On Friday, May 26, 1865 at New Orleans Confederate General Simon Buckner, acting for General E. Kirby Smith of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department, negotiated with Union General Peter Osterhaus, who represented General E.R.S. Canby, and worked out details for the surrender of the last significant army of the Confederacy. Under the terms of the surrender, officers and men would be paroled under terms similar to those of the Appomattox agreement. General Smith signed the surrender document at Galveston on June 2. After the war, Kirby Smith would enter the telegraph and railroad industries and would later become the president of the University of Nashville. At the time of his death in 1893, Smith was a professor of mathematics at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee.
00000174-b11b-ddc3-a1fc-bfdbb1a20000The Schreiner University Department of History is honoring the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War with a series of short vignettes focusing on events from 1861 through 1865. The Civil War was the most destructive conflict in American history, but it was also one of our most defining moments as a people and as a nation. Let us know what you think about "This Week in the Civil War." E-mail your comments to Dr. John Huddleston at jhuddles@schreiner.edu.Airs: Weekdays at 5:19 a.m., 8:19 a.m., 4:19 p.m. on KTXI and 4:49 a.m., 9:29 p.m. on KSTX.