Battle of Appomattox Court House
Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Lee arrived in a new uniform. Grant reached the parlour about half an hour later with mud on his clothes, after riding hard to the meeting.
9 April 1865: the breakout that failed
Early on 9 April 1865, Robert E. Lee ordered John B. Gordon's corps and Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry to break west through Union cavalry near Appomattox Court House. Instead they met Union infantry — Edward Ord's Army of the James and Charles Griffin's V Corps — blocking the escape route.
With the attempt failed, Lee requested a meeting with Ulysses S. Grant.
Ninety minutes in the McLean parlour
They met in the parlour of Wilmer and Virginia McLean's house in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia — not in a courthouse. Lee arrived shortly after 1 p.m.; Grant about half an hour later. Sixteen people are known to have been present for at least part of the roughly hour-and-a-half meeting.
Grant's written terms required rolls and paroles and the surrender of Confederate arms, artillery and public property, while officers kept their sidearms, private horses and baggage, and paroled men could go home so long as they obeyed the law. Lee accepted in writing that afternoon.
One army, not a country
Grant went further than the paper terms: he agreed that soldiers who owned horses or mules could keep them for spring planting, and offered 25,000 rations to Lee's hungry army. He also stopped a celebratory artillery salute, reasoning that the Confederates were now prisoners and should not be humiliated.
What Lee surrendered was the Army of Northern Virginia, not every Confederate force in the field. Parole passes began printing on 10 April, Confederate infantry stacked arms on 12 April, and 28,231 paroles were issued at Appomattox before 15 April.
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Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes
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