May 13, 1865!

On May 13, 1865, nearly a month after the surrender of major Confederate forces in the East, the last battle of the Civil War took place.  A few hundred feet from the Mexican border, the Confederate States Army won its final victory.

Talk about pointless.

I really feel sorry for the soldiers at the Battle of Palmito Ranch, fighting and putting their lives on the line for a war that was all ready over.  Private John Williams of the 34th Indiana was the last soldier to die in the war, the last of 620,000 Americans to die in the worst war in US history.

Nonetheless, the war finally ended and the horrific process of Reconstruction began.

It is a shame they simply did not just fire in the air three times and go home.

A half century later, Adam Gunther would be the last man to die in the First World War, in other words,history repeated itself.  The difference is that Private Williams died in the last battle of a war that truly ended.  We have not had a civil war since.  Private Gunther died in 1918 and the war resumed in 1939.

America learned in 1865 to let the Confederates off the hook early and the former CSA was reintegrated back into the Union by 1870, including the hotbeds of Southern nationalism, Virginia and Texas.

In 1919, despite the US attempts to get the Allies to moderate their approach to a defeated Germany, the Treaty of Versaillies was harsh and laid the groundwork for a worse war twenty years later.  Of course, it was easy for the US to call for a moderate approach to Versailles, especially since 10% of France was destroyed and Britain took major casualties.

Still,lessons of history slipped past.

Par for the course on planet Earth!