Video: 'Ken Burns - The Civil War: Episode 8 - War Is All Hell (1865) | Ken Burns Documentary' (Apr. 8, 1865, 50:54)

(Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, dawn; during Battle of Appomattox Court House, part of the Appomattox Campaign of the American Civil War) — Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee ordered Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon to make one more attempt to break out at Appomattox this morning.

But after Gordon’s men drove federal cavalry from their positions and swept forward to the crest of a hill they were halted by an advancing solid wall of blue, the entire Union Army of the James.

Upon hearing the news, Lee finally stated the inevitable: “Then there is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”