he surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ended the Civil War. The nation’s return to peace marked the opening of an age that would raise the United States to new and undreamed of heights in wealth, productivity, and world influence. But few could sense that promising destiny then as Union and Confederate forces laid down their arms for good after four years of bloodshed. Whatever relief this event inspired was tempered by grieving on both sides for the great loss of human life the conflict had brought. In the devastated South, economic recovery seemed almost insurmountable; in the North, the joy of victory was quickly overshadowed with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Yet for the future of the reunited country, the fruit of victory, as Lincoln had eloquently stated in his second inaugural address, was the expulsion of slavery once and for all from the American soil. In this profound sense the war gave birth to modern America.