Appomattox

 A reminder to members of City Daily Photo that the theme for the first of August is Purple. 

We continue on where we left off yesterday with this look at the Civil War and its influences on Canada.

General Sherman had taken his army across southern countryside in their March to the Sea, destroying Confederate infrastructure as they went. Now as the last months of the Civil War began, Sherman set his sights north, looking to do the same to the Carolinas, and link up with Union forces in Virginia.

The Petersburg siege came to an end in April. General Lee could see no hope of protecting Richmond from the Army of the Potomac, and broke free with what was left of his Army of Northern Virginia, trying to reach supplies further west. Grant and the Union army followed, overtaking the hungry rebels at Appomattox. It was there that Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9th, 1865. That moment in history, the gravity, dignity, and respect of it all between the two generals- that was something I would have liked to have seen.

There were still Confederate forces in the field, but Sherman would soon receive their surrender, showing the same consideration as his friend and commanding general.

Four years of death on an unimaginable scale, a country ripping itself apart. And now it was over. Successive Union generals had blundered into serious mistakes, or failed to capitalize on opportunities, despite having the advantage of numbers and industrial output. Lee had become a legend in the eastern theatre of the war. Until Grant came along; as Shelby Foote said, Grant "knew how to beat Lee and did."

The Union celebrated the end of the war, and victory. Yet mere days after Appomattox, President Lincoln was assassinated on April 14th while attending a play at Ford's Theatre. John Wilkes Booth staged it all as part of a three pronged attack on Union leadership, shooting Lincoln himself while one of his cohorts attacked the Secretary of State and another failed to do his part to kill the Vice President. Booth fled into the night, but would meet his fate soon enough. North and South were shocked. The actions of one angry man still resonate down through history today.

A bust of the great emancipator. I would have thought this was part of an American collection, but in fact it is part of the collection at the Canadian Museum of History.

Time moved along. The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, entrenching the end of slavery into the Constitution.

Two years later, the United States acquired Alaska from Russia. The new Canadian government, fresh off Confederation, saw this as territorial designs and a reason to consolidate the West.

The Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing citizenship rights and protection under the law to the formerly enslaved and their families, was passed by 1868.

Canadian federal concerns about what the Union would now do without a war made them look west to ensure that the western territories wouldn't get gobbled up by Americans. And out west, among the indigenous tribes, was one group of people, the Metis. They were a blend of indigenous and French that had become a distinct culture on their own. Based largely in what is now Manitoba, they had their own ideas about their place inside Canada, and their relationship to the federal government. In time, that would lead to violence.

This display case includes the vivid craftsmanship of Metis peoples.