On 14 April, 1861, Union troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, surrendered to their Confederate attackers. The fort had suffered a 34-hour bombardment with no hope of reinforcement or resupply. The Union Commander, Major Robert Anderson, lowered the 33-star U.S. flag and carried it as he led his defeated troops out of the fort. The Civil War had officially begun. President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion.
After four years of bloody warfare and half a million dead, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to U.S. Army Commander Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, on 9 April, 1865. The war was over, though a few widely separated forces would not get the news till weeks later. The last Confederate general to surrender was Brigadier General Stand Watie. He was a Cherokee Indian who commanded the 1st Indian Brigade of the Confederate Army. Watie said he joined the Confederate cause to protect Cherokee sovereignty and the tribe’s tradition of holding slaves.
Our Civil War was not officially over until 20 August, 1866, when President Andrew Johnson issued his proclamation. For all legal proceedings, our courts recognize that date as the official end of the war.
Abraham Lincoln was conflicted by his views of race and slavery. He described slavery as a “monstrous injustice”. In a letter of 4 April, 1864, he stated “if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong”. He believed that our founding fathers had viewed slavery as being on a “path to extinction”. On the overall subject of race, he reflected the beliefs of White people of his era. On 13 October, 1858 while campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, he wrote: “I am not, nor have ever been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the White and Black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermingle with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and Black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And insomuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior. I am as much as any man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race”. Lincoln won the popular vote, but the Illinois Assembly chose to re-appoint Stephen A. Douglas. At that time in our history, there was no popular vote for U.S. Senators.
In August 1862, in a letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln wrote, “my paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not to either save or destroy slavery”.
On 1 January, 1863, Lincoln issued his often misunderstood “Emancipation Proclamation”. The proclamation only applied to “those states in rebellion”, the Confederate states. Northern slaves were not set free by the proclamation. The end of the Civil War saw three amendments to our Constitution quickly ratified. The 13th freed the slaves. The 14th gave citizenship to all those born or naturalized in the U.S. The 15th gave all male citizens the right to vote.
On 14 April, 1865, exactly four years after Major Robert Anderson had marched out of Fort Sumter carrying his 33-star U.S. Flag, Major General Robert Anderson marched into Fort Sumter and raised that same flag. Later that day, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. He would be the last casualty of the Civil War.
By Paul Warrick: May 27, 2026 – Great Falls, Mt
Author: Staff
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