The Gentleman Defeated: Lee Surrenders to Grant's Union Machine at Appomattox

As the winter of 1864 to 1865 descended upon Virginia with the siege of Petersburg grinding on and bloody stalemate after the defeat of Union forces at the crater, the Confederacy's strategic horizon looked bleak at best.

In Georgia, William Tecumseh Sherman had captured Atlanta and marched to the sea, giving the Union a significant victory that helped buoy Lincoln in the polls and steal from the South its last real hope of victory, which Lee had won in the wilderness at great cost.

This was the idea that Union dissatisfaction with the war would grow so severe that Lincoln would lose the election and peace-minded former General McClellan would win.

Before Sherman's victory, that had been a distinct possibility.

After Sherman, however, not so much.

In any case, Sherman was now slicing through the Carolinas like an unsparing scythe, burning Columbia and tearing up the last railroads connecting Virginia with the Deep South on which it relied for food and supplies.

In the Shenandoah Valley, Philip Sheridan had systematically laid waste to the countryside, burning every barn, mill, and wheat field, announcing that a crow flying over the valley must carry its own rations, and then he destroyed Jubal Early's tiny remnant at Waynesboro.

A Jackson Early was not.

Meanwhile, the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, the last lifeline of the South where blockade runners could get through, fell in January of 1865.

In Petersburg's trenches, the Army of Northern Virginia was dissolving from cold and starvation.

Desertions reached an alarming, catastrophic rate of 100 men a night.

Now, these who left at this point were not cowards, by and large.

They were largely devoted, battle-scarred veterans.

But they were receiving letters constantly from their weeping wives back home in places like Georgia and Alabama, pleading to them that their children were starving, and they needed to come home to protect and feed them, to keep their families alive as disaster beckoned and loomed.

And so they left, leaving Lee's effective infantry shrinking ever more, gradually heading down to just 35,000 men who had to hold 35 miles of works against 125,000 federals who pressed relentlessly against their right flank.

This was a dire period.

The war was lost, but was grinding on, and one can imagine how that weighed heavily on Lee's soul.

Describing how Lee remained sane in this period, despite all this just terrible news, Emory Thomas writes, quote, What likely kept Lee as stable as he was during the extended trauma of siege in 1864 was the experience of his entire life.

He had known frustration before, in childhood, in many of his assignments before 1861, in his career generally, in his marriage and his children, in his efforts to manage the Custis properties, in his execution of Custis's will, and more.

Small wonder Lee expressed his sympathy to bereaved friends and relatives as he did.

The dead go to glory.

The living must endure more of this veil of tears.

Lee knew more than he wanted to know about enduring in a world imperfect, end quote.

In February 1865, a desperate, panicking Confederate Congress took a step it should have taken three years earlier.

It appointed Robert E. Lee general-in-chief of all the armies of the Confederacy.

As the winter of 1864 to 1865 descended upon Virginia with the siege of Petersburg grinding on and bloody stalemate after the defeat of Union forces at the crater, the Confederacy's strategic horizon looked bleak at best.

In Georgia, William Tecumseh Sherman had captured Atlanta and marched to the sea, giving the Union a significant victory that helped buoy Lincoln in the polls and steal from the South its last real hope of victory, which Lee had won in the wilderness at great cost.

This was the idea that Union dissatisfaction with the war would grow so severe that Lincoln would lose the election and peace-minded former General McClellan would win.

Before Sherman's victory, that had been a distinct possibility.

After Sherman, however, not so much.

In any case, Sherman was now slicing through the Carolinas like an unsparing scythe, burning Columbia and tearing up the last railroads connecting Virginia with the Deep South on which it relied for food and supplies.

In the Shenandoah Valley, Philip Sheridan had systematically laid waste to the countryside, burning every barn, mill, and wheat field, announcing that a crow flying over the valley must carry its own rations, and then he destroyed Jubal Early's tiny remnant at Waynesboro.

A Jackson Early was not.

Meanwhile, the port of Wilmington, North Carolina, the last lifeline of the South where blockade runners could get through, fell in January of 1865.

In Petersburg's trenches, the Army of Northern Virginia was dissolving from cold and starvation.

Desertions reached an alarming, catastrophic rate of 100 men a night.

Now, these who left at this point were not cowards, by and large.

They were largely devoted, battle-scarred veterans.

But they were receiving letters constantly from their weeping wives back home in places like Georgia and Alabama, pleading to them that their children were starving, and they needed to come home to protect and feed them, to keep their families alive as disaster beckoned and loomed.

And so they left, leaving Lee's effective infantry shrinking ever more, gradually heading down to just 35,000 men who had to hold 35 miles of works against 125,000 federals who pressed relentlessly against their right flank.

This was a dire period.

The war was lost, but was grinding on, and one can imagine how that weighed heavily on Lee's soul.

Describing how Lee remained sane in this period, despite all this just terrible news, Emory Thomas writes, quote, What likely kept Lee as stable as he was during the extended trauma of siege in 1864 was the experience of his entire life.

He had known frustration before, in childhood, in many of his assignments before 1861, in his career generally, in his marriage and his children, in his efforts to manage the Custis properties, in his execution of Custis's will, and more.

Small wonder Lee expressed his sympathy to bereaved friends and relatives as he did.

The dead go to glory.

The living must endure more of this veil of tears.

Lee knew more than he wanted to know about enduring in a world imperfect, end quote.

In February 1865, a desperate, panicking Confederate Congress took a step it should have taken three years earlier.

It appointed Robert E. Lee general-in-chief of all the armies of the Confederacy.