History Department Ryland Lecture: Lincoln’s Peace: Searching for the End of the American Civil War

On April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Ulysses S. Grant accepted Robert E. Lee’s surrender. Celebrated at the time and later on as the final act of the Civil War, was the surrender really the end? Confederate armies remained active for another two months. Even after those surrenders, was the war over? What about the fighting that continued with guerrillas, or with Native peoples, many of whom had aligned with the Confederacy? And how does the end of slavery fit into the story? So long as slavery persisted, which it did long after the Confederate surrenders, could the Civil War, which was a war against slavery, be deemed concluded?

Join the Department of History for a lecture by Michael Vorenberg, professor of history at Brown University, which will explore lingering questions about when and how the war ended, uncovering a prolonged struggle that thwarted efforts to achieve a lasting and just peace in the United States.