“There is nothing left for me but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”

So said Robert E. Lee, 150 years ago today, on the evening of April 8, 1865. Lee had commanded the Confederacy’s most celebrated army, the Army of Northern Virginia, for three years. That army had been reduced from 92,000 men to 8,000. The remaining Confederate soldiers had gone without food for a week and were surrounded by 80,000 Union troops. Both sides could see that the end had come.

The next day, April 9, Palm Sunday, Lee met with the Union commander, General Ulysses S. Grant, in the parlor of the home of Wilmer McLean in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Grant showed up in rough garb caked with mud; Lee was in full dress uniform. Both men had dressed as they wished to be remembered.

Lee’s motivation in surrendering, he said, was to avoid further bloodshed. Grant offered very generous terms: Confederate soldiers would not be taken prisoner, but could return to their homes so long as they laid down their arms and agreed to obey federal law. Officers, cavalrymen, and artillerymen could retain their swords and horses. Grant would supply food to the Confederate troops.

Lee agreed, and so ended a war that had claimed the lives of over 650,000 soldiers---to this day, more than the total casualties of all other U.S. wars put together. The equivalent death toll today, adjusting for population growth, would be 7 million. The South lost fully a quarter of its white male citizens between the ages of 16 and 45 in the Civil War (blacks did not serve in the Confederate Army).

What was the war about?

Southerners often say it was about states’ rights, and to a point, that’s true. But the right the South was defending was the right of some people to treat other people like property, so it would be fairer to say the war was about slavery. Apart from slavery, the conflict over states’ rights might never have arisen.

Did the war accomplish anything? It ended slavery, preserved the Union, and set in motion reforms giving every U.S. citizen---at least in theory---the right to vote and to equal treatment under the law. We’re still hashing out what this means (see recent political developments in Indiana and Arkansas, among other places), but the principles of freedom and equality under the law are no longer questioned in America.

America is also becoming a more homogeneous country in some respects. Shopping malls in Mobile are indistinguishable from those in Buffalo and Boise. All Americans listen to the same music, eat at the same restaurants, watch the same movies and television shows, and buy the same brand-name clothes.

And yet, the divisions created (or revealed?) by the Civil War still exist. The South remains more politically conservative than the rest of the country. We’re still the “Solid South,” the only difference being that we’re now solidly Republican rather than solidly Democratic.

Distrust of the federal government runs deep here. We resist anything with a federal label on it, even when participation would save us money and increase our standard of living. That may be partly a residue from having lost the Civil War.

The South is also more ethnically homogeneous than other parts of the country, as it was in the 1860s. Waves of European immigrants following the Civil War settled largely outside the South. Even today, it’s largely Americans elsewhere who rub shoulders with people from Latin America, East Asia, and the Arab world.

In the South, despite a large black minority, white folks still call most of the shots. But that, too, is changing. The grandchildren of blacks who left the South during the Jim Crow era are returning here in surprising numbers, and Latinos are gradually finding a home here, too. Motivated, hard-working newcomers add vitality to local economies, so their presence among us is a good thing.

Robert E. Lee would no doubt be stunned if he could see the South today, 150 years after his surrender to General Grant, and I’ll bet we’d all be stunned if we could see it 150 years from now.

Richard H. Schmidt is a retired Episcopal priest, editor and author who lives in Fairhope. He can be reached at courier@gulfcoastnewspapers.com.