What event is considered the symbolic end of the civil war?

Answer 1

It ended with Lee's surrender at Appomottax. Dignity and compassion were the order of the day that ended America's deadliest war. General Grant had given 2500 rations to feed Lee's troops. There were many losses of life during the long war, and this, even if it didnt give back all the lives taken, it was like a sign of peace.

Answer 2

I am assuming that you refer to the American Civil War, which is generally referred to simply as The Civil War. There is hardly a nation in the world, past or present, that hasn't had at least one civil war. They're unfortunately far too common.

The American Civil War is very generally said to have ended with the surrender by Confederate General Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia to the forces of Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9. 1865.

But Lee was only the first of the Confederate generals to surrender. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to William Tecumseh Sherman on April 26, 1865, in Durham, N. Carolina, and on June 23, 1865 Stand Watie became the last Confederate general in the field to sign a cease fire with the Federals.

But can the surrenders of the various Confederate forces be considered the last act in the drama? Some historians think the final, earth shaking event of The Civil War to be the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14th, 1865.

No one will ever know how Reconstruction of the nation would have proceeded had Lincoln lived to oversee it (he would have had to contend with Congress, and some members were eager to punish the South for having seceded at all), but there can be little question that Reconstruction without Lincoln was much harsher than it would have been with him. It is possible that the Jim Crow laws of the Reactionary South, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and the whole Civil Rights Movement might either not have happened, not needed to have happened, or might have taken a different direction had Lincoln not been murdered.

Answer 3

The Confederacy's last hope was that Lincoln would be voted-out in the Election of November 1864.

They had good reason to expect this, as Grant's long siege of Petersburg was bringing appalling casualties, but no movement, and Northern civilian morale was suffering. But some timely victories elsewhere saved Lincoln's reputation, and he won the election.

For the next six months, the Confederates fought on till they were barefoot and starving, with not the slightest chance of overturning the odds, and for no other reason than just to show that they were not the kind of people to give up easily.

Whether this empty gesture was worth the continuing bloodshed is debatable indeed.

Answer 4

When Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse in VA.