Battles of the Civil War

by Thomas Elbert Vineyard

The Confederate officers were allowed to retain their side arms, and the Confederate soldiers to retain their horses. This was a welcome concession.

Lee's army numbered less than 28,000 men, which he surrendered. Of these less than one-third were bearing arms on the day of surrender.

The Confederate soldiers for some time did not realize that negotiations for their surrender was on and were expecting and seemed to be anxious for another battle with General Sheridan in their front, and were greatly surprised on learning of the negotiations that had been completed for their surrender.

It was at once apparent to all that the great war was practically ended.

On the next day the surrender of the army was completed, and when Lee made his farewell address to his soldiers, who had so faithfully defended their faith in the Confederacy in all the hard battles in which they had been engaged, and especially since the Wilderness campaign, and in the defense of Petersburg and Richmond in the closing days, where their endurance was the greatest, and had now come down to the closing scenes at Appomattox, they were all deeply moved. General Lee, in broken accents, admonished them to be as brave citizens as they had been soldiers.

Thus practically ended the greatest civil war in history. Soon after Lee's surrender the other Confederate forces arranged for their surrender in quick succession.

It had been a long, bloody and devastating war, and it is said that there were more Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout alone than the number with Lee's army at the surrender.

The war closed on a spectacle of ruin the greatest yet known in America. While the smoke had cleared away, and the roar of the cannon had ceased, yet there could be heard the wailing of mothers, widows and orphans throughout both North and South, which is the greatest costs of so great and devastating war.

The Southern states lay prostrate; their resources gone; their fields desolate; their cities ruined; the fruits of the toil of generations all swept to destruction.

The total number of Union soldiers engaged were about a million and a half. Of this number, 275,000 were either killed in battle, died of mortal wounds or from disease in camp, and the loss to the Confederates was approximately the same. In both armies about 400,000 were disabled for life, thus making a grand total loss of about a million able-bodied men to the country.