The American Civil War Ends
Date: April 9, 1865
Location: Appomattox Court House, Virginia
Far away from the deserts, mountains, and plains of the Southwest, soaked in blood from years of the American Civil War, the brutal, endless conflict between the Union and the Confederacy raged on in the fields and towns of the eastern half of the US.
Union General Ulysses S. Grant & Confederate General Robert E. Lee
Following the Appomattox campaign in Virginia, encompassing several battles including the Battle of Five Forks, the Union breakthrough at the siege of Petersburg and finally, the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse, the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union Army under the command of Union Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant shortly after noon on April 9, 1865. Though the Confederate government wouldn't officially dissolve until May 10th, and the last Confederate army would surrender on June 23rd, April 9th is seen as the official end date of the war. Five days later, on April 14th, US President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater, Washington, D.C.
United States President Abraham Lincoln
In the Southwest, the last Civil War battle to take place was almost three years earlier in July 1862, the Second Battle of Mesilla. Mesilla served as the capital of the Confederate domain known as the Arizona Territory, and after a long, bloody campaign that took place across New Mexico and Arizona that ended with Mesilla and the territories in Union hands, the Confederate domain known as the Arizona Territory ceased to exist, once again becoming a part of the New Mexico Territory and the Union.
That's not to say that the Southwest enjoyed peace during that time, between 1862 and 1865. After the defeat of the Confederates in the Southwest and the establishment of the New Mexico and Arizona Territories in February 1863, Military Governor James Henry Carleton, the General of the California Column that defeated the Confederates in Arizona, and now governor of New Mexico, began ordering the construction of forts and an increased military presence in the areas along major trading routes and towns. This was in response to continued uprisings by several tribes in the area that began prior to and during the Confederate occupation.
Military Governor James Henry Carleton
What followed was a Union scorched earth campaign against the Navajo, Apache, Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, Brulé, and the Oglala, with soldiers skirmishing with war parties, burning their dwellings and crops, executing those who resisted, and rounding up the survivors to forcibly send to reservations. The battles, ambushes, skirmishes, atrocities, and massacres that followed turned huge swathes of the Southwest, already weary from the carnage of the Civil War, further into a warzone.
Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890
In the Southwest, the end of the American Civil War came and went, but the wars with Native tribes that began and reached a fever pitch during its tragic presence in American history continued long past the days of Appomattox Courthouse. Though the conflicts between the US Army and specific tribes ebbed and flowed over the coming decades, this conflict didn't decisively end until the massacre of nearly 300 Lakota men, women, and children in 1890, over 25 years later, at Wounded Knee Creek.