‘We are all Americans’: Appomattox, 1865

On this day 160 years ago, Confederate General in Chief Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to the Union Army of the Potomac under the Commanding General of the United States Army, Ulysses S. Grant. The long national nightmare of the Civil War, which had raged for four years, was over.

Records show that 21,982 Minnesotans enlisted in the United States armed forces between 1861 and 1865, of whom 635 died in combat, playing crucial roles in decisive battles like Gettysburg and Nashville, and 1,936 as a result of disease or accident. This is equal, proportionately, to 86,000 dead from today’s population. Minnesota paid a high price in blood to save the Union and end the evil of slavery.

Lee was unmistakably a Virginia aristocrat and made an impression on all who met him. “I met you once before, General Lee,” Grant said as they were introduced, “while we were serving in Mexico, when you came over from General Scott’s headquarters to visit Garland’s brigade, to which I then belonged. I have always remembered your appearance, and I think I should have recognized you anywhere.”

Grant was, perhaps, just as unmistakably a Midwestern everyman who made rather less of an impression. “Yes,” Lee replied, “I know I met you on that occasion, and I have often thought of it and tried to recollect how you looked but I have never been able to recall a single feature.” Nevertheless, in the greatest American tradition, the everyman had beaten the aristocrat.

“After signing the papers,” historian James M. McPherson wrote of that meeting at Appomattox:

…Grant introduced Lee to his staff. As he shook hands with Grant’s military secretary Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian, Lee stared a moment at Parker’s dark features and said, “I am glad to see one real American here.” Parker responded, “We are all Americans.”