Fort Mahone after its capture, 1865.
Deserted Confederate huts on the abandoned Petersburg line.
On the Sunday following the evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, Lee’s troops were cut off at Appomattox Court House, destroying any hopes they might have had for uniting with Johnston in North Carolina. In this small Virginia town nearly 100 miles west of Petersburg, the Army of Northern Virginia, now numbering little more than 28,000, surrendered to the Union forces. Within a week of the fall of Petersburg the major striking force of the Confederacy had capitulated. General Johnston surrendered his army to General Sherman in North Carolina on April 26. By early June 1865, all Confederate forces had been surrendered, and the Civil War was over.
Union soldiers on Sycamore Street in Petersburg, April 1865. For these men, basking in the aftermath of a successful campaign, the war is almost over. To the west, General Sheridan’s cavalry is racing to cut off the retreating Southern army. “If the thing is pressed,” Sheridan tells Grant, “I think Lee will surrender.” Says Lincoln: “Let the thing be pressed.”
On April 3, 1865, with Petersburg in Union hands at last, General Grant issued orders sending off the Armies of the Potomac and the James in pursuit of Lee. While the photographer was taking this picture, showing a Federal wagon train leaving the city to join in the chase, the remnants of Lee’s army were marching toward a little crossroad village named Appomattox Court House.