called home from the field and disbanded.
Before these veterans separated, never to meet again with arms in their
hands, they were reviewed by the President, Congress, and an immense
throng of people who came to Washington from every part of the loyal
states to welcome them. During two days (May 23 and 24, 1865) the
soldiers of Grant and Sherman, forming a column thirty miles long,
marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, and then, with a rapidity and
quietness that seems almost incredible, scattered and went back to their
farms, to their shops, to the practice of their professions, and to the
innumerable occupations of civil life.

Of the Confederates not one was molested, not a soldier was imprisoned,
not a political leader suffered death. Davis was ordered to be
imprisoned at Fort Monroe for two years, but he was soon released on
bail, was never brought to trial, and died at New Orleans in 1889.

SUMMARY

1. After the election of Lincoln seven states seceded from the Union,
and formed the "Confederate States of America."

2. Four other states joined the Confederacy later.

3. The refusal of the United States to recognize the right to secede led
to the refusal to give up Federal forts in Charleston harbor. The
attempt to take Sumter by force led to the appeal to arms.

4. The line which separated the troops of the two governments ran from
Chesapeake Bay, across Virginia, and through Kentucky and Missouri, to
New Mexico.

5. While the Union troops held the Confederates in check on the eastern
end of the line, they broke through the line in the West, and, aided by
the Union fleet, opened the Mississippi River.

6. The Confederates were thus driven from the Mississippi and forced
back to the mountains of Georgia. Sherman was sent against them, and in
1864 marched eastward through the heart of the Confederacy to
the Atlantic.

7. Marching north from Savannah, across Georgia and South Carolina, to
Goldsboro in North Carolina, he was now in the rear of the Confederate
army in Virginia.

8. Grant, meantime, with the Army of the Potomac, had fought a series of
battles with Lee, and had besieged Richmond and Petersburg; and
Sheridan had cleared out the Shenandoah valley.

9. Lee was thus forced, early in 1865, to leave Richmond, and while
retreating westward he was forced to surrender.

SECESSION AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION
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