Michael Vorenberg on Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War
When did the American Civil War end? Most people today would say: With Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, 1865. Yet few people at the time thought that this surrender of a single army ended the war. Abraham Lincoln did not think so. He did not live to see a peace. He was assassinated less than week after the Appomattox surrender. The fighting continued. So did slavery.