April 2025’s Cover Image: Lee Surrenders to Grant

Our cover image for April 2025 honors the 160-year anniversary of the Surrender at Appomattox with a famous scene painted by artist Louis Mathieu Didier Guillaume in 1867. In the painting, Guillaume depicts the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia by General Robert E. Lee to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, in the parlor of Wilmer and Virginia McLean in Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, 1865.

Lee arrived just after one o’clock in the afternoon. Grant and his staff would arrive an hour and half later. After some small talk and friendly conversation, the two men discussed terms of surrender. Fully expecting capture, Lee was dressed in his best uniform.  Grant quickly wrote out terms in his order book, which had already been previously outlined for Lee in letters the two generals exchanged over the previous two days.  The formal surrender was exchanged in the form of two short letters. Grant’ s letter was a mere five sentences long and Lee’s reply, which formally surrendered the Army of Northern Virgina, was only three short sentences.

Following the surrender of Lee, General Joseph Johnston surrenders to Major General W. T. Sherman near Durham, North Carolina on April 26th. General Richard Taylor surrenders at Citronelle, Alabama on May 4th. General Edmund Kirby Smith surrenders the Confederate Department of the Trans Mississippi to Major General Canby on June 2nd and General Stand Watie surrenders Confederate Cherokee Indian forces in Oklahoma on June 23rd, becoming the last Confederate general to surrender.