What were the final battles of the Civil war That led to lee surrender at appomattox ? What was the army's role in reconstruction and what role did the army play in juneteenth for answers to these questions and more Civil War insights . Welcome to the U . S . Army history and Heritage podcast . The official podcast of the United States Army Center of Military History . The Center of Military History writes and publishes the army's official history , manages the US Army museum enterprise and provides historical support throughout the U . S . Army . Hello everyone and welcome back to the United States Army history and Heritage podcast . I'm lee Reynolds , the strategic communications officer for the center of Military History . In this episode we're focusing on the army role at the end of the Civil War through the reconstruction time period . Joining me for this discussion is army historian and the executive director of the Center of Military History . Mr Charles our bowery Jr thank you . Mr Barry for joining me here . So if you hadn't listened to these earlier , just gonna refresh Mr Barry's background . He is a retired army colonel who spent his 23 year career as an army aviator flying Apache helicopters . He deployed to Iraq twice and commanded an Apache battalion in Afghanistan . He received a bachelor's degree and master's degree in history . He taught history at West Point and has published three historical books focused on the Civil War . He's currently working on his PhD in history . All right mister and so are you working on your PhD ? I am pursuing a PhD at George Washington University here in D . C . And is our focus area . I am really changing my focus to examine the U . S . Army after the Vietnam war . Specifically how the army integrates and recruits and trains and evaluates african american officers were great . So a big change from the civil war . Very big , very big change . But actually some similarities there too is a lot of roots incontinent . Alright , so now in our last episode , we covered Sherman's victories in Georgia and the Carolinas . So let's pick up the discussion with what is happening now in Virginia around Petersburg and Richmond . So what's going on there in the Richmond ? Petersburg area essentially since June of 1860 . For the armies of the Potomac , the Union Army under George Meade , which is generally supervised by ulysses s Grant , the general of the armies who travels with Meade's army and the confederate army of northern Virginia under robert . E lee have been locked in a campaign that really started in May of 18 60 for in the wilderness that pursued all the way south to the James River in june of 18 60 for Grant and Meade and the army across the James River and invest the city of Petersburg on the South bank , which is an important rail center for Virginia and the eastern theater of the war for the confederates , robert E . Lee reacts by holding Petersburg in a series of battles and the armies will fight for possession of Richmond and Petersburg from June of 1864 . All the way to the end of the war in April 1865 . Well , so let's talk about the size of these , these armies at the time . So the Union Army , how many people did they have versus the southern , the Union Army . By this point , the army of the potomac and the army of the James , which is the two armies . So you really have a federal army group around Richmond and Petersburg . The army of the potomac commanded by Meade , and then the army of the James commanded by Benjamin Butler In total , Grant will have well over 100 and 20,000 men at his disposal around Petersburg . During the campaign , robert E lee's army of northern Virginia begins the over land campaign in the previous year with around 60 65,000 men . But that force is really whittled down in size . They gained some replacements over the winter of 64 65 . And so they hold at a strength of around 50 to 60,000 men during the campaign , but they are vastly outnumbered . The actions that took place out west and especially with Sherman . I know it's considered the Western campaign , but he's really just south of there . How did that affect the way that lee was going to be able to hold out . What's going on here is that the southern generals are trying to maintain their hold on , sort of the industrial and commercial and agricultural Heartland of the south . So essentially Georgia , the Carolinas and Virginia because these are the confederacy is prime industrial areas , of course Atlanta and Richmond , their main industrial areas and then also their agricultural Heartland . But then finally the access to ports and so you've got mobile in Alabama , you've got charleston in south Carolina , Wilmington north Carolina , which are the ports that allow the confederacy to carry on commerce to try to break the blockade and maintain connections with the outside world . And so these these commanders are Operating independently of one another , but in pursuit of a general strategy of trying to maintain the confederacy in being in 1864 , And so um now that Lee is virtually surrounded in the Petersburg Richmond area . So what are the key battles that take place ? That event push lee back out of Richmond and this story begins in the west in the late fall of 18 60 for when the army that had defended Atlanta and was was defeated at Atlanta then tries to move north into Tennessee . And at the battles of franklin and Nashville in december of 18 64 is defeated and almost destroyed . And so the remnants of that army which are now commanded again by joseph e johnston sort of make their way in small groups back into the Carolinas and joe johnston will attempt to consolidate an army in south Carolina because he's aware of the approach of Sherman's army , which after Atlanta has marched to savannah Georgia and then marches north into the Carolinas . And so that process essentially cuts off any place in the interior of the confederacy that lee could expect if he wanted to evacuate Petersburg to move into , to sustain itself . This territory is essentially shrinking away to nothing at this point and and Johnston's army is fighting for its life . But over the fall and winter Of 1864 , 65 , in Petersburg Mead and Butler's armies essentially carry out a campaign of gradually strangling Lee's army inside the Petersburg entrenchment by moving to the south and then the west to encircle Petersburg and cut off the lines of communication from Petersburg to the rest of the confederacy . And those are the , the Weldon Railroad which leads into north Carolina and the south side railroad which leads into southwestern Virginia and east Tennessee . And so Grant is using his armies to gradually move around and cut those lines of communication , Which is complete by late March of 1865 . In a campaign that begins on 30 March , uh the federal armies which have reconstituted over the winter , they are ready to go . The roads are dried after the winter rains and snows and once the conditions are ready , this federal army group which now vastly outnumbers lee's army will undertake a final offensive on the 30th of march in the first of april , they will break through the confederate lines southwest of Petersburg and by that night , lee realizes that if he stays in place , he's going to be captured on mass and destroyed . And so he will use his last remaining line of escape , which is the south side railroad to move into southwestern Virginia , uh with with elements of Grant's army group in pursuit . Uh that pursuit will happen over the next week and the forces will arrive at appomattox Courthouse in southwestern Virginia on the seventh of april . They'll fight one last sort of battle on the 7th and 8th where Lee will make a final attempt to break out because his force has been caught and encircled by troops coming from the Richmond and Petersburg area which are led by a force of African American soldiers who assigned now to the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James . They now have an entire corps of African American soldiers . These troops surround lee around appomattox Courthouse and they forced the deliberations and the surrender that happens on april 9th of 18 65 . Right , so , um , let's get inside that room . Um what happened basically in the room between Grant and lee , This was sort of a classic At the time for a 19th century conflict , a surrender negotiation in which each of the belligerence is seeking to create the conditions out of the surrender that will enhance each side's strategic objectives . So at this point for robert e lee , it is first and foremost about carving out concessions for his confederate forces that will allow them to take some semblance of honor or status from the surrender . But keeping in mind that all of these negotiations have a clear eye on the post war political settlement . So both Grant and lee are concerned about the post war settlement and how that will impact their forces . And so both sides are interested in discussing things like political amnesty about whether there's going to be some sort of imprisonment and Reprisal process against defeated soldiers in the southern armies and the rights that these defeated confederates will take with them home because they're going to depart . And so lee negotiates some very specific things into the settlement . For example , allowing soldiers to maintain livestock horses mules that they've traveled with , uh , in some cases allowing officers to retain sidearms as they depart , uh creating the conditions for the parole and amnesty of , of defeated soldiers from further legal action or Reprisal . All these things are negotiated in this process and it takes a couple of days of negotiations before the two generals meet in the mclean house in the parlor there to to sign the articles of surrender that actually end the conflict or that that end the fighting between these two armies now and it's an important , it's important to also realize in this context that the surrender at appomattox is just that it's the surrender of one of the confederate armies and that this is only the ninth of april and there are two more large scale army surrenders after this point . Because at this point jefferson Davis is in charlotte north Carolina . He's taken the confederate government in exile to charlotte north Carolina and he is awaiting to see what happens in each of these places . So the first domino to fall is lee's surrender at appomattox . And given Levi's stature in the confederate states of America , many people will interpret this as the end of the war and in fact in effective terms the war is over . But that means there there are other forces still in the field in north Carolina , joseph E johnston's force which had been contesting Sherman's advance through the Carolinas is defeated at Bentonville . North Carolina . They move to the Bennett farm near Durham north Carolina and in the process of of negotiations which take a couple of weeks , they will reach a surrender agreement on april 27th . So from the ninth to the 27th , you have negotiations going on in north Carolina That are involved that that grant is involved in . So grant has moved to Raleigh North Carolina after the fall of Richmond and he is supervising these different negotiations . But they reach Joseph E . Johnston Sherman reached a surrender agreement on April 27 , the final forces in what we call the trans Mississippi theater of Alabama Mississippi Louisiana texas . This confederate force does not surrender until May 4th . They surrendered at citronelle near mobile Alabama Jefferson Davis and his small rump government in exile are captured in Georgia on May 10 . And so these are the , these are the dominoes that fall . There is another battlefield uh fight in texas at a place called Palmetto Ranch on May 12th 18 65 . Uh , and in fact the last confederate combatant of any kind is a ship . Uh , it's the CSS shenandoah , which is a , which is a blockade runner , which does not surrender until november 9th 18 65 when they pull into ports in Liverpool England . So that's the last combatant of the Civil war to actually surrender . So , so it's really a misnomer to call the surrender at appomattox the end of the civil war and then for each of those different negotiated pieces that you talked about , which , which would follow . I mean , how closely did they , the conditions resemble , you know , each other and then was one followed only in one area and the other followed another . Or did they like finally combine and say this is what we're going to follow between the three large surrenders . There's a remarkable degree of continuity . Uh , it's clear that the terms of each made their way into the media into discussion . There were communications up to the confederate government and back down to other elements in the field . And so the three articles of surrender or great resemblance to one another . Uh they basically all focused on the fact that the armies would be the defeated armies would be disarmed and disbanded . The personnel would be allowed to return to their homes . But at this point , The entire situation sort of shifts to the political arena . And we get the question of how the defeated Confederate states since the Confederate government is gone . What you now have our 13 states that were in a state of rebellion , which will have to be in some cases negotiated their re admittance to the Union will have to be renegotiated . And this is the process that carries us into into reconstruction . But also keeping in mind that all of this has made exponentially more complex by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln shortly after the surrender at appomattox . And so Abraham Lincoln had had made it known in his last days that he would take a conciliatory approach to the reconstruction of the confederacy and the readmission of those states to the Union . And he had advised , you know , there's a famous scene at the end of the movie , the recent movie , the Spielberg movie about Lincoln where Lincoln and Grant are talking and and Lincoln says , let them up easy . He says he wants to take a conciliatory approach and it's one of the great counterfactual unknowns of american history is what would have happened in the aftermath of war had Lincoln survived . Uh but the fact remains that he did not and so we move into the Reconstruction era , which is an era of great conflict as a result of the strains of war and the assassination of Lincoln . We're entering the reconstruction area now . Uh Andrew johnson is president and um , for about the next 12 years , I believe until 18 77 is considered the end of Reconstruction in 76 76 . So what was the plan , you know , at that point in 18 65 and who was going to lead that plan ? This is an era that is really understudied in the history of the US Army and it's an area that for a lot of reasons since the civil war army , people have been reluctant to study Some of it is due no doubt to the immense loss and damage of the civil war . You know , 600,000 people killed just in the army's untold destruction across the landscape of America . And so there was a strong belief , particularly among professional soldiers , that the civil war had nothing to teach the army because they would never go through something like this again . We know now , in , in in hindsight that that's not necessarily true , but the army was , was intimately involved in reconstruction because the first stage of this was a military reconstruction in the aftermath of the war at the same time as the army is demobilizing hundreds of thousands of men and downsizing from a millions of men force to just a few 100,000 , the few 100,000 that are left are in the south and they're they're maintaining garrisons in the south to enforce not only the terms of surrender , but they're also carrying out an active military and peacekeeping role to protect the lives of free people . And these are in the in the so of course the other major outcome of course of the civil war is the end of slavery and the the the path to freedom for all of these enslaved people . In the immediate aftermath of the war , these people will remain exactly where they were in their communities but in a in a status that's free but very contingent and it's very based on local conditions . And so what you have are small army garrisons throughout the south that are tasked with maintaining the peace preventing violence against people and protecting the rights of newly freed people african americans that are that are instituted in these acts in these amendments , the 13th 14th 15th amendments of the constitution and the 18 66 Civil Rights Act . So they're tasked with enforcing these things with an increasingly small force that's melting away . And there's a good data point in june of 18 65 . So as the war is ending , There are approximately 270,000 US troops garrisoning across the south for reconstruction By January 1866 . So just eight months or so later , that number is down to 87,000 . And so when you think about the sheer size of the south , this is a force that is completely inadequate to its task and because of the expense of maintaining them , the first units to be demobilized , our cavalry units . So if you'd want a force that could keep the peace in a largely rural area in the 19th century , you want cavalry . They're the first to go . Many of the units that remain on active duty in the south in this role are African American units . And so you can imagine the , the violence that occurs in communities where african american soldiers carry weapons and are charged with enforcing the peace . And so the army and Reconstruction is placed in a in a virtually impossible task of of , of peace enforcement , peacekeeping and in many cases , active military operations against paramilitary forces . And by 18 67 68 you have the rise of the ku Klux Klan , which is an active paramilitary force that's carrying out terrorist military action , political violence against people of color to what to in their terms , to redeem the south and to prevent the enactment of this process . And all of this complicates the plan of Reconstruction , which was to develop a political path for each of the states of the confederacy to renounce their secession and to readmit themselves to the union via a political process of basically taking an oath of loyalty to the union all over again . And how long did it take for that to happen . Um , and , and as you're talking , I'm thinking about these troops that are in the south , are they all federal troops or after a time period ? Did some of these southerners then rejoin the Federal army ? And were they also part of this force in the south ? Well , these are all federal troops . So these are regular army or army of the United States troops that garrison these places . Uh they're organized in a district and department level organization with uh with former Union Army field generals in command of these different districts . And and they carry out this task with with almost negligible resources to do so uh the other role that the army has is in working with the Freedman's bureau , which is also led by a former army general Oliver Otis Howard , the namesake of Howard University , uh who is tasked with with carrying out the legal and social integration of free people back into american society . And so they do all of these things together . But this process of re admitting states to the Union is not finished until 18 76 until the three final holdout states agreed to support the 18 76 Republican candidate Rutherford B . Hayes and he agrees to readmit them to the Union on this basis , effectively ending Reconstruction . So the process takes a decade of conflict in which these various southern states take different routes to to achieving their reintegration into the Federal Union and just decide , you know , what was happening in the north . So we have reconstruction in the south . Um , and I know um , really with the a couple of minor exceptions , um , there wasn't a lot of battle going on in the north , but was there any form of reconstruction or healing going on in the north at the same time ? What you see in the north at this time is an incredible amount of fatigue with the war . And that fatigue translates into political pressure to accelerate the demobilization of the army , the return of soldiers to home . And this really does complicate reconstruction . So that's what's happening in the North . Also important to realize that in the 1870s , the army is also ramping back up in its campaigns in the west to enforce treaties to treat with and in many cases fight native american tribes in the west . And so the same year that Hayes is elected 18 76 is the year of little Bighorn . And so you have army units and in many cases the cavalry , these regular army cavalry units that exist are moved to the west to resume campaigns against native tribes . And so you have Custer and the seventh cavalry as a part of a larger campaign against the Lakota Sioux in the in Montana and Wyoming carrying out these large scale operations at the same time as these district and region Department commanders in the south are dealing with their mission . So that's another reason for this lack of attention to the Reconstruction army because a lot of army leaders are focused on these actual campaigns that are happening in the west . And they were being , you said the army was in some way being rebuilt to fight those wars out west . But were they also being forces were also being taken away from reconstruction to do that . They were . And and there's a real , there's a real tension in this period between the parts of the army that are focused on carrying out reconstruction , which is a very underappreciated , under resourced , just unglamorous task and it's bloody and difficult . You've got the portions of the regular army that are engaged in these Western campaigns . So they're really back to the pre war mode of small detachments , garrisoning forts , protecting lines of communication lines of migration , dealing with tribes carrying out active campaigns . And then you have really a third sort of constituency of the army that is left largely in the east and Northeast . And these are career soldiers who are not involved in one of those other two areas of operation . But they're thinking about what the United States needs from its army in the post war years . And many of these officers have their eyes on europe because at the time you have revolutions occurring in europe , You have , for example , the formation of the Prussian empire . You have the franco prussian war of 18 70 71 . And these officers believe that the lesson of the civil war for the US army is that we can't continue to rely on mass conscript armies . We have to have a professional trained , long standing army . And that's the , that's the advocacy campaign that officers like Emory Upton will carry out to design an expandable army concept on the european model that creates a professionally trained regular cadre of officers and N C . O . S who can rapidly expand and train draftees and volunteers in the event of war . But he recommends that the army significantly increase its regular army establishment To to do those things . And he meets with only very , very limited success in doing that . So the army will remain a very small constabulary force for the next 20 years until we hit that next major period of conflict , which is right around the turn of the century and the conflicts in Cuba in the Philippines . And then what about the role of and I'm not sure if you call him The militias at this point in history , but the militia is the National Guard . So these still , because you talked about maintaining a regular army , but then we still have the guard , we don't have the reserve yet . That doesn't come I think for another 30 years or something . But but we still do . So what's the role of the National Guard at this at this point . It's a great question because one of the outcomes of the 1876 presidential election is the posse comitatus act , which was which was a forcing function by mainly the Democratic Party , the minority party in Congress , mainly Southern to create legislative action to prevent the federal government from using the army in a policing role . And so the posse comitatus Act now , which still exists today , specifies that only the president by executive action can , can can require federal troops to engage in police activity . So directly carrying out policing against the american citizenry and only an extreme emergency circumstances that posse comitatus act will in general restrain and limit what the uh what these militia units which become National Guard units across all of the states can do . But in the 18 seventies and 18 eighties , army troops will be used to do things like break strikes and so in the seventies and eighties , uh during periods of economic unrest in many cases , the federal government , in really in contravention of the posse comitatus act will mobilize troops . They will federalize National Guard units to carry out actions against american citizens in a number of cases . During this so called redemption period of the sixties , seventies and eighties in the south as violence ticks up as federal troops leave as reconstruction ends , troops will be used to fight against these political violence campaigns carried out by the KKK and other groups . All right . And then um I think this is important to bring up because it was created during the same time period We have now juneteenth is a new national holiday and that's celebrated every june 19th , which commemorates the last slaves being freed in America . So , can you talk a little bit about that ? And , and the army's role in creating that ? So we talked about this timeline of the end of the Civil war and the fact that it doesn't really end on april 1965 at appomattox . In fact , the conflict continues through military and civil means inter playing for a number of months after that surrender . And on june 19th , 18 65 a force of US army troops under General Gordon Granger arrives in Galveston's texas . So on the coast of texas , on the gulf coast , they arrive and what they encounter when they arrive in Galveston's is that the population there has essentially continued on with slavery with servitude as if the end of the war had not happened because they relied on the general lack of knowledge of newly freed people who did not know that they had been freed . And so when Granger arrives and sees this condition , he issues a proclamation in Galveston's on june 19th . That that reminds everyone that the war is over the confederacy no longer exists . And african american enslaved people are now free . And that's the genesis of this holiday of juneteenth when these communities realize that they are free uh , and so the army does have a significant role in creating the conditions of that freedom , Right ? Great . And uh , yeah , I think that's , that's helpful . And with this discussion about the end of the civil war , it just just makes sense to , to discuss that here and understanding that it was really the army that that helped to create that it is . And , and not only was it the army , it's , it's a good time to re emphasize the ways in which African americans participated in their own freedom and they did this by taking up arms . So they took advantage of the federal government , the american government's offer of military service and they enlisted in the hundreds of thousands of , of men supported by their families in many cases , uh , and they , they knew very clearly what they were signing up for . Two to don the uniform in , in a war in which the other side was committed to their literal destruction if they were captured . Uh , And so you have incidents like the Battle of the crater in Petersburg in uh , in june of 18 60 for when hundreds of black soldiers are captured and they're returned to bondage were sent off to places like Andersonville , uh , to to perish . Uh , but but these men understood that in many cases they were signing a death warrant to sign up and they did so and the , the massive numbers in which they served and the incredible character of their service also deserves mention as we get the end of this discussion , Is there anything else about the end of the civil war and its impact on american society that you you want to add ? I think it's important to mention in our current context and in our current national discourse that the the idea that sprouts up primarily , if we're honest , out of the surrender at appomattox is the idea of the lost cause . And one of the things that scholars have done in a very effective way , particularly in about the recent 10 years , last 10 years or so , is unpack the ways in which the settlement at appomattox . And so the settlement , the character of the settlement encourages the idea to grow in the south and a lot of this is fed by lee's general order to his troops at the end of at the surrender , which says that this army was not defeated on the battlefield , but it was overwhelmed by superior numbers and economic might of the north and that the southern honor was unstained by defeat because they were simply outnumbered . Uh , this is the root of the lost cause , which is a way for white southerners to cope with the enormity of this defeat that happens . Uh , and it's a way for them to consistently push back against freedom for african americans and for an increasing amount of diversity in our society that comes with the exercise exercising of the rights of these newly freed african americans . And so uh the the end of the civil war , the pain of reconstruction , the the rapid demobilization of the US Army and the the concomitant rise in extra political violence against black people in the south . Uh These things are linked and knitted together and they create and they created the conditions which lead to , you know , for Plessy versus Ferguson , Which is the separate but equal act which inaugurates Jim Crow in 1896 . All of these things are in a timeline and they are related to one another . And all of these threads in this chain of causation which leads us to many of the conflicts that are that are polarizing our society today have their roots in the end of the civil war . And it's important for people to understand those roots . Well , great . Well thank you so much . Mr Barry . And you know , before we close , we have that one final segment called who a trivia . So what what is your piece of who would trivia about this time period ? I've got to uh and they come from the Petersburg campaign . One is the again that we've talked about the influence of technology on the war and the technological changes that come about . Well , one of the really interesting technological innovations of the federal armies at Petersburg is the U . S . Military railroad . So railroads had been used to move troops across theaters of operation and move supplies for the whole war . But during the Petersburg campaign , the railroad has a tactical use because Union Army Railroad engineers led by Herman Haupt actually construct a field railroad around the Federal lines . Encircling Petersburg that originates at the base at City Point and this railroad goes right up to behind the front lines and it encircles and it goes along behind the front line trace of the Federal Army . And each major segment of the army has its own station on the military railroad . And so what you have is the first sort of mechanical casualty evacuation which happens . So soldiers who are wounded in the front lines can be on a train in the matter of minutes or hours back to a field hospital at City Point . In the other direction supplies . Food can move very quickly around the lines and for as an example , soldiers on both sides in the reminiscences about the campaign mentioned that they could hear the railroad moving along behind the lines , but they could also smell the aroma of bread . Fresh baked bread that came from ovens in kitchens at City Point is on a train and it's in the hands of a soldier in the line within hours . What a dramatic difference in it's an amazing difference in warfare . Uh , and so that's my better trivia there . But then also talking about the service of african american soldiers at Petersburg in the Battle of New Market Heights , which happens in september of 18 64 north of the James River 14 African american soldiers will earn the medal of honor in one engagement at the Battle of New Market Heights . Uh including in these as Sergeant Major christian Fleetwood of the Fourth United States colored troops who is a native of Baltimore Maryland . Uh And this is one of the more sort of famous incidents of of african american service in the uh in the war . And in many of these battles , these african american soldiers will shout as they enter confederate lines as they defeat confederate forces that they're remembering . Fort pillow which had been in late 18 64 also a massacre of african american troops in Tennessee . Uh And so that one battle at four at at at New Market Heights uh significant moment in african american military history . And you said 14 medals of honor . Well , okay , well thank you so much . Mr Barry , appreciate your insights today about these final stages of the civil war and reconstruction and if anyone wants to learn more about the civil war or army history in general , then I encourage you to explore our website at history dot army dot mil and you can click on our publications tab and we've got a great series on the Civil War or pamphlet series , the U . S . Army campaigns of the Civil war , The fantastic reads , they're they're short , they're to the point so I encourage you to check those out at history dot army dot mil . And if you want to experience army history every day , then visit our social media sites on facebook twitter and instagram and please join us every week on this podcast for more in depth discussions about army history as we cover topics from all eras of the US Army history examining battles , soldier experiences , equipment , weapons and tactics . Thanks for joining us today on the United States Army history and Heritage podcast for the center of Military history , I'm lee Reynolds and until next time we're history . The views expressed in this podcast reflect those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views policies or opinions of the US Army or Department of Defense . For more information about the army's proud history and heritage , go to history dot army dot mil mm hmm .