After four years of brutal fighting that killed roughly 750,000 Americans, Lee met Grant at the McLean house in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Grant offered generous terms, allowing Confederate soldiers to return home with their horses and sidearms. The surrender did not officially end the war but signaled its collapse, triggering a cascade of remaining Confederate surrenders over the following weeks.
Robert E. Lee arrived at Wilmer McLean's brick farmhouse in his best dress uniform, sword at his side, expecting to be treated as a prisoner of war. Ulysses S. Grant showed up muddy from days of hard riding, wearing a private's blouse with only his shoulder straps indicating rank. The contrast between the two men mirrored the fates of their causes.
Grant's terms were deliberately merciful: no arrests, no confiscation of personal property, and any soldier who owned a horse or mule could keep it for spring plowing. When Grant's staff began cheering at the news, he silenced them, reportedly saying the Confederates were 'our countrymen again.'
Lee's 28,000 remaining men, starving and exhausted after being cut off at Sayler's Creek, had little choice. Word spread through the ranks that Lee wept as he rode back from the meeting on his horse Traveller. Soldiers on both sides wept too—some from grief, some from relief that the killing might finally stop. Other Confederate armies would fight on for weeks, but the war's back had been broken.