Bennett Place: Largest Confederate Surrender Ends the Civil War

What was the last surrender of a major Confederate Army during the Civil War? Many Americans think it’s Appomattox Court House, but while the latter negotiated surrender between Union Lt. Gen. U.S. Grant and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was crucial to ending the war, the last major Confederate Army to surrender did so at Bennett Place, North Carolina, days later on April 26, 1865—159 years ago today.

Besides U.S. Grant, Gen. William T. Sherman was the most brilliant and successful Union general of the Civil War. His March to the Sea was a decisive move toward ending the war, and he and Grant worked together and depended on each other in a large and vital degree. Confederates and their modern sympathizers love to vilify Sherman, accusing him of various horrors; ironically, some of the “crimes” were just Confederate propaganda, and Sherman’s successful campaign never even approached the brutality of widespread Confederate war crimes. Sherman’s negotiation of the surrender at Bennett Place, however, helps to illustrate just how eager he was to welcome back any Confederates who truly wanted peace, and how willing he was to give them (perhaps overly) generous terms.

On April 17, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston met with Sherman to discuss a potential surrender. The negotiations were complicated first by news of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s tragic assassination on April 14 at the hands of a racist Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln had planned an excessively charitable reconstruction, but, understandably, the Republicans and federal government were feeling less than generous after Lincoln’s death. In the long run, however, Sherman’s terms were quite generous. Few traitors in human history have received so merciful a treatment. America’s bloodiest conflict, the Civil War, was over.

Read the full story on Substack: https://catherinesalgado.substack.com/p/bennett-place-largest-confederate