Bells Ring to Commemorate Lee's Surrender-- Part 5

The Associated Press was founded 15 years before the Civil War and at the time reported that ragged, hungry Confederate soldiers had already begun surrendering on their own in Virginia even before  Lee officially surrendered.  Days earlier, the Union  Army had smashed its way through Petersburg and into the Confederacy's ca[pital, Richmond.

Lee was attempting to escape with his army when Union forces "attacked them vigorously: in the hours before the surrender, convincing him that surrender was the only alternative.

AP at the time reported accounts saying "the road for miles was strewn with broken down wagons."

--Old Secesh