The poet T.S. Eliot once wrote, “April is the cruelest month”, describing the coming of spring during the midst of war. His war was World War I, but the words are eerily apropos when remembering the Civil War. ¹

During the Civil War, April was indeed a month filled with sorrow and loss during all four years of the war.

When Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, the nation was at a breaking point that had been strained for many years. Seven Southern states had already seceded by the time Lincoln took office in March 1861. His inaugural speech was widely read and was, for some, incendiary. Men like Dorsey Pender, for example, decided to join the Confederacy after reading what he saw as perceived threats in Lincoln’s First Inaugural; his own state of North Carolina had not yet decided to secede. An editorial in the Charleston Mercury printed in the days before the Fort Sumter attack reads, “The North is swollen with pride and drunk with insolence.” The editor added, “Experience shall be their teacher. Let them learn.” Mary Chesnutt, a Charleston diarist, wrote that she heard her friends exclaim, “God is on our side!” When she asked why, they replied, “Of course he hates the Yankees.” ²

Abraham Lincoln was in a quandary with the soldiers manning the Federal garrison at Sumter in Charleston Harbor. To allow it to fall into Confederate hands was a sign of weakness, but more importantly, Lincoln saw it as his duty to uphold Federal lands and the people protecting them. It was a matter of Constitutional duty. He sent supplies. From Charleston, artillery along the battery fired upon the fort and soon Major Robert Anderson, the commander of the garrison, surrendered to South Carolina leader James Chesnutt – the husband of diarist Mary Chesnutt. Three days later, Lincoln ordered a special session of Congress to declare war – and asked for troops to enlist for ninety-days' service. ³

For the rest of the month of April there were riots, anticipations of attack, and the flocking of millions, North and South, to enlist. Virginia seceded later in the month of April in 1861. Robert E. Lee, a Federal commander, sent his resignation and promptly offered his services to his home state.

April 1862 saw the beginning of the Peninsular Campaign by Union forces in the Army of the Potomac, led by General George McClellan, against the Army of Northern Virginia, led by General Joe Johnston. The following day, April 6, 1862, two other armies in Tennessee, led by Generals U.S. Grant and Albert Sidney Johnston, met in death grips at a place called Shiloh. General Johnston, killed in that battle, was the highest-ranking officer from either side to be killed in the entire war. ⁴

Because of the astonishing losses, the South, an agrarian society, had a far less population than the industrial North. In April, 1862, the first of three Confederate conscription acts were initiated. Later that month, on April 25, New Orleans fell to Union naval forces under Admiral David Farragut. ⁵

By April 1863, General Robert E. Lee had been in charge of the Army of Northern Virginia for several months. The Army of the Potomac had a new commander too. Joe Hooker, by April, had done wonders for the men of his army. He cleaned it up, fed the men and raised their spirits and expectations. By the end of the month, the Federal forces were again in Virginia and crossing the Rappahannock. Hooker said, “May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.” ⁶

In Mississippi, General Grant began his attack on Vicksburg. What began as a frontal battle soon evolved into a long-term siege.

By April 1864, General Grant had been promoted to the charge of all Union armies. Realizing that General Lee’s army was the one to defeat above all others, Grant elected to oversee campaigns in the East, traveling with General George Meade, who still commanded the Army of the Potomac. Having been promoted just before the Battle of Gettysburg in late June 1863, Meade would command the army until the end of the war, though he had to answer to Grant, his immediate superior officer. By April, Grant had decided upon an Overland Campaign. He would fight through the spring and summer, from early May through July. In the west, Confederates fought victoriously at the Battle of Mansfield (also known as the Battle of Sabine Crossroads) in northwestern Louisiana, part of the Union’s ill-fated Red River Campaign. In Tennessee, the vindictive Nathan Bedford Forrest captured Fort Pillow, a Union fort on the Mississippi River. When captured black troops attempted to surrender, he had them shot down on the third anniversary of the Fort Sumter surrender. ⁷

The last day of April 1864 brought a terrible blow to Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his family. His five-year-old son, Joseph, fell from a balcony in the early afternoon to the brick walkway below, and died soon afterward. ⁸

April 1865 brought the beginning of the end for the four-year war. On April 2, General Grant and the Army of the Potomac successfully breached the walls of Petersburg, and the city fell into Union hands. The ragged and starving Confederates, in an attempt to reach Joe Johnston’s army in North Carolina, were cornered a week later at Appomattox Court House. On April 9, Lee surrendered. On April 11, the formal surrender took place as the men of the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered their weapons and flags to the North. Neither Lee nor Grant was present. Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain, who led a regimental charge of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, was the man chosen to oversee the formal surrender.

On Friday, April 14, 1865, at Fort Sumter, Robert Anderson, the man who had surrendered the fort four years earlier raised the same flag he brought down over the fort. The day was an equally happy one for Abraham Lincoln, who knew the war was about to end. His happiness was short lived. He was shot by the assassin John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre, and died the following morning, Saturday, April 15. His funeral was held April 19. ⁹

“I know this foul murder will bring down worse miseries on us,” Southern refugee Mary Chesnutt correctly prophesied. ¹⁰

On April 26, Federal soldiers surrounded the Garrett tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia. Booth, who was hiding in the barn and refused to surrender, was shot. He died soon afterward on the Garrett porch. ¹¹

While every month during war was filled with bad tidings, April was indeed a terrible month for those hailing from both North and South. Experience was truly an effective teacher, and hopefully mankind has learned the awful lesson, when human beings were capable of inflicting the worst upon one another. Sources: Chesnutt, Mary Boykin. Mary Chesnutt’s Civil War. Edited by C. Vann Woodward. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1981. Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land. Quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford University Press, 1979 (Third Edition). Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative: Red River to Appomattox. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. Smith, Jean Edward. Grant. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Steers, Edward, Jr. Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press, 2001. Sutherland, Daniel E. Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: The Dare Mark Campaign. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Wagner, Margaret E. The Library of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War. New York: Little Brown & Company, 2011.

End Notes: 

1. Oxford Dictionary of Quotes, p. 204. 

2. Wagner, p. 14. Chesnutt, p. 48. 

3. Wagner, p. 15. 

4. Smith, pp. 195-196. 

5. Wagner, pp. 58, 61. 

6. Sutherland, p. 128. 

7. Smith, p. 288. Wagner, p. 172. 

8. Foote, p. 140. 

9. Steers, pp. 121, 133. 

10. Chesnutt, p. 791. 

11. Steers, p. 204.