued on June 23, 1865, declared the rebellion fully suppressed only within the state of Tennessee, Johnson's home state where he had been military governor.
End of the war
CSS Shenandoah
The CSS Shenandoah was commissioned as a commerce raider by the Confederacy to interfere with Union shipping and hinder their efforts in the American Civil War. A Scottish-built merchant ship originally called the Sea King, it was secretly purchased by Confederate agents in September 1864. Captain James Waddell renamed the ship Shenandoah after she was converted to a warship off the coast of Spain on October 19, shortly after leaving England. William Conway Whittle, Waddell's right-hand man, was the ship's executive officer.
The Shenandoah, sailing south then east across the Indian Ocean and into the South Pacific, was in Micronesia at the Island of Ponape (called Ascension Island by Whittle) at the time of the surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to the Union forces on April 9, 1865. Waddell had already captured and disposed of thirteen Union merchantmen.
The Shenandoah destroyed one more prize in the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan, then continued to the Aleutians and into the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean, crossing the Arctic Circle on June 19. Continuing then south along the coast of Alaska the Shenandoah came upon a fleet of Union ships whaling on June 22. She opened continuous fire, destroying a major portion of the Union whaling fleet. Capt. Waddell took aim at a fleeing whaler, Sophia Thornton, and at his signal, the gunner jerked a wrist strap and fired the last two shots of the American Civil War. Shenandoah had so far captured and burned eleven ships of the American whaling fleet while in Arctic waters.
Waddell finally learned of Lee's surrender on June 27 when the captain of the prize Susan & Abigail produced a newspaper from San Francisco. The same paper contained Confederate President Jefferson Davis's proclamation that the "war would be carried on with re-newed vigor". Shenandoah proceeded to capture a further ten whalers in the following seven hours. Waddell then steered Shenandoah south, intending to raid the port of San Francisco which he believed to be poorly defended. En route they encountered an English barque, Barracouta, on August 2 from which Waddell learned of the final collapse of the Confederacy including the surrenders of Johnston's, Kirby Smith's, and Magruder's armies and the capture of President Davis. The long log entry of the Shenandoah for August 2, 1865, begins "The darkest day of my life." Captain Waddell realized then in his grief that they had taken innocent unarmed Union whaling ships as prizes when the rest of the country had ended hostilities.
Following the orders of the captain of the Barracouta, Waddell immediately converted the warship back to a merchant ship, storing her cannon below, discharging all arms, and repainting the hull. At this point, Waddell decided to sail back to England and surrender the Shenandoah in Liverpool. Surrendering in an American port carried the certainty of facing a court with a Union point of view and the very real risk of a trial for piracy, for which he and the crew could be hanged. Sailing south around Cape Horn and staying well off shore to avoid shipping that might report Shenandoah's position, they saw no land for another 9,000 miles until they arrived back in England, having logged a total of over 58,000 miles around the world in a year's travel—the only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the globe.
Thus the final Confederate surrender of the war did not occur until November 6, 1865, when Waddell's ship reached Rock Ferry and was surrendered to Capt. R. N. Paynter, commander of of the British Royal Navy. The Shenandoah was officially surrendered by letter to the British Prime Minister, the Earl Russell. Ultimately, after an investigation by the British Admiralty court, Waddell and his crew were exonerated of doing anything that violated the laws of war and were unconditionally released. Shenandoah herself was sold to Sultan Majid bin Said of Zanzibar in 1866 and renamed El Majidi. Several of the crew moved to Argentina to become farmers and eventually returned to the United States.
Proclamations
On April 6, 1866, Johnson issued a second proclamation that formally ended the rebellion in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia (as well as proclaiming it ended, rather than merely "suppressed," in Tennessee). Only Texas, where pockets of resistance remained, was excluded.
The formal end of the war came on August 20, 1866, when Johnson signed a Proclamation – Declaring that Peace, Order, Tranquillity, and Civil Authority Now Exists in and Throughout the Whole of the United States of America. It noted that his April proclamation had declared "that there no longer existed any armed resistance of misguided citizens or others to the authority of the United States in any or in all the States before mentioned, excepting only the State of Texas."
This final date, August 20, 1866, was adopted as the legal end of the Civil War by United States courts, departments, and agencies, as well as Congress. An 1867 act of Congress extended soldiers' wartime rates of pay "for three years from and after the close of the rebellion, as announced by the President of the United States by proclamation, bearing date the twentieth day of August, eighteen hundred and sixty-six." The Supreme Court also cited August 20, 1866 as the war's official end in Anderson v. United States.
See also
Military forces of the Confederate States
Origins of the American Civil War
Raising the Flag at Fort Sumter
Turning point of the American Civil War
Sources
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
Andrews, J. Cutler, The North Reports the Civil War, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955
Baker, T. Lindsay, Confederate Guerrilla: The Civil War Memoir of Joseph M. Bailey (Chapter 6: Collapse of the Confederacy), University of Arkansas Press, 2007,
Badeau, Adam, Grant in Peace: From Appomattox to Mount McGregor; a Personal Memoir, S.S. Scranton & Company, 1887
Beatie, Russel H., The Army of the Potomac, Basic Books, 2002,
Boykin, Edward M., The Falling Flag: Evacuation of Richmond, Retreat and Surrender at Appomattox, E.T. Hale, 1874
Bradford, Ned, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Gramercy Books, 1988,
Chaffin, Tom, Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah, Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007,
Crotty, Daniel G., Four Years Campaigning in the Army of the Potomac, Dygert Brothers and Company, 1874
Coombe, Jack D., Gunfire Around the Gulf: The Last Major Naval Campaigns of the Civil War, Bantam Books, 1999,
Craven, Avery, The Coming of the Civil War, University of Chicago Press, 1957,
Cunningham, S.A., Confederate Veteran, Confederated Southern Memorial Association et al., 1920
Davis, Jefferson, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, D. Appleton and Company, 1881
Dunlop, W. S., Lee's Sharpshooters, Tunnah & Pittard, 1899,
Gills, Mary Louise, It Happened at Appomattox: The Story of an Historic Virginia Village, Dietz Press, 1948,
Janney, Carolyn E., Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox, The University of North Carolina Press, 2021,
Kean, Robert Garlick Hill (Younger, Edward, ed.), Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean, Head of the Bureau of War, Oxford University Press, 1957
Konstam, Angus (Bryan, Tony, illustrator), Confederate Raider 1861–65, Osprey Publishing, 2003,
Konstam, Angus (Bryan, Tony, illustrator), Confederate Blockade Runner 1861–65, Osprey Publishing, 2004,
Long, Armistead Lindsay, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee: His Military and Personal History, Embracing a Large Amount of Information Hitherto Unpublished, J. M. Stoddart & Company, 1886
Longstreet, James, From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America, J.B. Lippincott, 1908
Marvel, William, A Place Called Appomattox, UNC Press, 2000,
Morgan, Murray, Confederate Raider in the North Pacific: The Saga of the C.S.S. Shenandoah, 1864–65, Washington State University Press, 1995,
Schooler, Lynn, The Last Shot: The Incredible Story of the C.S.S. Shenandoah and the True Conclusion of the American Civil War, Thorndike Press, 2005,
Wise, Jennings Cropper, The Long Arm of Lee: The History of the Artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia; with a Brief Account of the Confederate Bureau of Ordnance'', J. P. Bell Company, 1915, volume 2
1865 in the American Civil War
April 1865 events
August 1865 events
Historiography of the American Civil War
Andrew Johnson
Jefferson Davis
Robert E. Lee
Edmund Kirby Smith
May 1865 events
June 1865 events
Military history of the Confederate States of America
November 1865 events
October 1865 events
Reconstruction Era
September 1865 events
Southern United States