"Obstinate Heroism: The Confederate Surrenders after" Topic

Appomattox (Volume 4)

"Despite popular belief, the Civil War did not end when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, in April 1865. The Confederacy still had tens of thousands of soldiers under arms, in three main field armies and countless smaller commands scattered throughout the South. Although pressed by Union forces at varying degrees, all of the remaining Confederate armies were capable of continuing the war if they chose to do so. But they did not, even when their political leaders ordered them to continue the fight. Convinced that most civilians no longer wanted to continue the war, the senior Confederate military leadership, over the course of several weeks, surrendered their armies under different circumstances.

Gen. Joseph Johnston surrendered his army in North Carolina only after contentious negotiations with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. Gen. Richard Taylor ended the fighting in Alabama in the face of two massive Union incursions into the state rather than try to consolidate with other Confederate armies. Personal rivalry also played a part in his practical considerations to surrender. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith had the decision to surrender taken out of his hands—disastrous economic conditions in his Trans-Mississippi Department had eroded morale to such an extent that his soldiers demobilized themselves, leaving Kirby Smith a general without an army. The end of the Confederacy was a messy and complicated affair, a far cry from the tidy closure associated with the events at Appomattox."

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Amicalement
Armand

I disagree with the assertion that the Confederate troops in the filed could have continued the war. They certainly could not have done it effectively. So, they could have continued the war, but Kirby Smith's army demobilized itself? The armies in the field surrendered because it would be senseless to do otherwise. The war was over.

They could have prolonged it for a few weeks by playing catch-me-if-you-can.

As many countries did… maybe it's a "moral" thing….

Amicalement
Armand

Saying when the Civil War ended is a bit of a parlor game. There are those who say it was in November of 1865 when the CSS Shenandoah finally gave up.

Once Lee and Johnston surrendered it was over and the troops who surrendered or simply went home afterwards knew that continuing resistance was simply murder combined with suicide.