By early 1865, Sherman was fighting his way through South and North Carolina to link up with Grant in Virginia. On April 2 Grant captured Petersburg, and then the Army of the Potomac invaded and conquered Richmond. Caught between the armies of Grant and Sherman, Lee saw that his hungry and bedraggled army was trapped. On April 9, at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, Lee and Grant met to discuss and sign the terms of the Confederate surrender. Two weeks later another Confederate army surrendered at Raleigh, North Carolina. The war had ended, but not without one final tragedy: the assassination of Lincoln in Washington on April 14. John Wilkes Booth, an actor who sympathized with the South, saw the murder as a final act of vengeance against the tyranny of Lincoln and the North.

The cost of the war was high for both sides. The Union had lost 140,400 killed in action...