Video: 'Ken Burns - The Civil War: Episode 8 - War Is All Hell (1865) | Ken Burns Documentary' (Apr. 4, 1865, 45:57)

(Friday, April 7, 1865, 5 p.m.; during the Appomattox Campaign of the American Civil War) — As Union forces under Gen. Ulysses Grant pursued the Confederate army under Gen. Robert E. Lee along the Appomattox River, Grant initiated a series of dispatches between between the two commanders:

“The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance. I regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.”

Lee, still not ready to surrender, continued to hold a dialog with his nemesis Grant while holding out hope that he could escape the growing Union stranglehold.