ay captured Charleston, South Carolina. Then on April 2, after a long siege, the Confederate capital, Richmond, was evacuated and the Confederate government was moved to their new capital in Danville, Virginia. The next day Union troops moved in to officially take control of the city. Then, on April 9, 1865 Lee and Grant met with their armies at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. There, Grant accepted Lee’s surrender. Lee’s men then lay down their weapons, thus, ending the long Civil War. The Civil War had lasted almost four years. More than 600,000 United States men had died. That’s more than the total number of lives lost from every war the U.S has fought in combined. Neither side had expected the war to last as long as it did or for the war to put an end to slavery. After the Civil War, many friends of President Lincoln were worried about the safety of his life. He had been receiving threats of assassination in the mail and everyone knew how much hate there was towards Lincoln, especially from the ex-Confederates. So, bodyguards, cavalry escorts, and even troops camping out on the White House lawn protected Lincoln as best they could. However, all the precautions failed. On, the night of April 14, 1865 Lincoln and his wife attended the theater. Then, in the third act John Wilkes Booth came into the President’s box and shot Lincoln in the head. Doctors rushed to try and save the wounded President. However, on the morning of April 15, 1865 Abraham Lincoln died in his bed at the age of 56. Lincoln’s funeral was held in the East Room of th...
