United States History from 1877 Professor Donald Kilguss Jr. American Enters a New Age Clip 2 The war ends on a very optimistic note in April of 1865 at a place called Appomattox Courthouse. On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered to U.S. Grant in the home of Wilmer McLean. Lee and his men were treated very leniently and also very respectfully by Grant and the US forces. So there was a sense of optimism. There was a sense of hope for the future. As a little side note, which all these little things happened during the American Civil War, Wilmer McLean, in whose home Lee surrendered to Grant, he had originally owned a home in northern Virginia. His home was right in the Shenandoah Valley and had been used by the Confederate general during the first Battle of Bull Run, as his headquarters. Wilmer McLean lived there for a little bit longer after the battles but he began getting tired of the North and the South moving up and down the Shenandoah Valley and Wilmer said; let me move someplace where the war will never touch me again. He found this little place in the southern central part of Virginia. A place that had once been the courthouse in Appomattox that he purchases as his home. As the saying goes, the Civil War began in Wilmer McLean’s front yard and it ended in his front parlor. As I said, there is that senses of optimism, that sense of hope that maybe we can bind up the nations wounds as Lincoln said in his second inaugural address, quickly and leniently. But all that changes when on April 14, Good Friday as a matter of fact, Abraham Lincoln went to the theater and that is where he is going to be shot by John Wilkes Booth. He will die early the next morning at 7:22 a.m. Years later, the former confederate President, Jefferson Davis, wrote about Lincoln’s assassination. He said the following, “Next to the destruction of the confederacy, the death of Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South has ever known.” That was because we were entering this very bleak period that is known historically as Reconstruction. .