CWRTF Meeting: The Appomattox Campaign (1)

CWRTF Meeting: The Appomattox Campaign

Start Time: 5:30 PM

End Time: 8:30 PM

Contact: Elizabeth Daly

Guest: Hampton Newsome

The Appomattox Campaign, March 29–April 9, 1865, consisted of a series of engagements south and west of the Confederate capital at Richmond that ended in the surrender by Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865). During his Overland Campaign the previous spring, Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant had relentlessly pursued Lee before settling into a ten-month siege of the Confederate transportation hub at Petersburg, south of Richmond. Grant was finally able to dislodge Lee’s army at the Battle of Five Forks (1865), allowing him to take Petersburg and then Richmond. The Confederates fled to Southside Virginia in an attempt to unite with Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, but Grant maneuvered Lee into a trap near the village of Appomattox Court House. There, on April 9, the Confederate general received terms of surrender from Grant. The remaining Confederate armies also laid down their arms…