California was a long way from the bloody battles of the Civil War, which ended 150 years ago at approximately noon Pacific Time Thursday, but you can remember this event with a new postal stamp.
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House in rural Virginia, ending a war that took 600,000 lives. The overwhelming industrial power of the North, combined with the moral authority of ending slavery, finally doomed the Southern cause.
The new stamp is a reproduction of the 1895 painting “Peace in Union” by Thomas Nast, who was also a political cartoonist and is credited with devising the donkey and elephant as symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties. The painting hangs in Galena, IL, where Grant once lived.
Though parts of Southern California were sympathetic to the South, no major battles were fought and federal troops were sent to Los Angeles in 1861 to buttress union support.
