Why was the battle of palmito ranch fought after the confederancy surrendered?

Answer 1

Actually, the Confederacy itself never surrendered. Today many people believe that the war ended on April 9, when Lee surrendered to Grant. But all Lee surrendered was his own army and what remained of his department, Northern Virginia, which was Virginia north of the James River. Another big surrender followed on April 26, when General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered what was left of the Rebel Army of Tennessee to Sherman, at Bennett Place, near Durham, North Carolina. The last remaining large Rebel force in the field east of the Mississippi River, under Lieutenant General Richard Taylor, surrendered in early May at Demopolis, Alabama, almost a month after Lee. A few days later the fugitive President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was captured near Washington, Georgia. Confederates west of the Mississippi had been almost completely cut off from communication with Rebels east of the River since Vicksburg fell in July, 1863. The southern commander west of the Mississippi, which area was called "The Trans-Mississippi", was General Edmund Kirby Smith. He had been on his own for almost two years, as far as planning and doing what he thought best. It was part of Kirby Smith's forces which fought at Palmito Ranch, and won a victory. Smith finally surrendered his Department near the end of May. Confederate Navy commerce raiders were still on the high seas even then, and one, the CSS Shenandoah, kept on for several more months, finally obtaining newspapers from captured Yankee whaling ships, and then word from a British warship encountered at sea which had just left San Francisco, learned that the war was definitely ended. The Shenandoah then set sail from the North Pacific to Liverpool, England, which they reached in November 1865, becoming the last Rebels to haul down the flag.