Editing Confederate States of America (section)

===Collapse: 1865===
The first three months of 1865 saw the Federal [[Carolinas Campaign]], devastating a wide swath of the remaining Confederate heartland. The "breadbasket of the Confederacy" in the Great Valley of Virginia was occupied by [[Philip Sheridan]]. The Union Blockade captured [[Fort Fisher]] in North Carolina, and Sherman finally [[Second Battle of Charleston Harbor|took Charleston, South Carolina]], by land attack.<ref name="Martis28"/>

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The Confederacy controlled no ports, harbors or navigable rivers. Railroads were captured or had ceased operating. Its major food-producing regions had been war-ravaged or occupied. Its administration survived in only three pockets of territory holding only one-third of its population. Its armies were defeated or disbanding. At the February 1865 [[Hampton Roads Conference]] with Lincoln, senior Confederate officials rejected his invitation to restore the Union with compensation for emancipated slaves.<ref name="Martis28"/> The three pockets of unoccupied Confederacy were southern Virginia—North Carolina, central Alabama—Florida, and Texas, the latter two areas less from any notion of resistance than from the disinterest of Federal forces to occupy them.<ref>{{cite book |last=Foote |first=Shelby |date=1974 |title=The Civil War, a narrative: Vol III |page=967 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing |quote=Sherman was closing in on Raleigh, whose occupation tomorrow would make it the ninth of the eleven seceded state capitals to feel the tread of the invader. All, that is, but Austin and Tallahassee, whose survival was less the result of their ability to resist than it was of Federal oversight or disinterest. |isbn=0-394-74622-8 }}</ref> The Davis policy was independence or nothing, while Lee's army was wracked by disease and desertion, barely holding the trenches defending Jefferson Davis' capital.

The Confederacy's last remaining blockade-running port, [[Wilmington, North Carolina]], [[Battle of Wilmington|was lost]]. When the Union broke through Lee's lines at Petersburg, [[Richmond in the American Civil War|Richmond]] fell immediately. Lee surrendered at [[Appomattox Court House National Historical Park|Appomattox Court House]], Virginia, on April 9, 1865.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 323–325, 327.</ref> "The Surrender" marked the end of the Confederacy.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 287</ref> The [[Japanese ironclad Kōtetsu#American career as CSS Stonewall|CSS ''Stonewall'']] sailed from Europe to break the Union blockade in March; on making Havana, Cuba, it surrendered. Some high officials escaped to Europe, but President Davis was captured May 10; all remaining Confederate land forces surrendered by June 1865. The U.S. Army took control of the Confederate areas, but peace was subsequently marred by a great deal of local violence, feuding and revenge killings.<ref>The French-built ironclad [[Japanese ironclad Kōtetsu#American career as CSS Stonewall|CSS ''Stonewall'']] had been purchased from Denmark and set sail from Spain in March. The crew of the [[CSS Shenandoah|CSS ''Shenandoah'']] hauled down the last Confederate flag at Liverpool in the UK on November 5, 1865. {{cite book|author=John Baldwin |author2=Ron Powers |title=Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship|page=368|publisher=Three Rivers Press|isbn=978-0-307-23656-2|date=May 2008 }}</ref> The last confederate military unit, the commerce raider [[CSS Shenandoah|CSS ''Shenandoah'']], surrendered on November 6, 1865, in [[Liverpool]].<ref>United States Government Printing Office, ''Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion'', United States Naval War Records Office, United States Office of Naval Records and Library, 1894
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Historian [[Gary Gallagher]] concluded that the Confederacy capitulated in early 1865 because northern armies crushed "organized southern military resistance". The Confederacy's population, soldier and civilian, had suffered material hardship and social disruption.<ref>Gallagher p. 157</ref> Jefferson Davis' assessment in 1890 determined, "With the capture of the capital, the dispersion of the civil authorities, the surrender of the armies in the field, and the arrest of the President, the Confederate States of America disappeared ... their history henceforth became a part of the history of the United States."<ref>Davis, Jefferson. [https://archive.org/stream/ashorthistoryco00davigoog#page/n544/mode/2up/search/surrender+at+Appomattox ''A Short History of the Confederate States of America''], 1890, 2010. {{ISBN|978-1-175-82358-8}}. Available free online as an ebook. Chapter LXXXVIII, "Re-establishment of the Union by force", p. 503. Retrieved March 14, 2012.</ref>