It was a war that no one expected to last long, and then a war that some suspected would never end. But when Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865, America’s Iliad was finished.
Like the losing player in a chess game whose endgame looks clearer with every move, Gen. Robert E. Lee spent the first days of April 1865 dodging and weaving across southern Virginia in an effort to stave off the relentless pursuit of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, whose Union army outmanned Lee’s Confederate troops by more than two to one. By the morning of April 9, it was clear to Lee that he was out of options. After hours of tetchy negotiations back and forth between the picket lines of the two armies, a meeting to arrange terms of surrender was set for the nearby town of Appomattox.
