Palm Sunday

At the stroke of noon on Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ravaged by almost a year of near daily combat with Ulysses S. Grant's Union armies, has tried one last time to wage battle and escape to fight on. But the blue-coated soldiers bound the Confederates to their east, west, and south. Vastly outmanned and with no escape possible, Lee, ever dutiful, feels the verdict of arms has spoken with finality and his only course is surrender. But Grant,...
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At the stroke of noon on Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ravaged by almost a year of near daily combat with Ulysses S. Grant's Union armies, has tried one last time to wage battle and escape to fight on. But the blue-coated soldiers bound the Confederates to their east, west, and south. Vastly outmanned and with no escape possible, Lee, ever dutiful, feels the verdict of arms has spoken with finality and his only course is surrender. But Grant, riding around the armies, isn't available to agree to a truce and his commanders are ordered to attack. Yet at noon Lee's plea reaches Grant, and the terrible headache that's been plaguing the Union commander for the past twenty-four hours instantly disappears. A dignified and solemn surrender conference takes place that afternoon in the little village of Appomattox Court House. Union President Abraham Lincoln, after two weeks with the army in Virginia, is sailing up the Potomac toward Washington, hoping for word of Lee's surrender. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the rump of his cabinet, a government in exile in Danville, Virginia, fear the worst, but Davis cannot believe the South could fail to achieve independence and clings to the delusional hope that the demands of his own personal will must triumph. The elation of the men on the victorious side, and the bitterness and defiance of the defeated are fully plumbed as the evening hours go forward. "Palm Sunday: April 9, 1865 - Post Meridian" unfolds, hour by hour, from noon to midnight, interweaving the true events of one of the most important days in the history of America with the stories of a small handful of fictional characters, most prominently an African-American Union soldier and his former master in Confederate Gray. Grant, Lee, Lincoln, Davis, and the great generals of both sides, Longstreet, Sheridan, and Custer, all make significant appearances in the second volume of this unforgettable novel of the day the American Civil War effectively ended.