Prologue
July first 1863. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It's a sweltering eighty seven degrees, the air is filled with musket and artillery smoke that chokes out the sun and burns the lungs. The sounds of firing muskets and the rebels yell as they charge up the hill only to meet the barrel of a yankee’s musket.
The Union has been taken by surprise; they weren’t expecting an attack, not here, not today. The Union had rallied its troops at the high ground on Cemetery Hill and were using this advantage to keep the Confederate troops grounded.
In the military tent, far away from the battle, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee is commanding his generals. He tells them that if practical they must take Cemetery Hill. He plans on giving this order to one man who he believes will execute it perfectly. He orders General Thomas, Stonewall, Jackson who only sixty days earlier was nearly shot by his own men while returning to camp after the Battle of Chancellorsville.
When Lee told Jackson to take the hill if practical, Jackson understood what he really meant, take the hill by all means necessary.
At noon the 2nd Corps of Army of Northern Virginia, or the Stonewall Brigade, charged up at Cemetery Hill, followed by infantry behind the horses. Union Major General Oliver O. Howard was overwhelmed by the sudden charge and the sheer numbers that his own men fell into disarray.
When the smoke cleared, General Oliver O. Howard and his XI Corps lay dead at the feet of Stonewall Jackson. Cemetery Hill had fallen and was under control of the Confederate States of America.
With the high ground lost on the very first day, the Union Army of the Potomac was forced into a desperate, chaotic retreat. Union General George Meade attempted to rally his men further south, but the momentum belonged to the rebels. By July 3rd, the Army of Northern Virginia had not just won Gettysburg; they had shattered the Union’s defensive line entirely. The road to Washington D.C. was wide open. But the war did not end overnight.
In Washington D.C, Abraham Lincoln ordered General Ulysses S. Grant to abandon Mississippi and head north to protect Washington immediately. Grant left Mississippi and arrived in Maryland two weeks later in the city of Baltimore.
Lee had moved on the city of Emmitsburg, securing it shortly after leaving Gettysburg. When word reached Lee that Grant was in Baltimore and marching on him he addressed his men saying, “Prepare yourselves men, for this war has just begun.”.
Grant and Lee met one another in Annapolis and the ensuing battle was far bloodier than even Gettysburg. Lee ordered his men to spare as many men as they could telling them that these men had fought long and hard and deserved mercy. However this did not mean Lee did not intend to win the war.
The Battle of Annapolis started on July 24th and lasted six days with both Grant and Lee sustaining heavy casualties. On July 30th with Lee’s men surrounding Grant's men, a single man on horseback rode from Grant’s tent. Riding out from the encircled camp toward the Confederate lines, in his hand he held a large stick with a white bedsheet flying from the stick.
Ulysses S. Grant was surrendering to Robert E. Lee.
The two men met on August 2nd in a small barn a few miles away from the battlefield. Lee was dressed in his grey uniform and well groomed. Grant entered the room in a dirty uniform with mud caked boots. Lee extended his hand to Grant and Grant shook it.
Upon sitting Lee said to Grant, “I take no joy in this day, General Grant. It is a heavy tragedy that two men of the same soil were forced by politics to draw so much blood from one another. You fought a brilliant campaign, and I am truly sorry it had to come to this.”
Lee refused to take Grant's surrender sword, refusing to let Grant surrender his honor. With Grant’s surrender to save his army, the Union's last hope was gone. By the next year, a war-weary Abraham Lincoln officially signed a treaty recognizing the Confederate States of America as a sovereign country, ending the war on May 10th 1864.
The treaty that ended the American Civil War or as it became known in the south The Second Revolutionary War, was signed on May 10th 1864 in Washington D.C. In attendance at the signing was General Robert E. Lee, General Ulysses S. Grant, Union Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Union President Abarham Linclon and Confederate President Jefferson F. Davis.
The Treaty of Gettysburg established the formation and recognition of The Confederate States of America formed the states of South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.
The treaty required that all Prisoners of War from both sides be peacefully returned home along with all slaves that escaped from the south to the north. The treaty called for the succession of all hostilities between the North and the South.
The Treaty of Gettysburg also established that all land south of the Missouri Compromise Line be given to the Confederate States of America up until California, of which the entirety of the state remained in the Union. The Union territory of New Mexico was given to the Confederacy along with the Indian territory.
The border states of Missouri, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland were to hold a vote by January 1st 1865 on where their allegiance lay. The Union was allowed to use the port of New Orleans and maintain control of Fort Sumter while the Confederacy gained control of all former Union forts in their territory and was allowed access to the Great Lakes for trade.
Lincoln and Davis signed the treaty and shook hands. Afterwards when both men were alone they wept for what they had done.
Jefferson Davis later admitted, “For if I were to regret one thing it would be the signing of that treaty for by my hand was my country torn apart.”
