![](data:image/svg+xml;base64,PD94bWwgdmVyc2lvbj0iMS4wIiBlbmNvZGluZz0iVVRGLTgiPz4KPHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHhtbG5zOnhsaW5rPSJodHRwOi8vd3d3LnczLm9yZy8xOTk5L3hsaW5rIiB3aWR0aD0iMTQ4Ny41cHQiIGhlaWdodD0iMTkyNXB0IiB2aWV3Qm94PSIwIDAgMTQ4Ny41IDE5MjUiIHZlcnNpb249IjEuMiI+CjxnIGlkPSJzdXJmYWNlNSI+CjwvZz4KPC9zdmc+Cg==)
WHEREAS, General Ulysses S. Grant created the terms of
surrender, which allowed 28,000 Confederate soldiers to go home
with pardons; and
WHEREAS, The defeat of the Confederacy led to the
reconstruction of those states that rebelled against the end of
enslavement of Africans and African Americans; and
WHEREAS, Countless memoirs and oral histories testify that
many slaves first learned of and experienced emancipation at the
moment of the Union's triumph at Appomattox; and
WHEREAS, Approximately 4,600 enslaved people were emancipated
in Appomattox County on April 9, 1865, by the surrender; and
WHEREAS, One of the accounts of a formerly enslaved person
living in Appomattox was from a woman named Fannie Berry, who
described the community's reaction to the surrender by stating
"[We] began to sing...'You are free, you are free'... such
rejoicing and shouting, you never heard in your life"; and
WHEREAS, The USCT involvement at Appomattox served as a point
of pride and as vindication to other Black soldiers and
civilians, especially those in Southern states; and
WHEREAS, African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass
reflected on the surrender during a Decoration Day address in
Arlington, Virginia, and is quoted as saying, "When the dark and
vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious, preferring to rule
in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern heart and
stirred all the malign elements of discord, when our great
Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government throughout the
world, had reached the point of supreme peril, when the Union of
these states was torn and rent asunder at the center, and the
armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and
bloody hands to destroy the very foundations of American
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