The Army Was Surrendered Not The Government

Over the years since the War Between the States ended many people have thought that the Government of the Confederacy surrendered the day General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia.  General Lee only surrendered his army not the government of the Confederacy.  Here are the exact words to which General Lee and Union General Grant set their hand to on that day in April 1865.

“In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”

Richmond had fallen on 2 April and President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government had evacuated the city. Davis and his cabinet temporarily located themselves in Danville, Virginia but they were soon forced to flee before the advancing Union forces and travel through as yet unoccupied portions of the Carolinas and Georgia.

Following Lee's example, other Confederate generals also began to surrender in the next few weeks. But Davis continued to urge armed resistance right up until he was captured by Union troops on 10 May. On that date, Andrew Johnson, the recently inaugurated American president, declared armed resistance in the South had effectively ended.

Johnson's announcement was a little premature. Confederate troops in Palmito Ranch, Texas launched a successful attack on 12-13 May and it was not until 23 June that Stand Watie became the last Confederate general to surrender his forces at Doaksville, Oklahoma. The American Civil War officially ended on 20 August 1866 via a Presidential declaration.

But you'll notice that while the war did effectively end by the various military capitulations, the Confederate government never formally surrendered. Davis certainly did not and, as far as I can tell, the Confederate Congress was too disbursed by April 1865 to issue a surrender.  On August 20, 1866, President Andrew Johnson signed a Proclamation—Declaring that Peace, Order, Tranquillity, and Civil Authority Now Exists in and Throughout the Whole of the United States of America. It cited the end of the insurrection in Texas, and declared
... that the insurrection which heretofore existed in the State of Texas is at an end and is to be henceforth so regarded in that State as in the other States before named in which the said insurrection was proclaimed to be at an end by the aforesaid proclamation of the 2d day of April, 1866.
And I do further proclaim that the said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States of America.
As it says above President Johnson of the United States said that the insurrection was over, but no where does it say the Confederate Government signed any formal surrender.  They cannot make it so until a formal surrender is signed since the Confederate Government was a sovereign Government with a Constitution and President with its Congress.  No where does it say they relinquished these.  President Davis was imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe as a pure act of vengence.
Because Congress was not sure that white Southerners had really given up slavery or their dreams of Confederate nationalism, a decade-long process known as Reconstruction expelled ex-Confederate leaders from office, enacted civil rights legislation (including the right to vote) that included the freedmen (ex-slaves), and imposed conditions on the readmission of the states to Congress. The war and subsequent Reconstruction left the South economically prostrate, and it remained well below national levels of prosperity until after 1945.  The legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, as seen in thousands of lynchings (mostly from 1880 to 1930), the segregated system of separate schools and public facilities known as "Jim Crow", that lasted until the 1960s, and the widespread use of poll taxes and other methods to frequently deny blacks of the right to vote or hold office until the 1960s. In more modern times, however, the South has become the most integrated region of the country. Since the late 1960s blacks have held and currently hold many high offices, such as mayor and police chief, in many cities such as Atlanta and New Orleans.  So, the War Between the States and it’s aftermath lasted at least a hundred years; and it continues to be a factor even in 2014 as the South has had lower percentages of high school graduates, lower housing values, lower household incomes, and lower cost of living than the rest of the United States. These factors, combined with the fact that Southerners have continued to maintain strong loyalty to family ties, has led some sociologists to label white Southerners a "quasi-ethnic regional group".  The South in the past 50 years has seen a larger influx of people from the North moving here to live, African American Communities growing and people of other international races moving here especially in the bigger cities.  But there is still the strong influence of a separate South in the rural areas.
The Staff of the Henry County Community News