Appomattox and the Assassination of Lincoln
Lee surrenders to Grant, and five days later the president is shot
Quick facts
- Lee's surrender
- April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House
- Union commander
- General Ulysses S. Grant
- Lincoln shot
- April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth
- Lincoln died
- April 15, 1865, at 7:22 a.m.
What happened
On April 9, 1865, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met in the parlor of a house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, to arrange the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, which effectively ended the Civil War. Grant's terms were generous: Lee's men could go home if they laid down their arms and pledged to stop fighting. The most important symbol of the Confederacy was gone. Five days later, on April 14, 1865, at about 10:20 p.m., the actor John Wilkes Booth crept up behind President Lincoln at Ford's Theater and shot him in the back of the head. Lincoln was carried to a house across the street and died the following morning at 7:22 a.m., the first American president to be assassinated.
Why it matters
Lee's surrender ended four years of war that killed more Americans than any other conflict and destroyed slavery. Lincoln's murder days later removed the leader who had preserved the Union and set the terms of emancipation, at the very moment the country faced the harder task of rebuilding the South and defining freedom for four million formerly enslaved people. His death shadowed the entire Reconstruction that followed.
How we know
The surrender terms survive as a signed document in the National Archives, and the assassination is documented in eyewitness testimony, the trial of Booth's conspirators, and the medical record of Lincoln's death, all preserved in the National Archives.
Sources
- National Archives. Articles of Agreement Relating to the Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia (1865) · Primary source (author-declared)archives.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- National Archives, Eyewitness. Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, 1865 · Primary source (author-declared)archives.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- National Park Service. The Surrender Meeting at Appomattox Court House · Reputable sourcenps.gov · The domain "nps.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The American Civil War → · See the American Civil War timeline for the final 1865 campaigns that forced Lee's surrender and the war's last months.